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The Deserted Hospital
We came home to sad, sad news. Dale was in the hospital, in a coma. My brother Wayne and my sister-in-law Linda were sitting with him. My son, Joey, had tried to reach me at Sean's but we had already left. Everyone in the world has a cell phone but me.
We almost decided not to go to the hospital. The thought of watching Dale die, as I had watched Judy die, was almost unbearable. In the end, though, I knew we had to go. He was my brother and he deserved to have us there for him.
So Alex and I drove out there. It was an hour and a half drive and it was dark by the time we got there. As we parked in the lot, we noticed everything seemed eerily quiet. It was deserted, except for one car, but there were a lot of lights on inside. We had come to this hospital years before, when Alex scraped his forehead on a nail, and once later with Dale, so we were sure we were in the right place.
We walked through the entrance and went to the front desk. No one was there. We walked to the right where there was a long corridor, lined with rooms and the elevators. The rooms contained furnishings and equipment, but they were empty of people. It was unusually cold and we began to feel as if we were in an episode of 'The Twilight Zone'. We wondered what had happened to everyone. Could they have been attacked by a patient that went berserk? Could that patient jump out at us at any time? As we explored, I made the remark that the patient could pose as a doctor and then lure us off to our death. We decided against getting on the elevators. We went back to the front and shouted 'hello' and knocked on the doors to the offices. No answer. This was just a little too spooky. We had to get out.
We went back out to the truck and sat there looking at the hospital--baffled, to say the least. What was going on here? Why would a hospital be left completely open and unattended? Then we noticed what looked like a silhouette of a man in one of the front offices. He appeared to be bent over a desk and he wasn't moving. What was he doing? Why hadn't he answered our knock? Was he sleeping? Was he dead? Was it really a person, or just a shadow? Did we dare go back in to find out? What choice did we have? How else would we find Dale? But what if he was the patient that had gone insane and attacked everyone?
We went back inside and knocked hard on the door to the office. The man didn't answer. We shouted 'hello' and knocked about two or three more times. We finally gave up and went back out to the parking lot. We would need to find a phone to call Wayne and Linda. It didn't dawn on me that there was likely one at the abandoned front desk.
It was then that we saw the giant building in the distance across the street. Could they have built a new hospital since our last visit? We drove over there and sure enough...
next - No More Running - Facing the loss of my brother.
or see the index a little farther down this page
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