Horror - Novelette

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. Remote Medicine Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

REMOTE MEDICINE

Orson Rowe transcribed while the telephone grew hot against his ear. It was all there, his little staycation ruined with the itinerary for a flight to the middle of nowhere. Sometimes sending the right man for the job was the only way to get a thing done and damned if he hadn’t worked hard to be the right man.

But at what cost?

This vacation for one.

“I wish you didn’t have to go,” Janine Rowe said. She massaged his shoulders gently from behind.

He leaned back into Janine’s bulging belly and turned his mouth to her hand. “I know, but this Ronnie Trafford guy turned out to be a total putz.”

Two nights earlier, Ronnie Trafford called into head office and told them that he quit and that he didn’t give a ‘rat’s shit’ about the job. Ronnie had gone into a northern mountain community on behalf of the company with hopes of bridging an old tie with the new generation living there.

It was big money that should’ve come home easily. People remembered money the way they sometimes forgot actual price. Many years into the past—1959 it was—the little town of Sipitak boomed with natural gas production and an aluminum smelter. Townsfolk filled their pockets and savings accounts, but production stopped abruptly. Deciding they had made enough money, had enough of the filth, the oddly colored snow, and the flammable burps emitted now and then from the ponds, they closed off all resource business.

Tears had fallen when they killed the town’s only real economic lifelines, but things were happening, people were sick and there were birth anomalies. The town dwindled to approximately one thousand residents and now, twenty years later, most of the remaining residents had little to do with the aging or dead relatives that axed the initial production.

“What’s it got to do with you?” Janine asked.

Orson spun on his chair and put an ear against Janine’s belly. He wrapped his arms as far as they reached, lacing the tips of his fingers together at the nubbins of her spine. Her long blonde hair stretched to her butt crack. She wore a light, but rough peasant blouse and a skirt that touched the tops of her leather-sandals.

“I’ll do the meeting, and I’ll book a flight straight home.” He smiled, but his answer was insufficient. “Look, I have to go because I do, simple as that,” he said. “And don’t you dare try to come out of there until I get back,” he added in a gooey baby-talk voice, poking gently at the ready-to-burst bulge.

—

Orson landed alongside two-dozen other passengers at a cozy mountain airport. The baggage claim had no carousel, but instead awaited an attendant with a trolley. In glass cases stuffed animals roared silently, paws and talons outstretched, suggesting the local fauna was nothing to mess with.

The usual rental car companies didn’t operate there. But the sticker on the bumper hardly mattered to Orson, so long as it took him where he needed to be. The offered rental was older and rougher than Orson expected: a 1971 Chevy Kingswood wagon with rust creeping over the fenders and running boards, faded lime paint, and peeling and rotten woodgrain.

“Thank you for choosing Jubalee,” the attendant said without a trace of irony.

As he was taking the keys and coming further out of his flight grogginess, he said, “Nothing newer?”

“We do, but you said you’re going to Sipitak and the boss doesn’t like putting the mileage up on later models,” the woman said. “He’s not a fan of oil companies either.”

Orson smirked at this. “Lot more than just oil.” He picked a bit of fuzz from the embroidered RimRoil emblem on his jacket as he spoke. These small-minded, small-pocketed people were everywhere.

“Have a nice trip,” she said then.

Orson nodded, and on his way out, stopped at a pop machine for a Mountain Dew. Sipitak was still better than five hours from the airport.

The Mountain Dew wouldn’t last, and he understood that when the can was more than half gone before he hit the outskirts of the small town.

“Headed to PG?” the attendant at the gas station asked when Orson appeared at the till with an armload of stuff and a paper map.

“Sipitak,” Orson said.

“Why in god’s name you going there?” The attendant was an older man, wide-eyed and a bit gruff with a salty beard and bushy white eyebrows.

Orson tapped his lapel and the RimRoil crest thereon.

“I’d make that visit short as I could, I was you,” the attendant bagged up the goods.

“Noted,” Orson said and hit the grayed asphalt and quickly found himself on a lonely highway cutting up between endless swatches of rainforest. Beyond the trees were mountains and Orson craned his neck to get a look, but it grew boring quickly, as did jerking around to see bald eagles—so much of both.

It took better than twenty minutes before he noticed that he listened to an 8-track rather than the radio. Midway through David Bowie asking if there was life on Mars, he fingered the switch on the aftermarket addition, then rolled the tuner through static and fuzz. Nothing, nothing, and more nothing.

“Oh well,” he said and pressed the faux-chrome selector on the 8-track player attached below the dash and let Bowie fill his rental car. “Could be worse, could be Como or Denver.” He tapped the steering wheel along to the beat.

He liked Bowie, just didn’t admit it publicly. In college, they used to razz the left-wingers about being disco queens instead of men. He never really felt good about it, but he wasn’t about to make that the hill his social standing died on.

—

It was a little after eight when Orson saw his first Sipitak sign and discovered, given enough time, he could singalong to most of Hunky Dory. The sign ahead was faded and rusty around the edges. Someone had been at it with a small-calibre rifle.

Rain speckled his windshield as he pulled past the first of several boarded buildings. Already, it looked as if the town needed the rain, a good downpour to wash it all away and start over fresh. They needed RimRoil more than RimRoil needed their resources.

“Ch-ch-ch-changes…” he whispered along, until the lyrics caught in his throat upon seeing the weight of the dilapidation around him. The place looked cursed.

At one time, the town was home to more than six thousand workers. Since then, there was no telling how few or how many lived there. They didn’t earn in the traditional sense and according to the government’s mail-in census, they didn’t much care about complying with federal law.

To his left was a small gas station. Orson rolled over the rubber line. No price sign, which typically meant an outrageous cost per gallon. Not that it was his dime.

He parked and stepped out of the car, stretching his back as he spotted a man through the foggy glass of the shack-like establishment. The man turned robotically toward the door and shuffled outside.

“How’s business, my man?” Orson asked.

The man said nothing, just kept on shuffling.

“Looks like rain, huh?” Orson tried again. Small talk was one of his touches. He chummed and hummed with locals.

This man still did not react and continued his slow shuffle, never lifting either foot from the pavement. He wore blue jeans and a Supertest t-shirt; both had seen many seasons and many washes, despite what the lingering stains and scent suggested. Strangely, the man also wore an ancient Esso hat. As if uncertain which brand of fuel he pumped. Not that it mattered.

“I’m just getting in,” Orson said.

The man worked his way around the car and to the pump, pulled the nozzle from the rusty machine, and slipped it into the gas tank’s spout hole. He was painfully cautious. Nozzle in, hand squeezed. It was as if a great glow shined over the man and he enlivened.

“You want it filled, do ya?”

“Don’t have much of a choice. You appear to be the only game for about five hundred miles.”

The man sniggered. “Not quite.” He leaned his back against the car and took off his cap. He scratched at his forehead with the peak.

Probably woke him up from a nap, Orson thought.

“You come from PG?” the attendant asked, the gasoline flowed slowly, just better than a trickle. “Sorry, it creeps, something bitched up a couple years ago, not enough business coming in to bother fixing it.” He pointed at the nozzle, his cap still in his hand.

Orson saw a long scar running down much of the man’s scalp. Definitely not the work of a skilled or caring surgeon.

“No, I come from the airport. From way down south in a town called Justine, down in Greyland. Up here on behalf of RimRoil.”

“Right, right.”

The flow rushed up and the nozzle clicked in the attendant’s hand. The brightness in his face drained. He replaced the nozzle with unreasonable caution, as if it were made of eggshells, porcelain.

Orson pulled out his wallet and fingered the bills; he looked at the numbers on the pump. Jumbled nonsense. “And the grand sum is?”

The attendant didn’t look at Orson or the pump and began his shuffle back to the shack.

“What in the hell—calculator.” Orson started toward the attendant once he’d stepped inside.

Walking on the trail of the attendant, Orson stepped on the rubber hose and a bell dinged. Beyond the foggy glass, the attendant turned and put his hat on his head. Moments later the man shuffled out toward the pump.

Orson stepped aside to let him through the door. “Hey, you ring up a total?”

The attendant shuffled past him, picked up the nozzle, and slid it into the tank’s spout hole again. He squeezed and after a brief rush and splash, a quick smile, and then a click, the man holstered the nozzle and shuffled back toward the shack, ignoring Orson.

The skies opened and Orson jogged to his gas cap, spun it, slapped the door closed, and hurried around to the driver’s door. He waited, watching the attendant. After two minutes, he started the car.

“Don’t want money, you won’t get it.”

He made it back onto the road, already feeling guilty, guessing someone’s half-stunned brother was given that job and he’d be getting in trouble for forgetting to accept money.

“Catch them on the way out.”

Next step, now that he had a full tank, was locating somewhere to sleep. Everywhere, blighted. The town had seen better days and three of the streets he attempted had fallen trees blocking passage. Finally, after thirty minutes of wandering, Orson saw a B&B sign—old but there.

Sipitak’s creepiness lodged deep. Most of the homes had moss growing over the roofs and lawns of long, long grass, combed sideways by the wind, but thin from a lack of sunlight. Eyes watched from within dirty rundown homes, candlelight burning within…he shivered.

“Imagining things,” he said as he pulled up to the B&B.

All other windows aside from the front door and the bay window of the two-storey centennial had faded plywood instead of glass. By the front door was a sign, planted in the weedy flowerbed. BUSINESS CLOSED SORRY.

Next-door, a woman stood in her yard, she appeared frozen mid-action, her arms stiff, one up near her face and the other about the level of her chest. He stared a moment in wonder and then saw the rake by her feet. He thought that he could slide the rake right into her hands and she’d burst into life like a wind-up toy.

“Shit, lady,” he said, and Bowie switched from singing about Changes to asking about life on Mars. “This town is rough.”

He had the address of the meeting place and followed a map he’d drawn on a piece of paper and shoved in his wallet before he left home—a man named Hotchess had explained the route to him over a scratchy phoneline. RimRoil owed him, this was a real shithole, and he was supposed to be on vacation.

Heading north, Orson passed more of the same by way of degradation; every tenth or eleventh house he passed had eyes staring through windows. The town gave him the stone-cold willies. He arrived at the X on his map to discover the gate of the hospital, and it shined like a lighthouse amid the dead town.

“Thank Christ.”

The sign was steel, obviously decades old, but clean and neat. It had three arrows, next to that read GENERAL, the second pointed in the opposite direction and read EMERGENCY, and the third was newer and pointed in the same direction as general admission. It read COUNCIL. Orson wheeled into a large parking lot featuring a dozen rusting hulks from the ‘fifties and ‘sixties.

As he stepped toward the entry, he saw a vehicle similar to his own. It was of the current decade, though dated—maybe an ’80 or ’81—and had a Jubalee sticker on the window. Was it possible there were other suitors for the local resources?

“Good luck,” he said, cocksure as ever.

After crossing the lot, he pushed against the door, and then pulled, only to discover it locked. To his left, a tinted window slid open a crack.

“Welcome to Sipitak Regional, are you sick?” asked the gruff feminine voice.

“No, I have an appointment with the mayor, Mr. Hotchess. It’s tomorrow but—”

“Dr. Hotchess is in but cannot see you now.”

“That’s fine, I just need a place to sleep and eat. The bed and breakfast—”

“Closed. We have beds and a cafeteria, do you like soup and Jell-O? I do, I eat a lot of soup and Jell-O, sometimes we have different stuff, but mostly soup and Jell-O.”

The window snapped closed.

“Um, all right, so I can spend the night and talk to the mayor in the morning?”

Orson waited for a reply but heard nothing. He tugged on the door again.

The window opened.

“Welcome to Sipitak Regional, are you sick?”

“No, it’s still me. You forgot to unlock the door.”

“Are you hurt?”

“No, I just told you, I have an appointment tomorrow with the mayor—”

“Dr. Hotchess is in but cannot see you now. Come back tomorrow,” the woman said.

The window closed.

Orson lifted his hands to the sky. “What in the hell is this place?” He tugged the door.

The window opened.

“Welcome to Sipitak Regional, are you sick?”

“Very sick,” he said and heard fidgeting before the door opened a crack.

He stepped through the creaky steel door. A woman sat in a booth just inside. Her jaw hung loosely and her eyes were glazed and vacant. Orson waved his arms and lowered to her sightline. Nothing.

There was a silver bell on the counter outside the booth. Orson tapped the button. The woman shook into life like a startled puppet.

“Geez, you scared me, where’d you come from?” She smiled mossy teeth. “You’re sick, you’re hurt, you’re here to see somebody?”

“Like I said, I’m here to see Mr. Hotchess.”

“Oh, the doctor’s performing surgery for the next hour. I can page somebody else.”

“Sure, get me somebody, anybody that can help me.” Orson was curt, annoyed. Getting in and getting out had already become more trouble than he planned for.

The woman swung a handless arm at a telephone on her desk. The stitch scars were rough, but long healed. She punched her nub until she found the intercom button. An electric hum filled the air and then her voice boomed and echoed. “I have a man in need of help.”

“And food,” Orson added.

“In need of help, headed to the cafeteria,” she added and then punched at the telephone until the hum died.

“Where’s the cafeteria?” Orson asked, but the woman’s vacant gaze had returned and she sat helpless. Orson hit the bell.

“Geez, you scared me, where’d you come from?”

“Cafeteria?”

“That’s where the soup comes from,” she said, and her eyes glazed over again.

“What is wrong with you people?” Orson asked and stepped away from the booth.

After a few steps and one turned corner, he found signs hanging from the ceiling. Two more arrows, one directed straight forward toward CAFETERIA, LONG-TERM CARE, and OBSERVATION. The other sign pointed toward EMERGENCY and LAUNDRY. Orson had only a slim hope remaining that this backwards, rundown, ass-crack of a town would turn itself around so he could make a deal. Get the resources and money flowing. The hallway was pale and his footfalls echoed dully. Two young men in filthy jeans and ratty t-shirts, one at either end, operated mops, both seemed wildly enthusiastic about the chore.

Orson didn’t bother asking them if the sign still pointed him in the correct direction. Room after room was dark. There were, apparently, no nurses on the floor. The hospital was much like the rest of the town in that sense, but unlike the rest of the town, life breathed here. He could smell it, even hidden beneath industrial chemical cleaners and raw alcohol.

He came to a T and took a right; another sign directed him from there. He then arrived at the telltale stainless steel of cafeteria doors. He swung them inward. A large room with several tables and chairs. A man leaned against a door near the kitchen. It smelled clean rather than like food, which was a letdown. The trip had his guts begging to know if there was grub on Mars.

“Hey, how’s business?” Orson asked; the man continued leaning against the wall. “Wake up, Scooby, duty calls.”

The man blinked. “I’m awake, what do you need? Soup?”

“Unless you have a steak and some brews hiding back there...and the mayor.”

“We have soup and Jell-O. This is a hospital.”

“Soup’ll be fine.”

“Maria, we need a soup!”

A steel door rolled upwards a few inches and eyes peered out from behind.

“Mayor’s the doctor. Doctor’s in surgery now, you know that, right?” the leaning man said. A security guard or possibly an orderly.

“So I hear.”

Maria belted out from behind the steel, roll-up door above the counter. “Got to come here for everything now. No steaks anywhere.” After she spoke, a paper bowl, a dusty spoon, and a packet of Lipton’s instant onion soup slid across the stainless counter. “Water takes a second.”

Orson stood sharing an awkward silence with the leaning man until the whistle of a kettle began. Maria poured the water into the bowl from behind the window.

“You add the mix. You want juice?” she asked.

“Sure do, I’m here for the full Sipitak experience,” Orson said. The trip seemed hopeless…no wonder Ronnie flaked.

The juice was murky orange and only appealing because he was parched. He mixed the soup with the water and took a seat. He considered asking for soda crackers, but decided against it. Bite and then bed. He’d give Janine another call, explain and complain, and then sleep. He no longer really cared if the deal went through. From the looks of things, RimRoil could probably snatch up most of the town for almost nothing and then have their way with the resources. Same as they did with sister companies all over Africa and the Middle East. People tried to stand in the way of progress, but when there’s a demand, one company or another will go out and get a supply.

The onion soup was as flat as possible, still, it was something in his stomach. Footsteps approached, as the salty dregs of the soup went down. A cube of green Jell-O slid onto the table in front of him. The man who’d been leaning next to the kitchen retreated, returning to his post.

“Watch it glimmer, see it shimmer, cool and fruity, Jell-O brand gelatin. Of all desserts, you love the one…” Orson trailed, laughing at himself. He hadn’t had this stuff in years. He then hiccupped and his eyes got weighty. “I think I need a bed,” he mumbled, his words came out slurred and almost drunken.

Something was happening.

Something…

—

In flashes, he felt hands on his arms, his legs dragged along limply, as if hanging only by strings. The hospital around him made him wonder if Janine had gone into labor…but no, Sipitak. He was in Sipitak and…he smelled something dirty and the lights dimmed. His knees banged against hard surfaces. Heard a final clang and felt his body zoom downward at gravity’s demand.

“I hear you, where are you?” a voice called from beyond the doorway.

Orson looked around him. He lay on a pile of soiled linens and old mattresses. The room was cooler than the rest of the hospital, the light ruddy by comparison, and the scent wasn’t so clean. Orson felt his neck and then rubbed at a sore knee. He recalled starting into his cube of dessert, it being sweeter than normal, then, after that came giddiness, sleepiness, and then, this.

“I can hear you. Can you find the lights?” the voice asked.

There was a door in the wall not a few feet from where he stood. He climbed from the damp sheets noticing a decidedly horrible coloration: those autumn tones. A gag rose. He swallowed it down. The far wall featured a series of troughs and sinks. Orson raced to them. Thick yellow soap came from a heavy steel dispenser. He spun the tap, it thumped, wheezed, and finally water leapt from the spout. Hands in motion, a shiver played over him. This town was all the way wrong and making a deal was not even a thought.

“Hey, come on. It’s dark in here, get the lights, would ya?”

Orson cut the flow, his hands and arms scrubbed red. He broke for the heavy door and found it opened onto another room, this one smaller and featuring industrial washers and dryers. He looked around the room once more and decided he’d move toward the voice lost in the dark, for lack of another option.

A man ran hands over a wall.

“Hey, you.”

The man turned. “You find the lights?” he asked. His eyes wore milky green hoods of ribbon thin scar tissue, the color of festering pus, of Irish cream liqueur. His eyes below appeared gouged at, as if someone attempted to steal his retinas.

Orson didn’t know what to say.

“I’ve been looking for weeks, I think. What’s today? Oh man, I’m freaking.”

“Monday, the ninth.”

“Oh, not so long as I thought. The dark makes it weird. There was another one before. I don’t know where he went. I can’t find the lights. When I find them, I’m going home. Man, do me a solid and help me find the lights.” The man roamed as he babbled.

“How did you get here?” Orson asked.

“I don’t know. I think there was an accident. I don’t remember anything since getting off the plane and going to…hey wait, we are in Sipitak, right?”

“That’s right, who put you down here?”

“Put me? I don’t know. I’m just here. I think I sleepwalked into an abandoned building. I do that. I sleepwalk. The boss is going to be pissed…I really need this job.”

The man walked with his arms out something like a cautious zombie. Orson didn’t want contact. He sidestepped the man’s reach.

“I don’t think you sleepwalked, somebody put you here, why would they do that?”

The man turned at the sound of Orson’s voice. “Stop moving, I can’t find you. Are you hungry? I found a freezer. It’s like popsicles of all kinds of food, but not on sticks. Sometimes on sticks.”

The man turned away from Orson and Orson noticed a stubbly area on the back of the man’s scalp and an inch-squared hole that led to the pinkish brain matter below. Orson’s heartrate sped and his body went rigid. He touched the back of his own head. Solid.

“Hey, come on, this way. I cleared it. You won’t trip. Just follow my voice,” the man said.

Around a corner, a heavy handle clicked, and a door wheezed open. The sounds were huge in the quiet of the room. Orson glanced into a yawning incinerator door before he turned the corner to follow the man. Mounded ash, nothing more.

The blind man rustled around the darkness of the walk-in freezer and stepped out, nibbling on something small and brown. “Come on, grab some. Delicious,” he said.

Orson cleared his throat. “Um, I don’t know how to tell you this—” The words died in his chest as he stepped into the dark freezer and flicked the switch just outside the door.

Piled, stacked, and hanging, body parts of every flavor of humanity. The floor was slick with iced blood and climbing pink frost.

The blind man was munching on a frozen tongue.

Orson jumped backward and slipped on the ice. On his way down, he kicked the man and the man tumbled into a shelf. The shelf dropped and the contents spilled onto Orson. Organs, digits, and eyeballs with long strands of frozen goo trailing behind like kite strings. He began gagging. He then screamed and scrambled, knocking away the clinging body bits. The frost had them sticky and reluctant to leave him. As he rose, his hand pressed down with a soft crunch and an eyeball exploded under his palm. He screeched and wiped at his pants with frantic need.

The other man laughed. “Oh, Ronnie, you’re breaking the place again. Don’t worry. I knocked over all kinds of shit when I first woke up here.”

Orson backpedalled out of the freezer, away from the odds and ends of preserved parts. “Ronnie, Ronnie Trafford?” he screamed.

“Hey, yeah. How’d you know?”

It had been a month since Ronnie Trafford set out to meet with the mayor of this bumpkin town.

Orson got to his feet and searched the room for another door.

“Calm down, I know it’s scary in the dark,” Ronnie cooed.

“It’s not dark, dipshit! You’re blind! You got a fucking hole in the back of your head, too!”

“A hole?” Ronnie fingered the back of his head. He stood straight and then swung his arms out. “Is somebody here? Can you find the lights?”

Reset button.

“No, no, no!” Orson burst back toward the laundry chute where he’d awoken. He returned through the door and at the far end of the room, partially hidden by a stacked washer-dryer unit, was a staircase.

Orson cleared a path. Ronnie was calling out behind him, spouting that same tired message.

“Ronnie, follow my voice.”

“How do you know my name?”

Orson ignored the question. “Careful, find the steps.”

“Are you hungry?” Ronnie asked and thumped forward. “This is new… Can you find the lights?”

“Follow my voice.”

Ronnie stiffened as he crawled and then called out. “Can you find the lights?”

“Keep moving forward and up the stairs,” Orson said and swung open the door at the top.

He looked along a wide and lengthy hallway of bright and sterile walls, floors, and ceiling. If those signs were correct, he should be able to figure his way back to the car.

The PA system buzzed and crackled. “Paging Dr. Hotchess, paging Dr. Hotchess, there’s a man here looking for you and I think he’s sick.”

Orson froze and pushed his back tight against a wall. A thought struck him and he dropped his hands into his pockets, surprised to find his keys, wallet, change, and a lighter. A quick, snapping glance around a corner suggested a clear coast and more importantly, a payphone hanging on the wall.

“Stick here a minute, Ronnie.”

“You going for the lights?”

“Yep.”

Crouched low, Orson got to the telephone, inserted a dime, and dialed the first number that came to mind. After six rings it was a surprise to hear his own voice on the tape recording machine they’d had installed a few months earlier.

“It’s horrible, babe, it’s horrible. Call somebody. I’m in Sipitak and I—”

A voice cut him off. “To continue, please insert another dime.”

“Goddamn,” he said, fishing in his pocket. The line clicked away. “Damn you,” he whispered, found a dime and ran a finger down the list of numbers on the front of the telephone. There was an emergency number, and he dialed and waited.

“Hello? Are you sick? Are you hurt?” a familiar voice asked.

“I…I’m in trouble.” Orson didn’t know how else to respond.

“You should come to Sipitak. We have an emergency room. And soup.”

He squeezed his palms in frustration, banging a hand against the wall. “Goddammit all,” he whispered.

Orson rushed back to where he had left the man.

“Ronnie?”

Gone.

Down the hallway, the direction he’d hoped on heading, two tall men pushed a smallish figure in a wheelchair. Trouble. Ronnie would have to fend for himself for a time.

“Where did he go?” asked a high, nasally voice.

Quickly, Orson stepped back to the last room he’d passed and slid behind an open door. His worry drove closer and closer to frenzy as the footfalls approached. His own feet stepped in sequence with those outside the room and he met a wall. Jumping, startled, he let out a wheeze, and then dropped to the floor. The door creaked open and he slid under a steel bed as the light overhead lit.

“He’s down here somewhere,” that awful voice said.

Two sets of feet and a set of rubber on steel wheelchair wheels rolled just inside the room. Beyond the room, a loud clang sounded and a voice echoed up the hallway, “Hey, is somebody there? Can you find the lights?”

“The newb let Ronnie out,” the nasally voice said. “He won’t get far.”

One set of feet stepped behind the chair and steered while the other waited a moment longer but followed eventually. Orson let out a deeply held breath. The door clanked shut and the lock spun.

“Fuck sakes,” he said.

Above him, on the bed, something moved—comfort adjustment. The air sucked back into Orson’s lungs and he waited until he thought he might pass out.

“You can come out, you know,” said the voice of a child.

Orson didn’t dare. He wanted to wait out the end of time, safe underneath that bed.

“Can you fix my TV?” the voice asked, “Please.”

The childish helplessness melted the fear. The place was insane, he couldn’t wait out anything; besides, they were doing things to innocents. The child. Ronnie. Orson slid out from beneath the bed and climbed to his feet, his back tight against the wall.

The shape on the bed was pitiful: long frizzy hair, shoulders about ten inches apart, shining brown eyes two sizes to big for his face. A square tube television was sat atop a table at the foot of the bed. The screen was tiny, the box encasement massive.

“I don’t know much about TVs,” he said and unexpectedly, the child wailed. Orson finally recognized the child as a girl. “Shh, shh, I’ll try, but you have to be quiet.”

“Thanks,” the girl giggled.

Orson looked around the room, spotted the plastic wire running toward the wall, but not quite reaching it. He tugged and returned to the foot of the bed, pulled the table holding the television closer. The feet screeched incessantly and he paused for a breath to listen to the world beyond the room. It seemed impossible that he might be screwing around with a TV at such a time. The table screeched a little more as he scooched it closer to the socket. He pulled a silver knob and pale gray glow awoke with slow growth.

“No picture,” the girl said.

Orson twisted the channel knob four clicks until he found a program. Behind him, he heard a loud crunch and then another and another.

“My brother makes popcorn, want some?” The girl chewed around the words: crunch, crunch, crunch.

“Your brother?”

The girl reached under her blanket for the popcorn before shoveling it into her mouth.

“Uh, no thanks,” Orson said.

He stepped down and the girl’s eyes remained glued to the screen. The door had locked, he’d heard it, but still he needed to feel it. He gave the knob a hapless half-turn. Back across the room, below and behind the television, long thick drapes hung low. He rushed over and pulled aside the cloth. It was dark but it was outside. The glass dropped as he shoved, and it thumped into the soft dirt. Simple enough. He tried another square pane, and it fell. He now had plenty of room and finally, something would go his way.

Crunch, crunch.

But he couldn’t just leave the girl, could he?

Crunch. Crunch.

“Okay, want to go for a walk?” he whispered.

“A walk?” The girl shook her head gently. “My brother doesn’t like the outside. He can’t walk.”

Crunch.

“How about you and me then?” Orson said thinking the poor girl would need years of therapy to overcome whatever had gone on in this hospital.

“We can’t leave him,” she said and reached down for more popcorn.

Crunch, crunch, crunch.

Orson rubbed his forehead.

“Listen, we’ll come back for him.” Orson reached and swung back the girl’s blanket.

It was dark and the dim picture on the screen cast only grey shadows. He peered at a strange shape, not like legs at all. Squinting, he leaned in tighter.

“I don’t wanna go,” the girl pouted.

The picture on the tube changed to something bright—a Minute Maid advertisement—casting an understanding over the room. The girl stared at the screen and reached down below her stomach. She lifted her hand to her mouth.

Crunch. Crunch.

Orson gasped, “Fucking hell,” as the scent of decay filled his nose. “Fucking hell.”

The girl plucked maggots from what appeared to be a rotting torso sewn onto her lower half, like a playing card. She shovelled them into her mouth a few at a time. Some clung and wriggled about her chin like living crumbs.

Crunch.

Orson dry-heaved, convulsing. So thin that it appeared nothing more than tissue on bone, he saw the boyish face. Light from the television bounced against its open eyes. Her brother. The maggot machine providing the insane girl with a popcorn substitute. No butter necessary.

The head turned. “Can you help me? I don’t wanna make no more popcorn.”

The girl took another handful of maggots from a seemingly endless resource.

Crunch. Crunch.

Orson’s mouth danced soundlessly as he scrambled to the window. The voices returned in the hall and he spun. The drop outside was short. From inside, he heard a key in a lock and ran blindly from the sound, into the rainy night.

—

The courtyard had both doors and windows, but nothing budged for him. It was almost fully dark, and Orson moved around as Ronnie had to, feeling the world. There was a brick archway and he retreated from the rain to flick his lighter. The light flashed and stunned him momentarily.

He imagined stepping through that door and home to…why hadn’t Janine answered his call? Was she in labor? Not the time to worry about that.

The lighter flame fizzled and he flicked the roller again. He crept to the door, just to be sure. It didn’t move. That courtyard was so incredibly dark, even the windows of the hospital let no light peek through…and then one did and Orson finally noticed the two-dozen faces staring at him from just beyond his protective arch.

He gasped again and the people, all suffering a major deformity of one sort or another hobbled away or merely turned their backs, pretending to ignore him. As horrible as these people were, they gave him some hope. They hadn’t captured him and didn’t know him to be at odds with the house.

He swallowed. “Can anybody help me?”

A brave figure crept forward slowly, palms out. Orson saw just the silhouette but understood that it was a woman, soft and bulging at the edges. As she drew closer, the shadow over her faded, and the scrubs became visible.

“I’d bet you’d dig a pillow,” the woman said. She wore a nurse’s uniform, soiled, but obvious.

“What?” Orson’s voice croaked.

“A pillow, some soup, a blanket, a blowjob, a finger in the bum.”

“What? No!” Orson shouted and then covered his mouth again.

“Everything’s got a price, it’s how we make extra bread,” the woman said.

She got close enough to loom over Orson. She wasn’t tall, but she had a great deal of presence. Her eyes rode uneven on her face and her skull bulged at either side. Her legs bowed oddly, like a cricket’s, and her scrubs were filthy with brown and red stains.

“I need to get out,” Orson said.

“You need the keys?” the woman asked dropping an arm to her pocket.

“Yes, keys.”

“Umm, hundred bucks.”

Orson pulled out his wallet. He had eighty in cash and a few bucks in change.

“I can do, eighty-four,” he said as he counted.

“Umm, hundred bucks or your keys.”

“How about eighty-four.”

“How about eighty-four and you rub my back?”

Orson shivered. “No.”

“Then no keys,” she said and started away.

“Fine, keys for keys,” he said.

She ran back to him. “I can give you a finger in the bum for the eighty-four.” The nurse dangled the keys from the very finger he expected she wanted to stick in his ass.

He snatched the keys and ran past her. He needed his keys.

“Hey!” she screamed. “He made a deal!”

People with nubs for arms, legs mutated into fins, holes in their torsos or heads, people with cleft faces and lumped potato craniums emerged from every shadow. Orson raced toward the doors at the far side of the courtyard. Five figures stood directly in his path. All of them hideous.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his lighter. “Deal, deal!” he shouted and tossed the object toward the woman.

Like cats to a string, the horrid figures broke for the lighter. Orson reached the door and worked blindly. From behind, he heard moaning and groaning, approaching footfalls sluicing through the rain-softened dirt. He jerked and tugged once he got the key in.

“This ain’t keys!” the woman’s voice bounced around the courtyard and Orson heard the soggy steps rushing back toward him.

“Work, damn you!”

The lock spun. A reaching hand with only three fingers on a crooked palm touched his cheek and then one dirty finger hooked into his mouth.

A voice rang out, “Got ya face!”

Orson chomped and released; the fingers popped from his mouth. He swung open the door and yanked it closed behind him. He twisted the bolt. He heard a thump and backed away from the door. Beyond the steel, he heard voices and then the familiar clink-clank of another set of keys inserted into a lock. Orson peeled away from the sound, up a dim hallway, toward a bright hallway. Fifty feet from the four-way intersection, he stopped to consider his position. A clown in a red wig, wearing a tuxedo, and holding a bouquet of flowers waved with his free hand.

“Hey, kiddo, need an upper?”

Orson made a choice and continued down the hallway, away from the clown, passing room after room. All appeared empty, but he’d come to know better than to assume.

“Don’t be scared, little guy!” the clown shouted, his jog was quick and smooth.

Orson rounded a corner and tried a door marked UTILITY. It opened and he stepped inside. It was dark and quiet, small, and shelves of cleaning supplies lined the walls. Loud voices filled the hallway.

He heard the nurse from the courtyard talking to the clown. Then he heard squeaking footfalls. The voices quieted. Just barely, Orson heard the same nasally voice that he’d heard from inside the room used by the sister-brother combination.

“Sue Ellen, get back to your yard. Bumps McGee, you watch these halls. The poor man is very sick and he’s got it all wrong.”

There was a comical laugh and a collective groan. More wet footsteps squeaked away from the closet.

“Where could he go? He’s not magic, not magic like old Bumps McGee,” the silly voice said.

“Not now, Clown,” said the nasally voice. “Check the doors on this hall…they should be locked.”

“Yes, Doctor,” said a deep voice.

Orson reached down and felt the smooth doorknob, he pushed at it, hoping there was a lock mechanism, but there wasn’t. Key only. He tried his key, but it didn’t fit, not even just the tip.

In both directions, footfalls and doors swinging open and locks clicking tight; Orson was in a box smaller than a prison cell and felt doomed. They’d turn him into some fucked up near-zombie just like Ronnie or the receptionist, maybe they’d attach him to Ronnie and he’d survive eating the very maggots that kept Ronnie’s rot from creeping further onto his own flesh.

Orson’s teeth chattered and he bit his cheek, tasted blood. “This can’t be happening,” he whispered.

The doors swung audibly on either side of the closet and Orson spun frantically, making certain that the walls were indeed that. There were no hidden passageways. One option. The heavy drop ceiling. He climbed onto the shelving. He kicked an aerosol canister onto its side. It rolled back and forth but didn’t drop to the floor. He pushed a hand against the ceiling and felt it lift. He scrambled and got his shoulders through and forced away the heavy panel. In his rush, he kicked a shelf. The canister dropped and bounced with eardrum shattering cries: HE’S HERE, HE’S HERE!

The utility closet door swung open as Orson crawled onto the precarious network of steel banding and moldy tiling. He’d made it several feet before he heard one of the deep voices say, “Fucker’s gone into the ceiling.”

It was dark, it was dusty, and it was stuffy in the ceiling. He had to keep pace and gravity demanded that he not ignore the shakiness and blind hopelessness of his situation. He had no idea of direction; the thought of rushing away from the parking lot made his stomach turn.

Rustling to his right, he glanced behind him expecting an orderly or a clown, but he saw neither. He continued; moments later there was rustling to his left. A ceiling panel tilted, offset, and light poured through the gap. Orson quickened his crawl. A panel cracked beneath him and he focussed his weight onto the supports.

Directly behind him, a panel loosened and dropped. A giggle followed the crash. Orson glanced back and saw only a swath of light pouring up into the dead space above the ceiling. To his right, and very nearby, another tile dropped. Seconds later the same happened at his left and Orson fought a scream. He turned forward and the tile in front of him popped up and crashed down.

Orson did scream this time. A mix of fear, frustration, and anger played upon his overwrought voice. He spun around and headed back, away from the near threat. His hand crashed through a tile and he leaned, his arm swinging into a room below while he struggled to right himself before the tile caved and took him to the floor.

Before him, the tile exploded in a shower of dust and insulation. The clown’s head popped up like a carnival game target. “Don’t be scared, surgery ain’t so bad!” Bumps McGee shouted. “Hey, I’ll bet you like balloons! Groovy balloons!”

Orson fought to free his arms and then the tile crashed beneath him and he teetered, almost fell, but managed his grasp on the skinny bands of steel. He shifted his weight and felt the tiles below his feet crack.

Bumps McGee blew into a balloon, it stretched out past Orson’s ear. Static lifted the hair at the side of his head. Bumps McGee tied the nozzle and slapped the balloon against Orson’s face. Teasing.

“Fuck off, you fucking—” Orson started and found the long skinny balloon rammed into his open mouth.

“I don’t see why you wanna fight it, you started this! You gave us the gifts first!” Bumps McGee wagged a pronged tongue from side to side as he continued to force the balloon tight against the back of Orson’s throat.

Orson bit down on the balloon and jerked backwards away from the clown. The balloon popped in his mouth and the tiles gave all around him. Orson felt gravity take him on another ride. Bumps McGee laughed his goofy clown h’yuck, h’yuck, h’yuck and jumped down. He towered over Orson.

Bumps the clown had bumps all over him. Huge things, bumps so big the thick grease paint didn’t hide them.

“You’re next! You did this! But we can all play now!” Bumps McGee shouted and kicked at Orson.

The contact forced his lungs to empty and he rolled over. “My wife is pregnant; I’m going to be a father, please!”

Bumps McGee smiled. “That ain’t news, buddy boy. Don’t worry, we can fix her and the babe. We can fix everybody, just like you fixed us!”

Orson rolled to his hands and knees and felt another kick. He fought the urge to turtle, and crawled toward the door. He had to get away, he had to get home.

“You got him? Good,” said the nasally voice from the doorway.

Orson’s eyes rose and took in the wheelchair and the stubby-legged man with his bulbous, hydrocephalic skull, cleft lip, gnarled ears, and black irises. The little man wore a doctor’s coat, the sleeves rolled back to offer room for the short and pointy fingers that seemed to move as if possessed.

“Please,” Orson moaned.

The little man smiled as best he could with his misshapen lips and spoke that high, nasally voice. “No need to beg, we’ll give you all the luxuries you gave us. Bumps McGee, go with Porter and ready the surgery room. Hazleton, bring the patient to my office; we have to go over his options.”

“Please,” Orson moaned again.

“Hush,” the doctor said, leaning down and swiping his eerie little paw to wipe a tear from Orson’s cheek before the burly orderly lifted the patient.

—

The doctor’s office walls featured x-rays of different deformities, growths, and malformations. There were candid shots of the smiling doctor in his chair, bloody scalpel in hand; photos of others in scrubs holding body parts; a mother head to foot in blood cradling a small blob of miscolored flesh. Orson attempted to rise from his seat, fighting the sights around him, but the large man acting as orderly shoved him down.

“Why do you let him do this?” Orson said.

“He didn’t start this; he’s just continuing it. So many left and the town gets smaller every day. Dr. Hotchess is a hero. He makes them all want to stay.”

“You’re insane, he’s mutilating people and what’s so special about this town? Why can’t you go someplace else?” Orson was frantic under the heavy grasp.

The hand let up and the man came around to sit on the neat steel desk in front of Orson. The man brought his knee to his chest and worked on his bootlaces. The boot dropped to the floor and the man peeled away a white cotton sock.

“Where could I go?” he asked.

The foot was clubbed, but otherwise normal, until the heel spread and from beneath, the foot hinged upward and pushed out three insectile toes. The toes grew in length and the webbing between stretched, the veins and muscles below were disgustingly visible through the thin skin. The pointed nails at the tips of the toes were thick and yellow.

“No!” Orson shouted and shook his face side-to-side when it became apparent that the orderly planned to sink those filthy toes between his lips.

“What’s wrong, you don’t dig what you’ve created?”

Orson couldn’t figure how any of the oddities were his fault and every time one of the locals accused him, he grew more confused. It didn’t make a lick of sense, none of it.

Orson grabbed onto the foot and the toes wrapped around his hand, twisting. Orson screamed and writhed and fell to the floor. The orderly grunted and swore under his breath.

“What’s this?” Dr. Hotchess said.

The pressure left Orson’s hand and he silently thanked the doctor.

The doctor was on a different chair. Black wheels rolled by Orson’s sightline from his pinned angle on the floor. An electric motor buzzed.

“Put your sock on,” Hotchess said.

Orson scanned the floor around him. It needed a sweep, but amid clouds of filthy cotton and animal fur dust bunnies, a metallic glint flared. Orson reached. Instantly he reeled his arm back in pain. Blood bubbled from his palm and he reached out again, touching the object at the other end, hoping for a smooth handle. It was there and he felt the cotton and fur stick to his palm and fingers as he pulled the knife close. The tool was grimy and felt sticky and yet slick in Orson’s grip.

“Get him up,” Hotchess said.

The man finished tying his boot and reached for Orson. Orson cooperated, let the man pull him to his feet, and then stabbed blindly with the object before he had a chance to think this through. It wasn’t until blood showered outward and the object jutted deep from the orderly’s eye-socket that Orson identified it as a plaster knife. A tidbit he’d picked up from a story CBC did on medical supplies.

He tried to ignore the griminess and the dried blood mixing with his fresh blood all over the handle and grabbed the knife from the man’s face. A new fountain burst upwards and the orderly shook all over. Orson pointed the knife at the doctor where he sat behind the desk.

“I’m getting out of here.”

“You came to us, you came to make more, did you not?” the doctor asked.

“Shut up, you’re all bananas! Now, book!” Orson swung the knife in the air, directing the doctor toward the door.

The doctor’s dexterous fingers worked the controls. “It’s my surgery chair, shame to get it out and not use it.”

“Which way is the parking lot?”

The doctor rode out of the office and into the hallway. Orson held the knife inches from the man’s neck, walking behind, free hand on the back of the chair just in case the doctor had a warp speed gear.

“You came to make more, right? RimRoil Resources and your corporation’s side pursuits. Ronnie told me, but I knew he wasn’t the one to speak to. I knew someone better would come.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

They passed a set of windows out to the courtyard. One by one, the freaks planted their hands and faces against the glass to watch the doctor roll by.

“A deal! We had a deal!” the nurse shouted through the glass.

“You’ve been here and you left, it’s how we all came to be, well most of us. I carried your tradition forward. We love your designs, even if change can be scary.”

Orson looked over his shoulder and Bumps McGee and the other orderly had stepped out of a room and strode quietly behind.

“Stay back or I’ll slice this little creep’s throat,” Orson said.

“Can’t you see? We’re on the same team,” Hotchess said.

“You’re all crazy. I came to talk about resuming the natural gas extraction and the smelter. That’s it!” Orson said.

Maria and the security guard stepped into the hallway.

“Stop!” Dr. Hotchess screamed, his high whine echoing throughout the hallway.

Startled, Orson bumped into the back of the stalled chair.

“Children, brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, and those in between. This man wants to start the makers again! Just as we hoped!”

Along the hallway, doors began to open, dozens of them, and abominations poured free. The figures lurched, crawled, dragged, and slid on the slick floor. “Hooray!” they shouted, mouths slobbery.

“Quiet!” Hotchess shouted.

Orson didn’t know what to make of it and pressed the blade against the doctor’s throat. “I’m leaving and you’re not stopping me.”

“If you start the makers again, you can leave! We will celebrate your greatness. We will erect monuments in your honor! I will get you ten arms!”

“Move, now,” Orson said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m leaving and I’m never coming back.”

“Never?” the doctor asked and slowed his resumed pace.

“Never.”

“It comes eventually. It starts with one and comes eventually, maybe it skips, maybe it doesn’t, but it comes and the mutation finds its home. We will not be denied! I can show you the greatness of what you’ve begun!”

The crowd cheered again and creeped inward. Gaining on them.

“Move, move!”

“Last chance!” Hotchess said and the crowd of encroaching freaks drew nearer.

From down the hallway a man shoved his way through. “Hey, I can hear you, can you find the lights? Man, I’m freaking.”

“Ronnie, park it!”

“Uh, sure. Hey, do you know where I can find a light switch?”

“Eventually, somewhere on the line it finds a home,” the doctor said.

“Shut up and roll!”

“No! People, he is lying! He will not bring back the makers and we cannot let anymore leave until the natural creation resumes, it’s the only way!”

Orson grabbed the tiny doctor by the neck and lifted him as a mama cat lifts her kitten. The doctor’s arms flailed and his legs kicked uselessly.

“Stay back!”

“Let me go! Let me go!”

“I’m coming to you. It’s too dark here,” Ronnie said.

The crowd of freaks shrank the circle, so Orson brought his knife up to the doctor’s neck. The doctor had begun choking and gasping for air.

“I’m leaving or he dies, and nobody makes more!” The local phrasing worked and the freaks froze in place. Orson stepped through the mass as it parted. The doctor took on a purplish hue.

Ronnie was at the end of the hallway, no more than twenty feet away, feeling walls, looking for a light switch. As he got to the reception booth the woman behind the glass asked him questions, he asked questions right back.

“Ronnie!” Orson shouted, “Don’t move!”

“Oh, hey, do you know where I can find a light?” Ronnie spun and smiled.

“Open that door lady!” Orson shouted as he jogged closer to the reception booth.

“Are you sick?” she called back.

“Ma’am, can you get the lights?” Ronnie said.

“I’m all better now!” Orson said.

“Oh,” she said and switched the mechanism that unlatched the door’s lock. The glass doors creaked open. Orson tossed the tiny doctor like he was a bag of trash. His little frame thumped and bounced on the floor and he wheezed. “Somewhere…down the line…it comes! You’ll see!”

The freaks started up the hallway toward Orson and Ronnie. Orson grabbed Ronnie by the collar and dragged him outside. Ronnie stumbled along, still smiling. “If we’re running, we should at least hit a light.”

Orson saw his car just as he left it and rooted into his pocket for the key. He found it and unlocked his door. The doors behind him slid closed and the freaks began thumping on the glass of the hospital’s exit. As if they didn’t know the magic words to get the receptionist to cooperate.

A heavy breath left Orson’s chest and he got Ronnie into the car.

“Sure is a dark night, how can you see where we’re going?”

Once again, Orson didn’t answer and ran around the nose of the car. The hospital doors slid open and the ambling, dragging, squirming masses rushed out.

Orson spun the key. “Saailors fighting in the…!” He lowered the volume on Bowie and jerked the big car out of the hospital lot.

“Thank god,” he mumbled.

“Hey, it’s really dark; you should hit your lights,” Ronnie said.

“Shut up. You’re blind.”

Ronnie quieted as the car rolled and squealed around a corner.

“Nah, just dark,” Ronnie said and then felt around the dash looking for a light switch. He spun the stereo knob.

“…she could spit in the eye…” Bowie continued.

Orson switched the button back off.

“Of fools as they…” voices shouted from the back seat and Orson jerked around to see three small figures very much like the doctor: deformed and mushy faced, black eyes, tiny claw-like hands, “…ask her to focus on…”  they continued in high harmony. Orson screamed and yanked the wheel as if he could shake the figures from the backseat, peeling the nose of his rental over the gas pump at the shitty little station where he’d filled his tank when he first arrived in town.

 Just before he felt his body ejected, just before the flames shot and the empty space in the tank underground burst, he saw the man through the glass react to the dinging rubber hose.

—

Orson awoke with a jerk of recognition.

The hospital.

He tried to move, but his entire body ached as pain traveled on lightning bolts through his veins.

“No surgery!” he shouted.

A nurse rushed into his room at the sound of his cry. She seemed normal, but sometimes they did until they peeled away a layer of clothing.

“Shh, Mr. Rowe, please,” the woman cooed. She was in her twenties or early thirties, chubby, rosy-cheeked, and smiling.

“Let me see the back of your head!” Orson said.

Such a curious request, the woman’s hands went to the back of her head and her tightly cropped hair. She turned. “Something on my head?”

Just hair and scalp, the tie to her nurse’s cap. Orson eased.

“Where am I?”

“Greyland University Hospital. Do you remember your accident?”

Orson did and all too well, but somehow, he was away and mostly safe.

“Am I…am I whole?” he asked.

“Sure, just a little busted and a little burned. I guess your car seat shot out. Ejected like a military plane. Pretty lucky, then there was a helicopter already there for some reason.”

“A helicopter?”

“I guess. I’ll find your wife. Funny, it’s the first time I’ve ever seen a woman better than nine months pregnant and still more mobile than her hubby,” the nurse smiled as she spoke and trailed away.

Orson waited and Janine waddled into the room, tears ran her cheeks, but a grin rode her lips. “Oh Orson, I’m so glad I have you back. I thought the worst when I got that message.”

“How did I get away?”

Janine explained calling the police and then RimRoil Resources, threatening to go to the media if they didn’t find her husband. They made calls and spoke with some men who’d worked in Sipitak some years earlier. The place had become hostile over genetic deformities, of course none of it proven to be the result of chemical use in the gas excavation or from the aluminum smelter.

By lunch, RimRoil had a local helicopter pilot take a peek over the town and saw flames flare into the sky. He landed on the highway not a quarter mile away, almost plopping down right over Orson’s tossed body.

“Then what?”

“About what?” Janine asked.

“The freaks, the doctor and his freaks!”

Janine shrugged, feigning ease. The town had been completely empty other than the body of Ronnie Trafford still smoldering within the shell of the rental car.

—

Orson had never been so helplessly nervous in his entire life as he was while he waited on news from the delivery room. The same nurse he’d spoken with before returned throughout the day to offer updates and came back every half hour once Janine went into labor. After the third hour, the nurse stopped coming. Orson finally saw her again after the fifth hour as she buzzed past his room in street clothes.

“Nurse!” Orson shouted.

“Guess you been in here long enough.” She pushed Orson’s wheelchair through the delivery waiting room, she explained the complications and that they’d brought in a specialist.

“Is it Janine,” he asked, “or the baby?”

“Your wife is sedated but fine; it’s the baby,” the nurse said.

The nurse planted Orson, and he waited with Janine’s mother. They didn’t have much to say to each other. An hour later, a different nurse went rushing past, shouting something Orson didn’t catch, her long brown ponytail swinging behind her skinny frame. Another nurse came along then, a smallish woman with sheepish eyes. “Mr. Rowe, the doctor’s through. Would you two like to speak to him?”

“Please, please,” Orson whispered and then looked to Janine’s mother. The woman was ghostlike and gazing blankly at a wall. “Just me.”

The nurse wheeled Orson down a hallway toward a string of offices. A voice carried. “I think it went pretty well,” the voice was high, “have to expect,” and familiar, “things like this, they can happen to anyone, trust me.”

“No, no.” Orson shook his head thinking it was impossible. The nurse wheeled Orson into an office.

“Orson!” Dr. Hotchess, shouted gleefully. He wore sunglasses and gloves, hiding much of his horror. “It was quite an effort, but I’ve got your baby looking right as rain, got all four fingers and all fifteen toes. I even put a valve on her itty-bitty skull so when it balloons full of fluid you can drain it, nice and easy. I told ya, it hits eventually.”

“But I…what did you do?” Orson sobbed, head to his chest, his arms unable to cover his face thanks to the casts.

“Nothing you wouldn’t have done to a child of mine. Nothing you haven’t done to children of mine.”

XX