Room 801 | Teen Ink

Room 801

May 6, 2016
By JasonTodd BRONZE, Mount Sterling, Ohio, Ohio
JasonTodd BRONZE, Mount Sterling, Ohio, Ohio
1 article 0 photos 1 comment

          It happened at the worst possible time. We were heading to the airport, to go to Shanghai to visit my wife’s sister, when my wife, Alena, went into labor. We rushed to the nearest hospital in Central City and were quickly taken to room 801. Doctors are running frantically around like chickens with their heads cut off and Alena was screaming frantically, but still looked as beautiful as the goddess Aphrodite herself. But I swear, the woman sounded like a banshee and would not shut up. The long hours spent there were grueling and through the eleven hours of labor, the baby still hadn’t come, we could kiss Shanghai goodbye.
          The doctors seemed to know what they were doing, so I decided to go for a walk. Down the hallways, there are trails that line the floor. I decided to follow the path headed by a large blue arrow. While following the seemingly never-ending arrow, I pass the nursery and can’t help but to peer in at all the newborn children. Some were crying, some looked perfectly content. I stood for a moment and thought about how my life is going to change, hopefully for the better.
As I continue down my zippered path, it leads me to a waiting room full of people, no one seems to be paying attention to the TV on the wall but I notice it. The headline of the story was, ‘Caped Vigilante Strikes Again’. I’ve heard stories of a vigilante ‘criminal’ that’s been doing the police department’s job for them in a city a few hours away, it’s a pretty neat thing if you think about it. But I only glance at the TV for a few moments before I move on along the blue arrow path. The path then leads me outside to the garden area of the hospital. When I walk outside, the smell of fresh spring air hits me in the face. There are bright, blooming flowers all around. I peer across the street and am surprised to see my old friend Barbara entering a motel, but she was hesitant to open the hotel room, maybe scared of what may lie ahead of her. As a kid, Barbara and I went to school together, but she was forced to move out of state with her dad’s promotions. About three weeks ago I had bumped into her, she told me stories of how she's traveled all around the world, and how her dad is now the police commissioner of a city up north (I can’t remember the city’s name though), and now she permanently resides in that same city. So anyway, it was odd seeing her here.
          Only a short ten minutes after I return to my wife’s room from my walk, she starts to push. Doctors are rushing and Alena’s screaming. It made me think back to a few months ago when I was at the circus I worked at (which got shut down). I remembered back to when one of our performers, Ralph, fell to his death from the tightrope (that’s why the circus was shut down), all the screaming made me reminisce. Then, reality hit me like a swift smack in the face and I was back in the hospital room.
          Fifteen minutes later, the doctors brought me the child. My child. My wife gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, Logan. The doctors told me I needed to hold my baby in the lobby while they made sure my wife was all right. I held him for about 8-10 minutes in the lobby, when a nurse finally greeted me. I was anxious. She looked somber. She then gave me the news that my wife, Alena, had died shortly after giving birth. She said that the doctors did everything they could to save her, but she had passed away very unexpectedly. I was horrified, we’d only been married ten months. Now that I had a son, what I going to do? I walked into the haunting hospital room in tears, just as one of the doctors hurried out. The doctor was strangely in a hurry, I could only see his green matted hair sticking out of his little doctors cap. I blindly asked him what happened, but he paid no attention to me. I couldn’t see him very well due to the tears in my eyes, so I couldn't make out the details of his body very well. Then I walked the rest of the way into the room and I met her motionless body. But something was off. Her eyes were still open, and her face, something was different. She had an enormous unnatural grin on her face, something inside of me knew that her death wasn’t natural. The doctors looked as horrified as I did, they had no clue how she may have died. Things just didn’t make sense, I was so confused. But one thing inside me was clear, someone is behind this, and  my sole purpose now is to protect my son, and to avenge her death by finding the man responsible… 


The author's comments:

This story was somewhat inspired by the 'DC Comics' Universe, and from a dream I had one night.


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