I keep trying to run but the tiles are tricky.
The linoleum floors in my secluded wing of the hospital were freshly waxed and I had no shoes. Bare feet on the speckled tiles wouldn’t be a problem for a normal person, but I wouldn’t be in the hospital if I were normal. Even though it was late at night and my ward was sparsely staffed for the late shift, every light in the hallway was on. Huge white rectangles reflected off of the tiles, making my head ache. I had been having headaches for the last couple of days. The headaches weren’t why I was here, though. They were just a lovely new addition to my troubles. I slapped my left hand against the white wall to steady myself. My own breathing was the only sound I could hear besides the fans in the ventilators that seemed to never stop running. The dry, sterile air would dehydrate anyone else. Not me. I never seemed to get dehydrated.
Cautiously, I took a step forward. My foot made a wet plopping noise as I brought it off the floor. My hand stuck to the wall as I steadied myself, my foot squishing down on the floor. I had no shoes or socks. Doctor Thumbsucker decided it was “a waste of hospital resources” to continue giving me fresh socks, or even the little blue footies I saw orderlies and nurses wearing when they came in to check my tubes. Barefoot, I took another step with more confidence. As long as I concentrated on what I was doing I could make progress. One foot in front of the other, just a few feet at a time, edging down the hallway. The tile was cold on my feet but I was sweating.
Maybe sweating isn’t the right word for it. It wasn’t leaking, not really. I didn’t want to contain it, I guess, but I didn’t like it happening. Oozing was more like it. That’s why I’m here - I ooze. You get hot or uncomfortable or nervous, you sweat. It’s normal. It’s what your body does as part of its natural course. I don’t sweat like that.
I ooze.
They don’t really know what it is. The docs in masks run all kinds of tests on me, but I don’t think they have any idea what’s coming out of my skin these days. It looks like clear jelly, like someone spilled Vaseline on me, except it’s coming from inside me. Coming out through my skin. At least it doesn’t smell. At least, they tell me it doesn’t. You can never smell your own stink, right? You can kind of get a sense of it when it’s bad, but generally you’re immune to your own funk. Anyway, if it does smell, they haven’t told me.
I just ruins everything. If I get too warm at night I get my goo all over my bed sheets. If I work up a sweat in any way, my clothes are a goner. I’m cold all the time, but I’ve just taken to wearing hospital gowns all the time, two at a time. One the normal way, tied in the back. The second one is flipped around like a robe. You get pretty good at tying them without paying attention to it. Still, I have to change gowns a couple times a day if I exert myself too much, or get too upset. I start sweating and oozing and my gowns get all nasty sticky and they cling to me and bunch up in all the wrong spots and it drives me crazy. So I have to keep changing gowns through the day.
But I’m tired of living in this hospital. I’ve tried to sneak out but it never works like I want it to. There are always gooey footprints. I can’t run on the tiles. I worry if I get going too fast I could slip and crack my skull on the floor. No shoes, no running. If I had my shoes back I could tie ‘em super tight and sneak out of here, get back to being a human being and not a quarantine case. I’m tired of the poking and scraping and sample jars and syringes. I want out.
I don’t get to exercise much, and there’s not a lot to fill my day, so I don’t fall asleep easily. That’s all secondary, though, to the fact that I can’t comfortably sleep more than a couple hours before I jam my bed up into a nasty funk. You try sleeping in gooey sheets and see if you can get a full night’s sleep, okay? So I stay up late. I’ve gotten a sense of the night shift’s schedule, the ins and outs, when the cleaning crews make their rounds. I think I might be one of the only patients on my floor. It’s lightly staffed for a hospital, let alone for a freak like me being here.
One gooey foot in front of the other, I continue my persistent escape. Keeping my breathing steady, I focus on keeping my cool. No excitement, no sweat, I tell myself. As I come to a T in the hallway I slow my steps to listen for another person. I cock my good ear to the open hallways and listen. No sound but the vents humming away. I take the pillowcase I brought with me and wipe my feet free of jelly and turn left. I’ve been down this hallway before. I’ve seen where the cameras are and I know where the nurses station is. Providing Carolyn is engrossed in her sudoku like she normally is, I should be able to crawl past her desk without anyone noticing. From there it’s a couple elevators and hallways to the street. I don’t know much about the hospital grounds or even where I am beyond these white walls. I never made it farther than the parking ramp. All I know is I’m in the Seattle area. The few times I’ve been able to watch TV since I’ve been here, I’ve seen ads for the local news team broadcasting in Seattle.
That freaked me out the first time I saw it - I don’t live in Seattle. Rather, I didn’t live in Seattle. I lived in northern California before they brought me here. I don’t know why they brought me here, they don’t seem to have any experts in jellies or jams or circus freaks like me - the staff all seemed unsure of what to do with me. I wouldn’t know where to go if I got out, but I want out anyway.
A door clicks open behind me and my heart sinks into my stomach. I forgot about Darrell.
“You know you shouldn’t be out here” he says with a touch of reluctance in his voice.
My shoulders slump and I think about running anyway. I don’t think he wants to have to detain me. I must feel as gross to him as I feel to myself. Exhaling the breath I had been holding, I stand. I don’t face him right away. I keep looking ahead at the wall.
“Come on, don’t make me get Dr. Thumbsucker,” he asks. His voice is low but stern, despite the persisting reluctance.
Grinning to myself I ask “Does he know you call him that, too?” I turn and see the bear of a man in his white uniform. He’s almost seven feet and thick like a refrigerator.
His heavy cheek rises in a grin and answers “Hell no, man. I don’t wanna cross him, do you? Come on, let’s get back and I’ll ask the cleaning crew not to snitch about your footprints.” I lean past him to see clear jelly tracks on the floor. My feet, no question about it.
I chew my lip.“Alright. But I don’t think you’d be able to hold me down if you had to.”
We walked back the way I came.
“I wouldn’t want to, doesn’t mean I can’t” he said. Darrell had a ring of keys on his belt that jingled the beat of his steps, ringing with his hips shifting as he walked behind me. “You ever do that game in the summer where you grease up a watermelon and throw it in a pool, see who can snatch it away from everyone?”
“So you could eat it?” I teased.
He scoffed. “Nah, I hate watermelon. I kicked ass at that game, though. You wouldn’t stand a chance.”
We walked in silence back to my room. When we stood in front of my door, his card-key pressing against the sensor, watched him, observing how he was observing me observing him. He held the heavy air lock door open for me, motioning me in. I turned around as the door swung slowly shut with a light hiss.
“We’ll just have to see about that, won’t we?” I asked.
“Whatever, Jellyboy.”
I woke up in the middle of the night, covered in goo. Clear, cooling in the sterile air. Complaining to the empty room, I shuffled the sticky blankets off me and sat on the edge of my bed. It felt more like a gurney, but it was still a bed. I shook my head slowly to work the sleep out of it and hopped down to the cold floor. My bare feet slapped with sticky jelly on the tile.
Rubbing the greasy grime down my arms, I walked to the door and put my thumb on the intercom button. It was covered over with a soft, clear plastic to keep me from gumming up the works. Nothing happened. No click, no buzz.
“Hello?” I asked. The room was dead. No sound around me.
The fans had stopped.
It was darker than it should be, too. The lights that were always on, weren’t. Low running lights were on in their place, casting a yellowish tint to the room that made it look like sunset in August, despite the absence of windows. The transparent windows to the hallway showed the same running lights in the hallway. It was cold, despite the lack of circulating air.
I pressed the intercom button a couple times in a row, testing the system. There was no backup to the system, I guess. Above my right shoulder was a camera mounted in the wall. It didn’t look like the familiar security camera, the mini-production kind you always see on TV. This was the black ball, omnidirectional-threatening kind you see in a shopping mall. It was one of the first things that tipped me off about not being in a government center - they would’ve gone for a cheaper model. Or a guy. Dumb guy at a desk. That might be cheaper than this camera. They would take my vitals through it. Pulse, temp, liquidity level - which was how they referred to my condition on charts. Nah, Uncle Sam was too cheap and/or broke to shell out for that kind of tech. Private hospital, then.
“Hello? Guys?” I waved my hand back in forth in front of the camera. “Anyone working this morning? Am I alone in here?” My warped reflection moved closer in the reflection. “Hey!” I shouted. The skin slid up my ribs when I shouted. All I had on were hospital-issued disposable boxers, standard white. They clung to me with goo. I was getting cold. My feet slapped as I padded over to the short stack of gowns. I slid two on in my usual configuration and went back to the door.
Pressing my head against the glass, I tried my best to see down the corridor in either direction. All there was to see was more corridor. Whenever I left the room it was always to my right. From what I’d seen, I was the only room on the floor. It sure seemed that way, anyway.
