The road to the hospital was long and winding. Like a snake, it sliced through the foot of the mountains as the only way leading out of Wafter’s Point—and coincidentally the only way from town into the hospital.
Up this high in elevation, the narrow road was prone to getting cut off by snowfall, which made the winter months seem like flipping a dice on the chance of disaster.
Though, to be fair, this area was lucky to even have a hospital so close at all.
Even the nearest Walmart was nine miles away.
This area with its cold mountain charm and suffocating small-town vibe wasn’t exactly the prime target for businesses, and the town of Wafter’s Point…
Well, to put it nicely, Wafter’s Point was a tiny speck of hell.
Albeit, it was a pretty hell with neat picket fences, and white lines, and a group of busy bodies who called themselves the ‘Beautification Squad’ went around bullying people into keep their yards clean.
On sunny days, if you squinted a little, it almost seemed like an ideal suburban paradise.
Until you felt the sheer boredom covering this place like a cloud.
It was hell; a fiery inferno and gossip and stale boredom where nothing interesting ever happened outside of a television screen.
It was for that reason that Wafter’s Point memorial didn’t attract too many doctors—or anyone for that matter who wasn’t desperate enough to forgo decent civilization for a job.
Desperation was why Miriam figured her father had been offered a pretty penny to practice at the hospital.
Enough money to pick up their life in the city and move here with plenty to spare. More than enough to leave behind everything and everyone she had ever known for a creepy three story Victorian house on a misty hill that creaked and moaned in the wind at night.
Though, if she wanted to be honest, she’d admit that the money wasn’t the only reason they’d come here.
Desperation attracted desperation after all.
Some days her father seemed so eager to leave their old house behind—full of those old memories—that she figured any hospital could have flashed an actual penny at him and he would have had them on the next plane before the ink on his contract had even dried.
Some days, it seemed as if the ghost of her mother haunted him, driving him away from everything and everyone in an attempt just to forget.
When running away didn’t work, the alcohol was his only remedy.
She figured that it was only coincidence that her only uncle also lived in Wafter’s Point with a family of his own to make the move less traumatic.
In theory at least.
In reality, her Uncle Sal and her cousin Sheena seemed just as wary of her as she was of them. Even now, in the front passenger seat of his truck, Miriam caught her Uncle glancing at her nervously from the corner of his eye. Carefully, he’d peek, only when he thought she wasn’t looking.
It was like he was afraid that she might spontaneously combust into thin air if he happened to blink.
Shatter into a billion tiny pieces right there on the vintage leather seat.
“So…did your Dad say anything about coming over for dinner this weekend?” He asked, tactfully changing the subject, though his eyes kept darting to her chin.
A quick glance in the rearview mirror revealed why; there was still a bit of blood still smeared across her bottom lip.
“I-I’m not sure,” she stammered, lying once again, because her father had made it all too clear that mingling with his forgotten family was the last thing on his mind.
‘We can’t, pumpkin,’ he had said when she gathered enough strength to ask. ‘I’ll be working that weekend.’
It was probably the truth, but he had blurted the same old answer before she’d never given him the date.
These days, if it didn’t involve a patient or a bottle of liquor, her father didn’t really seem interested.
Still, she tried to feign innocence as she reached up casually to swipe at her chin with the back of her sleeve. “Oh, I’m sorry…I forgot to ask.”
She forced a fake bit of nervous laughter to give the lie some credit, and then whispered a fervent, “I’ll ask him later.”
“Great.” Her Uncle smiled, just enough to crack the hardness of his appearance. Happy.
Miriam almost hated herself for feeding him the lie—maybe she was getting too good at forging the truth?
Her uncle grinned all the way to the road that curved into the hospital. It transformed him. Despite the graying hair and wrinkles pinching the skin around his eyes, he almost looked younger. Handsome even, like an older version of her father.
Until they pulled into the parking lot of the hospital, and his mouth fell back into that tired, flat line.
“Let’s get this over with,” he grumbled, clicking off the ignition with a sigh. Miriam waited while he clambered out of the truck and marched over to her side to hold open the door.
It was drizzling she realized as she stepped out on the pavement. Icy cool drops tinged with ice landed with a plop on her forehead, making her shudder even in her winter coat.
“It might snow later,” her Uncle grumbled, glaring up at the silver sky. “Hopefully we can get back into town before then...”
Miriam glanced down as he wrapped his arms around his chest and realized that he only had on his gym clothes.
He caught her stare and jerked his head toward the entrance to the emergency room. “Let’s go, kiddo.”
Hefting her backpack over her he shoulder, Miriam followed him across the parking lot and through the gleaming sliding doors to enter the emergency room.
The walls were a pristine white, plastered with posters demonstrating good hand hygiene and the importance of vaccinations during flu season. The floors were a shiny, beige tile that felt like glass beneath Miriam’s feet as she followed her Uncle down the hall, past an overflowing waiting room and through a set of elevators that chimed as he pressed the call button.
“Your Dad’s on the twelfth floor?” He asked cocking his head back at her.
“Yep.” She sighed as the elevator slid open as her under punched in the right button to send it lurching up.
Most people hated hospitals. The clinical cleanliness. The icy chill that seemed to permeate the air of every floor.
It was creepy, to them, she figured. An ever present reminder of death and sickness.
To Miriam, however, the place was like a second home. Between her doctor’s appointments and the days spent following her Dad around like a lost puppy—back when she used to want to be a doctor ‘just like him’—she had virtually grown up within the walls of various hospitals across the state.
In a world of inconsistency, where everything was about as constant as a rushing river, the hospitals were the only things that stayed the same—like the solid rocks of the riverbed beneath her feet.
Even now, with her dad working late and her part time gig as a candy stripper, she spent more time at Wafter’s Point Memorial that she did at home.
Though, these days she rarely saw her father in either place.
“Which way is it?” Her Uncle demanded as they stepped into the pea-green hallway of the twelfth floor.
With a sigh, Miriam fingered the strap of her pink backpack and nodded toward a set of metal doors that branched into an area restricted from visitors where the physicians kept their offices.
It had been almost four months since she’d been back there—coincidentally the first day they had arrived in Wafter’s Point and her father had tried to do the ‘father-daughter bonding’ thing by showing her his new office.
‘See, Miri?’ He had gloated while staring out of a wide window that branched out over the mountains in breathtaking vision of snow-capped mountains and thick pine trees. ‘You don’t get a view like this in the city.’
After that, she hadn’t seen much of the plain room with its oak solid oak furniture, or her father for that matter.
It was funny almost. Especially considering the fact that this floor was part of her Candy Stripping route. The same floor where he happened to be the head physician.
To be fair, she barely saw him anywhere these days.
At home.
At work.
Every now and again she might catch him leaving a patient’s room or wandering the halls, but each time the meeting was the same. He’d smile and utter a hasty ‘catch you at home, kiddo. Tell ya what! I’ll cook your favorite spaghetti.’
Only later she would get a phone call that he had to work overnight.
She couldn’t lie, even to herself, and say that the first few times hadn’t stung…
Maybe a few tears had been shed into a pillow here and there.
But now, after four months in Wafter’s Point it had happened too many times to be truly hurt anymore. She had her own routine by now, anyway—a dinner of microwaved leftovers at the massive table in their empty dining room where stacks of boxes gathered dust, still waiting to be put away.
With most of the silverware still packed in boxes, there wasn’t enough for two place settings anyway.
“I’ll go…talk to him,” her Uncle said cautiously, snapping her from her thoughts. “You wait here.”
He looked like barging into the back offices to talk with his estranged brother was the last thing in the world he wanted to do, but with a determined look in his eyes, he straightened the hem of tee-shirt and headed toward the doors. As he approached, a harassed-looking nurse excited with an armful of files.
A few moments later, his voice floated back to her, “Excuse me, I really need to talk to Edward Spriller. It’s important…”
The nurse gave an exasperated sigh while judging her armful of files. “I’m sorry, Sir, Dr. Spriller is currently out on rounds. If you don’t mind waiting I could page…”
“Can I have his page number then?”
“I’m sorry, Sir, Dr. Spriller explicitly forbad us for giving out his page number for civilian use—”
“Are you kidding me?” Her Uncle’s voice bellowed out over the hallway like a roll of thunder. “He won’t answer his cellphone! I can’t page him! Can you just get him on the line—it’s about his damn daughter!”
Miriam stopped listening. Instead, she moved toward a row of chairs across from the elevators and threw herself into one while her Uncle argued with the nurse.
Carefully, she sat her backpack down at her feet and unzipped the topmost compartment to pull out a slender pink diary. It was small and cheap, like the kind sold at a thrift store for a few bucks. It smelled like moth balls and every page sported a frilly pink border of stars and hearts, but with a sigh Miriam flipped it open to the nearest blank page.
Day 27, she wrote with shaking fingers clenched around a plastic pen.
Seizure in Math class.
Trigger might have been projector light, but…
She chewed on the end of her pen for a moment, before adding.
But nothing definitive yet.
Second one in four days, she scribbled, pressing the pen down so far that it bit through the page.
And then.
It’s getting worse.
“Miriam?”
She flinched, heart thumping as she shoved the diary into her backpack, before glancing up…into the smiling face of a nurse with curly blond hair and cheery green eyes.
Oh. She released the sharp breath she hadn’t even been aware of holding.
The figure standing above her was not her father. Or someone who might freak if they happened to catch a glimpse at the pages of her so-called diary.
Just a fellow volunteer, pushing a cart laden with fresh pitchers of water and bright flowers to distribute to the patients.
“H-hey, Liza,” she said shakily, with something that could have been a smile.
“Hey!” Liza beamed, and padded over, dragging the cart behind. It had a loose wheel that squeaked as it rolled across the smooth floor.
Squeak, squeal, squeak…
“You waiting for your Dad?” She glanced around the empty hall as if expecting her father to come walking over at any minute.
“Kind of,” Miriam said, scooting over so that the woman could take the seat beside her.
“You’re here early today…” Liza frowned, eyes on a clock mounted on the other end of the hall. “Did school let out early or something?”
Miriam shrugged. “Something like that…”
A nosier person might have pressed her about it, but Miriam knew that Liza had her own problems. Problems that made her know better than to pry into someone else’s business.
“Hey!” she said with a grin, promptly changing the subject. “If you’re bored, you could do me a huge favor while you wait…”
She batted her blond eyelashes imploringly.
Miriam laughed as she zipped up the compartment of her backpack, trapping the diary safely within. Tossing her hair over shoulder, she sat back in her chair.
“Sure, what?”
“Well...” Liza wrestled the cart to a stop and perched herself on the edge of a seat. “Kayla bailed, so I’m stuck doing sitting duty too.” She pouted, rolling her eyes.
Miriam nodded for her to continue. Kayla was a grad student who only seemed to volunteer at the hospital for something nice to put on her resume beside a stint stripping in New York city.
Miriam had seen her skip more days than she actually showed up. Which was a good thing, in a way, because more work actually seemed to get done when she wasn’t there.
“There’s a patient on this floor,” Liza added. “A girl in a coma—a Jane Doe. One of your Dad’s patients actually...”
She waited a minute, as if expecting her to say something like ‘oh yeah, dad mentioned her last night at dinner.’
But Miriam was silent, and with a nervous chuckle Liza soldiered on.
“Anyway,” she said. “You’re dad requested that someone sit with her in case she wakes up. I was going to do it after I finished passing out this stuff…but, you wanna do it instead?”
If Miriam were to answer truthfully, she would have said no.
Hell, no.
The metallic taste of fear still lingered on her tongue.
The soreness from the seizure left her body aching in its wake.
The last thing she wanted was to be alone with someone who couldn’t help her if things went…wrong.
But Liza was one of the closest things she had to a friend in this town. One of the few people who didn’t look at her a little strangely from the corner of their eye as if afraid she might shatter like fragile glass.
One of the few people who treated her as if…she was normal.
She doubted that anyone else would trust her to sit alone and care for someone else—even for a few moments.
“Sure!” She said with a false cheeriness she didn’t feel. “I’d love to help.”
Liza beamed. “You are such an angel. I swear, most kids your age don’t seem to care about anything that doesn’t happen within a video game.” She laughed, but the light didn’t quiet reach her eyes. “The patient is in the last room at the end of the hall. You have you badge with you?”
“Yes.” Miriam nodded, thinking of the tiny sliver of plastic that proclaimed she was an official volunteer cleared by security. “It’s in my bag.”
“Great!” Liza jumped to her feet, and reached for her tiny cart. “I’ll let your dad know where you are when he comes through.”
“Great…” Mariam said, glancing down the hall where her uncle grumbled into a cellphone while the nurse looked on anxiously.
She thought she heard him utter something that might have been. “She’s your daughter, damn it! And I have to go through the damn bureaucracy to get a hold of you?”
“Y-yeah!” She said quickly lurching to her feet. If her voice was a little too loud—downing out her Uncle’s shouts—Liza didn’t seem to notice. “That’d be fine.”
She couldn’t move down the hall fast enough. Her legs trembled as she skirted past the Nurse’s station, pausing only to dig her visitor’s pass from the depths of her backpack and flash it at a security guard who let her in.