Chapter 2: Proving One's Worth (Part 4/7)

"So . . ." I said after catching my breath. "Think we should call for some help?" I asked him. In hindsight, I couldn't believe that in that entire time, neither of us had considered calling 911. In slow twitching motions he turned towards me before dumbly nodding his head. Making my way back around to the interior of the nurse's station, I picked up the phone and promptly dialed 911 after pressing 9 for an outgoing call. I'm sure the administration would appreciate a call, but they were going to have to wait in line for me to talk to the police first. Upon the second ring I heard it being picked up. A calm female voice came through. "911 what is the location of your emergency?" "Um yeah, about that. The location is easy to give. . .." I said with some trepidation in my voice. Then I gave her the address of our nursing facility and the name and location of our closed unit. "As for the specifics regarding our emergency, I think you'd have to see it to believe it. . .." I paused for a moment to think. "I can say that there is one dead elderly woman with her heart ripped open and a passed-out nurse. As far as the perpetrator goes, it has ceased living." . . . . "No, I cannot make a guess at what IT is, except to say that it is about the size of a person, and much more deadly. If I could, I'd send you a photo of it." . . . . . "Yes, everyone else is secure." . . . . "Yes, I'll stay on the line until the police arrive. Thank you." As I remained on the phone, I hadn't realized till that moment that the door alarm had already shut off. Never having occasion to press on the door till the secondary alarm tripped, I didn't know if someone had reset it, or if it was normal for it to turn off after a while. Admittedly, at that time I figured it was inconsequential given the scope of things. While the 911 operator continued to keep me on the line and engage me with conversation regarding the situation, Jeremy having finally been convinced of the death of the creature, went about checking up on all the residents that had been rushed off to their rooms. Come to find out, most had actually stayed in bed, but a few had been fruitlessly pounding away at their doors to get out. Thank goodness the always open bedroom doors had magnetic weights when the emergency occasion such as a fire called to have them closed. This had made it too difficult for the senior residents to force their doors back open. Unfortunately, there had been two falls as some of the residents had reacted poorly to not going through the motions of their before bed routine. Although there were a few bruises, from what both of us could guess at, there were no broken bones. A miracle amidst the hell we just went through if you ask me. Well, . . . . minus two casualties of which included a bloody transformation. . . . . Finally, I could hear the faint sound of sirens as they grew louder and higher pitched as they drew near. The sound itself traveled through the sliding door that led to the enclosed outdoor patio, despite the cars coming in from the parking lot on the opposite side of the building. The pounding of hard soled shoes could be heard a short while later, and with 5 quick beeps two male officers yanked open the door. From my vantage point, I could see the pale visage of the evening charge nurse as she peered worriedly several meters back from the side of the doorway. "It looks like the police just arrived", I informed the dispatcher on the phone and then promptly hung up on her. She was far too good at keeping a dead conversation going. Looking expectantly at the officers, I was immensely curious as to how they were going to deal with this disaster. I'm sure that with their training and professionalism that they could take control of the situation with calm and measured steps. . . "What the Hell is That!?!" The cry came from the beefier of the two officers. Instantly they both pulled out their guns and trained it on the bloody blue mess of the reptilian creature that looked like it might go through its death throes all over again. "Um," I interjected, "That's what I was talking about over the phone when I said that something had killed one of our residents." I guess that this grisly scene of the reptilian creature was also Not something that they were trained for. I'm sure that anytime now they would come to their senses and order us out of the unit so that we wouldn't impede their way. It appeared though that they weren't in a very clear frame of mind. I honestly don't know why I was so nonchalant about the whole thing. Maybe it was just a quirk of mine where extreme situations don't seem to faze me as much. . . . . . . .*flashback*Before I graduated high school, I worked at a grocery store in the summers. I was frequently used as a sample server for the deli. Creating a booth and giving out samples of whatever they wanted to promote, I was able to greatly increase their sales in that area. One time that I was giving out samples, I saw a middle-aged man with dark brown skin, blue jeans, a dark shirt and a scarf over his face walk in the store. The first thing he said to me was to ask where the bank was. Feeling just a little incredulous at the oddness of the situation I simply replied with a nonchalant "you have got to be kidding me." With that he simply raised his shirt a little so that I could see the gun that he had tucked into his pants. Seeing that, I shrugged and pointed him in the direction of the bank. With that he started walking in that direction, before pausing and turning back towards me. "Oh, and uh lay down." He said. "Ugh," with a disgruntled huff of my breath I lay down on the ground. This guy was definitely an amateur. I then watched as he walked right past the bank and over to the customer service. All this while I was feeling very awkward laying there on the floor, (I mean seriously, that floor has to be nasty considering how dirty it must get with everyone walking on it) so I got up to sitting position and was on the verge of standing back up completely, when my supervisor came over to me to berate me for sitting on the ground. It was then that I informed him that a guy with a gun came in and told me to lie down on the floor. With a brief widening of his eyes, he dashed off to what I assumed would be calling the police. Figuring I had done my duty, I stood up the rest of the way, and went back to giving out samples of food to those that came by my stall. Overall, things had been very quiet. I heard later on that the employee at the customer service desk was scared out of their wits when the guy pulled his gun on them. . . . . . . . . .*present*Thinking back on that time, maybe I might have felt drastically different if he had pointed the gun at me rather than just flash it, but it seems I now know how I react in a desperate situation, having just killed what could only be described as a true monster. The officers on the other hand didn't seem to be taking things too well. I could hear retching noises coming from the now hiding charge nurse, while both officers had gone pale in the face. The thinner of the two officers had his gun in his right hand while his left whipped out his radio. "We have a 10-18, 10-52, 10-78, and 10 um . . . , just get everyone down here STAT . . . and bring a coroner . . . and animal control!" Sputtering near the end of his brief contact he waited for a response of 10-4 before dropping his radio causing it to bounce near the floor on its coiled extension cord as his shaking fingers were unable to re-clip it to his utility belt. It truly was a terrible situation seeing as the policemen wanted to clear the scene of residents, yet unless they wanted to start herding the elderly people out the back emergency exit, then they'd have to let them trample through the crime scene. Luckily, we were on the first floor and so out the emergency back exit it was. Not being allowed to cross the doorway, the charge nurse had to pass the keys to the newly arrived and ogling security guards who then passed them to us. With the massive number of keys, Jeremy went from key to key trying it on the back door so that we could open it without setting off the alarm again. While he did that, I began gathering up the residents and making them transport ready. The charge nurse had already left to go find some more CNA's and Nurses to help us out. New beds to temporarily move the residents to were found and resident assignments were shuffled around. At that moment, I was terribly glad that I wasn't a nurse with the mountain of paperwork that was likely to ensue following this epic disaster. As to our personal unit nurse who had passed out, I actually had not seen what happened to her prone form, shortly after the police had gotten there. Figuring that she had woken up and moved on her own power, or someone else had taken care of her unconscious form, I decided to push that concern to the back of my mind. At last, after pushing each of the residents out the back door in a wheelchair regardless of their level of mobility, the police had Jeremy and I return to the crime scene to answer the questions that the now present police chief and detective had for us. At the site of the reptilian body, there was a circle of uniformed gawkers that stood both inside and outside the doorway to the closed unit. The head coroner was shaking in excitement as he examined the body while the animal control man and woman were casting distant sideways glances at the scaly monster formerly known as Mr. Smith. Barely any work had been spent on the deceased Mrs. Clifford, except to snap a few photos, zip her up in a black bag, and carry her out the back door to be shipped off to the morgue. All that was left to mark her passing was a large puddle of smeared blood and an overturned walker by the exit to the outside patio. Many times, I heard several other sirens approaching the nursing facility as apparently the news of such a unique killer had spread. S.W.A.T. had come, both state and city police, and from the look of the plainclothes yet official looking personnel, I'd say some of the 3 letter agencies had joined the party as well. A middle-aged detective with pepper colored hair and a moderate build suited with gray sports jacket and dark gray slacks had been interviewing both Jeremy and me. This had been going on for the past 25 minutes with a growing look of incredulousness on his face, as if he could not believe what we were telling him. Were it not for the sickly-looking pile of shed human skin that lay in a pile next the where the late Mrs. Clifford had met her fateful end, combined with the detached Foley catheter, then I felt certain that he would never have believed that the creature that now lay sprawled out at the doorway had once been a senior resident at our facility. The happenings at this point were something that should have only occurred in high fantasy or horror fiction. Despite the public's distrust of the unknown, there was a big difference between suspecting it might be real, versus being handed such undeniable evidence of its reality on a silver platter. Everyone wanted to see, but no one wanted to be the first to admit on paper what had happened; Thus, the huge turnout of officialdom. "So, let's go over this again." I sighed as the silver haired detective continued his repetitive questioning. "You first noticed a change in his eyes only today, are you certain that there were no other changes to the late Mr. Smith prior to today's events?" I had mentioned that he had been taken for treatment or assessment earlier in the day and that there had been some residual bruising around his veins supposedly from blood draws, but that I had no further details than that. After about an hour of the same or similar questions regarding what happened did the interview with the detective seem to wind down. By this time, the coroners and animal control had finally decided on the use of a stretcher with a large black body bag to place the creature in to transport to the morgue or my guess is some variation of area 51. The lead coroner didn't seem to want to let the creature go, likely knowing once it was taken, he would never see it again. As he continued to use what looked like a portable dissection kit and trying to justify his actions to the plainclothes who seemed to be trying to usher him away, I noticed a growing strangeness to the air. Don't get me wrong, I already knew that what was happening was plenty strange enough, but something extra, something that just made my skin crawl started to occur. It felt very similar to what I first felt when I entered the closed unit at the beginning of the shift.