It was just after midnight, on the 31st of March, that Kate burst into her room with panic in her eyes, her hair a mess and the left sleeve on her scrubs partially torn off at the seams. Interestingly enough, she locked the door behind her, but Sayori could see her hands shaking, even from her place at the bed.
As she fumbled her key into the lock, she started talking, a rapid-fire barrage in an uncharacteristically shaky voice.
"Sayori, you gotta get outta here. This disease – I don't know what it is – it's not COVID."
"What do you mean? Of course it's not – we haven't had to worry about that in-"
"It's nothing like COVID! That's what I mean!" Sayori shirked back at the sudden outburst. Why'd she lock the door? What was she going to do to her?
"Those patients we took in – they're going crazy!" Kate approached Sayori's spot on the bed, the young girl suddenly feeling very vulnerable, pulling further away on instinct until her back was against the wall.
"James walked in to the room we've been holding them in, Mary was with him – they'd been hearing moaning and... screaming all night. I dunno if you heard it, they're a few doors down the hall, but..."
Of course she had heard it. That's why she was still awake. She couldn't stand hearing noises like that, of abject pain and misery and terror and
She wasn't ready for Kate collapsing. Nor was she ready for the loud, hopeless sobs wracking her bony little shoulders.
"They... they got up. The p-patients. And then..." Kate swallowed, drying her eyes on her sleeve, "t-they ate him. Mary s-saw it all, she t-tried to get them off him, but w-when one of them came lunging after her s-she..."
Kate broke down, completely, and Sayori decided that her leg had rested enough for now because Kate was her friend and you can't leave your friends crying like that so she tossed the sheets aside and got up and fell flat on her face, her legs still unused to carrying her weight after weeks spent laying around doing nothing.
Kate noticed and reached for her and Sayori managed to crawl towards her friend and held Katie as well as she could but her arms felt like spaghetti and her leg was still painful but i can't just leave her and Kate started bawling and sobbing and Sayori felt the tears staining the front of her hospital gown and soon she felt something in her own throat as well and a sick feeling in her stomach and she quietly sobbed into Katie's shoulder while holding her as tightly as possible because it hurts so bad when your friends are sad and i hope i can make her feel better somehow
"T-they... she... Mary, she s-shut the door, she l-locked it. She h-heard James g-gurgling and s-screaming and t-the sound... they were eating him, for fuck's sake! T-they were..."
Kate's sentence ended with a sob and a sniffle. Sayori didn't know what to say. Some of the kids in her school had jumped off the roof, before the board replaced the chest-high metal fence enclosing the rooftop with a 2-meter-tall concrete wall topped with barbed wire, and of course they'd all talked through every suicide with the class and the teacher during homeroom, but...
There wasn't really anything she felt like she could say.
"He's in a better place now"? After getting torn to shreds and eaten alive by "people" he was trying to help? "Life goes on"? What if it doesn't? What if the cannibals who ate James alive were coming for them next?
She didn't know what to say, so she settled on just hugging her, as tightly as she could.
"I'm s-sorry, Katie. I'm so, so, sorry."
"Don't be. It's n-not your fault. It's those s-stinking cannibals that I blame, not you."
Whether Kate had actually calmed down or was just putting on a tough front was unclear, but when she got up from her spot at the foot of the bed, Sayori followed suit, leaning on her friend for support.
"Sorry, it's my leg – it's still not..." Sayori winced.
"I know. But we h-have to get you out of here. To the police station, or... or something. Out of town, maybe. Lay back down or sit somewhere, I'll t-try to get the cast off. You s-should be mostly healed up by now, it wasn't a bad fracture, barely worse than a hairline."
Sayori obliged and sat down on the bed, and Kate took off towards the locked cabinets on the far end of the room, her key chain jingling with every determined step.
"I'll get that cast off and splint your leg. You should be able to walk alright and upright, but I wouldn't start running anywhere yet, if I was you. Still," the cabinet door creaked open, "I'm no doctor, but we would have discharged you by the end of the week, anyhow."
An uncomfortable thought entered Sayori's head. Perhaps it was because nightlife in Rosewood – while calm at best – still entailed some kind of noise filtering in through her window. Revellers singing, the occasional police or ambulance siren, the smack of an empty beer bottle breaking on pavement...
"Katie," when did I start using pet names? "w-when did you start taking in the first "critical cases"?"
Kate froze completely. She still had her back turned, but Sayori could see her shoulders tense up, even from here. Any semblance or pretense of looking through the cabinet for supplies was gone.
"A week ago." Her voice was steely, cold. "Two weeks after we got you here. Why?"
"It's quiet outside. Normally, this time of night, you'd be hearing some nightlife outside, even on a Wednesday. You don't think-"
"Oh, Christ. Oh my fucking God." Kate turned around, and now the panic was obvious. She'd taken off her medical mask, and her face was pale, her green eyes wide open, parted lips showing clenched teeth, shoulders set with an almost rigor mortis-like stiffness.
"Kate?"
"W-we need to get away. Right now." Kate resumed her hurried rummaging, but Sayori couldn't help noticing that she'd grabbed a large first aid kit and an EMT backpack from the depths of the cabinets. "M-maybe there's a curfew in place, one that we haven't heard about yet? M-maybe there's... there's... s-something..."
While the words may have been convincing, her tone was anything but.
Sayori grabbed the crutches leaning on her nightstand and held them tightly, hoping with all her might that they were sturdy enough to repel a potential attacker.
"Kate, where's my clothes? I need my shoes, I c-can't go barefoot, I need my jeans and my-"
"Just s-shut up for a momen..." Kate took a deep breath, her voice hollow and hoarse. "Somewhere in these cabinets. I think it's the one to the far right. I'll unlock it for you."
Sayori wasted no time in hobbling over. After a quick, cursory search, she found what she was looking for – her old banged-up red Converse, a gray beanie, a pair of faded jeans, her underwear, a white "I 3 KY" t-shirt she'd planned on bringing home as a souvenir... all neatly packed inside of the backpack she'd bought just a few days into her trip.
For some reason, her hoodie, her scarf and her jacket were nowhere to be found. Luckily, her jeans still had the red friendship bracelet from junior high attached to the keychain, and whoever was in charge of stripping her before surgery had decided to put her old wristwatch into one of the front pockets. It might have been a childish decision, but she decided to wear the bracelet on her wrist as well, as a kind of lucky charm, or something to that effect.
Getting the cast off wasn't particularly difficult – a few snips and it was over. Sayori wasted no time in scratching her right leg raw from thigh to ankle, as Kate looked on with barely masked distaste.
"Good thing it was just a back cast." She said while pinching her nose. "Would have had to saw it open otherwise.
No wonder – the stink was something else, and her fingernails had amassed quite the collection of dead skin on their brief adventure. A quick wash with a wetted sponge and the usual unscented hospital soap took care of most of it, but Sayori made a mental note to change out her socks as soon as possible.
Still, the splint fit well, and while she wasn't going to be running track any time soon, she could at least kind of keep up with Kate.
They were out of her room, now, first aid kit and crutches in tow, heading for the reception, both of them quiet, trying to make as little noise as possible.
"What about the rest of the people in here? Mary, the other employees, the patients?"
Sayori whispered, trying to keep pace as well as she could. "Are we just going to leave them?"
"They left us." Kate replied, her voice flat. "The moment Mary came back into the break room and told us what happened, they... they just left. We don't have other patients, either. You were the only one here until we took in those infectees. As you can probably guess, it's not exactly the biggest clinic in the world."
Kate suddenly stopped and hushed, getting down on one knee, beckoning for Sayori to follow suit. Despite the ache in her right leg, she tried her best, gripping one of the crutches for stability.
"See that? That's Room 2. That's where they are." Sayori stole a quick glance at the sign above her old room. Room 1.
"You weren't kidding about the "small clinic" thing..." Sayori murmured.
"Shh." Kate feigned annoyance, but Sayori knew her well enough to know when she was smiling.
Still, this was no time for levity, and they both knew it. Kate started slowly sidling along the wall, fluorescent lighting buzzing overhead. She was definitely a quiet mover.
"Perhaps all nurses are," Sayori thought, "and I'm only noticing it now..."
She tried her best to stay as silent as possible, but the closer they got to Room 2, the more she could smell something... off.
Something rancid.
Something rotten, strong enough to overpower even the smell of chlorine and disinfectant, mixed in with a coppery smell she'd rather not think about too much since she knew that if she did she might suddenly decide to hobble back to her room as quickly as possible and bolt the door with one of her crutches and hide under the blanket until this horrid nightmare was over.
So, she breathed in through her mouth instead, and kept her eyes focused on the back of Kate's head, internally debating whether it was dyed a bluish turquoise or a turquoise-ish blue.
"Katie?" Sayori whispered, although only after speaking did she realize it was more of a whimper.
"Yes?" Kate answered, her tone of voice surprisingly similar.
"Could you hold my hand? Please?"
She could have sworn she heard a sharp intake of breath from Kate, but the nurse acquiesced quietly, reaching behind her with her left, which Sayori gladly took, welcoming the warmth.
"Her palms are sweaty. I can feel her heartbeat. I wonder if she's nervous. Can't feel any rings. Is she single or is it just a patient safety thing? Her hands are really soft, I wonder what cream she uses..."
And so, they inched along, quietly, slowly, both of them trying their best to not look at the bloodstained handprint trailing down the small glass window in the door to Room 2.
"How cliché." Sayori thought, and would have probably followed up with something equally witty if it wasn't for the sudden BANG on the door that made her yelp all too loudly and scurry away from the noise and pull Katie with her to the opposite side of the hallway that suddenly seemed all too cramped but of course Katie wasn't prepared for that sudden shift and fell over and her first aid kit clattered to the ground with a noise that might as well have been a gunshot for all it did because
BANG
"Katie? K-Katie?! I'm s-sorry, I didn't mean t-to-"
BANG
"IswearIdidn'tmeantoIgotscaredand-"
BANG
"Sayori, shut the fuck up." Hoarse, shaky voice. "Now we run."
BANG
Kate disentangled her hand, picked up her kit, shot a final, spiteful glance toward Sayori, and bolted.
"W-wait for me! Please!"
"My ride's parked out front, just come on!"
Sayori followed her as best she could, but there was no way she could match Kate, not with this leg, most likely not even if she was healthy.
They went past the cursed fucking room, past the medical supply storage, past the reception and then, just like that, they opened the double glass doors and found themselves outside.
The spring air was cold, the gibbous moon hung in the sky, almost full. Yellow sodium lights bounced off scarred asphalt. The entire street was deserted.