Immobilized

Welcome to this sneak peek into Short Bites vol 2. Please note this is still a work in progress and may change before final publication.

With that, please enjoy . . . Immobilized.

 

 

There was a moment, an all-too-brief moment, when Bobby thought he could save himself. He and his father had boxed up most of his father’s wares, the plastic bins stacked on top of each other, when he pulled the display box off the shelves. Walking around the stack of bins, he was going to set it down on the table, but while the large display box blocked his vision, his foot found what his eyes had missed. He tripped over the lone plastic bin sitting on the floor. Stumbling, the large acrylic display box in his arms shifted his center of gravity forward. The more he tried to get his feet under him, the faster he went, which meant that when he inevitably fell, he hit the ground hard.

He held out the box in front of himself. Later, he would ask himself if that was a better plan. The acrylic box survived the impact, but would it have if he landed on top of it? In replaying the scene in his mind, he imagined different realities.

The box breaking his fall but crushing his fingers underneath.

The acrylic breaking under him, the shards slicing his face or even his jugular.

Breaking his nose against the unyielding clear acrylic.

But the version of reality that would haunt his dreams for weeks to come was the one he experienced. First, his left knee slammed hard against the floor. The convention hall was a thin layer of carpet covering a cement floor, as his knee learned on impact. He held out the display box in a vain effort to save it, meaning nothing broke his fall as his face fell onto the same hard floor. The display box he tried so hard to save hit the ground next, the top coming off and the contents spilling across the convention hall floor. For the first few moments, Bobby lay there, his body racked with pain. Then he lifted his head off the ground, only to see ruby-red droplets of blood hitting the carpet.

“Oh, no,” he moaned. “No, no, no.” As if chanting his denial could make his injuries reverse themselves.

His face and knee were numb from the shock of the impact, but he felt the blood pouring from his lip and dripping from his nose. He covered his mouth with his hand, trying to hold in his blood. The bone of his upper lip hurt. Did he break a bone? Or his nose?

“Bobby!” his dad called, rushing around the boxes and kneeling by him. “Bobby, are you...” He froze, then gently pulled Bobby’s hand back, looking at the bleeding lip. “Oh, wow, that’s going to need stitches, buddy. Hold on.”

Other vendors nearby came to Bobby’s aid as well, though many of them argued over what the best course of action was.

“Lay him on his back,” one said.

“No, he could choke on the blood,” said another.

Another came up with a chair. “Let's get him sitting up. Dude, can you move?”

His father came running up with one of the T-shirts from the boxes they had been packed in. He balled up the clean shirt and pressed it against Bobby’s lip. Bobby couldn’t express what that meant to him — that his father would part with one of his products for the sake of his son — but his gratitude was buried under pain and shock. The smell of new from the shirt, of fresh ink and starch, mixed with the salty copper smell of his blood. “Hold this here. I’m going to get help. Don’t worry, I’ll pack everything up.”

Packing up the booth was the last thing on Bobby’s mind. He couldn’t care less about his father’s side hustle, selling his self-published science fiction books at fairs and conventions like this one. Bobby caught a hint of guilt mixed in with the concern in his father’s eyes. Bobby would have loved to blame his father for this — it would have been so much easier — but the truth was, it was his fault. He was in such a hurry to pack out and get home that he had gotten careless.

A man in a convention center uniform walked over to Bobby and his father. “Hey, heard we had an accident. Can I see?” As Bobby pulled the T-shirt back, the convention center employee hissed and scrunched up his face. “Eww, yeah, I think that’s going to need stitches.” He guided Bobby’s hand back to his bleeding lip as he said, “Keep pressure on that. Can you tell me your name?”

“Bobby Kaplin,” he moaned, his voice muffled by the wadded-up shirt.

“Can you tell me where you are?” the convention center employee asked.

“SpaceCon,” Bobby said.

“Did you black out at any time?”

“No.” He kind of wished he did. Then he could have skipped some of this pain.

The convention center employee grabbed a radio from his belt. “Yes, we’re going to need an ambulance out here.”

The convention center employee stayed with Bobby and his father until the paramedics arrived, wheeling in the gurney with them. They checked Bobby’s lip — “Oh, yeah, that’s going to need stitches” — and asked him some of the same questions before helping him climb onto the gurney. His leg was sore and stiff, but it wasn’t bleeding everywhere like his face was. The paramedics raised the back of the gurney so Bobby was sitting upright. Once Bobby was situated, the paramedics strapped him onto the gurney.

His dad reached over and squeezed his hand. “I’ll be there as soon as I have this packed up.”

His dad looked back at the vendor booth, at the racks half-disassembled and the banners still needing to be taken down, and Bobby knew his father was contemplating letting it all go to stay with his boy. He squeezed his father’s hand back. “It’s okay, Dad. I’ll see you at the hospital once you’re done.”

Bobby’s father gave him a smile as the paramedics rolled him away. They replaced the t-shirt with an ice pack that Bobby held in place as they rolled him out of the convention, past the vendors packing up their booths and the cosplayers hanging out at the front of the convention center for their last pictures on Instagram and TikTok. Few looked at him, too busy with their own things. Bobby was surprised at how dark it was. It had been daylight when he was last outside. Being inside the convention hall all day, he hadn’t seen the sunset.

The gurney rose in the air, making him feel uneasy. He couldn’t see the ambulance behind him until they slid him inside it. He couldn’t see how the gurney’s wheels retracted while still being level with the ambulance bay, but he could hear the electric motors working underneath him.

“Are you eighteen, Bobby?” the paramedic asked him.

“Yeah?” It came out as a question because he wasn’t sure why the paramedic wanted to know his age. “Why?”

“Since you are eighteen, I can offer you medication if you need it,” the paramedic explained. “Otherwise, we’d need your parent here. Are you in pain?”

“Yeah,” Bobby moaned.

“I can give you a shot of Toradol,” the paramedic said. “It’s like super-aspirin. Non-narcotic. Would you like that?”

Bobby nodded. The paramedic grabbed the shot, wiped down his arm with a cold alcohol wipe, and jabbed the needle into his upper arm. Bobby wasn’t a big fan of needles, but compared to his other aches and pains, the shot was nothing.

“Did I break my nose?” Bobby asked.

“Let me look,” the paramedic said.

Bobby lowered his hand from his face. The paramedic very tenderly ran his fingers along the base of Bobby’s nose and his upper lip, pressing lightly as he went. Bobby smelled the latex of the gloves the paramedic wore.

“That hurt?” the paramedic asked as he pressed along Bobby’s upper lip like a blind man reading Braille.

“It’s really sore,” Bobby said.

The paramedic pulled his hands away. “I don’t think you did anything too bad to it. If it was broken, you’d be yelling if I did that.”

The ambulance ride was very short. They didn’t bother with the sirens, and they were still at the hospital within minutes. Then whatever magic they used to get the gurney up into the ambulance now worked in reverse, first with the gurney seemingly floating in the air as the electric motors whined to lower the wheels, followed by the brief period of sitting high in the air before the gurney lowered to a safer height. They wheeled him forward, glass doors sliding open as they approached. A guy with short-cut hair and Asian features caught up to them and walked with them. He wore a pale green scrub top and a badge with RN in huge letters on it. He talked with the paramedic as Bobby tried to take in his surroundings. The medical crew weren’t hurrying — if anything, they were strolling like they were on their way to a coffee break — but the halls and lights flew by faster than Bobby could make sense of.

They passed an open door down a long, dark hall. Bobby caught sight of — something, a silhouette filling the end of the hallway. He turned his head to try to make it out, but the gurney strode by without pausing. With the hall out of view, he relaxed back in the gurney. For the first time since he tripped, Bobby was thinking about something other than his bleeding lip. What had he just seen? He only caught a glimpse of — whatever it was. It couldn’t be what it looked like. It had to be some trick of light, something casting shadows to create the illusion that the... something... stood at the end of the hall. Whatever it was, it seemed... wrong. And, it seemed to be looking at him, its head following him as he passed.

Before he could make sense of it, the guy in the green scrub top said, “I’m Dennis. I’ll be your nurse today. Can you tell me your name?”

“Bobby Kaplin,” he repeated, raising an eyebrow. “Shouldn’t you know that?”

Dennis chuckled as he fastened a plastic bracelet onto Bobby’s wrist, his name and date of birth printed on it. “I’m making sure you know that. You had a fall. Sometimes it scrambles your brains. Did you hit your head when you went down?”

“Just my face,” Bobby said.

“Let’s take a look at that,” Dennis said. Bobby lowered the ice pack, and Dennis let out a whistle. “Yeah, that’s gonna need stitches.”

“So I keep hearing,” Bobby said as he placed the ice pack back on his split lip.

They rolled Bobby into a bright room, past one hospital bed and another that could have been fifty years old. The two beds were separated by a drawn curtain. The gurney’s wheels locked in place with a loud thunk, then lowered to the height of an average chair.

“Can you walk to the bed?” Dennis asked. As Bobby got up and limped to the side of the bed, Dennis added, “Your leg okay?”

“Yeah,” Bobby said. “Landed on it hard.”

His leg did throb, but he could bear weight on it just fine, so it couldn’t be too bad. As he slumped into the bed, Dennis hooked Bobby up to the machines bolted against the wall. He started by placing stickers on both sides of his chest, then connecting wires to them. Then he plugged in a white cuff that he wrapped around Bobby’s arm. Immediately, the machine on the wall started to beep, and the cuff inflated with a dull hum. Slowly, the cuff relaxed little by little, until the machine beeped again, and the last of the air rushed out of the cuff like a sigh.

“Pulse and blood pressure look good,” Dennis said as he taped yet another wire to Bobby’s finger. It glowed red. Dennis glanced at the monitor on the wall. “O2 sats are good.” He glanced back at Bobby. “Don’t worry, all this just lets me keep an eye on you from the nursing station.” He thumbed over his shoulder toward the open doorway to Bobby’s right. “The doctor will stop by and see you in a bit.”

Bobby lay back in the bed as Dennis left the room through a door to Bobby’s right, the way toward the nursing station. The paramedics rolled the gurney out of the room the way they came, through the doorway to the left. There was a thin curtain blocking his view, but it was the door they brought Bobby in from. Alone, Bobby held the icepack against his mouth. He had never been in a hospital room before. The overhead fluorescent lights gave off an electric buzz. There were things plugged into the wall that he couldn’t guess what they were for. Everything in the room seemed made of plastic or stainless steel, and everything smelled clean. All around the room were noises. There were people walking down the hall out of his view to his left, with the sound of wheels rolling on tile. To his right, he heard the clacking of keyboards and random ringing of alarms of some kind.

And then, from what sounded like above, the sound of scratching, like a large oak tree in the dead of winter, was scraping the hospital with its dry branches. Bobby had no reference, this being his first time in a hospital, but wasn’t he on the ground floor of a multi-story building? How would a tree be scratching at the roof? Then again, he had other things on his mind when they wheeled him in. Maybe he was wrong?

Bobby’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He fished it out to see a text from his father.

You okay?

Normally, he could kick out a text message in nothing flat, a fluent thumb-typist, but texting one-handed was a skill he hadn’t picked up yet. He felt hobbled, having to work to get out the short message: Doing fine. In bed. Waiting for dr.

The dots at the bottom of the messaging app dance — and danced — and danced. Bobby rolled his eyes. His father must be typing out a book. Finally, his father’s message shot out. Tell me what he says the moment he sees you. Almost finished packing out. Talked to the folks at the convention center, they say I can leave the truck here for now. I’ll grab an Uber and be over there in a few. Love you, son.

Love u 2 Bobby replied, then let the phone drop to his side. He leaned his head back and stared up at the ceiling. He thought about using the camera on his phone to look at his mangled face, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to see the damage. Gently, he probed the split with his tongue, tracing the chasm in his lower lip that ran down and to the left, the two edges feeling to his tongue as ragged as any cliff face. He pulled his tongue back in and pressed the ice pack back on the hole in his lip. No, he definitely did not want to look at it.

A sound from the next bed distracted him. The thin curtain blocked his view of the neighboring bed, hanging from a track in the ceiling. Was there someone there? He hadn’t noticed when they wheeled him in, but between the pain in his leg, the tear in his lip, and the — whatever he saw in the hall, he had been a bit distracted. Bobby strained his ears as he heard the sound again, like a tree branch cracking, followed by something banging against the plastic-encased metal of the bed’s siderail.

“You okay?” Bobby called out.

No one replied. Instead, he saw a ripple in the curtain, like someone on the other side was raking it with the end of a stick. The lights cast faint, indistinct shadows, but what he did see was long and thin.

And sharp.

“Do you need help?” Bobby asked, though he was starting to wonder if maybe he was the one who needed the help. The only sound from the other side was a kind of chittering, like teeth clicking together, and the scratching of branches. Bobby realized it was the same sound that came from above him... no, used to come from above him. It wasn’t there anymore.

It had moved in with him.

Bobby padded his bed, looking for the nurse's call button, but he couldn't find it. He spotted it hanging on the wall behind his right shoulder. Bobby swung his legs out of bed —

His left knee erupted, consuming every thought. His heartbeat thundered in his ears, drowning out all other noise. Bobby reached for his knee, only to find it had swelled up to the size of a cantaloupe, the skin pulled as tight as a drum. The barest graze of his fingertips sent searing pain through his knee, not from the surface, which was numb, but right under his skin. The strange juxtaposition of feelings made his heart thud in both pain and panic. The denim of his jeans was taut around his knee. Quickly, he kicked off his shoes and slid his pants off, afraid that if he didn’t do it now, they might need to cut them off later. Now in his boxers, he tossed the pants into a nearby chair and got a good look at his knee. There was no bruising, no discoloration, just an incredible amount of swelling.

When did this happen? He walked on this leg moments before. Why was it so messed up now? Getting to his feet, he found he could no longer put weight on the leg. When he tried, it sent lightning bolts of pain up and down his leg, and it was all Bobby could do to keep from screaming. Standing on his good leg, he reached out and grabbed the call button, then sat back down on the bed. Only, his left leg could no longer bend. Gravity tried to pull his foot to the floor, but his knee would not give. His chest heaved as he tried to swallow down his panic. His leg stayed stiff as a board, but the weight pulling down on his swollen, immobile knee caused an indescribable pain. Lifting it back into the bed caused even more pain, but some eased once it lay flat on the bed again.

“Dennis?” he yelled, his voice cracking. “Anyone?”

From next to him, the curtains rustled more. Bobby glanced over to see branch-like tips running against the fabric of the curtain, like a tree planted in the room, swaying to a wind only it could feel.

And the chittering was growing louder, like it was hungry.

“Mr. Kaplin?” came a voice from the doorway to Bobby’s right. He glanced up to see a man about his father’s age, with salt—and—pepper hair, walking toward him. “I hear you split your lip. Let’s have a look.”

“Are you the doctor?” Bobby asked as he lowered the ice pack from his lip.

“Mmhmmm,” he said as he studied Bobby’s lip. “Yeah, that’s definitely going to need stitches, at least.”

“At least?”

The doctor tilted his head from side to side, studying the split. “This may not be a simple laceration. I’m going to get a plastic surgeon to come in and we’ll see what he has to say.”

“Doc, my knee,” Bobby said.

He looked down at the knee, and one eyebrow shot up. “I take it this is new?”

“It like just happened. I walked in on it. Now it’s killing me.”

“You fell, right?”

Bobby nodded. “I landed hard on it. It hurt, but it wasn’t like this —”

The doctor pressed two fingers against the top of his foot. “Can you wiggle your toes?” As Bobby did, the doctor asked, “Any numbness in the foot?”

“No, it just really hurts.”

“Your foot?”

“My knee.”

The doctor nodded sagely. “I’ll order something for the pain, then we’ll get a good look at that knee.”

As the doctor turned to leave, Bobby shouted, “Sir? Wait. The guy in the next bed, I think he needs help or something.  I thought I heard him like moaning or something.”

The doctor stopped and cocked an eyebrow. Taking a few steps toward the curtain, he pulled it back to reveal an empty bed. “You’re alone, at least for now.”

“But I heard —”

“The ER is a very busy place,” the doctor said as he pulled the curtain back into place. “And it’s an old building. In fact, there’s quite a lot of renovations going on. Try not to worry about it. Just focus on getting better so we can get you home.”

The doctor left. Bobby lay as still as possible. Every movement with his leg, every shifting of his weight, felt like someone was stabbing him with red—hot knives. Unfortunately, his leg wanted to move on its own accord. Small spasms made the muscles under his swollen knee cause fresh stabs of pain. He tried to ignore it. Tried and failed. As he bled onto the ice pack, he wondered if another one for his knee would help. He rolled over to look for his call button, and that’s when his knee turned to broken glass, each shard grinding against the next.

Bobby pulled aside his blankets, and his eyes bulged in horror. The tips of long, thin, multijointed fingers came from under the curtain between the beds, the knuckles bending backwards in some places as the fingers snaked up and over the edge of his bed. They poked at Bobby’s leg, each touch of the gnarled fingertip caused another spasm, which in turn caused more stabbing pains. Each fingertip was worn to the bone, sharp from years of scratching and clawing, the skin around it crusted and scabbed over, some dripping with green pus.

"Get away from me!" Bobby's free hand swatted wildly at the branch-like appendages, but they moved with serpentine grace, coiling away from his desperate swipes only to dart back in from new angles. For every finger he knocked away, three more found their mark. His injured leg jerked involuntarily with each fresh assault, the movement sending fresh waves of agony coursing through his body.

The gnarled fingers multiplied, dozens of them now probing at his swollen knee with deliberate malice. Each touch sent lightning through his leg, making his muscles spasm uncontrollably.

"Stop!" Bobby shouted, his voice cracking with desperation. He twisted frantically, searching for the call button he'd used earlier. His fingers swept across the bed rail, finding nothing. Where was it? Bobby craned his neck, scanning the walls behind him. There! The call button dangled from its cord near the head of the bed, but it had slipped down behind the mattress, the white plastic barely visible in the gap between the bed and the wall. He stretched his arm back, his fingertips brushing the cord but unable to grasp it.

"Help!" he screamed toward the nursing station, his voice echoing off the sterile walls. "Somebody help me!"

The chittering grew more excited, hungrier, as if his cries were seasoning for the feast of pain. More fingers emerged from under the bed, some as thin as pencils, others thick as garden hoses, all ending in those bone-white tips that scraped against his skin like broken glass.

Bobby made one final desperate lunge for the call button, his shoulder protesting as he overextended. His fingers closed around empty air as the movement caused his knee to twist, sending such an explosion of pain through his body that his vision went white at the edges.

"What are you?" he gasped between ragged breaths, still swiping uselessly at the multiplying appendages. "Leave me alone!"

“Bobby?” Dennis called from the right-side door. He had some things in sealed plastic packaging in his hand. “You okay?”

“My leg!” he shouted, still trying to swat the fingers away.

Dennis leaned over to the bed, laying his fingers on Bobby’s thigh right above his swollen knee. “It’s spasming. That’s okay, I got something that should help with that.”

His gaze snapped to the gnarled fingers poking at his leg, then back at Dennis, and dread draped over him. He can’t see it?

Dennis held up the things in his hands. “I’m going to start an IV on you so we can get you some morphine for the pain. That should help.”

Bobby opened his mouth to speak, but he couldn't form any words. He nodded at Dennis, at the same time stifling screams of both pain and increasing terror. Dennis opened the plastic package and pulled out a rubber strip that he tied around Bobby’s right arm. “Ever have an IV Bobby?”

“No,” he said, his eyes darting between Dennis and the branch-like fingers reaching from under the bed. The fingers poking his leg and making it spasm. The fingers Dennis couldn’t see.

“I’ll insert a needle into your vein,” Dennis said. “There’s this plastic catheter on it. Once in the vein, I slip the needle out, leaving the catheter behind. Once that’s done, I tape it all down and can give you something to manage the pain, okay?”

Bobby swallowed hard and nodded as Dennis continued with his preparations. Bobby bit back his fear and his pain as the fingers kept prodding his leg, making the muscles twitch under his skin.

“Okay, you’re going to feel a bit of a sting,” Dennis said. “You can look away if you like.”

Bobby did look away, but not because he was afraid of the needle. He watched the fingers still prodding his leg. A sharp, pinpoint pain pierced the crook of his elbow, but compared to the pain in his leg, it was nothing. Bobby could feel the tape pressed against his arm.

“Okay, everything looks good,” Dennis said as he grabbed a syringe. “Now I’m going to give you a medication for nausea first, then the morphine.”

Bobby felt the cold fluid run through the vein in his arm, traveling under the surface of his skin. Then a weird sensation swept over him, a wave of numbness running from head to toe. His leg quit spasming, but his sigh of relief was drowned out by a noise from the other bed. From the other side of the curtain, the chittering shifted in tone. Was that disappointment? Bobby looked over to see the gnarled fingers retracting, almost shriveling.

“Better?” Dennis asked.

Bobby tried out the leg. Moving it still hurt worse than anything, but he found if he kept it perfectly still — and the morphine did quell the spasms — he could keep the pain away. “Better, as long as I don’t move my leg.”

“We’ll take a few pictures of your knee,” Dennis said, “and the plastic surgeon is on the way to take care of your lip.”

As Dennis stepped away, Bobby called out, “Wait!” He swallowed down his panic and tried again. “Sorry, but can you pull the curtain back?”

Dennis paused, cocking an eyebrow. He then walked over to the curtain dividing the room and pulled it back without any flurry or fanfare. The bed next to Bobby was still empty. No patient, no long fingers, no anything. Bobby wasn’t sure what he expected, but it wasn’t nothing. With the curtain pulled back, he can now see the other door leading out into the hall, the one they brought him in through. The hallway outside was dim — strange, considering the rest of the hospital gleamed under bright, sterile light. It was as if some unseen shadow had passed by, retreating down the corridor and allowing the light to slowly seep back in.

Once Dennis left, Bobby was all alone. Well, not really alone. He was alone in the room, but nurses and doctors were bustling outside his room to his right, out of sight but easily heard. Now with the curtain pulled back, he could see out the door to his left, where patients were being transported back and forth.

And somewhere, he was sure, was the creature with the long fingers.

He kept watch on both doors, but whatever the thing was that tormented him wasn’t returning. Alone, with nothing to do but hold his left leg still and the now-bloody icepack to his lip, he wondered what the thing was. What did it want? It went away when Dennis gave him the morphine and calmed his leg down. Was the thing getting off on his pain? Upset that the morphine took it away? Maybe it was his imagination, but it sounded disappointed when the pain subsided. Then again, maybe it was all in his imagination. Dennis didn’t see it. Maybe he did hit his head when he fell? Should he tell Dennis? Maybe it was a sign that something else was wrong with him.

From the doorway to his left, a guy rolled in a large machine. It hummed, electric motors helping the wheels on the machine roll, a large appendage at the end of an articulated arm. Everything on the machine was encased in white, thick plastic.

“Bobby Kaplin?” the guy pushing the machine asked. When Bobby nodded, he checked something on the computer. “Yes, I’m here to take X-rays of your knee.”

The X-ray technician pulled a large square plate from the machine. As gently as he could, he slid it under Bobby’s knee, but even with the morphine in his veins, the minuscule movements of his knee sent pain rocketing through his leg. He gritted his teeth, trying to keep from yelling out. The X-ray technician pulled the arm, aiming the cylinder at the end like a cannon at his knee. As he stepped back to the computer running the machine, the ER doctor re-entered the room from the right and joined the technician at the portable X-ray machine.

The X-ray machine made odd noises as the technician ran the controls, but the sound of something skittering from about his head was more concerning. Did the place have rats?

The X-ray technician pointed out something on the screen to the doctor. “Nothing but fluid.”

The doctor nodded, then looked at Bobby. “Good news. Nothing is broken. There’s a huge hematoma.”

“A what?” Bobby grimaced as the technician slid the plate back from under him.

“It’s basically like a big bruise,” the doctor said. “In this case, it’s really big. All that bleeding is trapped and has nowhere to go, so all that pressure is what’s causing your pain.”

“I’m bleeding?” Bobby asked. “Like, inside? Like a water balloon?”

“More like a sponge. Otherwise, we could drain it, relieve that pressure.” The doctor then pivoted to the technician. “Let’s get a CT scan.” He then turned his attention back to Bobby. “It’s probably what we call soft tissue injury, but we’re going to run another test just in case.”

“In case of what?”

The doctor walked to Bobby’s side. “I don’t want to worry you. Like I said, it looks like you bruised it all the way to the bone. It hurts, but it's not life-threatening, and in time it will heal.”

“But?”

“But there is a chance you ruptured a major blood vessel,” the doctor said. “In which case, we might need to surgically repair it. Now, I don’t think that’s the case, but we have to check to be safe. In the meantime, I’ll have Dennis get an ice pack to try to get the swelling under control. Don’t worry. You’re going to be just fine.”

“Okay,” Bobby said, not entirely convinced he would be fine, and not just because the doctor put the idea of a ruptured artery pumping blood into his knee like a garden hose with a hole in it. There was still the thing with the multi-jointed fingers. The thing apparently only he could see.

Bobby sank into the bed. None of this would have happened if his dad hadn’t dragged him to that stupid sci-fi convention. He didn’t blame his dad when the accident happened, but now that he was lying there, the pain increasing with the swelling in his knee, he was growing more bitter. Deep down inside, he really blamed himself. It was his not looking where he was going that caused him to trip over that plastic bin, but he wouldn’t have even been there if not for his father. Why did it have to cost him his weekends so his father could hawk his sci-fi books to a room full of strangers dressed up in cosplay? Let his father have his midlife crisis, but why did he have to be dragged into it? Now he had to pay for his dad’s struggling writing career with his blood.

And with that creature around, possibly his life.

Before long, Dennis came in with another ice pack. He placed it on Bobby’s knee like he was laying explosives. The cold shot daggers into his leg, which prompted Dennis to feed him another dose of morphine. Bobby gripped the bedsheets, as if the pain would shoot him through the roof if he didn’t hold tight. With an icepack on his lip and another on his knee, Bobby started to shiver, which caused his knee to scream in a pain that even the morphine couldn’t keep at bay.

“I’ll go get you a blanket,” Dennis said. “Hold tight.”

As he vanished through the right side, Bobby heard clacking from out in the hall to his left. He gripped the guardrail, the plastic casing creaking. Like the tips of tree branches, the bony fingers of the thing crept around the edge of the doorframe. Way too many fingers, with way too many knuckles. They wavered in the air, like they were sniffing for something.

Sniffing out Bobby’s pain.

“Dennis?” Bobby called out, trying to keep the panic out of his voice, his eyes locked on the fingers slipping into the room. Every time one of the gnarled knuckles bent, it snapped like it was overcoming years of rigor mortis. What scared Bobby more was not knowing what all those fingers were connected to.

Dennis strolled into the room with a bundled blanket. “Here you go.”

The tan blanket may have been thin, but it was very warm. As Dennis draped the blanket over him, the chills were immediately chased away, and with them the shivers that aggravated his knee. As his leg stilled and the pain eased, the fingers wilted back past the doorframe and out of sight.

“Better?” Dennis asked.

“Yeah,” Bobby said. Though the fingers were gone, he wouldn’t pull his glare from the left doorframe.

Dennis followed Bobby’s gaze out the door and out the hall, then glanced back at Bobby. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, I just —” He wasn’t sure what he could say without sounding insane. “I thought I saw something.”

Dennis walked to the door and stuck his head into the hall, then stood against the doorframe and shrugged. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

The moment Dennis stepped away from the door, Bobby saw the thing that had been standing behind the nurse. It was leaning around the doorframe, there for a mere moment before vanishing back down the hall, but the brief glimpse Bobby got turned his blood to ice. It had long, thin strands of gray hair, its pale skin easily seen under it. From what Bobby could tell from the top half of its torso, it was nude, its body a twisted mass of wrinkles and creases, but that wasn’t the detail that was seared into Bobby’s mind.

The thing had no eyes.

For that brief moment before it drifted out of sight, Bobby felt it was staring right at him, but where the monster’s eyes should be was a wrinkled and vein-covered expanse of flat skin. There wasn’t even the bulge of an eye under it, like a closed eyelid covering a cornea. There was just — nothing. Yet those missing sockets aimed right at him as the thing slid out of sight.

Dennis wasn’t out of the room for more than a minute before another man entered the room with a stretcher. He wore the same off-green scrubs as Dennis, but he wore a short white lab coat over them. He walked over and checked the plastic bracelet on Bobby’s wrist. “Bobby Kaplin?”

“Yes?”

“I’m here to take you to radiology.”

“Radiology?”

The man dropped one side of the stretcher, then dropped the guardrails on the opposite side of Bobby’s bed. Then he wheeled the stretcher next to Bobby’s bed, as if trying to extend it. “Going to take a CT of your knee. You need help sliding onto the stretcher?”

Bobby thought for a moment, then shook his head. Moving his leg was going to hurt either way, but he calculated that he could minimize it more than anyone else. He dropped his hand from his split lip and, with the ice pack in his grip, he pushed himself over an inch at a time. His knee screamed — no, it shrieked — as he did everything he could to keep the knee from bending while he slid over to the stretcher, panting and sweating, his jaw clenched as he choked down his cries of pain. The man who brought in the stretcher helped, sliding the pillow along with his leg. Once in the stretcher, he collapsed against the thin mattress and prayed his knee would calm down quickly.

“All set?” the man in the lab coat asked. Then his gaze was drawn to the split lip. “Oh, wow, that’s going to need stitches.”

“You don’t say?” Bobby said through clenched teeth as he brought the ice pack back to his lip.

The man pulled the stretcher away from the bed, then lifted the siderail up into place before taking Bobby out of the room through the left-side door. He took Bobby through a maze of corridors that would have gotten him lost on a good day, but with the dimness of night and the distraction of his searing pain, there was no chance of knowing his place along the labyrinth of hospital corridors. Before long, Bobby was parked outside an open door that spilled bright fluorescent light out into the dark corridor. In front of him were drapes of plastic blocking off the rest of the hall. On the other side, dim work lamps highlighted sawhorses and tools, walls ripped open with the pipes and tubes and wires all strewn about like the entrails of a deer after it fell prey to a pack of wolves.

“Don’t let all that bother you,” the man said. “That wing is being renovated.”

“Why did they keep this part open then?” Bobby asked.

“You have any idea how heavy a CT scanner is?” the man in the lab coat asked. “Let alone the power requirements? Nope, afraid the scanner stays here, and the renovations will have to happen around it.”

To Bobby’s surprise, the man stepped away, leaving Bobby alone in the dark hall. He craned his neck as much as he could without moving his leg, threads of pain warning him to stall immobile. “Wha … you’re leaving me out here?”

“You’re a big boy,” the man said. “You’re not afraid of the dark, are you?”

The dimly lit corridor stretched beyond the plastic tarps. No, he had something far more terrifying to be frightened of.

“It’ll be just a minute,” the man said, then disappeared through the doorway. In the dimness of the hallway, the lit room beyond made the doorway glow like the entrance to Heaven. Bobby lay back, trying to relax, trying to ignore that his lower lip was split into two, trying to keep his leg from twitching and sending bolts of unbearable pain shooting through his body.

Dad’s stupid sci-fi books are going to get me killed, Bobby thought. First, it killed his weekends, taking him away from his friends. Then it split his face open and messed up his leg. And if that wasn’t bad enough, there was some … thing roaming the halls of this creepy hospital. He was in pain, bleeding, scared, and it was all his father’s fault.

The plastic tarps draping the corridor ahead fluttered. Bobby seized, looking ahead. Work lamps threw harsh circles of light against gutted walls, creating a maze of brightness and impenetrable darkness. The tarps fell back into place, but what ruffled them? The wind? Inside? Maybe an air conditioning vent?

From somewhere deep in the renovation zone came the sound of scratching, like fingernails dragging across drywall. Then silence.

Bobby strained to listen, but all he could hear was the electric hum of the CT scanner behind him and the distant murmur of voices from the radiology department. The scratching came again, closer this time, accompanied by the soft patter of footsteps on debris-covered floor.

"Hello?" Bobby called out, his voice cracking. "Is someone there?"

The footsteps stopped.

Bobby stared through the layers of translucent tarps. Was something at the other end of the hall? He peered, trying to make it out. In the work light's glare at the far end of the corridor, a shadow detached itself from the wall. Could it be a construction worker? Another nurse or radiologist? No, the silhouette was wrong — too tall, too thin, moving with an unnatural fluidity that made Bobby's skin crawl.

The figure stepped into the light, and Bobby's breath caught in his throat.

The thing’s body was emaciated, ribs visible through translucent skin that hung in loose folds. Those impossibly long fingers — dozens of them — draped from its shoulders, a cloak of fingers where arms should be, each digit moving independently like the legs of a millipede. Its eyeless gaze bore into him with an intelligence that was both ancient and hungry. The creature's mouth hung open, revealing teeth that had grown too long, pushing past cracked lips in a permanent grimace of suffering.

It drifted toward him.

Bobby couldn’t see any legs, the creature floating on a curtain of infinite fingers with infinite digits. The fingers all snaked toward Bobby, each knuckle jerking and popping as if fighting rigor mortis. The closer it got, the more Bobby could hear it — not breathing, but a constant low wheeze, like air escaping from a punctured lung.

Bobby tried to move, to roll off the stretcher, to do anything, but his knee locked up completely. The pain was so intense that spots danced in his vision. He threw his head back, his screams of pain escaping his clenched teeth in a hiss, but he dared not take his eyes off the thing. He was trapped, helpless, a feast laid out for this nightmare.

"Please," he whispered, though he wasn't sure what he was pleading for.

The creature's head tilted at an impossible angle, as if puzzling out what it heard. Bobby couldn’t believe it was the first time the thing had heard a plea for mercy, and he couldn’t imagine it ever granting it.

It got closer, pushing through another layer of plastic tarps. Now Bobby could smell it — the sour stench of infection, of wounds that had never healed. The creature's breathing grew more excited, that wheeze becoming almost rhythmic, like laughter. Its fingers extended toward Bobby's knee. They hovered just inches from his swollen knee, and Bobby could feel the cold radiating from them. The bone tips gently raked over the swelling, caressing the mound of fluid building up between the bone and skin, sending shocks of agony up his leg and through his whole body.

"Bobby?" a voice called from the radiology department. "We're ready for you."

The creature's head snapped toward the sound, and it hissed — a sound like steam escaping from a broken pipe. It looked back at Bobby once more, those missing eyes somehow conveying a promise, then melted backward into the shadows as if it had never been there at all.

The man in the lab coat emerged from the bright doorway, clipboard in hand, completely oblivious to what had just transpired.

"Sorry about the wait," he said cheerfully, beginning to wheel Bobby's stretcher toward the scanner room. "Let's get this taken care of."

But as he wheeled him into the bright scanner room, Bobby caught a glimpse in the reflection of the glass observation window. The creature was following them, staying just outside the pool of light, its fingers already reaching toward the door they'd just passed through.

Another technician, a woman, waited for Bobby as the other one rolled the stretcher by the CT scanner. The scanner dominated the small room, the large, white donut-shaped machine with a thin table sticking out of it like a tongue, looking like the mouth of a screaming seraphim. The machine hummed with power, giving him the impression that the electronics struggled to contain it all, that it was on the verge of exploding in a ball of electrically charged plasma at any moment. As the two technicians rolled the stretcher parallel to the table of the CT scanner, they lowered the inner guardrail.

“Do you need help transferring over?” the female technician asked.

The thought of anyone besides him moving his tinderbox of a knee caused him a sense of dread second only to the one he felt over the thing hovering outside the room. Trying to keep his leg as stiff as possible, he shifted his body over little by little, the technicians sliding the pillow under his knee along with him. Each scoot came with a howl of pain he choked down. The thin pad on the CT’s table did little to cushion the hard surface underneath. Bobby collapsed onto the table, his shirt soaked in sweat, breathing hard, and his eyes watering.

“You okay, Bobby?” the female technician asked.

Bobby swallowed hard and nodded, the pain in his knee evaporating like a mud puddle on a summer afternoon. His breathing slowed. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Well, you don’t need to move anymore,” the female technician said.

Bobby bent his neck to see the gap from where he was to where he needed to be.

“Don’t worry, we’ll handle it,” she said. “All you need to do is lie perfectly still. Don’t move. We’ll do the rest.”

The technicians rolled the stretcher out of the room, then disappeared behind a wall of leaded glass. The table Bobby lay on began to slide towards the giant white ring, stopping when his knee was within the ring’s thickness.

“Okay, just hold still,” the female technician’s voice came from over an intercom. “This will take just a few minutes.”

Holding still was a challenge as he fought against the spasms that were threatening to return, the morphine wearing off. The large ring let out a deep, loud, repetitive Thunk Thunk Thunk as it did … whatever the machine did. As he lay there helpless, he wondered what it was about the room that kept the creature at bay. It couldn’t be the light. It had no problems probing into his well-lit room in the ER. The other people? No one else seemed to be able to see it, and while it lurked in the dark corridors, it wasn’t hesitant to snake its infinitely long fingers toward him in his room while the doctors and nurses were around. The machine?

Bobby cocked an eyebrow at that thought. While lying as still as a statue, his eyes scanned the machine that was, ironically, scanning his knee. The thing was absent when the portable X-ray machine was in his room as well. He thought it had been because his pain had subsided, but maybe it was because it didn’t like the X-rays?

The machine fell silent, and the table slid on its own back out of the giant white donut. The technicians came around from behind their shield and headed over to Bobby. The male technician grabbed the stretcher and rolled it over beside the exam table as the female technician stepped to the other side. “Alright, we’re all done. Why don’t we help you get back over?”

Bobby looked from the stretcher to the technician. “I can —”

But the two technicians didn’t wait for Bobby to finish. They each grabbed the sheet, the male tech leaning over to reach. Simultaneously, in one well-practiced move, they lifted Bobby an inch into the air and pulled him onto the stretcher. The whole motion took a second, but it was enough to make his swollen knee explode in pain, throbbing with the rhythm of a second heartbeat.

Over the grunt of pain, he heard the hungry fingers of the thing running along the outside of the doorframe.

“I’ll take you back to your room now,” the male tech said. The stretcher rolled toward the door.

“Wait!” Bobby shouted. The stretcher halted, and Bobby’s mind raced for any excuse to stall his leaving the safety of the room. “Um, the CT scanner. It’s like magnets or something?”

“That’s an MRI machine,” the tech said. “CT scanner is like an advanced X-ray.”

“X-rays?” Bobby asked. “So, like, how long do the X-rays last after you’ve been exposed?”

Bobby’s brief hope that the CT scan had somehow inoculated him against the creature was quickly dashed as the male tech said, “Oh, they’re already gone. X-ray particles are small, they pass right through you, they don’t stick around.”

The stretcher moved again toward the door. They wheeled him past the control room on the other side of the leaded glass. Bobby looked for a big “on” button, thinking he could slap it as he rolled by and try to chase the monster off, but all he saw were computer consoles far out of reach. As he was rolled through the door, he lay as still as he could as he fought the spasms in his knee, trying to keep the pain at bay. He stared up at the ceiling while passing through the doorway, and he saw the myriad fingers probing blindly for him. As long as he didn’t move and wasn’t in pain, the fingers seemed to slide around randomly, without direction.

The stretcher turned, and the corner bumped the edge of the door frame. The vibrations shook his leg, causing fresh waves of pain. He clenched his jaw tight, refusing to make a sound, which somehow made the pain worse, as if the pain escaped his body through his cries.

The fingers froze, then the tips turned toward Bobby like the heads of a hydra. Bobby willed his pain to go away, chanting in his head There is no pain, there is no pain, there is no pain.

The fingers snaked their way toward Bobby, but as his pain ebbed, the fingers lost direction. Their movements became less focused and more random.

It’s searching for me, Bobby thought. It sees pain the way my eyes see light. If I’m not in pain, it’s blind.

But the monster knew Bobby was here. It had “seen” Bobby, though it lost him when his pain was under control. Still, he had to be somewhere. The more he kept his pain under control, the better the odds that the creature would lose him. He just prayed the technician wouldn’t bump the stretcher again. The fingers swam all around him. Bobby winced as one large, bony finger narrowly missed his knee. As he was rolled down the hallway, the appendages melted back into shadow until they were all gone.

I did it, he thought. I ditched it.

For now.

And then the technician wheeled him into his ER room, and dread gripped him. He had to transfer back to his bed, and that meant moving his leg.

It will find me again, he thought.

Glancing around, he saw Dennis coming in from the other door. He lowered the side rail to Bobby’s bed, then moved to the other side. The tech rolled him between the two beds. The second bed was now occupied, a new patient arriving while Bobby was down at the CT scanner, but he was overwhelmed with his own issues to pay him much attention. His bed welcomed him back, the side near him open like a waiting embrace. Dennis stood there, waiting to pull Bobby over the way the two technicians had moved him to the stretcher.

“Can I have more pain meds?” Bobby asked quickly. “Before you move me?”

Dennis nodded. “Sure. Give me a second.”

As Dennis left the room and the technician relaxed, Bobby took in his new roommate. He was about his age — maybe a bit older, judging by the stubble on his face — and gripping his stomach. Specifically, the lower right side. He let out a soft moan, and Bobby felt his whole body chill like he was just placed into a freezer. His roommate rolled his head toward Bobby, taking him in for the first time.

“Hey,” Bobby said.

His roommate gave a weak nod of his head toward his split lip. “That’ll need stitches.”

“You okay?”

His roommate grimaced. “Stomach.”

Dennis came in with two more needleless syringes. He plugged one into the port of Bobby’s IV tubing and injected the pain med into him, followed by a flush from the second. Bobby felt the now-familiar numbing running from his head to his toes, his knee calming down. Tension Bobby didn’t realize he was carrying in his shoulders melted away.

“Hey,” his roommate said with a strained voice. “Can I get some of that?”

“As soon as we get orders from the doctor,” Dennis said as he tossed the empty syringes in a red plastic box on the wall. Walking back to Bobby, he asked, “You ready?”

Bobby nodded, and he braced himself. The technician grabbed one side of the sheets under him, and Dennis grabbed the other. Dennis counted down, then, in unison, the technician and Dennis lifted Bobby an inch in the air. He held his leg as still as possible as he was hoisted from the stretcher to his bed. The fresh injection of morphine deadened the pain in his knee somewhat, but the stabbing pain was more than the narcotic could overpower. Bobby pinched his eyes closed, willing the pain to go away.

From out in the hall, he heard the fingers sliding along the walls, looking for him.

As the technician wheeled the stretcher out, an elderly Asian man with a white lab coat walked in and headed over to Bobby. “Mr. Kaplin? I’m Doctor Ho, I’m the plastic surgeon — Oh, my, yes. Looks like I definitely have the right patient. That lip needs to be sewn up. Mind if I take a look?”

Bobby nodded, not sure what else needed to be seen besides his lip ripped in half. The doctor grabbed some latex gloves from a box hanging on a dispenser on the wall and pulled them on. As gently as if Bobby’s lip was the broken wing of a baby bird, he pulled the flap back and stared into the gaping hole that was what was left of his lower lip. Seeing whatever he needed to see, he stood up, pulled off the gloves that were now speckled with Bobby’s blood on the fingertips, and looked back over his shoulder. Dennis was standing there waiting. Dr. Ho said, “I’ll need a suture tray set up in here.”

Dennis nodded and left the room. Dr. Ho pulled back the curtain separating the room, leaving his roommate to his own issues. Bright lights were turned on and shone into Bobby’s face, forcing him to squint and look away. Dennis came back in with a white square of neatly-folded paper towels encased in plastic. He ripped open the plastic and gently peeled back the thick paper, as if it were the petals of a rose, revealing more folded paper on top of a plastic tray. Dr. Ho reached over and grabbed the paper, dropping it onto the table and unfolding it in a well-rehearsed way, barely looking as he opened it up, then donned the gloves within. He then reached into the plastic tray and pulled what looked to Bobby like the ear-piercing guns they used at the mall.

“This will numb you up,” he explained. “You’ll feel a small pinch at first.”

Bobby held still, waiting for the pain. The injection didn’t hurt nearly as badly as he feared, and as the numbing medicine did its job, the doctor injected him again at the edge of his feeling. The doctor continued like that, using the numbing from the last shot to mask the prick of the next injection, the dispenser letting out a click each time. When the doctor was done, Bobby’s lip was so numb, he was afraid he’d bite it off and never know it.

“Just lie back and try to relax,” the doctor said. “You shouldn’t feel any pain. If you do, raise your hand and I’ll give you more lidocaine, okay?”

Bobby nodded, and the doctor went to work. True to his word, Bobby felt no pain, but that didn’t mean the experience was comfortable. He could feel the needle pushing against his lip, the skin giving way as it poked through to the other side, felt the tugging of the thread as the surgeon pulled the two sides of his lip back together. Bobby could do nothing but lie there and endure the painless yet creepy sensation, so he zoned out, disassociating himself with his body. It was the closest he had to sleep, so he let his consciousness float away like a balloon tethered to his wrist, bobbing away but never going very far. He let himself float off, away from his swollen knee and his split lip, away from his pain, his father dragging him to these conventions, and far, far away from the finger-monster coming for his pain. Time became fluid. He could have been there for minutes or hours. He couldn’t tell. He didn’t care.

Then, it was over. “All done,” the doctor announced.

Bobby opened his eyes as the bright light was pulled out of his face. He reached up to feel his face, but the doctor caught his hand.

“Try not to touch it and keep it dry for a few days,” the doctor said. “I’ll prescribe an antibiotic mouth rinse to help fend off any infection. Come see me at my office in ten days so I can remove the stitches and see how you’re healing, okay?”

“Can I see?” Bobby asked.

“I’ll see if the nurse can find you a mirror,” the doctor said, “but you look good. Some of my best work.”

He gave Bobby what he was sure was meant to be a reassuring smile, but with his lip feeling three times its normal size and still completely numb, it would take more than that to convince Bobby he was okay. The doctor left the room, dropping off the needle in a plastic box by the door, but leaving most of the suture tray on the table for someone else to dispose of. Before long, Dennis walked in with a metal mirror.

“Heard you got all stitched up.” He handed Bobby the mirror with a smile. “Take a look.”

Bobby was a little scared to see what he now looked like, but he held up the mirror. His lip was in one piece now, but seeing a mouth full of stitches, he realized for the first time how much damage he had done. The stitches not only ran down left of center of his lip, but also down and underneath for half of the length of his lip from left to right. He reached up and, careful not to touch the fresh wound, felt the stiff sutures sticking out. He could make out the tiny knots the doctor had tied to hold the two pieces of his lip together, but judging by all the tugging and pulling he felt during the procedure, he thought there might be more inside his lip that he couldn’t see. His upper lip felt swollen, but it looked fine — until he flipped it up. The underside was a dark shade of purple that covered his entire upper lip. His teeth didn’t feel loose, but the bone they grew out of was tender. Every movement of his mouth made it hurt more.

He lay as still as possible, afraid any movement would set his knee ablaze again, like his bed was full of tripwires. He was scared of the pain, but more scared that the pain would summon the finger-monster toward him. Over the noises of the ER, he thought he could hear those fingers blindly running along the walls in search of more pain. What did it want? It sensed pain, was attracted to it, but what did it want from it? The only other thing he knew was that it didn’t like the radiation. It left him alone in the CT scanner, and when he got the portable X-ray. He still wasn’t sure how he could use that, and it also didn’t address the biggest question. Why was he the only one who could see it? Did the accident do something to him? He couldn’t imagine so, but then what was it? Why was he special?

From the other side of the curtain, his neighbor moaned. Bobby called out, “Hey, you okay?”

“My stomach,” his roommate moaned.

Dennis walked around Bobby’s bed and pulled the curtain back.

Bobby’s roommate was cocooned in those multi-jointed fingers.

They reached from beyond the doorframe like vines, intertwining over each other as they encompassed the guy in the bed.

“Okay, hold on, I’ll get the doctor to order you something for the pain,” Dennis said. He walked briskly out of the room toward the nurses' station, but if he could see what Bobby did, he would have run. Bobby could do nothing but lie there watching as it poked at his roommate with those raw, exposed, bony tips at the lower corner of his stomach. It was almost like it was trying to dig into him. Bobby wanted to help, but he didn’t know what to do. He was also afraid the thing would reach out to him if he so much as twitched.

As his roommate writhed in pain, the fingers pulled like it was yanking weeds from the ground. A faint blue wisp was pulled out, only to try to retreat back into him. The fingers grabbed the wisp before it could vanish, tugging it further out of the body. The guy screamed in pain as the fingers worked the blue essence from his stomach.

What is that? Bobby wondered. His soul or life-essence or something?

Whatever it was, the thing wanted it badly. Like a bird pulling a worm from a hole in the ground, the fingers worked with practiced adeptness. Dennis came back in with a different doctor than the one Bobby met. He pressed his hand on his roommate’s stomach, then released. The patient screamed, and the fingers jittered as if in excitement.

“I think his appendix is about to rupture,” the doctor said. “We need to get him into an OR stat. Get an IV started, get ten ccs of morphine in him. Nothing by mouth, obviously.”

“Of course,” Dennis said, then disappeared from the room. He came back a few minutes later with the same kind of IV kit he used on Bobby. “Okay, I know you’re in pain, but if you hold still for me for just a minute, I can help with that.”

Bobby was amazed that the creature went unnoticed. Not only could they not see it, but the swirling digits seemed to melt away whenever anyone got close. Did it not like being touched by people not in pain? Was it avoiding detection? Or was Bobby imagining the whole thing?

Maybe it's all in my head, he thought. Maybe I have a concussion from the fall or something.

The thought that there was no monster, that he was simply brain-damaged, wasn’t convincing enough to slow his heart rate. His shirt was soaked in sweat as he fought to keep his breathing under control. But he wouldn’t allow himself to shiver. He couldn’t move his leg, or those fingers would come for him next, imagined or otherwise.

The IV was started, and the morphine was injected. The patient, however, did not calm down. Maybe it was because his appendix was too far gone, or maybe it was the pain of his life essence being pulled out of his body, but the morphine was outmatched. A few moments later, another stretcher was rolled in. The fingers lifted to avoid being touched and formed an arch at the doorway. The medical staff lifted the patient by the sheet under him and laid him on the stretcher. As they wheeled him out, they dragged the fingers with him.

And like that, Bobby was alone again. He wiped the sweat off his brow with the back of his hand, but the edge caught the cold tears pooling, threatening to run down his face. He didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t run, not with his knee. There was no way he could fight this creature, even if he wasn’t injured. He never felt so helpless in his life.

“Bobby?” His father stood by the left-side door. Slowly, as if Bobby were a frightened animal that might bite him, his father walked over to his side. “Hey, looks like they fixed up your lip. Looks good.”

Bobby wished he could agree, but it felt like the surgeon sewed in small pebbles where the two ends of his now-reconstructed lip met. All along his lower lip, the sutures stuck out like the quills on a porcupine. His upper lip still felt swollen and numb. “You find a parking spot with the trailer?”

“Left it at the convention center,” his dad said. “Worked it out with the people there. It’s locked up in their parking garage by now. Ubered over here. We’ll Uber back when we’re done, get the truck out of hock, and head home.”

“Yeah, great,” Bobby said, glancing back out the hall.

“You okay?” his dad asked, taking a seat by the bed.

“Peachy,” Bobby said through clenched teeth. “My face was just put back together again, I can’t bend my knee —”

“You’re knee? What happened to your knee?”

He pulled the blanket back. “It swelled up to the size of a cantaloupe! If I so much as look at it, it hurts like hell!” He caught himself before he vented about the monster in the halls stalking him. As angry and scared as he was, he had enough common sense not to sound like a crazy person. He wasn’t convinced he wasn’t crazy.

“Son, I’m so —”

“Why did you bring me here?” Bobby shouted.

His dad blinked. “The hospital? You were hurt, though technically the paramedics brought you —”

“To your stupid convention! I wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t dragged me to this thing! Can’t you sell your books or whatever without me?”

His father leaned back in his chair. He spoke softly and slowly. “Yeah, I suppose, but it helps to have another pair of hands. Plus, you’re my son. I like spending time with you. You’ll be leaving for college soon. I won’t have too many more opportunities to spend time with you like this.”

Bobby lay back on his pillow. He was still too mad to forgive his father, but now he felt a twinge of guilt. “Some dads play catch with their sons. Why do you have to write stupid sci-fi novels?”

“You think my books are stupid?” His father sounded hurt, and that twinge of guilt Bobby felt was growing into a consistent regret. His father looked down at his hands. “You mean, why do I write? Or why do I write sci-fi?”

Bobby didn’t want to answer, sorry he ever brought it up, but the wound was exposed. There was nothing to do but close it up. “I guess both?”

His father played with his hands a bit. “There’s something communal about sharing stories. We learn about each other, grow as a people. A good story can thrill, inspire, educate, even heal. I guess I want to be a part of that.”

“Why sci-fi?”

He shrugged. “Escapism, I guess. From the horrors of the real world. I like to imagine a bright future where everything is better.”

Bobby deflated, sinking into his bed. After a silence that stretched on for what felt like years, he said, “I didn’t mean to call your books stupid.”

“I know you didn’t,” his father said in a tone that suggested he in fact didn’t know that. “You’ve had a rough day. You’re in pain. I get it.”

Bobby shifted in his bed, and knives buried under his swollen kneecap tried to stab their way out. As he hissed, his dad shot to his feet.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, just the morphine is wearing off,” Bobby said.

Then he heard it — the now-familiar scratching sound of the monster’s fingers looking for him. Looking for his pain. He froze, keeping his leg still and praying for the pain the fade before the monster could find him. Every bead of sweat turned into a miniature ice cube as those raw, exposed fingertips snaked their way around the edge of the doorframe, the raw meat dirty and caked in dry blood and a crusty green crud. He punched the call button, hoping for another hit of morphine to keep the monster at bay.

That’s when he noticed his father’s eyes locked on the monster.

Bobby flicked his glance from the monster to his father and back again. His lips parted as he worked up the courage to ask. Finally, he forced out the words in a strained whisper, “Can … can you see that?”

His father’s jaw dropped, shifting his eye for only a fraction of a second, not daring to keep his view off the monster for long. “Uh, yeah. You can?”

“I ... I was starting to think I had a brain injury or something.” Tears poured down his face as the stress of the day broke free.

“Just be quiet,” his father said, sitting on the edge of his chair. “Maybe it will go away if it doesn’t hear us.”

“It senses pain,” Bobby said, hitting the call button again.

Dennis wandered into the room, oblivious to the sharp protrusions of the chipped bones from the multitude of digits searching the room for fresh pain. “You okay, Bobby?”

“Can I have another shot?” Dread draped over him like a heavy blanket. How much morphine had he had? Was there a limit to how much he could take? If so, had he crossed it already?”

Dennis pulled a syringe from his pocket. Bobby tried to hide his relief. “I figured it was about that time.”

Dennis plugged the needleless syringe into Bobby’s IV, and he felt the numbing sensation flow through his body, but it wasn’t as strong as before. The morphine was growing less effective with every shot. Still, it was enough. The leg calmed down, the spasms fading, and the fingers grew lost. When before they grew toward Bobby like vines toward the sun, they no longer had a focus and slid in random directions, their eagerness fading. Bobby lay as still as he could, holding his breath, as the fingers started to wilt out of the room. He glanced over to see that his father was also as still as a statue, slowly letting his breath out.

“Better?” Dennis asked.

Bobby nodded slowly, his eyes on his father. “Yes. Thanks.”

“Not a problem,” Dennis smiled. He pointed at Bobby’s face. “The lip looks good.”

“Thanks,” Bobby said again.

Dennis headed out of the room. “Shout if you need anything else.”

“Okay, sure,” Bobby said, still nodding. The moment he vanished from the room, he spun his head toward his father. “You can see that thing?”

His father leaned in closer, keeping his eyes on the opposite door, the one where the monster fingers vanished from. “Of course I can. When did you start seeing things like that?”

Bobby’s eyes went wide. “There are more things like that?”

“Well, yeah,” his father said, then rocked his head back and forth. “I mean, not like that. They’re all different …”

“How long have you been seeing monsters no one else can see?” Bobby hissed in a loud whisper.

His father scrunched up his face, chewing on his upper lip as he always did when he was thinking. “I don’t know. Like, forever?”

Bobby twirled his hand to encourage his father to keep talking.

“It’s a family thing,” his father said. “My father had it, his mother had it. We were starting to wonder if it skipped you or something.”

“Skipped me?

His father shrugged. “You had never seen anything before now. Maybe the fall knocked something into place in the old noggin or something —”

“What are they!”

His father chewed his lip again. “Grandma used to call them Transients. She said they drifted in from other worlds. Never quite knew what she meant by that.”

“What do they want?”

His father looked grave. “They all want something different. I remember seeing one that got off making the local dogs bark at all hours of the night. Another one that kept killing all the ferns in the neighborhood. Just ferns. Rosebushes were safe, poinsettias too, but ferns? They all wilted within a day. Then …” Here he paused, taking in a long, slow breath as his shoulder tensed. “Then there was the one that whispered into the ears of teenagers when I was in high school. I never knew what it was saying, but there was one guy — Ryan Thune, I’ll never forget him. It seemed to focus on him.”

“Why?” Bobby asked. “Why him?”

His father shook his head. “No idea, but whatever that thing fed on, it found it with Ryan. It was always hanging by him, whispering who-knows-what to him. As the months passed, he’d get … dark. Moody. Angry. He glared at everyone. Then, one day, he tried to blow up the school.”

“What?”

“He somehow figured out how to make nitroglycerin,” his father continued. His eyes were unfocused, staring out past the hospital door and through time. “He was making it in his family's garage. Was planning on planting it all over the school. Unfortunately for him, it all went up. Took out the garage and everything inside, including him.” His eye snapped back into focus as he came back to the present. Meeting his son’s gaze, he said, “They all have a different thing, but they all have something in common. For whatever reason, they hate us. They all want to inflict pain on us.”

“How do we stop them?” Bobby asked.

“We don’t,” his father said. “Not with your leg messed up. Maybe with time to research and study it, we could find a weakness, come up with a plan …”

“Then what do we do?”

“We need to get you out of here.”

His father hit the call button. They sat in silence, waiting for Dennis and listening for the fingers to return. Finally, Dennis walked back in. “Everything okay?”

“We were just wondering,” his father said, “now that his lip is all fixed, what’s the next step?”

“The doctor was just discussing whether to admit him or not,” Dennis said.

Bobby’s head snapped from his dad to Dennis. “Admit? What does that mean?”

“Taking you to a room upstairs,” Dennis said. “Keeping you for a couple of days.”

From above him, the scurrying sound returned. Bobby thought back to when he first heard that noise and thought it was rats. He wished he could go back to believing it was rats, but he couldn’t pretend he didn’t know those raw, bony appendages were searching for him. Bobby’s chest tightened at that thought of being stuck here, a sitting target for the thing, but his dad moved to head off his budding panic. “We’d be more comfortable taking Bobby home. His mother is worried sick about him.”

“That’s an option,” Dennis said in a tone that suggested it wasn’t one he liked.

“Why would you want me to stay?” Bobby heard the quiver in his voice.

Dennis spoke slowly, making sure each word was heard. “Well, we could watch your leg, make sure it doesn’t get worse, make sure there are no complications.”

“Complications?”

Dennis put on a practiced smile. “It’s not likely, but there’s a chance the swelling could cut off blood flow to your leg. Then it’s a real emergency. We could also manage your pain like we are now.”

“We are a long way from home,” his father said, thinking quickly. “If we take him home and it gets worse, we can take him to an ER near our house.”

Dennis nodded in thought. “Okay, I’ll pass on your concern with the doctor, see what he says, alright?”

Bobby wanted to say something, but he couldn’t think over the clicking and scraping of bones whittled to sharp points searching over his head. His father covered for him. “Thanks, we appreciate it.”

Bobby swallowed down his panic as Dennis left. Once they were alone, he said to his father, “Can you hear it?”

His father glanced up at the ceiling. “Yeah, I hear it.”

 “What if they say I need to be — whatever he said, that I have to stay?”

“Relax, this is a hospital, not a prison,” his father said. “We can leave if we want to. Normally.”

“You want to elaborate on that?”

His father waved away his concern. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I am kind of worried about it.”

His father rolled his eyes. “There are certain conditions when they can force you to stay, like if you’re a psycho or something, but none of that applies to you.”

“Unless they figure out that I’m seeing a monster that’s invisible to everyone else,” Bobby said.

“Yeah, we keep that just between us,” his father said.

“If we can just go,” Bobby said, “then let’s just go!”

“Easy, buddy,” his father said. “It’s better to get properly discharged, but we’ll leave without their okay if we need to. Just stay calm and keep your pain under control. We don’t want that thing back here.”

Bobby lay back, ignoring the fingers sliding over him, the scraping noises ebbing and flowing like a tide. He kept stone-still, not wanting a single twitch to send pain ripping through his body. There was nothing to do but feel every ounce of swelling, no longer recognizing his own body. He wondered how long until it felt like his again, if it ever would.

If he lived long enough.

Dennis came in with a pair of crutches and something made of blue spongy fabric. “Okay, we’re kicking you out.”

Bobby swallowed down his sigh of relief, but he stared at the blue thing. In spite of being made of fabric, it was stiff and straight. “What’s that?”

“It’s an immobilizer brace,” Dennis said, leaning the crutches against the wall. “This will keep you from bending your knee.”

Dennis unrolled and laid the brace along Bobby’s leg. The brace was actually made up of three pieces, two side pieces connected to the main part with Velcro along its length. Dennis pulled it apart with a loud rip, resetting the pieces wider apart to accommodate the girth of Bobby’s leg. Then came the scary part, the part where the pain was going to come back. Dennis lifted Bobby’s leg up from the ankle and slid the brace under him. Since his leg stayed straight, it didn’t hurt too badly, but it was enough to catch the attention of the fingers. They scurried along the walls like piranhas in a frenzy over a spilled drop of blood in the water. Dennis secured the brace in place with Velcro straps, two above his knee and two below. Bobby could feel the cold, stiff metal rods pressing against either side of his leg from within the soft, padded material of the brace.

With the immobilizer brace in place, Dennis reached over and grabbed the crutches. “You know how to use these?”

Bobby shook his head, and Dennis gave a quick demonstration of how to use the crutches. When he was done, he dropped the siderail and held the crutches out to Bobby. “Why don’t you give it a shot?”

With Dennis and his father helping him, Bobby scooted to the edge of the bed, the brace making his bad leg stiff and awkward. The muscles along his thigh, pulling against the bones as he lowered his leg to the floor, were like cables of barbed wire. He swallowed the pain as if that would hide it from the fingers, but he could hear them getting excited. They pulled him onto his feet — well, foot, singular, since he only had one he could use — but before they could hand him the crutches, the room began to swim. Both the adults caught Bobby before he fell back onto the bed, or worse, the floor. The world grew blurry, and Bobby was convinced he was going to pass out, but slowly everything solidified and came back to normal.

“You okay, Bobby?” his father asked.

“Yeah,” he gasped. “Just give me a minute.”

Then he saw the tips of those multi-jointed fingers sliding around the doorframe.

His father must have seen it too. He played it cool, keeping his eyes off the monster only the two of them could see, but asked, “Isn’t it protocol to wheel a patient out on a wheelchair? Thought I read that somewhere. Is that a thing?”

“We can grab a wheelchair,” Dennis said, one eyebrow raised.

“That would be great, thanks,” Bobby’s dad said.

Bobby was worried that this would be a longer delay, leaving him a target for the monster of a thousand fingers. However, Dennis vanished into the hall for only a moment when he returned with a wheelchair. He held it in place as his father helped Bobby hobble over to and then sit down in the wheelchair. Then his father reached out and shook Dennis’s hand.

“Thank you so much for taking care of my son,” he said.

Dennis looked a bit taken aback, being both thanked and getting the sense he was being politely dismissed. He managed a smile, then patted Bobby on the shoulder. He handed Bobby a stack of papers as he said to his father, “The doctor gave him a script for some pain meds. If he gets any numbness in his foot, take him to the ER right away.”

“Got it,” his father smiled, ignoring the fingers inching their way further into the room. He pulled his phone from his pocket.

Dennis stepped around the wheelchair and took Bobby’s hand. “Good luck. Hope you get better soon.”

“Thanks, Dennis,” he said, the pleasantry holding more sincerity than it ever had in his whole life.

Dennis smiled. Then, with nothing more to say, he left the room.

And more fingers slid in to take his place.

“Let’s go,” his father said, slipping his phone in his pocket. Stepping behind Bobby, he grabbed the handles of the wheelchair. “Now. I’ve already called an Uber.”

His father pulled the wheelchair backwards through the door, dodging the multitude of fingers, then turned it around to face forward.

And banged his leg against the doorframe.

Bobby cinched up, tears threatening to flood down his face, hugging his crutches close to his chest and holding in his screams. Not that it did any good. The monster didn’t hunt by sound or sight but by his pain. He, however, heard the hungry multitudes of fingers scrambling for him. From deep down the dark bowels of the hospital, from the distant construction area, they came.

“Run,” Bobby gasped.

The handles of the wheelchair creaked under his father’s grip as he took off down the hall. Bobby’s view was forced forward, but he could see the fingers fighting each other to reach him, racing along the walls beside him, then passing him. The door was ahead, but the fingers got to them first, interlacing and forming a web in front of him, blocking his path.

Along the wall, plugged into a wall socket, was a portable X-ray machine like the one used on his knee before. “Dad! It hates that! Shoot it!”

His father hesitated for an eyeblink, doing the calculations between the already-blocked door and the multiplying fingers. His father let go of the wheelchair, letting it coast as he jumped behind the controls of the X-ray machine. As he figured out the controls, the fingers found Bobby. They gripped his leg, peeling back the padding of his leg brace to reach the tasty agony inside. Then they pierced his knee. Bobby shrieked, the fingers pulling and tugging like when the plastic surgeon tugged his lip back together, pulling the lifeforce or whatever it was from Bobby’s body. He felt dizzy, woozy, but whether from the pain or from what the monster was taking from him, he didn’t know.

The machine let out a thunk, and the fingers twitched, momentarily forgetting its prey. Bobby gasped like a drowning man breaking the water, arcing his back to fill every last bit of lung with air. His father hit a button on the machine, and it let out another thunk, sending the fingers into a nervous twitching.

Bobby pointed to the camera-like beam generator at the end of the arm. “Aim that at it!”

His father reached up and tilted the beam generator down the hall at the eyeless creature coming toward them, then hit the button again. It would have been more satisfying if it had shot out a giant laser beam at the monster instead of an invisible jet of X-ray particles, but the creature reared back as if it had been hit by a weapon from one of his father’s science fiction novels. The fingers wilted back like wax flowers in the summer sun, and his father fired again. And again.

“Dad, the door’s clear!” Bobby shouted.

His father hit the button one last time as he dove for the wheelchair handles and shoved Bobby forward. Along the wall was a button to open the doors. His father slapped it, and the doors took a painfully long few seconds to open. The fingers were already regrouping, coming back, but his father shoved Bobby out into the warm summer night.

Parked along the curb was a four-door sedan, its hazard lights flashing, with a glowing sign in the window that read "Uber." The front passenger window was down, and a balding Hispanic man leaned across the seat. “For Bobby Kaplin?”

“Yes,” Bobby said as his father wheeled him to the car. His father opened up the back door. As Bobby pivoted from the chair to the front passenger seat of the car, his swollen knee screaming in protest, he saw them — the fingers bursting through the hospital doors like a dam had broken, hundreds of gnarled joints scraping across the concrete, racing toward them with terrifying speed. Bobby pulled the crutches into the car, and his father slammed the door shut before jumping into the back. The tips of the fingers just began to scratch on the glass as the car pulled away. Bobby watched through the side mirror as the mass of fingers pursued them down the street, a writhing tide of bone and malice. Ten feet back. Twenty. Fifty. The creature's reach finally faltered, the fingers coiling back on themselves before melting into the shadows between streetlights, either unable or unwilling to chase them any further. Bobby collapsed back against the seat and closed his eyes.

“You guys in a rush or something?” the driver asked, oblivious to the monster he had outrun.

His father gestured to his son with a sideways nod of his head. “He hates hospitals. Can’t stand them.”

The driver looked at Bobby’s father in the rearview mirror. “Hey, aren’t you that writer? I think I saw you at the convention.”

“Yeah, that’s me,” his father said, forcing a weary smile.

“I got one of your books a while back,” the driver said.

“You like it?” his father asked.

The driver smiled. “I liked it, but it could have used some more action. Get some creatures in it like The Thing or Aliens, you know what I mean?”

The car turned a corner, and the last bit of the monster vanished from Bobby’s line of sight as his father said, “Not my style. Too much like real life for my taste.”