00:00
A distant bell tinkles.
It is cold. Your cheek is resting against a hard, uncomfortable surface. For a moment, your brain turns this way and that, attempting to get you your proper orientation. It takes a while before you realize that you are lying down, presumably on a floor. Your awareness of your limbs begins to return, piece by piece. Hands outstretched. Legs splayed.
They are all still there, you think groggily.
Probably. Together with it comes the awareness of a headache plaguing the inside of your skull; a throbbing, pulsating and dull pain that seems to emanate outwards from the deepest core of your mind.
Your brows furrow at the unpleasant sensation. Your eyelids shift. You blink twice. The headache subsides, slowly receding within your head. Then, you open your eyes fully.
All you see before you is a fuzzy mess of shapes. You squint instinctively. The image resolves slightly into a still fuzzy – but comprehensible – picture. Yes, you wear glasses, don’t you? Still laid out on the ground, you reach out, waving your hand around the floor until your fingers find the thin metal frames that you thought you saw. Just by placing them on, your vision transforms dramatically. Everything comes into sharp focus. These appear to fit you perfectly… so they must be yours. With the spectacles you manage to see just exactly where you are.
Squeaky clean white tiles on the floor. Crisply made beds covered with sheets of light green and blue, separated with privacy curtains. Cartoonish, cute signs reminding you to wash your hands frequently. A small flatscreen TV mounted on the far wall, its screen dark. A clock hanging above it – both of the slim, black hands, long and short, are pointed at the number twelve. Fluorescent lights are set into the ceiling, bathing the room in a harsh, white light.
Then there is the ever-present smell of disinfectant, sharp and sterile.
You appear to be in a hospital.
No matter how clean the tiles look from your vantage point on the floor, it is probably a good idea to get up from it just a little bit quicker. There is only one door to the ward, and one large window set into the wall right opposite it. It is probably there so that the patients are granted the luxury of enjoying the outside view even if they are too unwell to venture out, but the only source of light right now is coming from the lights in the ceiling. It is entirely dark outside. Pressing your nose against the cool glass, you are still unable to make out anything. If it is night, then you must be somewhere far removed from civilization. There are no lights whatsoever in the distance, not even the ever-present glow of the street lights that you would expect. It is as if the building you are in has been swallowed by a never-ending darkness.
Or it could just be that the windows are heavily tinted. You won’t know until you open it.
You take hold of the handle on the window, turn it, and push.
Nothing happens.
It does not move. You wonder if the window is stuck.
It does not budge even a fraction no matter how much force you apply, pushing and pulling. You might as well be exerting yourself against a brick wall, for all the good you do. You tap the glass pane – the sound weirdly flat in the utter silence of the room – and turn away, slightly frustrated at your wasted effort. Looking around, your eyes are drawn to the clock again. It has not moved since you last saw it… from the lack of a ticking noise, it might not be moving at all.
A sudden thought strikes you. Patting yourself down, you feel the unmistakable thin slab of a cellphone in your pocket, one that had gone unnoticed in the confusion of your awakening. You pull it out quickly and power the phone up. The display lights up and a password screen appears, big white numbers declaring that the time is currently 12:00 am. Easy, you should know the password to your phone by heart.
It’s…
Your thumb hovers hesitantly over the touch display.
Strangely enough, you can’t seem to remember the numbers at the moment.
The wallpaper, too, does not seem familiar to you, now that you think about it… but you also do not recall the wallpaper that you had. In fact… did you ever own this model of phone?
Well, when in doubt, it is simple. You key in the numbers.
1234.
That would usually do it… no, it doesn’t. An error screen taunts you for your lack of effort. Frowning, you put the phone away for now. Maybe the password will come to you later. Even if you had unlocked the phone, you noticed that the signal bar at the top of the screen was empty. You would not have been able to call anyone.
There does not seem to be anything else of interest in the ward; nothing to explain how you got here. The pillows and beds appear normal, for a hospital – which is to say that they are uncomfortable enough that you would not like to bring one home, but not enough so that you would prefer to have woken up on the cold hard floor instead. The panels above the beds appear to be active; small red lights are lit, and you have a feeling that if you press the call button it would ring the buzzer at the nearby nurse station. It would probably be more polite to go out and find one, though, rather than calling them in to explain matters.
Gripping the handle, you push open the door tentatively and poke your head out.
The hallway is well lit but there is no one in sight. Here, as inside the ward, the sharp scent of disinfectant nestles in your nostrils.
“Hello?” you call out. Your voice echoes down the empty corridors without a reply. This is strange. Even in an empty ward in the wee hours, there should be at least a nurse or two walking around, if only to keep an eye on things. A placard above the room you just left indicates that it is Ward 201. The plates that indicate the names of the patients inhabiting the ward are blank. A floorplan on the wall directly opposite you tells you that the nurse station is just ahead. If there is someone there and they did not hear you calling, perhaps they are sleeping on the job. It would not be a surprise... at least, it would be preferable to the alternative.
You round the corner.
There is no one on duty – each of the three swivel chairs are empty and facing you. You suddenly realize that the hospital feels very cold… though you have no way to tell whether it is the lack of human warmth or excessive air-conditioning. Still perplexed at the situation, you walk behind the counter of the nurse station. At least there are wired phones that you can use – even if there is no signal on the cellphone, landlines should work. You reach for the receiver. It disengages from the hook easily enough as you bring it up to your ear.
There is nothing to be heard. Not even a single dialtone.
Tossing the phone back, you scratch your head in puzzlement. You turn your attention back towards the nurse station itself. There are files and folders lined neatly inside their racks. Picking one at random, you pull out a
brochure.
Welcome to Ikei Medical University Hospital!
Opened in 2010 in partnership with the world-renowned Ikei University of Medicine, we aim to bring the best in healthcare treatment & research to Japan. Our specialties range from paediatrics to geriatrics: there is a specialist for every one of your medical needs!
Let us all take care of our health, together with Ikei!
The colourful, cheesy brochure, filled with the happy smiling faces of patients, goes on to talk about the various facilities they have. It appears to be a very well-equipped hospital indeed, comprising of a large complex with multiple inter-connected buildings; there is even a large, Olympic-sized swimming pool to aid in physiotherapy, and the cafeteria apparently boasts of a Michelin star rating.
You have to pause and wonder if that is not a little too absurd.
There does not seem to be anything else of note in the files; strangely enough, they are filled with pristine forms, templates and letterheads. None of them have been used, each of the fields are empty, and there are no signs of anything having been erased from the paper at one point.
There is nothing left to do here for now. Though there are two elevator doors located in front of the nurse station, the lights are off – they do not seem to be functioning at the moment. You head back to the floorplan in front of ward 201 and study it.
***
A. There are eleven more wards located on this floor. You want to look through all of them first – perhaps there is still someone around here. This floor can’t be utterly deserted.
B. You take the main stairs just in front of the nurse’s station to descend to the ground floor. If you head to the main lobby, there will definitely be people there; nurses, security guards, even patients arriving late at night.
C. You head upwards, towards the roof. The emergency stairs at the end of the hallway will take you right to the top – from there, you can get a good vantage point of your surroundings.
