Chapter 19
NINETEEN
LUNA
Being told that it is too late now to have any more tests taken and that they will have to wait until the morning was music to my ears. That’s because now is not the time for pointless tests that will tell me I am healthy when I already know that I am.
Now is the time for something far more important than that.
Now is the time to kill Sadie.
It’s 3 a.m., and the hospital seems quiet, or at least by its usual noisy standards.
I am lying in the bed I was given after my ‘fainting episode’, and the curtains are drawn around it.
But I cannot hear anything on the other side, and it has been a few hours since any doctor or nurse stopped by to check on me.
Everybody thinks I am sleeping now, but I am wide awake, and that’s because I’ve been biding my time until now.
Getting out of the bed, I consider putting on a few of the clothes I had to take off when I was given a patient’s gown, but decide against it.
It might be chilly and I would definitely feel more comfortable in my own attire, but I also need to make sure I look like a weary patient traversing the corridors of this hospital when I am seen by people out there, rather than a member of the public on the prowl to commit a crime.
It’s inevitable that I am going to be seen on my way to and from Sadie’s room shortly, as there will be plenty of staff working night shifts here and it’s not as if health conditions adhere to typical working hours.
There will be heart attacks and emergency operations and all other manner of unfortunate things happening in the dead of night, so I expect to see plenty of doctors and nurses between here and where Sadie lies.
But when they do see me, they’ll only see a patient who is on the way to the bathroom before going back to bed.
They’ll have no idea what I am really up to.
They’ll have no idea that I am about to cause the next medical emergency in this hospital.
I carefully unhook the IV line from my arm, wincing at the slight pain it causes me, but it’s merely a minor irritant and not anything that will cause me to stop and abandon what I intend to do in the next fifteen minutes or so.
Now that I’m free from that, I approach the curtain before carefully peering through the gap in it.
When I do, I see several more sets of curtains around other beds, the patients beyond them all asleep or resting while awake, as they should be.
I take the opportunity to step out then and make my way to the door that will lead out onto the first of several corridors I will have to navigate now.
I squint as my eyes are met by the harsh lighting in the first corridor, the difference stark between here and the darkness of the room I was lying in.
But while I’d rather not be blinded by so much light, I am relieved not to be met with the sight of any of the nurses on this ward, so I move quickly to get to the doors at the end of the corridor.
As I reach them, I hear voices and glance to my left to see a doctor and nurse chatting.
They both have their backs to me, so I move quickly past them and get through the doors, satisfied that I have left the ward without being seen by anybody in person.
But there must be CCTV cameras around somewhere, so all I can do is keep my head down the best I can as I keep moving, before the gods of fortune can decide I’ve had enough luck so far and turn against me.
I make it down another corridor before the third one sees me encounter the first person to spot me since I got out of bed.
It is a male doctor with a set of notes in his hand, and he is reading them as he walks towards me.
He briefly looks up to see me and smiles, before looking back down, so I guess I have barely registered as a blip on that man’s busy radar this evening.
I move into the next corridor, remembering the way I came earlier so I can find my way back to Sadie.
When I fail to recognise this way, I worry that I have got myself lost and am now wandering around a different part of the hospital to where I’ll find her.
If that’s the case, I’m screwed and she is saved.
Then I see something I recognise from earlier.
It’s a noticeboard with hospital news and various announcements pinned to it, and I remember seeing that earlier when I was being taken this way by the nurse who helped find me a bed.
I am going the right way after all and that means I should be seeing Sadie any second now.
I reach the double doors that I know lead to her ward and take a deep breath before pushing through them, wondering if I will be met with a team of nurses on the other side who will question why I am here, or Sadie’s parents, who have somehow been able to stay long past visiting hours ended to be near their daughter.
But I don’t see anybody.
Just a quiet corridor.
I can really do this.
I don’t slow down for a second as I approach Sadie’s room, passing the same spot in the corridor where I faked my illness earlier just so I could be admitted as a patient here and have this opportunity right now.
Then I reach the window that gives me a view into Sadie’s room, and I see the patient exactly how she was the last time I saw her.
Lying in the bed, her eyes closed, the machines active and bleeping all around her but her body still and silent.
She’s still in her coma, but it won’t be for long.
Time to ensure she never gets the chance to open her eyes.
I open the door and step into the room before quickly closing it behind me.
I see the empty chairs in the corner of the room where Sadie’s parents sat earlier, as well as Arthur and Ruby.
They are long gone now, back home and fast asleep, and that just leaves me as the sole visitor in here now.
Unlike them, I am not here to hold the patient’s hand and urge her to wake up.
I approach the bed whilst looking at the myriad of wires that are connected to Sadie. All of these are helping keep her alive and giving her the best chance of making it through her coma, but my intention now is to disrupt the aid they are providing so that she slips away before help can arrive.
I have no idea which cables and which machines do what, so I just start pulling things out of the patient at random, seeing a little blood pour from one of Sadie’s hands as I remove a drip before I take off the heart monitor pads on her chest and then rip out the IV drip on her other hand.
Within seconds, the machines start to react to the disruption, detecting that something is wrong with the patient.
I’m sure this will activate alarms and alert the team of nurses.
They’ll be here soon, and I glance nervously over my shoulder at the window to see if there are signs of anybody sprinting through the corridor to get in here quickly.
But I don’t see anybody, so I still have a chance to ensure they have nobody to save when they get here.
That’s when I pull the pillow out from under Sadie’s head and am just about to place it down over her face when I see something that makes me stop.
Two eyes.
Wide open.
Staring right at me.