Out of the Black - Lee Doty [104]
"Hi, Rae." He slurred, instantly uncomfortable with the amount of misery escaping through his short utterance. "Was that a... flip I just saw?" He sobbed uncontrollably once, twice, and then the world resolved to a black halo around her shining face.
Then the blackness was absolute. He could only assume she hadn't shot him.
***
Below, the principal surgeon stepped away from the table. Hawthorne breathed a sigh of relief and checked her watch.
"So, what's the plan chief?" Anne asked. Below, the OR doors opened, admitting a man of about thirty with shoulder length hair and a deep, smooth tan. "If Jeremy's here, things are pretty much wrapped up."
"Jeremy?"
"Yeah," Anne said, "The guy down there with the great hair and the crass tan of science. He's another phlebotomist... he's here to unhook your partner from the operating bed. Look, he's actually checking himself out!" Below, the newcomer posed surreptitiously before a polished cabinet, making what Anne had come to regard as one of his 'handsome faces'- this one was emoting "catch you later, babe".
"The operation is over. Though you might expect to hear it in here with me, the fat lady is in fact singing."
Hawthorne turned her head and arched an eyebrow, regarding Anne critically. "You don't have to do that."
"What?" Anne asked.
"Fat jokes." Hawthorne replied.
"Oh yes I do."
Hawthorne shrugged, "Ok, then at least try to make them funny. Now 'crass tan of science'- that was hilarious." She turned back to the window and to the subject. "We wait for now."
Below, the secondary surgeon stepped back, stretching her arms. Though they couldn't hear, she was flirting with Jeremy.
"Wait for what?" Anne asked.
"For who." Hawthorne corrected.
After a few seconds, it became clear that Hawthorne wasn't going to elaborate.
The lights flickered- flickered again. Down in the OR, conversations paused and people looked up- a nod to previous eras when a flying predator might have flown in front of the sun.
"I've got a really bad feeling about this." Anne said, looking about, feeling something both new and familiar hovering at the edges of her consciousness. With an almost audible click, she placed the feeling... it was the feeling she'd had, holding the Harm's blood sample between her fingers- the same feeling of chaotic bugs jittering restlessly- looking for food.
After three more minutes, the creepy bug feeling persisted, but they were almost ready to leave: Mendez, looking like a mummy in isolation film, was transferred to an open monitor bed and connected to its systems. The principal surgeon and the tech worked on the post-op report, Jeremy and the secondary arranged a date for drinks tomorrow.
"Catch you later" Jeremy's handsome face emoted. He winked and cometed his turn to go.
The doors of the OR opened inward.
A group of ten people lurch and stumble in, filling the OR's only exit.
At first their giggling daze and dishevel mark the new arrivals as the survivors of a flower-painted microbus accident. There is blood spattered among them to support this impression, but not all of their clothes follow the theme you'd expect for the passengers of such a groovy conveyance. True, most are dressed for a hip night out, but the circles of cool in which they move are obviously varied. Some wear the electric-traced black of the dated Psycho-Goth fad, while others wear the scanty leather and plastic fare of clubs with more explicit themes, a few even wear the sleek business casual of more mature pick-up joints. One wears only rumpled pajama bottoms, his bare and bleeding feet leaving red-brown footprints behind him.
Most still wear the remains of broken or cut plastic restraints on wrists and ankles, the kind used to secure patients in the high security ward of the hospital. Most are still wearing the hospital patient ID wristbands. But the most obvious similarities between the new arrivals are the dark mottled skin, the black vacant eyes, the humorless grins that seem to stretch from