The Hospital
In an operating theater illuminated by fluorescent lighting, emergency room surgeons frantically compressed the chest of a girl. Her long blond hair was smeared with blood, yet some how her face seemed so serene. Emeline watched from the hall window as each compression and each rescue breath seemed to be her last.
Emeline turned away from the gruesome scene, mechanically brushing the locks of her blond hair to behind the shoulder of her lab coat. This was the job she had signed up for, after all. Death was just part of the game.
At first, death in the hospital had jarred her. The memory of her first patient choking out his last breath had clung to her mind like a leech. With each passing patient that she saved and each passing patient that moved on to something new, Emeline realized that there was no use crying. No use shedding tears, because no amount of tears could ever bring them back.
She should have known it would be like this. On her first day of medical school, the teacher took her class down to the morgue. Every time she had a new patient on the verge of the ever-after, his words filled her head like smoke. "This is where they put your mistakes," the instructor had said, while leaning over the pallor body of a not so newly dead patient, "So don't make any."
As she walked down the hall to see her next walk in patient, she noticed something strange. The hospital appeared to be deserted, as if it was night. Emeline looked around to see if it really was night. She looked for the night guard, the janitor, the regular shift workers; all absent. Even stranger still was the fact that beyond the windows was the blackness of night, but it was somehow thicker that usual, somehow more tangible.
Emeline's gaze was sucked into the blackness. She delved deeper. Deeper. Deeper still, then suddenly, A methodic sound of scraping metal seemed to emanate from around the corner, and she spun around to see who or what made that horrific noise. When she did, she saw a sight that took her breath away in the most horrid fashion: blood smeared across the hallway wall, forming twisted hand prints at the beginnings and ends of the smears.
Against her better judgment, she went toward the smears, following them down the darkening corridor. Some poor patient must have done this, but why did no one see?!
Emeline turned a corner, still following the crimson trail, to come to a dead end in the normally long and twisted hall. She stopped, as did the smears, as if their soul purpose was to lead her to this exact spot.
At the very end of the hall, one of the fluorescent lights flickered, one second bright and normal as the rest, the next black as the grave. As Emeline stared, the light stopped flickering to be extinguished entirely to blackness.
The next light closer to her started flickering; on and off, on and off, until off was finally chosen for it and the world underneath it was plunged into darkness. This darkness was different than usual, yet familiar. It was the same thick, tangible darkness that lay just past the windows.
Another light, still closer to where Emeline stood flickered more quickly and died, adding to the darkness that now engulfed the dead end. Another light. Another darkness. And Emeline ran. She sprinted back around the corner and down the hall, all the while she could feel the darkness chasing her. Each light, just at her heals extinguished and the world underneath it disappeared, going colder than ice. Ice, after all still had some life.
She turned another corner and quickly dashed into the bathroom, the door swining behind her. Emeline braced herself on the sink, panting in a vain attenpt to catch her breath.
"What are you running from?"
Emeline looked up to the mirror in front of her.
"What are you running from?" her own reflection asked, an abnormally devilish grin on its face.
"Death!" Emeline whispered sharply in reply as her eyes widened and she took off out the door.
In the hall, the darkness had paused, as if waiting for Emeline to return. She sprinted in the other direction and the darkness soon picked up her trail. The lights flickered and died with increasing speed. Faster and faster they chased, nipping at Emeline's heels.
She kept running, past the operating theatre where the surgeons still tried to revive the girl and through double doors that swung in her wake.
Still running. The surgeons again. The poor girl. More double doors and the hall became lighter. Running still. Surgeons once more. Poor Emeline. Still more double doors swung behind Emeline as she ran down the hall into a burning light.
She ran past more doors and more surgeons and the light blared hotter and brighter until it was the same no matter if she closed her eyes or if they were open.
Emeline burst through once last door into overwhelming light and her eyes popped open and she gasped for breath. The surgeons looked down at her, their figures silhouetted by the blaring light of the operating room lamps.
"Emeline, can you here me? Yes or no?"
"Yes," she mouthed soundlessly.
"Emeline, you were in a car accident on your way to work, in the parking lot of the hospital no less. At times, we thought we lost you, but somehow we brought you back."
Tears streamed down Emeline's cheek. They brought her back.
). I didn't feel for Emeline. You just told me what happened, not too much show. We want to feel for the character (see, smell, touch, feel, taste).
And, yes, take note on what Jabs said. Give this a reread and run the spell check. Read it backwards.
