Evelyn Prince
New Hampshire General Hospital, Somerset
The day after the blast...
"How is she doing?" asked an older man in a white coat. He was peering over the shoulder of a young nurse, who seemed to be studying the red-headed patient that lay before them, scribbling jargon onto her clipboard. Evelyn Prince could see every word scrawled out in her mind, magnified with such extremity that she could inspect each wiggly deviation within the woman's rushed handwriting. She could hear every word that was said, loud and clear, as they bounced and reverberated around every nook and cranny of her aching skull. And yet, as hyper-aware as she was of the situation she'd found herself in, Evelyn Prince could not move a muscle.
At some point in the night, her mind had woken up. She could hear the mammoth blast from the nearby Lower East Side; she'd felt the tremble of the earth as the shock rumbled through the city. She'd seen the lights flicker off and the constant beeping and humming and machinery fade, then watched the flocks of doctors and nurses pour into the ward to make sure everyone was OK. Evelyn wanted to tell them she was fine, that they should let her go. And yet, her lips would not budge an inch. So Evelyn had laid here, reflecting over what had happened. It seems that the blast hadn't been all that bad... Aside from knocking out the power, nobody in her immediate vicinity seemed to be hurt. Perhaps she'd overreacted... And look where it had gotten her. Laid out cold on a hospital bed.
"It's difficult to tell," said the nurse, who glanced up at the dead equipment intended to monitor Evelyn's vitals. "She seems relatively unharmed. She's still breathing. Her scans showed some severe abnormalities; her brain seems far more active than is typical even in completely conscious people. But until we get the power back, we can't run any other tests."
The doctor nodded, and left the room.
The ward seemed largely silent now, except for the scribblings of the nurse's pen before she, too, turned to leave. Evelyn needed to do something - anything - to get her attention; to will the nurse to notice that she was here, that she needed help waking up. A shot, a shock... Anything. There was a moment of fear that washed through Eve's body as she considered the fact that, if she couldn't make herself known, she might never wake up. The pain that had persistently stabbed at Eve's brain - she presumed from the incident - was growing more and more severe as her stress levels sky rocketed. Her head felt like a pot of boiling water about to overflow, when suddenly...
Movement. Fast and unexpected, it took Eve a second to realise that her entire bed was rolling on its wheels with considerable speed, hurtling towards the nurse. With her back turned, and Eve unable to warn her, the inevitable happened: the collision sent the nurse tumbling to the polished floor as she screamed out in surprise. Two junior doctors rushed to her aid and helped to shaken woman to her feet, as she looked at the near-lifeless body of Eve with an accusatory eye filled with horror.
"Are you OK?" one of the men asked, his arm around her shoulder. "What happened?"
The nurse couldn't take her eyes off Evelyn. It was as if something was stirring behind those closed lids; as though the body was possessed by a force less-than-innocent. She'd heard the stories of the hospital being haunted but... No, she wouldn't let herself fall for such foolishness. After a moment of hesitation, the nurse finally tore her eyes away.
"Yes," she said. "Yes. I'm fine." her voice trembled with fear. "Something must have... Fallen loose, in the blast last night. Please, get everything back in order. I... Have business to attend to."
And with that, the nurse scurried out of the room.
'What the fuck just happened?', Eve asked herself as she was wheeled back against the wall, the wheels on her bed locked into place as they had been before. The doctors smoothed over her sheets and made sure everything was how it should be, before the younger-looking of the two headed off to a separate ward. The remaining man chuckled to himself, looking up at the security camera and smiling. He knew this part of the building had no power.
"Guess it's just you and me," he said, pulling back the sheets he had just tended to and letting his hand stroke along Eve's thigh. It was at this point that Eve realised the way things were going. 'Not again,' she said to herself, beginning to panic. 'Not now. I don't need this. Not today.' her mind reeled, her thoughts tripping over themselves as the man's fingers began to slide up inside her pale green gown. She wanted to scream. Every fibre of her being demanded she do so. She had to scream.
And she did.
Her body lunged forward, her brain flooding with lava as both hands grasped her skull. As her dry mouth let out a crackling, chilling scream, she felt the pain in her head release; rather than subsiding and ebbing away, it seemed to burst out from her body in a wave of unseen energy. The doctor was knocked flying, colliding with the wall at the opposite end of the ward. Beds toppled over, spilling their patients onto the floor. Piles of paperwork and notes flew into the air as though caught by a strong wind. Glasses of water fired themselves at the doctor, smashing around him as he cowered in the corner.
And then it stopped. Staff hurried into the room to inspect the commotion; the nurse from before was among them. Her eyes swept over the room, taking in the damage before they landed on Evelyn, sat upright in her bed, eyes wide open. The second their eyes met, the ward and everyone in it seemed to melt away, as Eve was presented with a vision in which the nurse tumbled from a skyscraper in a move that didn't seem entirely accidental. She heard every bone snap as the falling form collided with the concrete, felt the wet scarlet pooling around her, before the ward came back into the view.
"Lock the doors," the nurse said. "Nobody leaves until we figure this out." Her eyes were locked on Evelyn the entire time.
"Nobody leaves."
