The Wyrms of &alon

After stopping by a vending machine for a protein bar to tide me over until lunch, I took the liberty of video-calling Dr. Nowston on my console as Heggy, Dr. Horosha and I made the trip to Ward E. My plan was to ask him if he would be willing to lend his particular brand of expertise to our CMT—pun intended. I managed to get all of “I’ve been put on a team in charge of overseeing Ward E, would you like to—” before he cut me off.

“—Say no more. The answer can only be yes.” On my console screen, I watched him clap his hands together in excitement. “Genneth, this is the best birthday present you’ve ever given me.”

I narrowed my eyes. “It’s not your birthday, though.”

“C’mon man…” he said, “you know what I mean.”

With Brand’s smiling face bearing down too close to his console’s camera, I didn’t need to bother imagining him flicking his hand in dismissal of my technical quibbles.

“I’ll send you Director Hobwell’s presentation. I’ll keep you abreast of things as they come.”

I tapped my console, sifting through the menu to select the file. It vamoosed with a little whoosh.

Poor Harold’s perpetual vexation made a lot more sense when you realized that he was constantly having to bend his back over backward to deal with the latest legal obligations placed on him by his overseers at DAISHU. He could have sent the recordings of our briefing to everyone he planned on placing on a CMT, but legal technicalities demanded that he explain things to his chosen in person, as he had with us. Of course, Heggy, Horosha, and myself were about to enter a quagmire all our own.

Back during the Second Empire when the famous now-old central wing—the Administrative Building—of West Elpeck Medical had been constructed to replace the ornate pre-industrial construction which had, in turn, replaced an even older antecessor, the Administrative Building had been built with an eye toward modular design. In hindsight, the architects had been rather prescient. The fundamental unit of the building was the Ward, a collection of patient rooms, waiting rooms, hallways, equipment rooms, analysis rooms, and the like. The Wards themselves came in two types: the Number Wards—1,2,3, and the like—and the Letter Wards—A,B,C, and all the rest. The Number Wards were meant for outpatient treatment, while the Letter Wards were meant for those patients who were going to stay with us for a spell.

As the hospital continued to expand, these structural templates would be preserved, even after the architectural style they’d been originally built in had gotten tossed out the window. With the exception of Ward A and a handful of other pockets of eighteenth century antiquities which were protected from demolition by statute, most of the Letter Wards in the central wing had been gutted and replaced with their modern reincarnations, though some hallways and other details remained untouched by time. The Number Wards in the central wing where I worked—courtesy of my neuropsychiatric specialization—were mostly still in their eighteenth and early nineteenth century state, which wasn’t really a problem when it came to mental health. Every once in a while, I’d get called over to the Letter Wards—either in the central wing, or in other wings—to lend my expertise to a physician or surgeon in need of it.

I was the person they called when patients started to scream bloody murder for no apparent reason, or freaked out because they saw two of everything, or who thought their nurses and attending physicians were demons slipping poison into their IV lines. Have a mentally disturbed patient, or a patient with learning disabilities, or psychoses, or other special-needs? I was your guy. Disappointing though it was, yes, it took a licensed expert with multiple degrees to explain to other, differently licensed experts why they should not use the word “fish” in front of a certain special-needs patient who started screaming any time and every time he heard the word “fish”. Still, even with all my (mis)adventures in the Letter Wards, I’d never gotten as familiar with them as I was with the Number Wards, which made the sight that greeted Heggy, Dr. Horosha, and myself as we stepped into Ward E all the more breathtaking.

Your standard Letter Ward design remained stable for the last three-hundred years. The primary differences between different Wards were in their architectural stylings and the details of their layouts. Ward E was right next to the Suture where the old, central wing—otherwise known as the Administration Building—melted into the new-new northern wing, occupying a technological midpoint between the centuries-old shell and the two-decade old extension to the north.

A large open area was at the heart of any Ward, at the center of which you’d find the main reception desk, a long countertop wrapped around one or two structural pillars. Ward E’s reception desk was made from polished reddish stone that wrapped around a pair of plain pillars in a meander of rounded edges and right-angled turns. The overall shape was irregular, like a bismuth coastline. Within, and occasionally moving in and out of the opening in the desk were the handful of staff who kept the Ward’s logistics in smooth working order—receptionists, IT personnel, and the like. They sat in comfort in ergonomic chairs, their fingers darting over the console screens mounted on movable stands atop the counter. Many had personal consoles pressed against their heads with their shoulders as they conducted multiple conversations at once.

Personnel, patients, and hospital beds—both empty and occupied—flowed steadily through the hallways that stretched out from the reception area. There were three hallways, one for every cardinal direction save for north. Along with patients’ rooms and the occasional equipment room or specialized examination area, the halls were dotted here and there by plastic potted plants and framed artwork mounted on the walls. Most were bland watercolors or abstract nineteenth century paper sculptures filled with pretense, along with a couple of genuinely nice pieces. Short rows of interlinked plastic chairs littered the hallways, and—most of all—the waiting area tucked away behind half-spanning walls a stone’s throw from the reception desk. The walls were covered in abstract stained-glass mosaic designs, and the waiting area bore gaudy carpets with seemingly arbitrary polygonal shapes. The waiting area held the overflow from the larger admissions lobbies near the hospital’s many, scattered entrances. The southern hallway branched off into several corridors, along with a proper admissions lobby, filled with rows upon rows of chairs and cordoned paths, themselves filled with people being attended to by the receptionists behind the admission’s counter.

We entered Ward E by passing through admissions, through the double doors that led to the reception desk’s southern hallway. And though all these details and more caught my eye,what really caught my attention as we stepped into this high-tech hot mass was that Dr. Ani Lokanok was having a heck of time dealing with three strangers—and not the good kind of heck. I would have called Ani a damsel—she had that air of innocence to her—though I didn’t, because I knew she’d resent it.

Damsel in distress is a misnomer, as she liked to say. This distress is nothing that this ‘damsel’ can’t handle herself.

The Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) she (wisely) wore made her stand out from most of the doctors and nurses moving about in view, who had yet to don PPE of their own because they were still trying to process all the sudden changes in protocol. However, the plastic visor and apron she wore—the former to encase the head, the latter to surround the torso and thighs—didn’t seem to be doing her much good. I mean, it was great for protecting against disease, but it did little to ameliorate the trouble the three strangers were causing here. Ani’s distress showed itself in the usual way: a frown.

Despite this, of the four people, the three strangers beside her—one man, two women—appeared to be the worst for wear. The man was in late middle-age, and the younger of which was in a wheelchair. The way the man and the non-wheelchaired woman bickered in hushed, uneasy tones made it clear that they were husband and wife. And though it made sense to assume that the young woman in the wheelchair was their daughter, dear God, doing so made me ache for them.

“Please, doctor,” the mother said, “we’ve been waiting all morning.”

The young woman’s mother wore her brunette hair in a bouffant flip. Once upon a time, I imagine, the fearful symmetry and lush, un-split ends of the mother’s hairdo would have made for a fearsome sight, but now it was crinkly and disheveled. A cursory morning spritzing from a half-empty can of hair-spray was probably all that kept her hair in its shape. Liver spots had begun to blemish her neck and bosom, though it looked like she’d applied cover up to them. The woman’s dress was a quilt in the shape of clothes, made from squares of different fabrics material stitched together in a haphazard fashion. She also had coral-hued lipstick and a bit more mascara than was appropriate for someone her age.

“Maybe we should just go home, Babs,” the man says. “We can see an OBGYN in a couple weeks once things have calmed down.”

The father was, arguably, better dressed than his wife, but only because he hadn’t tried to powder over his slovenly get-up. His dark green plaid shirt hadn’t been buttoned properly; weedy chest hairs stuck through his unbuttoned collar. The khaki slacks and matching loafers were probably the nicest things on his body. That being said, even with the stinging, antiseptic scent that hung in the hospital’s corridors—vanilla, for the first floor—there was no mistaking the stench of cigarettes that clung to the many pockets in his long, well-worn dark blue jacket.

“No,” Babs—the wife—said. She shook her head at her husband. “We’re here now. Let’s do it now. Please.”

The husband looked at their daughter and then turned away in shame. “But… it’s all we have left…”

As I said, the daughter made me ache for them.

The young woman in the wheelchair moaned, mindlessly, from mouth that seemingly stuck agape. She stared deep into nowhere with eyes that hardly ever blinked and drool pooling in her mouth. Her dark, auburn hair was the liveliest part of her; a scribble of neon green dye ran across it like a stylized lightning bolt. Everything else, however, was wasting away. Her legs were emaciated. The bones pressed up against her stockings. Her blue denim dress was eerie, almost doll-like, even as it matched her eyes’ hue. Occasionally, she would rock her head to one side or another, but if there was any purpose behind it, I couldn’t tell.

She must have been in her mid-twenties.

It broke my heart to see someone like that, a prisoner in their own body. Unfortunately, I then opened my big fat mouth.