The Lazarus effect was the one that really got to me first - a term used to describe the way a patient’s arms would move involuntarily upward and cross at the chest once the brain had died. Pale mummies folding away for the long sleep under flickering clinical lights.
After that came agonal gasps – the dreadful, straining breaths one takes post-mortem – a last-ditch effort of the brainstem begging to breathe.
These were the two things that haunted me when I started at the hospital.
But we began to reduce these incidents.
See, I wasn’t a doctor. Hell, if I were, I wouldn’t be able to recollect it anyway - my memory had turned to shit after my accident. Despite this, I was luckily enough to be brought on for an easygoing monitoring role at Saint Kelly hospital.
‘Coma counsellor’ they called me. I had rounds talking to unresponsive patients and their grieving families at their bedside. Either way, it was always a one-sided conversation. The families always seemed to have less to say after I told them I didn’t practice medicine and didn’t have answers for them; that I merely spent my time being with their loved ones. Though, they were incredibly thankful for me.
I had only been at Saint Kelly for a few months before I felt as if I had truly seen it all. There are many more comatose patients than you think – you have the new-found plague of automotive travel to thank for that. Old, young, rich, poor – mistress tragedy makes no exceptions. All living but not quite here. How feeble our fleshy thought-bubble was in the grand scheme of the bustling world we surround ourselves with.
I was sitting with an old geezer in the west wing when everything changed. His face was a pallid sheet upon two bony cheekbones – I’m surprised his body still held on even though his mind couldn’t.
“How’s it going Richie?” Simon came through the door and folded one leg over the other as he sat down.
Simon was a senior doctor at the hospital and was one of the first faces I got to know when I recovered from my accident and began work. To a lot of people, I felt as if I was a burden – a pointless obstacle in the room that the nurses had to move around to reach the patient. But not to Simon. I rarely saw him since he was usually a few floors up concerning himself with research. When I did see him, he always seemed to take a genuine interest in how I was.
We talked for a while about his kids, the weather, a couple off-tournament sports games - the usual shit people ask about and pretend to show interest for. I just hoped that our bland conversation gave the bedridden geezer beside me a mind-movie for at least a little while we spoke.
“We’ve been working on something big.” His salt-and-peppered beard barely masked an excited grin.
From one coat pocket he pulled a syringe in a small glass case. He laid it down graciously on the bedside table and popped it eagerly. He looked like a kid unzipping a suitcase on his first trip - vacation spot: healthcare innovation hotel.
“See this, Rich’?” Simon pulled the syringe out with three pronged fingers. “We call it The Neon Key.”
It captured my attention entirely. Miniature azure waves rose and broke within the syringe, inviting me to look closer.
“As of today,” He checked his watch. “it’s fully approved by the FDA for clinical trials.”
“Layman’s terms, please doc.” I asked.
Simon took a while to explain: “We have tried the drug on animals without side effects for a couple years now, so it’s finally cleared for human testing, as long as we have the family’s approval.”
For a moment I stared at Ron, the geezer on the bed. How cold and alone it must be in the void of his mind. How cold it was that his family signed away the paperwork over a telephone, not even bothering to visit him anymore.
“Is it for his heart?”
There’s a fine line determined mostly by age where one man can call another man son, boy or kiddo without causing bitterness. Looking into Simon’s tight eyes between his weathered and wrinkled complexion, he reminded me of my grandfather or an old wizard. He checked out.
“It’s for his coma, sonny.” The doc’s eyes lit up as he said it.
I frowned. Surely, he was joking. I mean, I’m no professional, but the very idea of waking someone out of a coma at will was outlandish.
I didn’t have to speak before Simon read my face. “Yes, really.” He responded to the silence swiftly. “And I want you to watch.”
He stood up, rolled up his sleeves and began preparing the syringe. “See, the solution contains metabolites that can form dreams in the brain, no matter the degree of consciousness.”
“How did it get its name?”
“Well,” He cleared his throat, shooting a small spurt out of the syringe to get the measurement. “We have trialed it previously on a select group within our facilities. And when each one of them would wake, they would describe bizarre dreams. The link between every patient’s dream was that they saw a neon key towards the closing of their episodes. A distinct, bright neon key. And without knowing why, beyond reason, they knew they had to follow it to wake up.”
I sat in my chair frozen in intrigue, my hands locked at the armrests. I felt wariness for Ron, I had spent days by his side. I felt uneasy when I realized he would be one of the first people to trial the treatment. I guess somebody had to play the part of the worried son when his deadbeat kids wouldn’t show.
“I know this guy pretty well doc. His background. He’s had some pretty rough damage to the brain after his fall.”
There was silence for a while as Simon stood over the man. His face changed in the light, contemplating. “I know what you’re saying, Rich, but we have to extend treatment to the residents of Saint Kelly, especially after all the success we had treating the first patient.”
I nodded. This was a man passionate about his work, and it showed in his hand gestures.
“With patients like these…” He sucked at his teeth and shook his head. “I don’t think they can become responsive on their own anymore. These are our first to try.”
He was ready. “Grab his arms, will you?”
The needle went in effortlessly, and fluid flooded in.
A few minutes passed. I watched the old man tirelessly as he lay on the bed.
“It’s beginning.” The doc said. “He’s dreaming. Catch the rapid eye movement?”
I couldn’t believe it. This must have been the most he had moved for years. His eyes darted furiously under his lids, seeing what we could never see.
“Don’t let him free.”
At first, the geezer wrestled like a fish out of water. His shoulders twisted and turned, trying to escape my grip. He felt like a fish too – his skin feverish and sweaty, my hands almost failed to hold on.
“Something’s wrong, doc.”
“No, all natural.” When he said that, I caught a sparkle of worry in his withered eye.
That’s when it started. Great purple blotches began to bloom slowly but surely at the man’s fragile neck, spreading wide like butterfly wings.
Simon wore a frown and was shaking his head. “Bruising?” He tried to hold down one of the man’s limbs.
I knew Ron’s fall led to brain damage - to see him reanimated made my stomach sour, acidic splashes tickled my throat wanting to be free.
The man was loose. He sat up from his bed, his eyes glassy and vacant. He moaned words that didn’t make sense with a mouth that was never meant to speak again.
“He’s too far gone!” The doc boomed.
The man was whimpering meaningless phrases into the air, his breath smelled of decay. Bruises had wrapped around his neck like a scarf. Four plum-colored fingers bruised his nape, two indents lay under his chin. He spoke to me, and only to me.
“Don’t you see it?” He rasped.
The doctor tried to pull him away from me. The man stared through me with blackened empty eyes like I was glass.
I shouted, but the sound never came – he had me by my collar, choking me.
“Don’t you see him?” He whispered, thick cables sticking out of his bruised neck.
Then nothing. He had faded away like a deflated balloon into his sheets under the pale lights of the clinic.
The doc and I were silent for a while, save for the sound of our heavy breaths and the flatline echoing into the empty hallway. We exchanged a few glances.
Simon recomposed himself. “He… He must have had a severe hit to the head. You have to understand, we had to try it – you saw it yourself, despite everything he managed to speak to you. Everything was fine when we tried it on the first patient.”
I collapsed into my chair like a pile of jelly and covered my eyes with one hand. I cried for a while – I think it’s because I had to feel for him if nobody else could. Goodbye Ron.
Weeks passed.
The third, fourth, fifth patients Simon tried the drug on seemed fine at first. Until they weren’t.
I was dozing off next to Rose Walters in her ward when it happened again.
First a tap, then a loud clapping. I awoke suddenly to see a silhouette sprint down the hallway past Rose’s door. I made it to the doorway and peered out into the flickering lights of the hospital.
I followed. He ran around a couple bends before he slid down and crouched behind a wheelchair outside another patient’s room.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
Before he could settle himself he pushed me away at my ribcage, but I managed to steady.
His bald head looked up at me. He looked very sickly and contagious - like he had touched death, but death didn’t want to touch him. One of Simon’s patients.
Great marks where a hand had pulled his forearm were burned into his flesh. “He doesn’t want me to find the key.” He mumbled with a shaking jaw.
“Who? Who doesn’t want you to?” I asked.
You don’t see him? The voice of a snake escaped him.
I stared at him for a while – at the bruises on his arms and his glossy eyes. I couldn’t believe doc was still doing this to people. I felt sick, I had to say something.
A loud group of nurses dressed in white from head to toe came bustling through the hallway and passed me on either side, lifting the man into the wheelchair he had been hiding behind. When he was wheeled into the void at the end of the hall, I saw him twist and turn to face me, one finger pointing through me as if to say, hey, look behind you.
I didn’t, though. This west wing was quickly turning into a haven for the loonies. I lifted up my shirt to see where he had pushed me. At the sternum, a large bruise bloomed across my ribcage.
I lost my job that winter. Not so much from my own doing, rather, thanks to Simon. Authorities had shut down our wing once news got out about what he was doing. He took a chance to be a hero and failed miserably. The drug he had been giving patients induced nightmares so grotesque and harrowing it woke them from the deepest comas. The fatal mistake Simon had made was that the drug never truly left the system when the patients woke up. Reality bordered with nightmares. The thing that choked them in sleep had followed them into the halls of our hospital. And Simon paid the price. So did I.
I worked a new role at Saint Kelly. In fact, I was still in the same wing. The entire building had been emptied out and the staff reassigned. I stayed there, though. I could not remember anything before my accident, but I did know my way around Saint Kelly. I worked half janitorial half security. The warm feeling I got from talking to patients had been replaced by cold empty halls and cleaning products as I scrubbed away. I would be lying if I didn’t resent Simon for what he had morphed my job into.
I didn’t dread the evenings until Tuesday that week.
I had been up on my ladder replacing a lamp on the second floor when I heard somebody walk past.
I called out. Nothing.
The empty halls smelled like bleach, it coated my tongue and throat.
There was nothing out here except my mop standing against one wall.
At least, I wanted there to be.
At the end of the hall stood a tall man. Ghoulishly tall, he towered enough to bend his head to one side under the ceiling.
The lights flickered. I sprinted and he followed, his face indiscernible.
I screamed and screamed not because I was surprised to see him, but I might have screamed because the nightmares had come just like I knew they would, and the tall man grabbed and pulled, he pulled and pulled until my arms popped purple.
I screamed because at that moment I knew why Simon had taken such an interest in me.
I wanted to remember my wife’s face if I could.
Ahead, the green exit sign flickered incessantly under the cold lights of the clinic.
It looked like a neon key.
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Credits
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