Lens Macabre, Part IV

“Ms. Symons, there is something…odd…going on with your friend.”

“Oh?”  Well, wasn’t that an understatement.

“Yes, I…don’t know what to make of this.”  He scratched his head and looked up and down the hall.  Then he said in a low voice, “Is there some reason Miss Killibreu would have glued her glasses onto her face?”

Nell reared back, astonished.  “Why, she did no such thing!  What are you talking about?”

Dr. Eduards put his hands up.  “Shhh.  We want to keep this between just the two of us.  I don’t want someone to put your friend in the looney bin if I can at all help it.”

He went back into the room, motioning for Nell to follow him.

“Take a look for yourself,” he said aloud.  He put a finger between the earpiece and Jane’s face and pulled, but the glasses wouldn’t budge.

“Oh, my,” Nell breathed.  “It’s almost as if…”

“…her skin is growing around them,” the doctor finished.

“But how…?”

“I don’t know.  But we need to get those off of her somehow.”

He pulled Nell to the other side of the room, and went back to whispering.  “You’re sure she has no family?”

“Positive.  Just six or seven cats.”

Eduards glanced over at his patient and sighed.  “We’re going to have to wake her up and get her to sign a release form.”  He squeezed Nell’s arm.  “You stay here and I’ll be right back.”

Nell watched as he strode into the corridor and whispered urgently to a passing nurse.  She glanced quickly into the room, nodded, and hurried off.

Nell was staring out the window when the doctor returned.  The nurse had already been in to administer the meds into Jane’s IV.

“Has she shown any signs of waking up?” he asked Nell, as he pulled some papers out of a folder he was carrying.

Nell shook her head silently, and returned to Jane’s side.

Jane shifted a little and murmured something.  A moment later, her eyes fluttered open.

“Where…where am I?” she mumbled.

“In the hospital, dear.”  Nell patted Jane’s hand.  “You had a bit of a turn this afternoon.”  Nell didn’t consider it so much a lie as a huge understatement.

Jane nodded sleepily.  “I remember someone with…with an axe.”