Expired

Hannah Wellington, renowned doctor of Pulmonology at Oakland Heights Hospital, began her day by receiving a most stressing call by the Hospital Director’s secretary, saying that the big boss himself wanted to see her personally as soon as she arrived at the Hospital.

She had absolutely no idea what could the director: Dr. Ian Stone, want from her in such pressing urgency. She texted her assistant to inform the first patient of the day that she would be arriving late at her office that morning.

“Morning!” said a familiar voice from a hallway to her left. She turned and smiled at seeing the rounded face of the also rounded man that was Dr. Hughes Orwell. A friend from her college times and a successful cardiologist at the same hospital.

“Oh, hi Hughes! Wasn’t expecting in finding you here this morning.”

She waited until her colleague was next to her and then both were walking on the same direction.

“Me neither. Got a call saying the boss wanted to meet me here at Intensive Care. Weird, huh?”

“Me too.” The suspense of that call was increasing. “Do you know what’s about?”

“Nope.” He then pointed at the door of the room he was told to meet with the Director. “But we are about to find out.”

Soon as they entered the room, a nurse told them immediately to close the door behind them. The scenery was surreal. There was a patient lying on an operation table – an elderly woman – she was placidly white and was still as a rock.

Behind her was another doctor and Dr. Stone. He was not younger than the patient and was looking at the two arriving colleagues through his square thick glasses with real concern and greeted them with his thick and deep voice.

“Dr. Orwell, Dr. Wellington. Great that you arrived here together. Could you please be so kind as to evaluate the condition of our poor Mrs. Jameson here.”

The nurse handed them the patient report and, as they took a closer look to the patient, a concerned frown surged on the both of them.

Dr. Hughes tried to check the pulse, while Helen placed a hand over the patient’s chest, then moved it to the forehead and then to bellow the patient’s nostrils.

“No…” she hesitated, looking at Dr. Stone, which encouraged her to say it. “No… breathing?”

“And no pulse as well.” Added a very dumbfounded Dr. Orwell, while beginning to listen to the heartbeat with a stethoscope. They all waited for the cardiologist’s evaluation.

After a minute where he scanned several regions of the patient’s chest, Hughes said: “This person’s heart is not working. It is not beating. I’ve never heard of anything like it!”

“Neither did I or Dr. Julian here, that was attending Mrs. Jameson.” He looked at Dr. Julian, which was standing next to him. “Dr. Julian, if you may…”

Dr. Julian cleared his throat. “Thank you, Dr. Stone. Mrs. Jameson had given entry four days ago. Her condition was kidney failure. We were medicating her and, this morning, she just… ceased to breathe.” He made a pause, but no one added anything. “We tried everything our books taught us, but there was no reaction from the patient. She has been like this since four in the morning and that’s it. It is as…” he gestured trying to find the right words “As if she stopped living.”

“Good God!” said Hughes. “Julian, if I was not here, I would simply laugh in your face and ask if you don’t want to write and episode for the Twilight Zone. But this is… damn!”

“Dr. Wellington? Any intel from your side?” asked Dr. Stone.

“I don’t recall in all my Pneumology expertise of hearing about ‘paralyzed’ lungs. Of the vast array of conditions that a human being may suffer related to his breathing, there is none about not breathing. I’m very sorry, gentleman, but I don’t know what is this.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Dr. Wellington.” Said Dr. Stone and placed a gentle hand on Helen’s shoulder. “I believe that this is one of those extremely rare cases that happen once in every one hundred years. I know a specialist in rare diseases and I will contact him at once, asking if he can share some light with us. After all, all we want is for our lovely Mrs. Jameson to get back home well.”

After that event, Helen couldn’t return to her morning appointments right away. Instead, she accepted Hughes offer of taking a coffee at the cafeteria.

“This is like one of those cases of people that get abducted by aliens, you know?” said Hughes after taking a sip.

Helen chuckled. “Sorry, Hughes, but I don’t see how a person that has stopped living, as you said, might be related to those stories. I thought you a man of Science.” She playfully pointed at his identification tag.

“It’s not that, Helen!” he laughed as well “I’m not saying I believe that yellow men kidnapped people and took them into a spaceship. I’m saying that this situation is very similar to that of the people who tell those things. Who believes them? If you go out there and announce that a person has quit breathing, moving, talking and her heart doesn’t breathe and she is cold as stone what will the Medical community think of us?”

“Well, the Medical Community needs to know of this, regardless of what they might think. They can see the body of Mrs. Jameson anytime. That is if she intends on keeping herself that way.”

“She’s as still as the chicken I bought yesterday from the butcher.”

A phone rang from inside Dr. Hughes coat. He took it in his hand and asked permission from Helen, which she nodded.

“Yes?” he replied at the call. “Hum-hum…yes, I know who it is, go on…a WHAT?” Helen almost jumped at her seat with the sudden reaction. “He did what?… When?!…OK, I will be on my way.”

He disconnected and then looked concerned at Helen.

“What is it?”

“There was this John Mattes – on of my patients – had a severe heart condition and was in process for a pacemaker. And… how can I put it?” he sighed, then looked at Helen “ He went Mrs. Jameson’s.”

“No!”

“True. His heart stopped. So did his lungs, and everything else.” He sighed once more. “Two in the same day! I have to go. Sorry, Helen.”

Half an hour later, Helen was attending her first patient that morning. A man who was suffering from convulsing coughing. At least was something regular, despite the discomfort her patient was suffering.

“So, Mr. Cummings, I’m going to prescribe you a syrup and some pills.” She said while writing the medicine on a sheet of paper. “You take the syrup after your meals, three times a day, and the pills only in the morning, after breakfast, agreed?”

“Yes, Doctor…” the man coughed. “Thank you.”

“Here you have.” She handed him the prescription. “If you don’t get better in three days, please make an urgent appointment with me, okay?”

There were some quick knocks at the door.

“Yes?” she called and a paramedic entered the room.

“Dr. Wellington?”

“Yes, it’s me.”

“I’m sorry, but I need a word of advice in your field of expertise.”

“All right” she turned to her patient. “Thank you for coming, Mr. Cummings. Get well soon, okay?”

“I’ll try to, Doctor. Thank you” and then the patient left the office.

“So tell me, in what can I help you?”

“You see, Dr. Wellington, this morning we received a distress call from a family that went to have a picnic at the river. The eldest kid ventured too far and was taken by the current.”

“Oh, my God. What happened to him?”

“We managed to grab him a little downstream, but his lungs were filled with water. We tried to take it out, but…”

“But?”

“But the boy wasn’t reacting.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know, Dr. Wellington. His lungs were not working and his heart wasn’t beating.”

Helen had to postpone the remaining appointments of that morning. An emergency meeting was scheduled by Dr. Stone himself with the other heads of several department and speciality doctors.

Until noon, four more people unexpectedly stopped living.

“… when I contacted my colleague on rare diseases he told me he didn’t know of anything of the sort. I also called other specialists on Cardiology and Pulmonology from around the country and they sounded truly concerned and shocked at these events. Ladies and gentleman, I’m afraid that we might be facing an epidemic situation the world has never seen before.”

By lunch time, Helen couldn’t eat and went to the Hospital gardens near it’s entrance to try to relax a little.

While she was walking she found a nurse that happened to also be her friend: Joyce. And she was kissing the gardener, Mr. Cameron.

“Hello?” she interrupted.

The couple looked at her and smiled.

“Hi Helen!” said Joyce. “What’s up?”

“Can I give you a word, really fast?”

Joyce looked at Cameron and he nodded. “Sorry, dear, I’ll be right back.”

They both walk a little away from the park bench were Mr. Cameron was left.

“So, tell me.” Invited Joyce.

“What are you doing kissing the gardener? I’ve just passed through your husband on the way here. Are you guys fine?”

“Husband?” Joyce asked smiling. “I don’t get the joke.”

“It’s no joke, Joyce. Your husband works here at the Hospital. Imagine if he finds you in plain sight with Mr. Cameron? I mean, what would he and everyone else think? This is a small village, remember?”

“Helen, what are you saying? I have no husband. Never had one, but would surely love that Bill Cameron there would be my husband.”

“Joyce, you and your husband, Theo, had invited me for dinner two days ago.”

“Theo?” she wondered and looked at Helen as if something was not right with her. “The pediatrician? Girl, I don’t know what you’ve been drinking. I’ve never met the guy.”

Helen was not that sure. She did remember the diner at her friend’s house vividly.

“You know what?” Joyce cut it with a friendly pat on the back. “It must be this mystery of people stopping to be alive that’s grinding you. Let me present you to Bill. He says that it might be related to a place south of town, right at the edge of it, called ‘cemetery.”

What Bill Cameron told Helen made her leave right away and drive to that “cemetery” place.

Although the man was a gardener and not a doctor like her, his insight on the matter was worthy of checking personally. So she got back to her car and rushed there to meet Bill’s brother which was a ground’s keeper there.

On the way she noticed some plaques directing to that place, she has saw them before, but never thought much about it.

Once there, she found a quiet park filled with stone structures under the shade of tall trees. Josh Cameron was easy to find: he was at the entrance mowing the grass there.

He directed her to one of the sculptures he called “a grave.”

“Did Bill told you about these?” he pointed at the inscription engraved in the stone.

There was the following:

Martha Hunter

03/02/1923 –  06/08/1999

Forever missed in the heart of your children and granddaughter.

“She disappeared?” Helen asked.

“Perhaps. Who knows? Like any other name that’s on these stones, I don’t know them, nor does anyone that works here.”

“I see.” She was intrigued and almost touched the white stone slab. “These dates are what confuse me the most.”

“Did Bill explained his theory to you?”

“That the dates represent the time the person walked on Earth until she expired?”

“Huh-huh.” He crossed his arms, waiting for her opinion.

“But how does that mean that this person…” she then gestured to the remaining graves that stood like an army behind and to the sides of that one. “I mean, all these people – how can that mean that they too stopped living?”

“You’re asking me, Miss?” he roughly chuckled. “I just tend to this garden, I’m not a man of the Sciences.”

She let her shoulders hang, revealing a profound disappointment.

“But I know of a Hunter family that lives outside town.” he tried to uplift her with a small smile. “Not saying that this Martha was one of them, but I know a lot of people from here and there’s only one Hunter family on these parts.”

Helen felt like a detective while driving to the Hunter’s house, even if she had no solid evidence that could connect the graves to the mysterious illness, she needed to go there just to clear that out of her mind. It was nearby, anyway, she just passed the sign saying “Now leaving Oakland Heights” and the woods had embraced the road. According to the address, the Hunter’s lived on a simple house that she would be able to see just after the next turn.

 She made the turn and had to brake because of what was before her.

It was surreal, immense and unlike anything Helen had ever saw.

A few yards ahead of her, the road, the woods, the sky – the world dissipated into an eternal and endless white.

She left the car and silently contemplated the impossible imagery of what lies ahead.

There were no other cars there, the chirping of the birds that she could hear through the car’s open window was gone, even the radio was off.

Then, she heard something familiar. Something repetitive and asynchronous coming from somewhere at her right.

She found there a very small park with two tables. On one of them, a man was sitting on a chair working on a laptop.

He was the only thing she could relate to, the only living being besides her, so Helen walked to him.

“Hello.” The man said, still typing.

“Good morning. Do you know what happened with the road?” she gestured at the vanishing zone.

“Well, nothing has happened with the road. It’s perfectly normal.” The man said, slightly raising his head to confirm it.

“Normal?”

 “Oh yes, Helen. It is very normal.” The man asserted.

“You know my name? Have we met before?” Helen was beginning to feel scared.

“Someone said that as we go down the road we keep losing parts of our life. It’s as if the soul begins to decay before the body does.”

Helen didn’t know what to make of it.

“What are you saying?”

The man said in the same natural manner, while tilting his glasses.

“What if in that process we lose things that would only bring us pain? No matter how absurd they could be. Take for example, the notion of Death? Would you be here knowing that your son had died last night on a bike accident?”

“Dyed?” she repeated, clearly thinking on something else. “Wait a minute, what son? I don’t have a…”

“Memory.” He interrupted. “A cruel companion. Essential to live, relentless on making suffering in life.”

He then closed the lid of his laptop and stored it on a bag, while leaving the seat.

“I think this will be all.” He bowed his head at Helen, saying goodbye with a thin smile.

The man walked into the white void where he disappeared.

Helen didn’t found it that strange. She just took a sit and tried to remember what was her name and where was she.