"Where's the doctor when you need 'im?" yelled a nurse down the hall. Mary Ann peeked around her chair to see where the voice was coming from. A large red headed woman in scrubs wheeled a screaming man down the hall. He cradled his left leg, the end of which was missing.
"Wow," the word bubbled out of her, "He's lacking a foot." At this point the jet-lag talked for her. She hadn't slept at all on the plane or tube ride as they called it here. She'd arrived at her dorm only to find out placement exams where the next day and her books hadn't arrived. Thank God she was an smart enough to know to go to the library. That's where she'd been when it attacked.
"Be glad you're not him. Am I right?" Mary Ann said, too loud to the room. The woman next to her turned her back as if to tell the child in her lap to ignore the crazy girl.
"Well, I'm glad I'm not him," Mary Ann said. She really needed sleep.
The ER was overrun. Mary Ann regretted not taking the word of her RA, or whatever they call them here in England, to fix her cut back at the dorm. Still, the memory of the lackluster box he called a first aid kit hadn't inspired her with confidence. Her mistake. She looked at the small bundle of bandaids she'd used as a stop gap measure to get to the hospital. The cut bled red around the edges exposing the depth of the thing. It would require stitches; at least two, maybe three to stop the blood. How was she to know the ER would have a multiple car pile up.
She watched as another nurse zoom past with long thin metal scissors. The kind that go up holes. She shuttered.
"I don't want to find out where those are headed," she joked. No one even turned her way.
"What's got into their bonnets?" She asked. Yep, she definitely needed sleep to reset her filter.
"Five more minutes. Give them five more minutes, Mary Ann," she told herself. "It will be worth it in the end." She looked down at her finger. The blood was contained for the moment, otherwise it might have dripped onto her new navy blouse or God forbid her favorite pair of white jeans. Red, white and blue only really go together on the flag.
She noted five minutes ticking past. She'd been here an hour. Reluctantly she stood up from her hard earned seat to check her place in the queue.
"Oh, sorry," she said after tripping on an old woman's walker. The woman ignored her, just like the countless men and women she'd had to step past.
"These people must be robots," she thought to herself. She couldn't be sure given the fact that this was her second day in the country. Must be a cultural thing. Ignore the foreigners.
The poor nurse at the help desk looked overwhelmed. Pens, papers, the works. It was a royal mess.
"'cuse me," Mary Ann said, "I understand your busy but I've been waiting over an hour and I'm am bleeding." The nurse didn't even have the decency to look up from her paperwork.
"Name?" she asked.
"Mary Ann Lee," Mary Ann replied leaning in. "I've been here over an hour. How much longer I can expect to wait?"
"One moment please," she said turning back to the files on her desk. They were in three stacks of varying heights covering every inch of the small desk space not occupied by a 80's computer.
"You use hard copies?" Mary Ann was curious. She'd never seen a hospital use a patient file before. "I thought they were obsolete."
"Computers are down, Mary Ann Lee, Mary Ann Lee. Ahh, here it is." She pulled a file out from midway down the second stack.
"American, hm."
"So? what does my place of birth have to do with when I'll be seen?" Mary Ann asked. She just looked harder at Mary Ann's file. "Minor laceration on your third index finger due to-"
"An accident at the library," Mary Ann stated. "I was looking through the books when one of them bit me."
"Paper cut," the nurse supplied from the file.
"It's deeper than it looks," Lee Ann stated. It was still bleeding even after three bandaids, the walk from the library to the dorm-room, the trip to the emergency room, and waiting over an hour to be seen. "If it was an ordinary paper cut it would have stopped bleeding by now right?" Mary Ann said shoving the blood soaked pile of bandaids at the woman. A trickle of blood escaped to land on the file. The nurse nodded absently unaware of the blood drops.
"I estimate it will be between a six and ten hour wait before you can be seen," the nurse supplied. She swiveled her chair around dismissively. I squared my shoulders.
"I have a test in eight hours. It's almost midnight and my books are back at the library. Can't anyone see me?" Mary Ann begged. The nurse turned back Mary Ann's way after rummaging through a cupboard behind her.
"Given that you are able to walk I would recommend you take these, patch it up yourself, and see your primary tomorrow," she said. She handed Mary Ann some gauze and a packet of nondescript neosporin type disinfectant.
"Like I have any clue what a primary is anyway," Mary Ann muttered under her breath.
"The doctor," the nurse supplied. She'd heard her. Mary Ann's face turned the same color as the blood on her medical chart.
"Who?" Mary Ann asked.
"The doctor," the nurse restated.
"No, I mean who is my doctor?" Mary Ann looked over at the folder in hopes of gleaning some new information.
"I can't really help you there," the nurse said closing the file with a snap. Mary Ann saw nothing.
"Thanks anyway," Mary Ann said. She looked back at the waiting room. Someone had snatched up her seat. She couldn't blame them. This place was wall to wall people tonight. Who knew the Oxford ER was such a popular place on Sunday nights. Not Mary Ann when she decided to come here an hour ago. She'd know better in the future.
"Well you have two choices. Stand here for the next six to eight hours bleeding to death before the doctor shows up or go back to your dorm room and patch yourself up with these." She lifted the stuff the nurse had handed her up. It became quite the debate in her mind.
"I'm becoming an archeologist," she reminded herself. "People are so much easier to deal with when their dead."
"No kidding girly," the guy standing behind her in line. "Can you let a guy through?"
"Oh, sorry," Mary Ann stammered stepping away from the Help Desk.
She hesitated at the doors thinking. She should leave. She was tired, she had a test in the morning she hadn't studied for, and she was jet lagged.
She stuck the supplies in her designer bag and headed for the door. Less than seventy two hours in this country and she was already making a nuisance out of herself.
She hailed a cab outside the hospital. She didn't trust herself to find her way back to campus. It was nice that cabs still ran this late at home you had to have a direct number if you wanted to get picked up after 10.
"Leaving the hospital walking, you should count yourself lucky miss," he said. She nodded.
"Yeah, lucky." They didn't have a doctor to spare even with twelve or so on shift.
"Most of them that go into that place don't make it out," he continued, ignoring my snide comment.
"The hospital?" I asked curiosity getting the best of me.
"No, them do as best that they can there. I meant those that wander into the woods." He pointed to a grouping of trees outside the window.
"The woods got it." She switched her attention to the passing buildings on the other side. They looked old and unfamiliar. It would take a while for her to get to know this place. Tiredness inspired her uncaring attitude.
"Tis the shadows that been filling up the hospitals of late," the driver warned, "best to be staying away from their woods." The shadows appeared to move with the breeze. Mary Ann shivered.
So those people weren't there because of a major highway accident she thought to herself. There was a serial killer lose in the woods making her night a living hell. What had she gotten herself into agreeing to go to school here? She could have be at Georgia State right now. Instead she chose to study here at her Aunt's Almamater.
"Use to be just cats and dogs, the occasional pet got sheared," the driver continued. "Now people are coming back from the woods without limbs, if they come back." The car stopped in from of her dorm. She got out and turned back to pay him.
"That'll be thirty five." She pulled out the pounds.
"Heed me warning miss. Stay away from the woods," he said. "Pretty little thing like you get swallowed whole in one bite."
"My problem wasn't the woods. It was a book." she said. She wanted to add that she was tougher than she looked, but the words escaped her.
"Paper, trees it's all the same to 'hem. I'd be leery miss," he said, "You have yourself a good night now." With that he drove away.
Mary Ann walked up to the doors.
"I just want to get this thing tended and get to bed." She told the door. "A good nights sleep would do me better than any amount of study tonight."
She tried the door. It was locked. After everything she was locked out.
"Great, just great." she said banging her head on the hard wooden door. The light overhead flickered. Were the shadows moving closer? The flickering light made it hard to tell. More likely she was just tired. She rested her back against the door and rubbed her eyes.
The light flickered again. The shadow was definitely closer. A chill creeped up her spine. How close was her dorm to that serial killer's woods? Close enough. She rubbed her arms to get warmer. England could be cold even in October. The shadow crept to the base of stairs. Mary Ann stood up her back to the locked door. Trapped. The light went out and stayed off this time.
Something grabbed her from behind.