It was five o’clock now, and the shadow of the hospital had completely over taken the bench where I sat to eat my lunch. Six days a week I have this bench to myself, trying to enjoy the peace and quiet that the rear of the building affords. The only disturbance being the occasional smoker looking for some small talk to go with their nicotine.
If only I were so lucky today.
In my left hand and glued to my ear is a small cellular phone, my mother’s continuous yammering assaulting my brain. What she is talking about I have no idea, nor do I care. It was always the same anyways; your father this, your father that, he won’t takes his med, he’s constantly in the way, he won’t listen to me, he won’t talk to me.
Jesus Christ, maybe if he could get a goddamn word in edgewise, I couldn’t help but think as my frustration mounted.Finally after having my exaggerated sigh go unheard for the fifteenth time, I decided it was time for more drastic measures.
“Mom,” I say.
No response, she’s still talking. Let’s try again.“Hey, mom,” again nothing.
Alright, that’s it, Morse code time.“Mom…mom…mom…hey mom…mother…mom…”
“What?” she snaps, obviously irritated that she can’t be the center of attention anymore.
“My break ended like, ten minutes ago,” I tell her.
“Well, why didn’t you say something earlier,” she complains.
I can’t hold back the open hand that jumps up from my lap and slaps me in the forehead.
Arg, this woman.“Look I gotta go alright, I’ll call you back later tonight, okay,” I try not to grind my teeth as my hand slowly drags itself down my face.
“Alright, fine,” she replies, “but not too late. And don’t use ‘like’ like that, it makes you sound dumb.”
“Fine, I’ll do it during my next break, I love y-”
Click.She hung up. The hell’s her problem. Like I’m gonna give her a call now.A crisp movement snaps the phone closed and drops it into my breast pocket to rattle around beside a pair of pens. With my left hand I reach down between my legs and crumple up the top of the brown paper bag containing my lunch, which has gone untouched thanks to my mother’s half hour long father slam session.
Another deep, loud sigh, no embellishment needed as I hop to my feet and set an intentionally slow walk back to the double doors leading inside.
I grab the dull grey, steel handle of the similarly dull grey, steel door. Then, leaning back so what little amount of weight I have does the work instead of my muscles, the door groans open.
Briefly, I raise my eyes to the grime covered hinges and their offensive sound. Somebody really needs to clean and oil those things. Sigh.
Lazily I let my eyes fall back down to level, spying a familiar and annoying figure at the end of the narrow, bland hallway.
I swear, this place is like a mad-house. White ceilings, white walls, white floors-“You’re late again,” the man at the end of the corridor calls out.
People you don’t want to see or hear…“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I reply, waving my hand nonchalantly.
“You keep pullin’ this shit and your ass is gonna get fired,” he carries on, free to use curses since the rear of the ground floor was mainly operating and emergency rooms, and therefore unfrequented by patients.
“Please,” I begin, “you think that if they could find anyone else willing to do the crap I do for nine bucks an hour they wouldn’t have already replaced me?”
I stop short of John, that’s the name of the man busting my chops, to take a look at him in the hopes of figuring out what he wants.
He seems tired, of course he always seems tired. At thirty-four he was only ten years older than me, but his face looked at least forty-five. The only lively thing about him was the persistent sparkle of laughter in his pale blue eyes. Other than that, he looked much the same as I. Lean build, average height, and that stupid blue jumpsuit with Maintenance stitched in red above the breast pocket – with a laminated hospital I.D. card clipped in front.
Maintenance, ha, goddamn janitors is what we are.My thought further reinforced as I eye the mop handle rising up out of the bucket into John’s hands.
“Hey, Danny boy,” he says, “with the economy the way it is, there’s all kinds of people out there scrappin’ for bad jobs.”
I answer with a dry chuckle and a bitter, “The fuck do you know about the economy?”
“ECON 201,” he starts defensively, “recessions coupled with sustained inflation, standard of living goes down, unemployment rises, people are willing to do anything to make a buck.”
“Yeah smart guy, well how’s it you spend your life pushing a mop around again?” I retort, admittedly bitter about not having gone to college myself.
“I was sick the day they were teaching us about condoms,” he says with a smile, “hard to make money for the woman you knocked up when you’re takin’ classes.”
I can’t help but let a grin overtake my scowl. The man was like a gunslinger with those wise-ass remarks.
“Don’t be getting’ excited just yet,” he continues, picking up on my change in mood, “I brought this here for you.” He flicks his wrists, shooting the mop handle at me.
I catch it with my free hand and give him a curious look.
“Another pre-med student,” a contemptible smirk on his lips, “couldn’t hold his lunch.”
“Ah, Christ, again,” I grumble, “where at?”
“Outside operating room three, east wing,” he states.
Once again, I sigh, wordlessly shoving my lunch off into John’s hands, confident it’ll find its way back to the break room. It always had before, though sometimes it’s a little lighter when I get it again.
“Mmm, ham today,” I hear over my shoulder against the constant rattle of the mop bucket’s wheels. Involuntarily I feel my face tighten with another smile. I can’t help but wonder if he’s being serious or not.
***
Ugh, who the hell eats tuna before coming in to witness surgery? And…is that strawberry milk? I stare down at the pinkish mess, spotted with chunked tuna and what looks like the remains of a
Turano roll.
Unbelievable.Pulling back my sleeves I take the two dust pans I grabbed from a nearby utility closet and start pushing the pile together. Then, keeping my head turned over my shoulder in an attempt for fresher air, I begin the process of pinching the makeshift scoopers together and dumping what I can hold into the rear of the bucket – sure to leave the mop as clean as I can for now.
Guess it’s not so bad that I didn’t get a chance to eat…A quick swab with some diluted AC-33 and it’s time to hunt for any pieces I may have missed.
Nothing. Thank god.Bending over, I do the final wringing out of my mop. Leaving my head raised up from the vile contents of my bucket, I can’t help but stare at the operating room doors and the sign I’m face to face with.
DO NOT ENTER. ORGAN RETRIEVAL.
Normally I don’t care about what’s going on it these rooms, usually it’s enough having to squee-gee up the leftover blood. But today I can’t help but wonder what that silver-spoon punk saw that could’ve made him so sick. So I decide to give a peek through the little square windows set in the top half of the doors.
Huh…that’s weird.There was nothing going on. There was no one in the room, save for a body in the center with a sheet pulled over it.
They couldn’t have finished. It didn’t look like they had even started. There was no blood anywhere, no sponges tossed on the floor, the movable table containing the surgical implements was completely undisturbed.
Ignoring the sign I approach the door and push it open with a whisk. Caught in an inquisitive trance my feet carry forward, not know exactly what it is I’m hoping to find.
Upon closer inspection, I notice the body is distinctly of feminine shape beyond that I didn’t care to investigate further. I can handle glancing at a victim in a motorcycle accident being rushed past in the halls, but I don’t really go out of my way to look at stuff like that.
Gah, shouldn’t there at least be an attending nurse or something? I think, standing next to the corpse and throwing my eyes back and forth between the three entryways.
‘Course, it’s not like this lady goin’ anywhere.“Are you now?” I vocalize my private wonderings aloud to the unfortunate patient. Meanwhile I continue to look around, absently now, my concerns shifting from the body’s welfare to my job.
Last thing I need on top of being constantly late is having the staff think they got a necrophiliac on their hands.What’s up with this? My mind stops worrying for a moment as I notice the IV for the first time above the operation table. I reach my hand up and fondle the tubing, watching as the edge of the sheet shakes with each slight movement of the line.
The fuck, what’s a dead body need drugs for?“What are you doing in here?!”
With a start, I drop my hands at my side and wheel around to face the aggravated speaker. A nurse as it turns out, mask on and gloved hands in the air before her.
“I-I’m sorry,” I stammer out, “I was just cleaning the mess some med student made outside.”
“You’re going to contaminate things,” she blurted, anger increasing as I watched her eyes narrow to slits.
“I know, I just, I thought, I-I thought that maybe he tracked some puke in here, and I was, I was just checking to see if-JESUS!”
Something’s got my hand!!I wrench my arm and jump sideways, running straight into the neatly laid out surgical instruments. My legs get tangled with each other and the table’s, and together the stand and I go pitching forward. I hold my arms up high to avoid getting cut by the tools as they fly through the air and clatter to the ground. Despite this act of self-preservation, I feel a sharp pain in my side as I land on top of the cart’s edge ribs first.
My breath is gone in a rush, and unable to yell out in pain I have to settle for a, God that hurts, within my head.
Stumbling to my feet, I clutch my flank in pain, managing to gasp out, “I’m…sorry…I’ll clean it up…I’ll help…” I end with a groan instead of further words.
Meanwhile, the nurse’s eyes made the transition from furious slits to being big as saucers and back again.
“You idiot!” she screams. “Get out! Get the hell out!”
Deciding to take her advice, I trundle out of the room still gripping my side.
***
“Look John, I’m telling you, the bitch was still alive!” I don’t care about the volume of my voice, these supply closets were very well insulated.
“The nurse or the body?” he jokes.
“I’m not fucking playing man, she grabbed me by the hand!”
“You know what this reminds me of? You know that story about the kid who goes to the graveyard to stab the ground above somebody’s gravestone”-
“Hey this is serious shit,” I plead.
Not listening though, the older man just rambles on, “so he stabs the ground, but he’s stuck because the ‘body’ grabbed him and come morning, the police find him dead from fright with a knife stuck through the cuff of his pant leg.”
“I’m not crazy, I know what happened,” I argue.
“So you actually saw her hand reach up from under the sheet and grab you?”
“Not exactly, but”-
“But what? You probably just caught your sleeve on the edge of the table…right before you fell over on that caddy.”
He just had to throw that in there, didn’t he?“But what about the IV,” I ask.
“Well they gotta keep the bodies hydrated even if they’re brain dead.”
“Then where was the respirator, college man,” my temper was getting the better of me. I hate being called a liar.
“Maybe they just took the body off life support, maybe an orderly forgot to unhook the IV, maybe they were harvesting tissue samples, how the fuck should I know?!”
Great, now I got the only person I could hope to believe me pissed off instead.
“Well we got to talk to somebody about this,” I insist.
"Talk to somebody about what, you think they just go droppin’ bodies here all willy-nilly. They have to keep paperwork on all this shit, you know. Do you know how many people would have to be in on this crack-pot conspiracy!”
John did have a point. You couldn’t get a new roll of toilet paper for the crapper without having to fill out two forms in triplicate. Not counting the carbons.
Even so, I know when I’m right.
“But”-
My fellow janitor put up his hand to forestall any rebuttal. “Enough,” he begins, “I’m two years away from getting a pension and then fallin’ back to part time. I’m not gonna throw my ass in the fire for no reason.”
I could feel the betrayal in my eyes as he continued his little speech.
“Now I’ll support your lie about goin’ to check for throw-up, but beyond that,” he thrusts his hands between us and dusts them off, “I wash my hands of this business.”
Without waiting for reply, he abruptly spins on his heels and begins walking away.
“Judas!” I shout after him.
“Pontius Pilate, stupid,” he spits back.
Storming out of the closet, I slam the door closed behind me. It hits so hard that the latch doesn’t have time to catch and it shoots back open. Halting it with a foot, I shove forward with both hands. The second bang rattles on down the hallway.
Son-of-a-bitch-bastard, I’m not…stupid…he’sMy thoughts are interrupted as an epiphany suddenly strikes me, something brought on by having my faces two inches from the word “Supplies” printed on the utility room’s door.
That’s it! Paperwork! Of course! Whatever was used during the organ harvesting would have to be checked out. Any tools, drugs, hell even plastic bags, it all requires filling out requisition forms! Requisition forms that would then be entered into the computer at the head nursing station on the floor where the operation was carried out.Brilliant. Truly brilliant.
***
At eleven o’clock the nursing station is deserted, so no one is around to keep me from hammering away at keys and slogging through file after file.
Damn, I never realized exactly how many deaths occurred in this hospital before now.Finally, through a combination of hard work and luck, I stumble upon the file I’m looking for.
Operating room three was registered in use from 4:30 p.m. until 8:00 p.m. Patient was Janis McClintock. Blah, blah, blah. We got surgeon, attending nurse, organs to be removed, surgical tools, medicine-“Oh my God…” The words escape from my lips in a breath whisper as terror claws at my mind. “A morphine drip. But that means”-
A hand settles on my shoulder and I cry out in alarm.
“Whoa, damn son,” a familiar voice barks in my ear, “you still seein’ ghosts?”
It’s just John. I want to yell at him for scaring the crap out of me. I want to start another argument about how I’m not stupid, because now I have proof. But I don’t think I have the time right now. I have to tell him what’s wrong with this place.
“What are you doing here,” is all I can manage as pivot in my chair and try to push my heart out of my throat and back down into my chest where it belongs.
“I came back to apologize,” he pauses a moment, glancing over my shoulder at the computer monitor then back to me, “but now I’m wondering if I shouldn’t be asking you the same thing.”
“I came here to find evidence,” I reply, spinning back around in my chair toward the computer screen. “Look,” I jab my finger at the list of items, sliding it down the glass until it stops beneath the incriminating pain killer.
I feel John’s face pass my shoulder and come to rest next to mine. I hear the surprise in his voice as he mutters the anesthesia’s name.
“That’s right,” I say, ready to guide his train of thought. “Dead people don’t feel pain. The only reason someone would need a morphine drip is so that the patient doesn’t bolt upright on the operating table screaming as their organs are being cut from their body!”
“Oh shit,” he says. I can hear the surprise and disappointment in his voice as his face backs away from mine. I can understand what he’s feeling. Having to work somewhere for so long and having something this nefarious going on the whole time right under your nose.
“We have to tell someone,” I begin, feeling my level of panic and excitement rise again. “Not just the administrator,” I continue, “he could be in on it. We’ll have to go to the authorities and”-
Ow, fuck, my head! What the hell?I open eyes that I don’t remember closing to see the floor laying below me. The side of my head is splitting with pain. I reach a shaky hand to touch the aching spot and feel something warm and sticky surrounding the tender spot.
I roll my head back and to the side, the world tilting and whirling the whole time. I see John squatting down beside me, holding a heavy looking stapler in his hand.
He knows the question I want to ask but can’t put into words. He answers it anyways.
“Sorry kid, I lied to you. You know how I said it would take a lot of people to run something like this?”
All I can do is groan.
“Well,” he says, the sparkle of laughter now gone from his eyes but the smile remaining, “it’s really only like ten or twelve. One of them’s the eyes and ears,” he finishes, pointing at himself.
My teeth hurt. My tongue’s unresponsive. I blink a few times to clear the water that’s starting to impair my vision. Finally I get out the dull, “Why”, I feel I need to know.
John’s smile widens a little bit more as he says, “ECON 201.”
I slide my hands forward to push myself off the ground. It seems to be taking forever.
“Well Danny boy,” the conspirator says, drawing the stapler back above his shoulder, “I hope you’re a donor.”
I feebly raise a hand to stop the blow. I draw a breath to cry out for help. I watch the stapler race toward me.
