Page 81 of Ward D
As I stare inside the room, my legs tremble beneath me. Oh no. Oh my God.
I never should have opened the door to this room. I should have made a run for it while I still could.
54
The stench of blood fills Seclusion One.
A couple of my friends are taking their surgery rotation right now, and when they discuss the surgeries they saw, they never mentioned the smell of blood. But this room is thick with it—an acrid, metallic smell that assaults my nostrils as I stare into the small dark space.
There’s death in this room.
I should run. The second I smell the blood, that should be my cue to run for it while I still can. But I am frozen in place, my phone glued to my palm. I want to look away, but I can’t. All I know is I will never forget it, not until the day I die. I will never stop seeing this room, even when I close my eyes to go to sleep at night.
The beam of my flashlight first rests on the bed. There’s a woman there. A small woman of around eighty years old. She is staring up at the ceiling, a drop of blood in the corner of her mouth. She is so still.
It’s Mary. Mary Cummings.
She’s finally joined her husband.
I move the beam of light away from Mary’s dead body. But that’s a mistake. Because the next thing the light illuminates is a figure lying in the corner of the room. A male with the frame of a football player, dressed in blue scrubs. And when the beam hits his eyes, they are staring ahead at nothing.
I clasp my free hand over my mouth. “Cameron,” I whisper. “Cam…”
He’s dead too. I don’t even have to check. I was mad at him for the way he broke up with me, but I didn’t want this for him. I wanted him to suffer just a little bit, then go off and live his life and be a surgeon or whatever he wanted. But that’s never going to happen now.
I almost drop the phone, but when I lower the light beam, I realize there are two more bodies on the floor of the room. The carnage is not over.
The first is a woman. I don’t recognize her, but she is just as still as Mary and Cameron. She’s lying face down on the floor, her arms and legs splayed out around her body. She’s dressed in only her underwear.
And there’s one final body.
This one is a man. He looks like he was in his seventies, with a bushy white beard. Like the woman, he is also in his underwear. I notice a bruise blossoming on his shoulder from where he tried to bash the door down. As I shine my light on his head, I can make out the deep indentation in his skull.
“I thought he was dead the first time,” a voice from behind me speaks up. “But he wasn’t. He got up and he kept trying to get out of the damn room. Fortunately, the second time I hit him in the head, I had better results.”
I turn around, raising my phone in the air like a weapon. And there he is. Standing right in front of me. The man who spent the whole damn night pretending to be Dr. Beck. Pretending to be taking care of all these patients when, in fact, he was nothing but an imposter.
And then the lights flicker back on. The generator has kicked back in.
My chance to escape is gone. I should have run while I could. I’ll never get another chance like that. He’ll make sure of that.
“You’re more resourceful than I thought you were.” His gaze lifts to the fluorescent lights overhead. “If you hadn’t been so damn curious, you actually might have gotten away. Respect, Amy. Truly.”
I take a step back. “Stay away from me…”
“Why are you so afraid?”
“I don’t know who you are, but I know you’re not Dr. Beck.”
“You’re right—I haven’t even introduced myself.” He smiles at me and those dimples pop. He really is handsome—I can see why Jade fell for him. “My name is Damon. Damon Sawyer. And it’s very nice to finally meet you, Amy. I’ve heardsomuch about you.”
55
Ihave to hold onto the wall to keep from passing out.
All this time, I thought the monster was in Seclusion One. I thought he was roaming the halls, hiding in dark corners. But all along, he was right in front of me.
Footsteps echo from down the hallway, growing closer. Bile rises in my throat when Jade and Ramona round the corner. Now it’s three against one, not that I had any chance against Damon Sawyer even on his own.
