Wednesday
25 May 2022

"Patient is some Jean Dupont, age unknown. Inconnu. Brought in by ambulance after a cop found him unconscious by the Seine. No identification available. Presenting with failure to thrive and altered mental status. Generalized scarring and deformity, localized primarily to the face. Tox screen positive for alcohol, benzos, and opioids. Vitals – normal, somehow."

Doctor Divoc snapped his clipboard shut, glancing disdainfully at the unconscious patient in the bed as he addressed his team of residents further:

"Just another homeless bum who doesn't know how to take care of himself. Order a PCR test and send him up to 5B. Hopefully we'll have him out by tomorrow morning, and then we can free up the bed for someone who actually needs it..."

Erik awoke to the startling sensation of a thin rod being pressed against the sensitive lining of his nasal cavity.

"Hold still, Monsieur…!" A surgical mask and a pair of goggles chastised him in an exasperated sing-song voice. "Almost got it – aha!"

The rod retracted from his nasal cavity and was presented before him like a stupendous work of art. Goggles made quick work of placing it in a red-capped vial and sealing it off in a clear specimen bag.

Erik blinked his eyes as the spinning, foggy world began to slow enough for him to try to get his bearings. Questions raced through his head, now that he was awake enough to ask them but still too dazed to answer them.

Where the hell was he? Why did he feel so weak? What was that thing that had just been in his nose?

"What…" Erik rasped, before stopping short at the sound of his voice. Goggles, too, stopped their movements to turn and stare at him in shock.

"Are you awake, Monsieur?" Goggles swept over to him, a blue plastic gown billowing around them. "Can you hear me?"

Erik clamped his mouth shut. He wouldn't allow himself to speak – not when his voice was this atrocious.

Goggles was slowly becoming a distinct figure before him, as the reality of the waking world continued to set in. Erik was no idiot, and he could recognize a hospital room when he saw one. Goggles, plainly, was a nurse – his nurse – obviously here to attend to the death bed of a living corpse.

And he must be dying, he surmised. After all, what was he doing in a hospital if not that?

He wouldn't let himself die here – of that much, he was quite certain. He would drag his sorry self out of this blasted hospital and hide in some rotten corner of the city. He'd die alone and forgotten, and that would quite possibly be the best gift he could ever give himself after a lifetime of so much wretchedness. He moved to sit up, throwing his legs over the side.

"Stay in bed!" The nurse snapped, pressing her hands against his shoulders and forcing him back into the lumpy mattress. "You're going to hurt yourself."

"Damn you, woman! Let me go!" Erik muttered as he fought against her, a second too late realizing he'd just broken his promise not to speak.

The nurse's strength was greater than his, in the end, and finally he gave up and sunk into the bed. He was tired – extremely so – and for the life of him he couldn't figure out why.

"Can you tell me your name?" The nurse asked, swinging his legs back onto the bed before unfolding the crisp white sheets on top of him.

Erik rolled his eyes. He would certainly not be sharing personal information with this prying cow. All he needed to do was to ignore the nurse long enough for her to grow tired of his noncompliance with her aggravating interrogation, and to leave him alone. After that, he could make his escape.

"Monsieur? Your name?" The nurse prodded again, before sighing. "Do you know the year?"

More silence.

"Do you have any family or friends you would like us to notify?"

That almost got him. Family! Friends! As if! The thought was simply absurd. He bit his tongue and let his lips form a sneer as an answer.

She threw her hands in the air. "I can't deal with this right now. I have other patients to deal with." She tossed the call bell in his general direction. "Hit the big red button if you need me. Otherwise I'll be back in a bit."

She hurried out of the room, tearing the billowing blue gown from her form and punching it into the trashcan as she went. Obviously she was a very busy lady, if her messy, greying hair said anything, and probably wouldn't be back to check on him in a long while.

All the better for him, Erik knew, as he clambered to the side of the bed – this time without anyone pushing him back down. It'd be hours before they realized he was missing. And she'd get her knuckles slapped, surely, but he'd hardly spared a tear for people like her in the past. Especially not people like her.

His head spun for a long minute once he was upright, and he placed his hands on his bony knees to keep balance. Something was definitely wrong with him, obviously.

As he let his head acclimate and his body reach equilibrium, he took the chance to look over himself and realized with a groan that he was wearing a hospital gown. A blasted hospital gown, he seethed, with blasted dots to boot!

This was certainly the first thing he would have to remedy, if he was going to leave this place undetected. He wouldn't make it five steps out of this room if they saw him wearing this horrendous rag! He needed different clothes – he needed a disguise.

Finally he felt bold enough to attempt to stand. No sooner than he'd picked his rump off the bed, did an alarm began to blare. Alternating between high and low pitches, it oscillated in a discordant rhythm and pierced his ears painfully.

The door swung open and the nurse from earlier stood at the doorway, yelling at him as she struggled to tie another flimsy blue gown around her waist, "Hold still! Sit back down! I'm coming in!"

Uncharacteristically obliging in the face of the alarm, Erik found himself falling back to the bed before she even reached him. He sat still on the side of the bed, feeling very much perturbed, as the nurse stormed towards him donned in full protective gear.

"You cannot get out of bed!" She lectured tersely, as if this was the hundredth reminder she'd given him. "You're going to fall!"

"I won't fall!" Erik snapped back in a gritty voice.

"You just woke up from a nearly fatal overdose," the nurse replied in a matter-of-fact tone, "and you've already begun to withdraw. Your body's not going to be strong enough to support you right now."

Erik could have laughed. "I don't overdose."

He just had an incredibly high tolerance, built from many, many years of self-loathing.

"Well, regardless, they found you on the side of the river. Looks like you took a mighty fall, too. That cut on your forehead alone took seventeen stitches!"

Cut? Forehead? Oh no…

Erik's hand sprang to his forehead, immediately coming into contact with something that was definitely not skin. A bandage. He almost breathed a sigh of relief before his fingers trailed down and found his rotten flesh exposed in all its glory after all. Only his forehead was covered – the rest of him, the worst of the disfigurement, was out on full display!

"My mask!" Erik barked at the nurse, a sharp hiss of need coloring his words. "I need my mask!"

"Now he wants to wear one!" The nurse muttered under her breath, reaching for something on the wall. "He ripped each one off in his sleep, but now he wants to wear one…"

She held it in front of him: a blue, sterile-looking, medical-grade mask.

It wasn't what he asked for. He asked for his mask. Not this flimsy little paper product.

But if life had told him anything, it was that beggars couldn't be choosers. He snatched the mask from her hands and made short work of wrapping its loops about his ears. It hung somewhat awkwardly below his eyes, having no nasal bridge to rest upon, but pinching the sewn-in metal wire helped give it enough structure to stay up and even gave the faint appearance of a nose underneath.

"Are you happy now?" The nurse asked. "Will you stay in bed for me now?"

Erik rolled his eyes and fell back against the bed, muttering, "Just go away…"

She obliged, making the same billowing blue exit as before. Once more, then, Erik found himself alone, staring around at the suffocatingly sterile hospital room.

How to escape? This should have been simple. He wasn't called the trap-door lover for nothing. But his head… there was that blasted fog that wouldn't go away. He couldn't think straight! Damn drugs… what exactly did he take last night, after all? How much heroin…?

No matter. He'd just have to focus more on what he was doing. The first obstacle was the bed alarm. And now that he knew about it -

He twisted his body around in the bed to look along the headboard. An alarm needed to come from somewhere, and once he found that somewhere, he'd be able to silence it. His blurry eyes searched the wall, searching for something alarm-like, something that would be capable of producing that awful blaring noise…

Aha! There it was! A sinister green little box. He grabbed it forcefully and pulled it, cord and all, fully into his hands and made short work of disarming the terrible device.

One obstacle done. He tossed it aside carelessly, barely paying it any heed as it bounced once on the lumpy hospital mattress before clattering to the floor. Then he stood and stretched his back so he stood at his full formidable height and –

Stars, all around, swimming in swirling darkness. What pretty constellations they made…!

He stumbled forward, commanding himself not to pass out. He leaned his full weight on his arms, which gripped at the solid clinical countertop spanning the length of the wall. With heaving breaths, he watched as his blackened vision slowly refilled with color. Damn heroin. No longer at risk for passing out, he padded to the door and peeked out the little window.

The hallway looked like a true ghost town - not a soul in sight! But he knew better than that, certainly. Eyes were always watching – especially when one wished not to be watched. Better to be careful…

Which meant he needed to disguise himself. Again he stared disdainfully at the hospital gown adorning his body. This was the first thing that needed to go if he was going to make it out of this hospital undetected. But what could he wear instead? His own clothes would make him too conspicuous and he'd be stopped before he made it ten steps down the hall. And besides, it didn't seem like his shirt and pants made the journey with him – judging by the lack of personal belongings bags, they were probably still down in the emergency department or, more likely, at the bottom of a dumpster by now. So again – what to wear instead?

He peered back out at the hall. Empty – well, not really. There were… carts, and such, lining the hall. Carts of medications and supplies. Supplies like –

Oh, what luck! How could he have been so blind? The cart right in front of his door was a linen cart full of disposable scrubs! All he had to do was look both ways and – snatch – a set of the paper-thin garments.

It was easier done than said, as it turned out. Years of living beyond the periphery of society had taught him well. In a matter of moments, the blasted dotted hospital gown was nothing but a forgotten remnant on the floor, and Erik was flattening out the wrinkles of his new scrubs against his lithe frame.

He looked himself over. He had no shoes, just a pair of yellow grippy socks, but if he walked fast and with enough confidence perhaps nobody would spare him a second glance. The surgical mask covered his face well enough, but maybe he'd be able to snatch some goggles like his nurse had on his way out. Otherwise – he was all set.

So with nothing but his wits, some paper-thin scrubs, and a face-mask barely skirting his nasal cavity, he turned the doorknob and began his departure.

Luck is a funny thing. Like love, it comes when you least expect it. And, also like love, it abandons you when you need it most.

Erik thusly made it nearly the entire length of the hallway before being spotted.

"Hey!"

And what inspired luck it was that it was Goggles, of all people, to spot him. He'd been so careful – instead of walking right out the front of the unit, he'd gone all the way to the deepest end of the hall to take the stairwell down. He'd hoped to avoid notice by strategically going to the most isolated part of the unit. But there Goggles was anyway, standing in the doorway of a room on his left, dressed in one of those giant silly blue gowns, waving over at him. He almost quickened his pace, frightened of being caught when he was so close to freedom, but she shouted at him:

"Can you hand me a flush?"

No, he absolutely could not hand her a flush, whatever that was! His disguise was extremely flimsy and if she even looked at him for a second too long she was bound to notice his matted hair, or his complete lack of shoes, or any other number of things that would give him away as a patient escaping from his room.

But he couldn't just keep walking – she was still staring at him! He was almost out of the unit, but there was still quite a bit of the hallway left to go. If he ignored her, she'd undoubtedly keep watching him. Indignant perplexity would quickly turn to recognition, and the security goons would be on him before he even reached the stairwell. No, that wouldn't do… he had to get out of her sight!

He ducked into the first room he saw – Room 594, he noted for some reason. It was the last room in the hall. Thankfully, it was an empty room, with just a bundle of blankets laid out in a heap on the bed. He closed the door behind him, and then peered out the door's window with bated breath to watch as another nurse eventually came by to assist Goggles. The pair of them stared in his direction for a long, nerve-wracking minute, before he heard Goggles mumble something along the lines of, "Guess he was just too busy – though, aren't we all…"

Goggles went back into the room she'd been standing at the threshold of, and the other Samaritan nurse disappeared elsewhere, and Erik readied himself to finish the final short stretch of hallway before he could kiss the beautiful air of freedom.

His hand upon the doorknob was halted in its motion by a tiny voice, barely a whisper, floating above the sound of the room's reverse ventilation:

"Help me…"