Disclaimer: I don't own Silent Hill. At all. Biatches.
Author's Note: I'm back! (grin) Let's get this coaster started up again! Please keep your arms and legs inside the car while we move through the flashback.
In the past… (4)
"I have it! I have it!" Connie shouted breathlessly. Arm extended, key dangling from her fist, she ran down the hall towards Dr. Alvarez. For a moment she thought her white tennis shoes would skid along the linoleum floor and she'd barrel into a fellow nurse, but she recovered and found herself at a sudden stop before the exasperated doctor.
"Don't show it to me!" he snapped, grabbing her hand and shoving it away. "Go do your job!"
Connie tried to look him in the eye as she nervously smoothed down her skirt. "Sir, wouldn't Wanda be the best to--"
"She would, but we have more than one patient in the ICU at the moment and Wanda can't do everything, now can she?" Dr. Alvarez snapped.
Connie winced, but straightened her posture and nodded. "Of course, sir, right away."
"She's stable, so it's not like you'll have to do much," the doctor continued snidely. He raked a hand through his slick hair. "I'll be up to reexamine her once I'm done with the reporters and police."
"Yes, doctor. Good luck."
He stalked away without saying anything more. Connie kept her gaze trained to the floor as she moved down the hall to the stairwell. Her face burned with embarrassment. She had managed to lose the key to the room of a high profile patient in intensive care: Eileen Galvin. Galvin had come in unconscious, a victim of a beating, a near murder. If she had gone untreated for much longer, or if the vehemence of the attack had been worse, she'd be in the morgue instead of a private room on the second floor.
It wasn't usual hospital practice to lock patients in their rooms, but Wanda, the Head Nurse, had decided it was best. Not only did the hospital staff have to chase the more brazen journalists out of the ICU because of "Walter Sullivan: Round Three," but Galvin was a victim of an uncaptured madman. Until a police officer was posted outside the room, Wanda wanted to keep her under lock and key.
She had given the key to Connie because while Galvin was stable, there were plenty of other patients that required her attention. The younger nurse, only two weeks on the job, had misplaced the key when she got sidetracked in her busy new workplace.
After she made it upstairs to Room 206, Connie slipped the key into the knob and held her breath as she turned it. It had taken her over an hour to actually find the thing. Though Galvin had been okay when she was left there, the nurse was afraid that something had gone terribly wrong when the patient was under her irresponsible care. She pushed the door open and gingerly slipped inside, gaze settling on the woman under the crisp, pale sheets on the bed. To Connie's relief, Galvin didn't look any worse, and the readings from the machines around her said the same.
Connie relaxed, letting out her breath in a slow stream. "Thank God."
"Is this the 'Sullivan' victim?"
Connie screamed and whirled around, her heart winding down when she saw the blue uniform of a police officer. She looked away from his amused smirk, back to her patient. "Y-yeah. You're gonna watch her?"
"That's what the doc told the vultures outside," he said. He jerked his thumb towards the hallway. "I'll be right outside the door if you need anything, alright?"
She nodded and watched him leave to take up his post before going about her own duties. She picked up the chart sitting in a narrow bin at the foot of the bed to update its notes. She had a hard time keeping her head down, her eyes wandering upwards to pity poor Eileen Galvin, unconscious, fragile. A fractured arm, a bleeding contusion over her right eye, her bandaged calf, purplish bruises up and down her body, and to top it all off, if Connie turned Galvin over she would see the numbers carved across her patient's back.
Connie shivered and moved to the thin curtain drawn to the side of the bed. She grabbed the flimsy green fabric and pulled it along the track in the ceiling, hiding the beaten woman from view. The nurse couldn't have concentrated the slightest otherwise.
Connie hadn't always wanted to be a nurse, and now that she was finally in the field, there were many moments when she questioned how she had gotten here. If she wanted to help people, couldn't she have worked in a soup kitchen or for the Salvation Army or Habitat for Humanity? She often noticed how easily the older nurses and doctors slipped into apathy and found herself dying to be that jaded. When she looked at Galvin, Connie knew when she went home that the brutalized woman would be perpetually in her thoughts, like the rape victim from yesterday or the orphaned boy in that wreck last week.
She didn't want to forget them exactly. She just wished she could see something else when she closed her eyes.
She was interrupted again by a voice, low and gruff, and when Connie looked up she was startled at the man in the doorway. It was the hard, angered look on his face that jarred her. It seemed out of place on someone not much older than herself, someone who also managed to make her feel small though they were both on the short side. But after a moment she saw past that, could see the flicker of uncertainty in his green eyes, the anxious tension in his clenched square jaw. Connie glanced over his shoulder to the cop in the hallway, who mouthed "the brother" to her. She swallowed hard.
He stepped heavily into the room and repeated, "I'm here to see my sister."
Connie could do nothing but nod her head and pull the curtain open partway. She stepped away to fill out her chart while the man made his way to the bedside. He moved with a stilted determination, obviously putting on a show, being the tough guy. She watched as he grasped the bed railing, his blocky body obstructing the patient from view. He stood there gazing at his sister, and the nurse could only be grateful that she couldn't see his face. She felt guilty for wishing her patients out of her thoughts. This poor guy had it so much worse than her, whose parents were alive and well, whose brother was living it up in college, whose dog even waited patiently at home. Connie gritted her teeth and forced herself to complete her notes.
When she looked up again, the brother was still there, but his shoulders were shaking. His tears were silent, but somehow the silence seemed worse than any wail. Connie put the chart on a chair in the corner and quietly moved to his side. She could see Eileen Galvin again, her bandages and bruises, and Connie suppressed a sympathetic noise that tried to slip from her throat. She didn't want to intrude on someone else's pain.
Connie put a hand on the man's shoulder. "Mr. Galvin--"
"What!" he growled, whipping his head toward her. His swollen face was red and his eyes were watery, but he glared at her so hatefully that she jerked her hand back for fear that he would break it.
"We're d-doing everything we c-can," Connie said shakily, shocked at his hostility. She clutched her hand to her chest, suddenly feeling ashamed, presumptuous for having touched him. "Did you t-talk to Dr. Alvarez? She's stable now, we… we're sure she'll pull through."
The brother didn't respond for a moment, but he finally stopped glowering at her to close his eyes and take in a deep breath. He shook his head, opened his eyes, and sneered. "Just tell me where the bathroom is," he said, putting a hand over his eyes.
Connie nodded, but couldn't bring herself to look at him. "Of course. Yeah. Down the hall, through the doors to the right."
He left quickly, at once behaving like she didn't exist, and Connie felt immense relief at seeing him gone, even briefly. She glanced at Eileen Galvin once more and sighed as she pulled the curtain shut.
"You'll get used to it."
She turned. The cop stood in the doorway, arms folded. She wanted to say something, but only felt awkward.
"Used to shit like this, I mean," he continued, nodding toward the masked bed. "Faster than you want to probably. I've only been on the force five years. I still get sick sometimes, sure, but never surprised. You come to expect it."
"That's really… really sad," Connie finally said, though she didn't know why. Of course it was sad. Of course she knew it was going to happen. She was waiting for it to happen. Anything to make it easier.
"Yeah," he replied. There was a pause, and for a second Connie thought he might go on, make some light conversation, work his way up to asking her out. But he disappeared from the doorway and here thoughts were anchored down to the patient again.
Suddenly she felt so terrible that she wanted to cry. Connie pressed her hands over her face and willed the tears away, forced the sobs back into her chest. Crying was not for the job. Crying was for home, where she could sit along on the couch with her arms wrapped around a pillow while her beagle stared at her dumbly.
The surge of feeling passed and she felt merely unsettled once again. Connie lowered her hands and blinked at the room around her. The green curtain reminded her of the brother. She wondered if he'd be back soon and felt sick at the thought.
Connie peeked out into the hall. Mr. Galvin was there with Dr. Alvarez. The brother looked calmer to her relief. The doctor stood with him, looking just as composed as Connie had ever seen him, the practiced concern on his face something she had accepted rather quickly and aspired to master.
"I expect to move her out of ICU in a day, perhaps two," he was saying. "She should wake up any time now…" And then they were walking down the hall together. Connie hoped the doctor was taking the brother down to the cafeteria for some coffee. She couldn't imagine being in the same room with someone so volatile again.
She flashed a weak smile at the officer by the door before ducking back in. There wasn't much else she could do, so she figured she'd better check in with Wanda. Connie examined all the machines one more time and was heading to the door when she spotted the chart on the chair in the corner of the room. Just another reason for Dr. Alvarez to get on her case again. She trotted over and picked it up so she could put it back in its bin.
A horrendous, grating scream erupted behind her, and she spun around, the clipboard flung from her hands. She saw a shadow of movement behind the sage curtain, a motion of panic and pain, and then sickening noises, wet tearing, sharp snapping, and sprays of red slashed across the curtain. Connie recoiled, her back colliding with the wall. Something flew from the bed, fluffing up the bottom of the curtain before hitting the floor and sliding to the doorway, where the officer stood. He shouted something, but Connie could barely hear him with her patient's shriek ringing in her ears.
The officer flung the curtain aside and it slid open halfway, click-click-click on its track, and Connie could see the stump of tattered flesh on the arm, the missing half of her face where her bandaged eye had been, the gaping mouth ruined on one side and plump and smooth on the other. And the blood, oh God, the blood slipping into the sheets, down the curtain to the floor, thick and red, and Connie felt her blood fall too, slide right out of her body, felt nothing but an echo of a scream, light as a ghost. But she fell like a stone, her knees unlocking and legs folding and sprawling her onto the floor.
Down there she could see the beneath the curtain, see the drip-drip-drip on both sides of the bed, puddling on the floor, spreading out, a trail of it sliding toward her, following some unseen divot in the floor. She didn't want it anywhere near her but she didn't have muscles anymore, she didn't have a voice to call for help. But Wanda had a voice, yelled for something, someone, and yanked the curtain open all the way around and she could see a leg, bent over the side of the bed but not at the knee, a white splint exposed from flesh overflowing with redness. And even as Connie's head hit the floor and her eyes closed, she never stopped seeing it, a woman torn asunder like a despised rag doll.
oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo
Next chapter is mostly done. Hopefully there won't be another near-two-month wait.