The Nurses Station

The Nurses Station

    Three nurses sat a table in a small room drinking coffee.  The three women were on their fifteen minute break.  Lucy, Heather, and Erin, all agreed that they would take their breaks at the same time so that they could talk.  They were friends, and it made sense that the three of them would take a break at the same time. 

    The hospital was not busy tonight.  Earlier a man had checked into the hospital.  The man had been using a nail gun at his home, and managed to shoot a nail through his right hand, in between his thumb and forefinger.  He told the nurses that he had to wait at his house before coming to the hospital for four hours, because the nail that had gone through his hand had also gotten stuck in the shingle that he was nailing in.  His wife arrived home after getting out of work to find her husband standing next to their house, nailed to it.  The nail gun victim was the only patient in the ER tonight.  He had lost so much blood over the course of the time it took his wife to get home, that the doctors told him that he needed to stay in the hospital for the night so that he could rest.  Heather was in charge of making sure that he was alright in his room, and had checked in on him four times so far during his stay.

    There were two doctors in the hospital.  They worked in the ER, but would spend all of their time in another part of the hospital reserved for doctors.  Most of their evening would consist of watching television on a leather couch, playing pool, reading the newspaper, drinking coffee, and chatting about their families, cars, and which nurses they would screw if given the opportunity.  Both of the doctors had helped the man who’d hurt his hand, earlier that evening and it had been a joint decision between the two that the man should stay the night in the hospital. 

    The nurses’ break was over.  During their break, over a cup of coffee, they had discussed their wanting to start working days instead of nights.  Heather, Lucy, and Erin, all agreed that a day shift would be better than working at night.  It was proposed that after their shifts tonight, they would ask the nurse in charge of day shifts, who would arrive at the hospital at seven in the morning, if it would be possible that they could begin to receive hours during the day that they could work, instead of night hours. 

    Lucy had been asked if she would check in on the man staying the night in the hospital.  She knew that it was Heather’s job to make sure he was okay, but Lucy figured if they shared the responsibility of making sure that the man staying overnight was comfortable, that the time would move along faster.  After clocking in to resume her shift, Lucy headed down the quiet hallway toward the room where the man was staying.  The man’s wife had gone home earlier, after the doctors informed them that he should stay the night.  When Lucy arrived at the doorway of the man’s room, she saw that his bed was empty, and he was not in the room.  She walked over to the other side of the bed to see if the man’s shoes were still there. 

    The ER patient who, earlier had arrived at the hospital with a four inch nail lodged in his hand, was in fact not in his room.  After spending five hours awake in a hospital bed, watching television had lost its entertainment value, and so had closing his eyes.  He knew that he would be in the hospital until at least ten o’clock in morning.  The man had decided to leave his room while Lucy and the other nurses had been on their breaks. 

    While Lucy was checking the man’s room, Heather had been asked by one of the other nurses to go to the doctor’s lounge and get something out the snack machine.  Heather said she would, and began to walk to the far end of the hospital where the doctors and the doctor’s lounge were.  She was greeted by the two doctors when she arrived at the lounge.  One of the doctors asked Heather about the patient they’d helped earlier.  Heather had been the nurse who’d helped remove the nail from the man’s hand, and both doctors had been there.  Heather’s appearing in the lounge had reminded the doctors of the patient who’d just snuck out of his room in the hospital.

    When Heather got back from the doctor’s lounge, she handed one of the nurses a bag of Doritos.  The nurse thanked Heather for getting her the chips.  After the nurse thanked her, Heather asked if Lucy had come back from the patient staying the night’s room.  The nurse said that Lucy had not come back yet, and suggested that if she liked, Heather could go see if everything was alright in the patient’s room.  Instead of going to check things out, Heather decided she’d wait there until Lucy came back.

    The man that’d left his room, Tucker Armstrong, had come back.  He’d been in several of the other rooms close to his when he heard someone in his room.  Tucker saw Lucy in his room, on the other side of his hospital bed, looking at the floor to see if his shoes were still there.  When she turned around, she saw Tucker Armstrong, with a raised scalpel in his good hand.  Tucker approached Lucy, who now looked frightened.  Lucy was so stricken with fear she could not move or cry for help.  Once Tucker had her, he began to slice at Lucy’s neck with the scalpel.  Blood began to stain Lucy’s white nurse uniform.  Tucker had held his bandaged hand over Lucy’s mouth while he was slitting her throat, pinning her head to his chest as he cut from behind.  When he was all through, Lucy lay dead on the floor, on the other side of the hospital bed in a pool of dark red blood. 

    After killing Lucy, Tucker decided he would relocate to another part of the hospital so that no one would catch him, but that he would come back when the time was right to kill more people.  Still holding the bloodied scalpel in his good hand, Tucker made an exit out of the room he had just killed Lucy in.  He would come back, he told himself, and when he did, he would kill more people.  Tucker decided that he wanted to kill Heather most of all.  He had seen so much of her since he’d been at the hospital that he wanted to kill her now.

    Heather was still sitting at the reception desk of the ER with two of the other nurses.  The other two nurses had struck up a conversation about dogs.  Heather sat there at the desk, looking off into space, wondering in her mind about what could have been taking Lucy so long to come back.  She turned her head to look down the hallway.  Because of it being nighttime, the hallway was dim.  Heather did not know whether to go see about Lucy or not.  Lucy hadn’t come back, and it had been an entire half hour. 

    Tucker Armstrong hid in a room, six rooms down the long hallway from where he killed Lucy.  Tucker figured that if he wandered to some other distant part of the hospital, that he might not get a chance to kill Heather.  He wanted to kill Heather more than anything, and that is why he stuck around close to the room he killed Lucy in.  All of a sudden Tucker could hear a woman’s footsteps growing louder coming from down the hall. 

    Heather had decided to see what was taking Lucy so long to come back to the Nurses Station.  She told the other nurses at the reception desk that she was going to find out why Lucy hadn’t come back yet, and that she was needed to see the patient whose room she was in charge of as well.  It had been an hour and a half since she’d last seen Tucker Armstrong resting in his hospital bed.

    When Heather got to Tucker Armstrong’s assigned room, she noticed that he was not in his bed or his room. Heather also spotted a small stream of blood beginning to make its way into the hallway coming from under Tucker’s hospital bed.  She walked toward the other side of the bed, half expecting to find Tucker Armstrong’s body laying there.  Lucy lay there in a pool of blood, instead.  Her throat had been slit.  So that’s why she didn’t come back, Heather thought.

    Then out of nowhere, the missing patient appeared.  Tucker Armstrong once again in the doorway, poised to kill his next victim, but this time much worse, good hand elevated into the air, complete with scalpel.  Heather looked into Tucker’s eyes; they were the eyes of a killer.  She sensed he wanted to kill her, and before he had the chance to grab her, she ran at Tucker and shoved him out of the doorway and into the hall. 

    Forced out into the hallway, Tucker stumbled toward the ground after Heather had knocked into him.  Heather dashed past him, running toward the Nurses Station.  Tucker collected himself, and began to chase after Heather at top speed.  Tucker managed to catch up with Heather and tackle her.  The cold linoleum floor hurt Heather knees as she fell onto them, after having collided with Tucker.

    Tucker forced himself on top of Heather.  He fumbled in his pockets with his good hand for the scalpel.  He thought for a moment about what he should do to Heather with the scalpel before he could pull it out.  Tucker thought to himself that it would be a good idea if he cut her face off, slashed her wrists, or opened up stomach right there, or maybe on one of the other hospital beds.  The thought of killing Lucy had come back to him, maybe he would decide to slice Heather’s throat.  Tucker pulled out the scalpel and raised it high above his head, with his good hand he was going to come down with it, straight into Heather’s heart.

    Heather lay pinned on the floor crying.  She could not wriggle loose.  She only had moments to live.  Heather’s entire life flashed before her eyes.  She looked at the scalpel.  It had Lucy’s blood on it.  Tucker’s face was misshapen and a sick gaze filled his eyes.

    Moments before Tucker’s assault on Heather had begun, one of the doctors that operated on Tucker’s hand, decided, after seeing Heather, he would come back to check on Tucker’s condition.  As the doctor made steps towards the patient’s room he could hear Heather screaming.  Once the doctor had come close enough to realize what was happening, he made an attempt to stop the struggle.  The doctor grabbed the killer’s good hand, just as he was about to fire the scalpel into Heather’s chest.  After seizing Tucker’s hand and freeing the scalpel from it, the doctor fought desperately to get the killer off of Heather. 

    As soon as Heather was able to get up off of the floor, she noticed the two nurses from the reception desk as they hurried toward her from down the hall.  The doctor had managed to kill Tucker Armstrong with the scalpel.  Tucker lay dead on the hallway floor.  The nurses said that they had heard the screaming.  After killing Tucker, the doctor seemed distant from the rest of the crowd.  Heather explained how Tucker had killed Lucy, and that he was trying to kill her, too.  Heather had assured everyone that she was fine, and that it felt good to be out of the clutches of death.

THE END