“I’m leaving now. If you want, you can heat up the leftovers in the fridge and I’ll catch you in the morning before you head off to work.”
“Bye,” said Lucy and planted a kiss on his bald head.I hope tonight’s shift will be relatively easy , Lucy thought as she looked for her knitting bag. Should be with the day patients released.
As she parked, she noticed the surveillance cameras had been reinstalled and a lone security guard walking up and down the rows. She tensed a bit when she heard the guard’s voice but soon realized he was talking into his Bluetooth earpiece.
Walking into work she caught her reflection in the glass entry doors. The hydrogen street lights reflected back onto the glass. She’d gotten used to them. She was no longer spooked by the weird shapes and shadows the lights made in the grass.
Lucy pressed the elevator button; wondering if had been fixed when it didn’t appear after a minute. How many calls does it take to maintenance to get this done? When it finally arrived, a man with
Elissa Scott two young boys exited. He looked at Lucy apologetically. The little buggers apparently hit the button for every floor, she realized.She was alone for the ride up to the main level. When the doors opened, she looked to her left and right—a regular routine— before exiting. The aroma of flowers greeted Lucy as she entered the lobby.
She took out her knitting project—a cap for Keith’s bald head— before settling into her seat. No worries now. It would be ready in time for their twentieth wedding anniversary.
Lucy jolted when she caught a shadow out of the corner of her eye. Her heart raced and her sweaty hands dropped a knitting needle. She took her time retrieving the needle, too nervous to look up, but the needle wasn’t there. On the way up, she bumped her head on the table.
She sensed someone was there, watching her. She could hear breathing. A patient? she wondered as she looked over the desk.A second passes and another shadow crosses the vinyl floor. Her heart beats faster. Keeping her eyes lowered, she was too nervous to look up; the man’s breath was closing in on her.
This man was bent over and leaning forward, staring. His eye socket was seeping fluid, one hand was holding his IV lines, which he had apparently disengaged from their poles and the other hand was holding the end of a tube that seemed to originate from his abdomen.
“Can I help you?” Lucy asked, trying to sound friendly rather than nervous. “Did you come down from level five?” She remembered reading an internal e-mail that warned the nurses about a problem patient. It described him as needing a feeding tube.
“Are you looking for this?” the one-eyed patient asked, in a sedated whisper. He leaned further forward with the needle, but not far enough.
Decisions = DestinyLucy presumed his range of motion was limited. “Yes, thank you,” she said. “I’ll come around. If you have surgical stitches, I don’t want you tearing them. So off you go now you need to get back to your bed.”
The man staggered, tripping over his wires. Lucy tried to steady him but he fell sideways. He stabbed her in the neck as they both tried to stop his fall. The one-eyed man grunted on impact, got up quickly despite the entangled tubes and fled when he saw Lucy collapsed on the floor, blood pouring from her neck and pooling on the vinyl tile.
Night became day, Lucy’s body lay motionless, after all these years the one-eyed stalker thought he had finally won. Ends