The Meridians(17)

Before he could finish the movement, however, there was a strange rushing noise. Wind gusted throughout the NICU, though that was impossible since the room was an extremely controlled environment with its own independent heat and air ventilation controls. Benjamin's hair blew about him in a way that was reminiscent of the halo of hair that had surrounded his head on his eighth birthday, on that day when he had ridden out of control and into the harsh embrace of a rock. Pressure built up in his head again, as though he were suddenly suffering from the granddaddy of all sinus infections, so quickly and so badly that he felt one of his eardrums pop and possibly even perforate.

His vision blurred, and when it cleared, he was no longer alone in the room with the gray man.

There was another man present. Very old, but still radiating vigor and energy as much as any newborn that Benjamin had ever met.

The newcomer looked at Benjamin with eyes that were blue, bluer than the deepest ocean, bluer than the clearest sky, and - incredibly - winked at him. As though two geezers appearing out of thin air in the middle of the NICU was not only an everyday event, but a highly desirable one.

Apparently the old man in the gray suit lacked the sense of humor of his counterpart. "You can't keep doing this to me!" shouted the gray man.

"I will as long as I have to," responded Blue Eyes.

"We both know how this ends," retorted Gray.

"Yes, we do. But it doesn't end today."

And with that, the gray man rushed at Blue Eyes with a bestial roar.

That was when Benjamin decided he was definitely in over his head, and no amount of fatherly protective nature could help in this insane moment featuring two old men who thought they were professional fighters in some geriatric mixed martial arts league.

He turned to the nearest wall phone and picked it up, intending to call security. But when he glanced over his shoulder to make sure the stranger was not hurting the babies, he dropped the phone.

The men were gone.

Benjamin was a rational man. A man who had put a great deal of his life into science and rationality. So nothing could have prepared him for that. The men could not have gone through the door to the NICU - it was a good twenty five feet away, and no way could they have gone so far so fast.

Then again, there was no way they could have gotten into the locked NICU in the first place.

Benjamin toyed for a moment with the idea of just hanging up the phone; of not calling security. After all, how would that conversation go? Benjamin: "Hello, security, there were two old guys in the NICU." Security: "Where are they now?" Benjamin: "They disappeared, so I don't know. But one of them winked at me and the other one did mention something about Hell." Security: "Why don't you just lay down on the floor in a spread-eagle position and we'll have someone right down to lock you up."

But after less than a moment's debate, he decided that he was morally obliged to call in what he had just seen - or at least, to call in the fact that there had been a mentally unstable intruder in the NICU.

As expected, the conversation that Benjamin had with security was less than enthusiastic. Things were even cloudier when the hospital's chief of security suggested that the closed-circuit monitors be checked for any men looking like the two that Benjamin described, specifically looking in the hall outside the NICU.

There were none. No one even remotely looking like the two aged fighters passed by the NICU in any of the twenty-four preceding hours.

Benjamin managed to hold onto his job, though he had a helluva time explaining what he saw - or rather not explaining it, since the reality seemed to defy all description - and then ended up taking the rest of the day off "for rest and needed rejuvenation time," as the head nurse very politely put it. The message behind her words was very clear to him, however: get your act together or don't come back.

Benjamin returned in two days, and never again mentioned either of the old men. His one concession to what he believed had happened was that he asked to be taken off the NICU shift.

He pondered whether being a nurse was worth it, and finally decided it was.

He just couldn't give up the healthcare benefits.

But if one more person appeared or disappeared during his shift...he was going to take his mother's advice and get a real estate license.





***





9.

***

At least they waited for him to get well - or rather, get better, he still wasn't back up to what he had been, and probably never would be again - before they put him on trial.

A number of the cops that Scott worked with were up in arms over the inquiry. After all, they told him, it wasn't enough that he had lost his wife and child in the same day that he had left his spleen and a good portion of his intestines in a hospital operating room. It wasn't enough that he had spent four months in a hospital room and another four learning how to walk once more - though even now he still couldn't get around without the aid of crutches. It wasn't enough that he had survived a shootout with one of the strangest endings anyone in the department could ever recall.

They had to have their trial.

Not that Scott could blame them. After all, there had been a very public murder, followed by an even more public shootout, followed by...nothing.

No prints.

No shooter.

No evidence, other than the spent casings and three dead bodies: two family members, and the blue eyed John Doe.