Between Two Worlds

Awake for only a few minutes and I was already sweating. The anemic walls of my hospital room were tightening around me like a hand on a neck. What had once been a comfortable refuge from the chaos in the outer world was now a tomb, or so it felt.

I robotically slipped on my fraying scrubs and upped the volume on my radio. Tuned to the only station available, a monotonous voice droned on through the crackle: day 287 since the end of the final plague…population count remains in slow but steady decline…disease rampant…no viable solutions for global supply shortages…

A sudden bang on the door startled me and I knocked into my side table sending an array of empty prescription bottles to the ground.

“Boss! Boss!” The bang was Bob and he was rapping his knuckles fiercely on the metal door sending shrill bursts of vibration through my dull white-noise room, “Arty, are you up? We have a major problem.”

With great effort I ran a rag across my dampened face and when I opened my eyes Bob was in my room panting and looking increasingly concerned.

“What’s up, Bob?”

“You alright, Boss? You look terrible.” He flourished a bear-like hand at my pallid face. Bob was an enormous man, both in physicality and presence — well over six foot tall and pushing nearly three hundred pounds of what was mostly muscle and possibly a little metal. He had no problem being my right hand man managing what was left of the Riverview Psychiatric Hospital, despite being at least twenty years my senior. He was a stickler for the rules and liked order, and since I was the nurse and he was the patient — I use that term loosely — to him, and to the other patients who remained for that matter, that meant I was in charge.

As Bob stood over me, sweating too, I couldn’t help but to stare at his hand. He had drawn fingernails on the nubs that were left on his right hand. Every few days as they faded he would re-draw them. Today they were a little wobbly. I never actually saw him do it, but I was aware of the black marker he kept in one of his vest pockets. That and the heart shaped locket he wore around his neck, tarnished and tangled up in his chest hair. He never talked about either — the fingernail thing or the locket, and honestly, I never bothered to ask. Bob wasn’t a man I felt much need to question. He was a man you accepted exactly as he was, he required no explanation, no excuse for who he was.

I use the term “patient” loosely with Bob because he admitted himself to the hospital long after we had already closed. About three months after the last major storm, after everyone lost everything, and the world fell apart (and everyone was thinking it but no one was actually saying “apocalypse”), Bob showed up at the front door. I, being the only staff member who survived and stayed, had unlocked it for him because I could see he was desperate. That or I was afraid of what he would do if I didn’t let him in. He was the only person who had dared to come that close, and no one had come since him either.

Despite the magnitude of respect I had for the man, I had begun to find his exuberance for management somewhat annoying.

“What’s the problem, Bob?”

“We’re out of toilet paper.”

***

Ten minutes later I was standing in front of a single roll of toilet paper, displayed preciously on a table that separated Bob and I from the remaining fifteen residents of Riverview.

In front of my confused audience I cleared my throat. “This is our last roll of toilet paper.” In the silence that followed a crescendo of chatter slowly emerged.

“You got us up for this?”

“No, people, this is serious.”

“How did this happen?”

“I think it’s obvious how this happened.”

“What will we use instead?”

“Are you sure there’s no more in the storage closet?”

“Have you checked under the thingy?”

“We could cut up the curtains.”

“No, that would clog the toilets! Then what would we do?”

“I like the curtains!”

Chest puffed and waving his non-doodled hand, Bob stepped up to the table.

“Folks, we do have a situation here. The toilet paper got away on us, yes, but we will find a solution. For now—“ His voice had a tendency to grow louder as he spoke and already he was yelling, “we will be rationing the remaining supply. Every person will receive an equal amount. Use it wisely.” He emphasized each word as though instructing soldiers with the last grenade.

Some grumbling arose.

He continued, “Water rations will be cut in half temporarily," the grumbling increased, “and rations of high fibre foods will cease temporarily—TEMPORARILY.”

“Okay, but what is going to be the actual solution?”

“Someone’s going to have to go outside.”

“That’s not an option!”

“We’re out of options!”

“Are we sure there’s none under the thingy in the storage room?”

“It’s all gone!”

“What if someone checked the dark wing?”

They had suggested what I feared was the only solution. The dark wing was the first area of the hospital to have been abandoned completely during the most destructive storm. It had sustained a significant amount of water damage, and what areas hadn’t been damaged by water had burnt up from the lightening strikes. The likelihood of finding toilet paper there was high — what state it would be in was another question.

When I finally got out of my own head the room was eerily quiet.

“Did you hear that?”

“What was that?”

Wild-eyed, Bob motioned for everyone to duck down as he peered out of the window. He crouched there for what felt like an eternity. The low rumbling of a motor suddenly became clear and Bob ducked.

“Code Asylum, people, Code Asylum!” He flew past me into the corridor and down the stairs to the front entrance. I could hear the door chains rattling loudly as he vigorously shook them.

The other patients broke into small groups and fanned out to their predetermined stations. I didn’t have a post during this particular drill so I slumped into a chair and contemplated my own conundrum, my heart and mind already racing — to what end I did not know.

Then the screaming started: blood curdling, tortured wails coming at me from every side.

From upstairs I could hear the ghostly shink of metal grinding on metal, and downstairs the rattling of the chains.

Before long the motor revved up again and faded into the distance. We didn’t have to run Code Asylum often, but it never failed. I felt no relief this time though, because the end of that drama meant the beginning of my own.

***

I was standing in front of the double metal doors to the dark wing with Bob smacking me on the back.

“I’d go in there with ya,” he was saying. “But you know I—“

“I know, Bob, it’s okay. Thank you for getting the door open.” As much as I didn’t want to go in there myself, I could see he was stirred up and I certainly wasn’t prepared for him to boil over, not today.

“I’m sure there isn’t anybody in there though, we’d have heard them, no question,” but the tremor in his voice was not persuasive. “The main things you’ll probably have to watch out for is structural damage and…and maybe animals.” He was rubbing a palm over his sweaty face and I could see he was buzzing.

“Bob, go back to the common room and get yourself a glass of water,” I said.

“Half a glass,” he nodded, distractedly.

“Right, half a glass.”

With that, he was off and I was facing down the double doors with a pit in my stomach, but my anxiety was slowly morphing into apathy. Lately I had just been so tired. I couldn’t think straight. My days were foggy and my nights were restless and fevered. I knew I was going downhill but I had to take care of the patients — not that they needed much help anymore. Ever since the world fell apart their symptoms seemed to improve. All of them. But I hadn’t had much time to think about it. More time wasn’t what I wanted though, but I couldn’t help feeling a constant sense of wanting more of something. What was it? Food? Water? Rest? Companionship? Help? The answer to all my problems always felt just out of reach.

Through the doors I went. It reeked of damp and mildew but with overtones of campfire that brought up strangely happy memories from childhood: telling ghost stories in the woods and getting spooked when bravely venturing out to the outhouse, all in good fun. The linoleum floor was sticky wet, curling up in places, and gave way slightly under my footsteps. Half flooded, and half burnt, a place between two worlds. Damage like this wasn’t supposed to happen; it didn’t make sense.

For a few eternal moments I walked through the horrible silence, then pushed open the sticky bathroom door with shaking hands and a heartbeat that could send an army marching. The floor was wet, but the stalls were still intact and there was no fire damage. For some reason I bent down to see if there were any feet under the stall doors. The room, like the rest of the dark wing, was empty and I knew that. If I think about it, really the hardest part of the whole endeavour was getting the damn covers off of the dispensers. But there it was. Success! The paper was little crispy from getting wet and then drying again, but absolutely useable. I stacked up everything I could carry and carefully made my way back down the hallway. I dared not to look behind me for fear that something was following — I’d rather not see it coming — but it was ridiculous of me to think anything was there.

Despite the precarious stack, I didn’t drop a thing until going back out through the double doors. I quickly shoved a piece of two-by-four through the handles (I would ask Bob to come board up the doors properly later) before scrambling around to stack up the rolls again. I headed back to the common room, anticipating the warmth of gratitude and applause.

With relief washing over me I did feel marginally better, until I got there to find Bob splayed out on the floor, motionless. My vision quickly narrowed and I dropped everything and rushed over.

“What happened?” I said, kneeling down over Bob’s waxy face. I could see the life was gone from him.

“We don’t know!” Someone said, “he said he wasn’t feeling well and the next thing we knew he was on the floor like this!”

“How long ago?” I asked frantically, checking for a pulse but knowing I wouldn’t find one.

“A few minutes now.”

I sat back on my knees, helpless and feeling sick to my stomach. “A heart attack, probably,” I said. And for some reason, I don’t know why, I opened the heart-shaped locket on his chest. In it were two tiny photographs, but both were so worn it was impossible to make out what they were pictures of. “He was—“ I started, and then something caught my eye and I pointed across the room. “What’s that?”

“Oh, I checked the storage room and found a big box of toilet paper under the thingy.”

I swallowed hard and croaked out a meagre “oh good.” My vision became a pinprick of sight in a whirl of static, and a shrill piercing sound filled my ears. A bead of sweat fell from my nose onto Bob’s still chest.