"Okay, how about this one? Nowonmai! Nowonmaaaiiiiii!"
Bishop and Arelia were carefully going through each of the hospital's rooms, searching for anything they could get their hands on. While they looked around, Bishop had started up a game of "Guess The Movie/Song/Book". Arelia entered one of the rooms through the door in the area they had met Kaufmann in.
"The Exorcist," she said. "And it's in both the book and the movie."
She moved through the room slowly, handgun drawn and fully loaded with fifteen rounds. It was dark; there was no identifiable light source she could turn on. Her pocket flashlight illuminated only a small portion of the hall she seemed to be in, and she had to turn her body to bring anything else into the light. On her right and left were shelves that seemed to have been filled with brochures at one point. A few of the pamphlets were still in their labeled slots, however, there was nothing of interest that Arelia could make out. Further into the room was a desk littered with documents and a singular broken lamp. As she approached, she could see a newspaper lying on the surface of the desk.
"Okay, Arelia. Your turn." Bishop looked over her shoulder as she picked the newspaper up and opened it. There was a gaping hole in one of the pages where an article should have been. "Hey, that's weird," he said with a frown.
"Yeah," Arelia agreed. "I wonder what was so important that it had to be cut out?"
"Maybe it had to do with something of Kaufmann's," her partner speculated quietly. "I wouldn't be surprised if it did."
"Me neither," she agreed again, setting the newspaper down. "What's this one? Timothy Flyte: The Ancient Enemy."
"That's an easy one. Phantoms by Dean Koontz, right?"
"Good. You've been keeping up with your literature."
They exited the room with the flyers and found themselves in another hallway. There were six room doors and two others that led to stairwells. The first door, straight ahead of them, was the Storage Room. Arelia stepped forward and tried the handle. It twisted halfway before locking.
"The door is jammed," she said unhappily. "We're not going to be able to go through that one."
"What about the one next to it?" Bishop asked. He turned the knob, and the same thing happened. Arelia glanced at the map of the first floor again.
"Try the Doctor's Office," she suggested. "It leads into a Conference Room that may hold something of interest."
The door was unlocked, and the room within was relatively normal. There were four chairs in sets of two's, each set opposite a small coffee table. Beyond that were two desks connected to a row of cupboards lining the wall at floor-level. There was a desk lamp, but it could not be turned on.
On the coffee table, Bishop picked up another map, this time of the hospital basement. He folded it neatly and put it into the back pocket of his pants. "Found a map," he relayed to Arelia. The ex-Marine turned to glance at him as she searched through the cupboards. "I'm keeping it in case we get separated." There was a slight pause in her rifling, then she nodded.
"Okay. Let's hope neither of us gets lost, though. I wouldn't want to be alone in a hospital."
"You don't like hospitals?"
"I, uh..." Arelia trailed off into silence, staring intently at the floor. Her lips trembled as if on the verge of forming words, then pressed into a thin line. Bishop watched her carefully. Finally, she turned back to the cupboards. "Well, who does like hospitals, right?"
"Spend a lot of time in them or something?" he pressed, opening the Conference Room door. He stepped inside and looked around, leaving the door ajar behind him. On a long, mahogany table was a key glinting in the dim light. Its tag read, "BASEMENT KEY". He put it into his pocket and started back toward the door. "Arelia?"
The Doctor's Office was empty.
