TOO LIFELESS. Kaelee was quite lifeless, and lethargic, on her first day of training at San Rafael Hospital. Why wouldn't she? She had a hard time getting some sleep this Sunday because of two things—first, her excitement for her training, and second, being hunted by the ghost of Surgeon Sin's face.
She tried to ease her mind, thinking that no matter how weird that English-speaking doctor was, she should not let it affect her motivation for her training. Unfortunately, she only caught a wink during the wee hours. Her grandmother had to wake her up.
"Kaelee, wake up. Why are you always late for everything?" he hollered with her machine gun mouth. She wasn't angry, but her tone was filled with urgency.
Kaelee could hear her pacing back and forth all around the room. The old woman quickly took her uniform from the cabinet and placed it neatly at the foot of her bed. Lola Helene's attentiveness wasn't new to Kaelee who is her only grandchild. She could even say that she was spoiled by Lola Helene.
"Get up, Kaelee," Lola Helene called repeatedly. Her grandmother was used to the fact that she slept like a log, which explains her patience. Meanwhile, Kaelee got used to her grandmother's patience, making her feel safe to give in to her laziness to get up.
'I'm still sleepy, Lola...'
⚕
KAELEE walked to San Rafael Hospital in her white scrub suit. She wore her uniform already because she wouldn't have enough time to change clothes once she reached the hospital. When she arrived, her co-trainees and the instructor were already present in the nurse station. So, they immediately began their briefing. They were designated to different wards and stations with different assigned schedules and routines.
Kaelee absorbed all her tasks in her head, but because she lacked some good night's rest, she always had to chase for everything, or else she would be too late for checking the vitals of a certain patient or for providing medication for them.
'Get haggard if you're meant to feel haggard!' Kaelee thought while panting. She almost slid the soles of her shoes against the floor to gain more acceleration as she descended the stairs. She was about to return to the nurse station after checking on a patient who was two floors away from her destination.
Kaelee preferred the stairs to the elevator because she feared that the hospital was too old and that even the elevator might malfunction and add her to the number of in-patients there. Aside from that, she thought the elevator would only slow her down, especially when there were other people in there with her.
She almost slammed against a man wearing a white coat, it made her gasp.
'Surgeon Sin!' her mind announced as she stepped back, lifted her eyes on the man, and recognized him.
Dr. Alfred was his usually creepy self—the stubbles, the sinister smile, the low-ponytailed wolf-cut hair, and his snake-like eyes. She still wondered what kind of patient would be able to entrust their lives to a doctor who looks like him.
'Do his patients know that he operated his own eyes? That he hired an unregistered nurse to be his assistant in his clinic?'
Unknown to her, the doctor looked happy upon meeting her because he had been searching for her all this time. The nurses at the nurse station told him that she was in Room 359. He was about to go there when they met by the stairs.
"Hello, little girl," he grinned. "How's your first day of training?"
Kaelee could not help rolling her eyes. "Challenging. I like it. Thank you, Doc."
He nodded. Then his forehead creased upon noticing the way she panted. "Why are you breathing like that? You're too young for heart failure."
"Just a little...It's just a little hectic today, Doc."
Worry began to show on his face. "Oh, can you make it to my clinic after your training hours?"
Nervousness shot her straight to the chest. She almost forgot that after her training, she was obliged to assist the terror doctor in his clinic!
"Yes...Yes, of course." She puffed. 'I'll keep my end of the deal. Not a problem. Or else, you might take back my opportunity to train here.' "Excuse me, Doc, but I already need to return to the nurse station."
Surgeon Sin stepped aside to give way. "Well, there you go, little lady."
Kaelee ran down the remaining steps of the stairs that headed to the floor of the nurse station. Once she got there, she saw the nurses huddling in one corner of the nurse station. They seemed busy with their cell phones.
"Have you seen this post? They saw a corpse at the back of San Rafael University," asked one of them with eyes almost glued to the cell phone screen.
"Yes, girl," one of them answered with a crumpled face. "It's so gross, girls. The eyes were plucked out and the arms were cut off. Ugh!"
"Who on earth could do such a thing?"
"My goodness, you know, if Surgeon Sin is not a resident doctor here, I might accuse him. Only psychos like him can do such things like that," another one of them muttered, rolling her eyes which ended up meeting Kaelee's stare. "What are you looking at?"
The other nurses shot a bothered look at her before they made a few taps on their cell phones and shoved them back into the pockets of their scrub suits.
Kaelee answered the nurse who questioned her. "U-Uhm...I just got finished with checking the patient..."
The nurse snatched from her the clipboard where the patient's chart was. "Can you get us some mineral water in the cafeteria?"
"W-What?" she asked, surprised. She? Being asked by them to get some ...mineral water?
"Wa-ter," she spoke slowly as if she was talking to an idiot. "Get. Us. Some. Mi. Ne. Ral. Wa. Ter. In. The. Cafe. Teria."
Her friends giggled in the background, while Kaelee, who was not good at hiding her reactions, rolled her eyes. "Fine."
They didn't like the way she rotated her eyes.
"Do you want to flunk?" their leader gave her a side-eye.
Kaelee faked a smile and just decided to keep her mouth shut. It was her first day of training; she didn't want everything to end up in shambles because there would be no other training opportunities left for her. So, she obeyed what she was told to do. She had to wait forever before the elevator reached her floor and let her in, so she used the stairs again. This time, she slowed down her pace.
'I hope they are just testing my patience as part of the training,' she thought while dealing with her irritation at the way those nurses looked at her. 'They even talk behind Surgeon Sin's back, claiming that he's a psycho.'
She halted. Kaelee stared blankly at the wall in front of her on the landing of the stairs before she could turn to the right and climb down another flight of stairs.
'Well, he really looks like a psycho. Who's going to respect a person who has snake eyes? What is Surgeon Sin's deal and—'
"That's not very nice."
She gasped and when she turned, she saw the surgeon standing behind her. Kaelee placed a hand over her chest, over her nervously beating heart, and her eyes studied Surgeon Sin's smug little grin.
"H-How did you read my thoughts?"
He burst out laughing for a short second. "Your thoughts? Aren't you muttering stuff about me while you're staring at the wall?" Then he crossed his arms, looking down at her because he stood three steps higher from where she stood. "Who looks like a psycho now? Staring at walls, talking to the wall..."
Kaelee must be so stressed out, that she did not realize that she was already babbling all the thoughts that were running through her head. She did not argue with the doctor since she owed him her training opportunity at San Rafael Hospital. "Why are you even here? You went the other way after we met earlier, right?"
"To be honest, I was already far when I followed your tracks," he smirked. "Because I forgot to tell you my address."
She crossed her arms and watched the doctor step down the stairs to close in the distance between them. "You mean, the address of your clinic?"
"My address," he insisted, "because my clinic is just at the back of my house."
She let out a groan. "Alright. Where?"
He already walked past her, climbing down the stairs. "Let's talk about that at the cafeteria. We are both heading that way, right?"
Kaelee could only shake her head. "Yeah, right."