Jeremy Robinson - SecondWorld

He reached Mount Sinai Medical Center ten minutes later. The hospital was large and nicer than most he’d visited. In fact, with its light brown exterior and surrounding palm trees, the place looked more like a hotel than a hospital. As he approached the building, the doors to the emergency room slid silently open.

Emergency power must still be working, he thought, but forgot all about the door when he looked beyond it.

Miller jumped back. Bodies filled the emergency room—piles of them. Vomit covered several, as well as a dusting of rust. Strangely, almost all of the victims were covered in blood. Something awful—something terribly violent—had happened here. Did the people turn on one another, desperate enough for medical attention to kill off any competitors?

A little girl’s face caught his eye. She was buried beneath three adults, her eyes closed. Peaceful. As though she had simply fallen asleep there. But Miller knew she hadn’t. The death she had experienced would likely have been anything but peaceful.

Swallowing hard, he stepped back, out of the building.

The doors closed behind him.

He found the main entrance on the other side of the hospital and entered the lobby, steeling himself for a repeat of the emergency room scene. But there were only a few bodies here. He forced himself not to look as he moved past them, focusing instead on a wall-mounted map and directory off to his right. Reaching it, he ran his finger over each department as he read the list. He made a note of every place he thought might have oxygen tanks, then paused. His finger lay on the BURN WARD label. Fourth floor.

He knew that people with severe burns were sometimes put in oxygen tents. Could he spend the night in one? Breathing freely? He hadn’t really slept since leaving Aquarius. As he assessed his need for sleep, he felt his legs grow shaky. His vision blurred. It was almost as though his body, knowing that sleep was near, began shutting down in preparation.

He knew he could sleep in the rebreather without issue. It was good for another twelve hours and he had two spare oxygen tanks strapped to his belt, not to mention a hospital filled with them. But to sleep freely, on a bed… well, that sounded like heaven. He headed for the elevators and pushed the button. The doors opened immediately.

Emergency power is definitely still running.

The elevator rose quickly. With a ding, the doors opened to a stark white hallway. A dead nurse lay on the floor, crumpled up into the fetal position. He stepped out and the doors shut behind him. In the silence that followed, Miller thought he heard the wind. He held his breath and listened.

It wasn’t the wind.

It was a child.

Weeping.

Miller spun around, trying to discern the cry’s source. He moved beyond the empty nurses’ station, stopped, and listened again. The sound was faint, rising and falling in volume, but never loud. He moved down the hallway, passing open doors. Some rooms held corpses, some were empty, beds still made.

A shadow shifted in the room at the end of the hallway.

He ran toward it.

His chest pounding from excitement, he slowed as he approached the door, caught his breath, cleared his mind, and entered. The corner room had two walls of windows, one looking out to the north, up the coast, and the other back to downtown Miami, which was aglow with orange light from the setting sun.

An opaque sheet of plastic hung from the ceiling and descended over the room’s bed like a tent.

A small body, obscured by the plastic sheet, lay on the bed. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought the person was looking at him. The weeping stopped, followed by some sniffling.

“Are you here to rescue me?” a sweet voice asked. It was a child. A girl.

“Yeah,” he said. “I am.”

“You can come under. It’s okay to breathe in here.”

Miller looked beyond the tent. Next to the bed was an array of equipment including large tanks of oxygen and air. An oxygen tent. Was this girl…?

He removed his mask so she wouldn’t be afraid, knelt down, and lifted the plastic from the floor. He quickly pulled it over his head and let it fall again.

The girl, dressed in a hospital gown, smiled at him, but the smile only lasted a moment. Her lips were swollen and split in several spots. The skin on her left arm looked like it had melted. It was red, swollen, and in some places, cracked and oozing.

She noted his attention. “The bandages hurt when they dried out. I took them off.” Her voice was weak. Frail. “There are other burns on my stomach and legs, all on the left side. Not as bad as my arm, though. The hospital gown hurts a little, but I didn’t want to be naked. Just in case.”

“In case of what?”

“In case you came.”

“Me?”

“Or anyone else.”

“Right.”

“I’m thirsty.”

He was sure she couldn’t drink through those lips, though maybe a straw would work. “I’ll be right back.”

He slid out from under the sheet, donned his mask, and found her IV bag. Empty. She’d been dehydrating to death. Alone.

“I’m Lincoln Miller. You can call me Linc if you’d like. What’s your name?” he asked.

“Arwen.”

“Nice name.”

“It’s from Tolkien.”

Tolkien? “How old are you?”

“Twelve.”

“Listen, Arwen. I’m going to go get some supplies. Stuff to help you feel better. I’ll be back in a minute.”

“’Kay.”

“Be right back,” he repeated as he left the room. He searched the hallways for a supply room, ignoring the bodies and his rising emotions. His focus was on Arwen now. He found a door with a brass label that read MEDICAL SUPPLIES. He tried the handle. Locked. After stepping back, he kicked the door three times, right below the knob. On the third kick, the door crashed open.

Cabinets and closets lined the walls of the room. Each was filled with impeccably organized and labeled medical supplies. He opened and closed five doors before finding a cabinet that held nearly twenty IV bags labeled SALINE—0.9% SODIUM CHLORIDE SOLUTION. He took five and left.

“I’m back,” he said upon return to Arwen’s room. He moved straight for her IV, checked the label to make sure he’d taken the right kind, and then switched them out. The liquid drip began immediately. Only then did he notice that Arwen had yet to respond to his entry.

Miller pulled up the plastic, climbed beneath, and found the girl lying still, her eyes closed. He pulled his mask from his face and knelt down next to her. He didn’t dare check for a pulse for fear her red, swollen skin would crack open. Instead he held the back of his hand beneath her nose and watched her small chest.

He sighed as he felt air move across his hand and saw the subtle rise and fall each breath brought to her chest. She was still alive and she had moved over on the bed. Before, she’d been on her back at the center of the bed, now she lay on her unburned side at the edge.

She’d made room for him.

He shook his head, wondering who was taking care of whom. That small gesture of companionship, he realized, had rallied his fighting spirit. He slipped out of his gear, placing the rebreather, handgun, water bottle, and several protein bars on the floor next to the bed. The exhaustion, chased away by the adrenaline of finding Arwen, returned with a vengeance.

He climbed onto the other side of the bed, careful not to bump her little body with his. The bed was firm, but comfortable. The air smelled of burnt flesh and hair. He looked at the back of her head. Her blond hair had burned from the shoulders down, but the hair on top revealed the child she had once been.

He ran his fingers through her hair and wondered if she’d been in one of the apartment fires he’d seen on the way to the hospital. Or perhaps her burns had happened before the catastrophe hit. There was no way to know, not now, anyway.