A cute old cardigan codger came shuffling out of the lab, reciting to himself, “blood … blood … blood,” like a person walking, searching, into a room, chanting “Car keys? Car keys?” while miming starting their car.
I let him pass. The lights continued to drone and stutter overhead, casting blue echoes where my eyes moved. I don’t think he saw me.
The line on the floor passed the lab and I glanced in the door as I went by. Inside, a person wrapped in yellowed gauze sat bolt upright and screamed, as blood flowers bloomed across its face, chest, arms. There were too many black-scrubbed doctors blocking the lamplight and the figure writhed in shadow.
I was past. I eyed the line, disappearing beneath and behind my flat sneakersoles. Every third step they squeaked. The frayed hem of my pants floated and flapped against bare, dirty ankles.
Ding! I hear the elevator up ahead, and I decided not to hurry. I could catch the next one. Or the one after that. The corridor was silent. Except for my steps, one, two, squeak.
Up ahead, the elevator doors creaked shut, and I could hear the clanking sigh as it climbed the spire. Not the direction I was headed.
The line turned a corner and dead-ended in a red representation of the hospital’s logo: a stylized bee in a hexagonal frame.
“Hello.”
I looked up at the voice. Her face apologized, but I waved the concern away and turned to the doors, craning my neck upward to watch the counter, still climbing.
“You’re Bryce, aren’t you?” She had a crumpled tissue in one hand, and she dabbed at her upper lip without looking away. A peach-colored bandage covered the tip of her nose, wrapped into a blunt cone.
I burped politely, but turned back to the dial, which had stopped on floor forty-four. Rhyming bastard.
“You are, I remember you from before. From when we were with my mother, you were across the hall. We spoke, don’t you remember? You told me your wife was dying.”
“We’re all dying,” I said. God, I sounded like some edgelord moody teenager trying to impress drama club girls.
“No,” she said, and dabbed at her lip, and, “Perhaps I was mistaken.”
Deep above, high in the spire, I could hear the elevator shudder, then whine towards us.
“You’re going down, I assume,” she said.
“There’s nothing for me up there.”
“There’s nothing for you down there, either,” she said, suddenly heated, hands clenched at her sides, color rising in her cheeks. A breath later: “You really don’t remember me?”
“It’s been a long day,” I said. “Coffee ran out.”
“I see,” she said. “I’m headed to the basement.”
I grunted acknowledgment. We’d be riding together for quite a ways.
There were no windows in the corridor, but I heard distant cries, and an occasional thunk as a disoriented seagull flew into the window of one of the rooms. I could smell cigarette smoke so stale and distant it was the whisper of the ghost of a tobacco leaf long gone, lost to history. A scum of sicksweat tinted every surface, including my hands as I held them up before me.
The grinding, crunching whine of the elevator grew, grew, grew, until it was painful to the ears and my eyes felt like they were vibrating, then between one heartbeat and another, it stopped. All was silent except for the woman’s shallow breathing.
The doors sighed open. The recorded music wafting out of that paneled and reflecting box was warbled and sluggish, the girl from Ipanema went shambling.
There was a man in the elevator, bent so far forward over his walker he formed a question mark in profile. He quavered at us and the doors began to slide shut again before I jumped forward and held them back. “Are you getting out?” I asked.
“Where am I?”
“Ground floor.”
“Oh, good. Martha’s here.” He took a few shuffling steps forward. When he was past, I released the door and stepped inside.
I waved at the woman, who seemed mesmerized by the old man. “Hey! You coming?”
“No,” she said. “You didn’t remember me.”
“Suit yourself,” I said, as the doors clung to.
There was a bang, and the elevator gently rocked on its suspension. I smelled ozone, the breath of an electric train transformer. My belly fluttered, and we were headed down.
Well. I was heading down.
My reflection in the warped brass panels gurned and grinned, my breath echoed in my ears like a rooftop rock concert from the basement.
The numbers chimed down, the bottom rows cracked and crazed beyond legibility, and I lost count of my progress soon enough. Whenever I tried to count, I got a different number.
I could see my breath, but felt no cold.
A small red ant crawled out of a crack in the casing of the button box, and circled, seeming confused as well. The ding of passing floors faded with each chime, and now was inaudible save as a faint pressure on the eardrums. The lights flickered glumly, then resumed, half as brightly as before. My reflection took on a ghoulish cast, blue in the shadows. The carpet squelched and clung as I shifted my weight from foot to foot, left to right, right to left. I wrapped my arms around my middle and waited.
A distant shriek approached from below and grew and grew until the elevator slammed to a halt and I stumbled, briefly steadying myself against a wall before recoiling in disgust at the clammy feel of it.
The doors opened. “Martha?” The name preceded an old man, hunched over his walker.
“No,” I said. “But I knew a Martha once.”
“Are you getting out?”
“Where am I?”
“Ground floor,” he said, and shouldered past me into the elevator. As he stood, staring at the whited buttons, I made my way out into the dimdark hall.
“Martha?” he asked again, as the doors closed between us.
Ground floor, he’d said. Could that be right?
Dark spots climbed the wallpaper seams. Black mold. Not good for a place like this. Sick people. Somebody should be told.
Only one way to go, but the lights grew dimmer the farther I got from the little elevator foyer. My damp sneakersoles screeched on the filthy tile.
A light. A door. Frosted glass, no label. I opened it. A hospital room, bed pulled near a window shining with gray light. The figure on the bed looked cold, familiar.
“You,” I said.
“Doctor? The pain is back. When I breathe. You have to do something.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t breathe,” I said, joking, but the pillow was back in my hands, pressing into her face, fracturing fragile bones of her face. “…Martha. Your name was Martha, wasn’t it?”
“Blood,” said a voice behind me, and I turned to see the old man, a doctor, a patient, standing upright now, holding the pillow, staring at a crimson stain. “From a broken nose. Laundry will have to boil that out.”
The pillow was in my hands. “I don’t remember,” I said.
“She does,” he said, and when I looked back up he was young, strong. Strong hands.
“You didn’t remember me,” said Martha. Accusing. “You didn’t remember anything, in the end.”
“Nothing ends,” said the doctor.
“No.”
“Again,” said the doctor.
A cute old cardigan codger came shuffling out of the lab, reciting to himself, “blood … blood … blood,” like a person walking, searching, into a room, chanting “Car keys? Car keys?” while miming starting their car.
I let him pass.
Haunted Spoons 