XVII - Paige
Paige
ran along the corridor, feeling the exertion burning at her lungs and throat
and hammering through her chest with each heartbeat.
"Charlie!?" Her voice was hoarse from similar calls, the
lack of breath only serving as fuel for pain.
"Charlie, where are you?"
The
hospital was bigger than she'd expected.
Corridors seemed to run off to left and right all the time, leading off
into patchy shadows where the strip lighting had failed and wheelchairs and
stretchers took on the appearance of sinister sculptures. She paused momentarily at each one, calling
Charlie's name and looking for movement in the distance, but they all seemed
the same, long, brooding, empty.
"Charlie,
Josh didn't mean it! You're safer with
us!"
Paige
froze as she heard something in the distance.
It sounded like a cry of some sort.
Charlie? She cocked her
head and listened carefully to the silence.
It seemed thick, almost tangible.
She could easily believe she was the only person in the entire building. Then, just as she was about to give up and
move on, she heard the cry again. It
was somewhere off to her right.
She
ran forward again, taking the first turn off to the right and continuing until
she came to the next junction, then she paused and silenced her breathing
again, straining to listen for the sound.
Once she pinpointed it she was off again, stopping each time at the next
junction to wait for the cry to come again.
At first it seemed indefinitely distant, but gradually as she continued
her repetitive pattern, it grew louder and gained clarity, although only
slightly. She couldn't make out words, but
it became clear that there was a more continuous sound that just the
calls. They were interspersed with
crying.
"Charlie? Charlie!
It's okay, I'm coming!"
She
picked up her pace and continued to follow the trail of sounds, barely noticing
the unnatural layout of the hospital she ran through, the absence of ward,
doors, lifts, stairwells and other services.
There were only corridors filled with flickering lights, patches of dark
and sinister-looking apparatus like wheelchairs and IV stands.
She
only stopped to notice the scenery when it changed and she was faced with a
large yellow sign pointing off down a corridor towards the source of the
crying.
GERIATRIC
WARD
There
weren't any other signs were there?
She shook her head and made to follow the sign when another cry called
out to her from the midst of the weeping.
"Let
me out! They won't let me out!"
It
was the voice of an elderly lady, straining under the weight of age and sorrow
and it sliced right through the young woman as she listened.
"I
want to get out...” The voice dissolved back into senseless sobbing.
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