Crawlers - Chapter Six: The Hospital

(trigger warning for mentions of eating disorders)

6. The Hospital

It didn’t take Aubrey long to get the hang of the wheelchair. There wasn’t much to get the hang of. It was so old and dodgy that one of the wheels kept turning and getting stuck, making Aubrey constantly roll herself into the walls and bash her legs. At least her legs didn’t feel any pain. After one minute of rolling down the corridor, she could already feel blisters forming on her hands. 

Neus crept along behind her. She was very skinny, and walked so carefully that she made no sound when she walked. Like a ghost. Her wrists were almost skeletal, hanging out of the sleeves of her hoodie. It reminded her of a girl in her school called Phoebe Bell who stopped eating one day. Macey had come up with this horrible nickname, and stamped around after her on the pitch going ‘Fee-Fi-Fo-Phoebe’ like a giant, and after the tenth time, Phoebe had run away crying and never came back to school. Months later, Aubrey was out in town doing some shopping with Macey when they saw Phoebe coming out of the Doctor’s office, thin as a rake and only recognisable by her thick glasses. Macey had opened her mouth to make another joke, but Aubrey quickly pulled her into Primark and distracted her with a blue denim jacket that was on sale. She'd never told Macey to stop the jokes. She'd just gotten good at steering her away, and telling herself that counted as kindness.

 ‘This isn’t a good idea!’ Neus warned Aubrey for the third time.

‘Okay, then go back! I don’t need babysitting!’ Aubrey snapped back, shaking the thoughts of Phoebe and Macey out of her head. ‘Just tell me where Ravi’s office is.’

Neus cautiously sped up and stood in front of Aubrey, preventing her from going forward. In the dim lighting of the hallway, the great big shadows under Neus’ eyes seemed to grow. ‘Please, just listen to me. Ravi would kill me if he knew I’d let you down here!’

‘Why?’

‘It doesn’t matter, please, let’s go back and find you a bed, and you can meet the others, they’re all nice.’

‘I don’t care if they’re nice!’ Aubrey hissed, rolling forward into Neus’s knees. Neus toppled over backwards and landed with a quiet thud. 

‘Ow! What the heck?”

‘I’m sorry!’ Aubrey said, not meaning it. ‘I’ve just woken up in a brand new world, my whole family is probably dead, my flamin’ legs don’t work, and Ravi might be the only person actually able to answer some of my questions. So let me pass, or I’ll run you over until your shins snap!’

Neus flinched, but didn’t move. Her hands were clenched so tightly that Aubrey could see her knuckles through the skin. God, Aubrey thought, this girl is useless. Then, quieter, a worse thought: that's what Macey used to think about Phoebe. She pushed it down, then wheeled forward. Neus crawled out of the way, using the wall to pull herself up. A set of double doors separated her from the next corridor, presumably where Ravi’s mysterious office was. There were warning signs plastered over the door, and charcoal sketches of those things outside, annotated in great detail. She stopped for just a second, her eyes lingering on the largest of the drawings, which had a note written next to it. 

Do not look them in the eyes.

They are attracted to sound and smell.

I think they remember faces.

 She wondered how someone had gotten so close to the creatures without being ripped to shreds in order to learn them. If what Neus said was correct, these things were lethal killing machines. She pushed the doors with her hands and then rolled into them to keep them open.

‘You coming?’ She called, half joking, out to Neus.

‘You’re not the first one, you know,’ Neus winced from behind her. ‘Lottie had a brother.’

Aubrey let the door swing shut, ignoring Neus. She had other things to worry about, though what could she have possibly meant? That Lottie’s brother had been paralysed? Or that Lottie’s brother had confronted Ravi for answers? She didn’t let the thoughts consume her too much. The corridor was darker on the other side. The wheels squeaked underneath her as she pushed them, her hands sorer than ever. As she advanced, something caught her eye. One of the rooms on the right was locked shut with three different padlocks. The door next to it was also locked, with a thick chain looped through the handles, pulled so tight it had dented the wood. She glanced down and noticed scuff marks along the floor, a mixture of light damage to thick gouges. It looked as though something had been dragged out… or in.

Tracing the scratches led her to another door. It was also locked, but there was no chain or padlock, so it must have been locked from the inside. Scrawled in black marker across the door were the words The Doctor’s Office, underlined twice. 

Aubrey knocked on the door three times, quick and loud, then wheeled back slightly. She suddenly felt a bit anxious. Perhaps more so than when she’d seen those things outside. There was only one thing that made sense to be locked in those rooms with such precaution.

The door creaked open. Ravi peeked around it, protective glasses balanced on his nose. He was wearing a hazmat suit. He took one look at Aubrey and seethed. 

 ‘What are you doing here?’ He snapped. ‘Back to the ward. Now.’

He went to pull the door shut, but Aubrey blocked it with her chair. ‘No, not until you give me some answers,’ she smirked. ‘Now.’

He looked at her for a second, then down at the chair blocking the door. ‘I should wheel you back to the ward right now.’

‘Go on then,’ she said, crossing her arms.

Something flashed quickly through his eyes as he scanned her from top to bottom, and then he smiled. ‘Fine, why not?’ Ravi murmured, waving a dismissive hand. ‘Might as well try to get someone to appreciate my work. But what you see in here, you can never tell anyone, okay? Not Lottie, not Neus, not anyone. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Depends what it is,’ Aubrey shot back, her mouth dry but her chin high. She hadn’t expected him to let her in so easily. ‘If it’s something totally messed up, then no promises.’

Ravi tilted his head, studying her through his safety glasses like she was a specimen in a jar. Then, he said, ‘Good. I prefer honesty. It makes you easier to predict.’

He stepped aside, revealing a cramped office lit by a few candles. A yellow hue fell across the desk, cluttered with labelled glass vials, swollen notebooks and metal trays lined with surgical tools. A microscope sat on a separate, smaller desk to the left, surrounded by small petri dishes, their contents cloudy and dark red.

‘This is my little secret project,’ Ravi said, pulling the glasses off. ‘Don’t touch anything. It might bite.’

Aubrey’s nose wrinkled, but she rolled herself closer anyway. ‘Neus said your dad worked on the infection when it first happened,’ Aubrey said, wheeling closer to the desk. ‘You continuing his work or just playing mad scientist?’

‘You ask a lot of questions for someone who’s barely been awake a day,’ Ravi quipped.

‘I’m a fast learner.’

He nodded, smiling thinly. ‘My father did work on the infection. And yes, I am continuing his research, looking for a cure. If that makes me a ‘mad scientist’ then so be it.’ He picked up one of the notebooks and flicked to a page filled with neat diagrams of brains, each one shaded with dark, branching shapes. ‘How good are you at Biology?’

‘I’m predicted a B,’ Aubrey said. ‘I’m decent. Not a genius like you though, I suppose.’

‘Look here, see,’ he said, pointing at one of his diagrams. ‘It isn’t like a normal pathogen. It’s certainly not a virus or a bacterium. It doesn’t spread through the bloodstream. It goes straight to the central nervous system. It enters at the spinal cord or optic nerves, then works its way into the brain. These filaments–’ he tapped the page ‘-they graft themselves onto existing neurons, replacing normal synaptic connections with their own network. Think of it like roots forcing their way into soil. Once it’s in the frontal lobe, it starts rewriting behaviour. By the time it reaches the brainstem, there’s nothing human left to save. The rest of the body starts to decay, and the host becomes aggressive, and most importantly, hungry.’

‘Have you ever seen The Walking Dead?’ Aubrey asked. ‘You’re literally like Doctor Jenner.’

‘This isn’t fiction,’ Ravi said, pulling out a scan from a folder on his desk. It showed a brain cross-section clouded by jagged black streaks radiating from the centre. ‘My dad took these before he, well… These are the infected areas, but look at these.’ He tapped at another dark mark closer to the brain stem. It was small, an oblong blob with what looked like several legs sticking out of each side.

Aubrey leaned in, frowning. ‘That doesn’t look like an infected blood vessel.’

‘No,’ Ravi said, almost proudly. ‘It’s what’s called foreign tissue. You know what that means?’

‘It’s not supposed to be there?’

‘Very good. All three of the infected brains I’ve studied show the same invasive structure. There’s an infection, yes, but it’s caused by this thing entering the host.’

Aubrey’s mind jumped ahead. ‘So… It’s not just a virus?’

Ravi’s brow twitched.

‘It’s a parasite, isn’t it?’ she pressed. ‘Like… a fungus or a worm or something, getting into the brain and taking over the nervous system? It came to Earth in that meteor crash. Wait. Oh Jesus, you’re telling me it’s an alien parasite.’

He hesitated just long enough to make her uneasy. ‘Something like that.’ Ravi said, putting the scans away. 

‘Then why did it only affect the adults?’ Aubrey asked suddenly. ‘Will we turn into them too, if we get exposed?’

‘Truth is, I don’t know,’ he said, looking down at Aubrey. ‘I can’t test living subjects now, can I? But that’s what I’ll be working on next, trust me. Is this all that you came here to find out?’

‘Mainly, I wanted answers about, well,’ she gestured to her legs and the wheelchair. ‘This. How can I fight aliens if I’m in a wheelchair?’

‘No one will be fighting aliens, Aubrey.’ Ravi’s voice became cooler, more clinical. ‘Without imaging equipment, I can’t be certain, but I’d wager it’s spinal trauma. And spinal trauma is…’

Aubrey felt heat rising in her cheeks. ‘Permanent.’

‘Yes,’ Ravi said.

‘You said something about physiotherapy.’

‘I don’t say this to be cruel, Aubrey, but I need you to understand the reality of your situation. We can’t waste energy chasing miracles.’ He bent down slightly, putting a hand on her right leg in what seemed to be the performance of a sympathetic gesture. ‘You’ll most likely never walk again.’

Aubrey scowled. It was less what Ravi was saying – deep down, Aubrey had expected as much, but hadn’t wanted to admit it – but more how he was saying it. His voice was cold, clinical, like he didn’t care at all. Like he was reading off a chart. Like her legs were just another bullet point in his research notes. 

‘Fine,’ she said, but then she couldn’t think of what to say next. She hated that, how her brain kept churning, but her mouth went dry. She spun her chair to leave, trying to make it look effortless, but immediately clipped into the desk. The wheel stuck, and her momentum died. Of course, Ravi just stood there, watching her flounder around, until he finally exhaled through his nose, long and disappointed, and pulled the door open, motioning her out with a swish of his arm. 

‘You’ll understand soon enough,’ he said, his voice clipped, already retreating into the safety of his notebooks. ‘You’ll fit in here. Just give it a chance.’

She thought of needy Neus, and Lottie’s sickly sweet smile, and the hopeless looks on the faces of the other kids in the canteen, and shuddered. What was there to understand? That they were all just sitting ducks, waiting to be picked off by alien parasites? 

‘I can leave if I want, though?’ She’d meant it to sound firm, but it came out as a question.

Ravi chuckled. ‘Out there? In that busted chair?’ He leaned closer, brown eyes gleaming behind the glasses, ‘I’d be studying your brain samples by dusk.’

She rolled away, not looking back. This wasn’t fair. None of this was fair. She heard the door shut behind her. The hospital wing was silent, save for the faint hum of the wind through one of the cracked windows at the other end of the hall. She stopped outside the locked doors, ears pricked. Was that a noise? Or was it just Ravi in his office? Then, so faint she almost thought she’d imagined it, something shifted. 

A scrape, like fingernails running down the door.

A muffled thud.

A raspy, dry moan.

Then silence again.

Her eyes darted to the chained doors, to the gouges in the floorboards, to the look in Ravi’s eyes. A chill worked its way up her arms, and she pushed harder at the wheels, moving faster, every squeak of rubber on linoleum sounding louder than it should. The blisters on her hands were burning, but she didn’t stop until she hit the double doors.

She risked a glance backwards and was sure she saw the padlocks dance, like the door was being pushed against from the inside.