Mind Games

“Please, help me! I’m looking for my husband.”

The receptionist clicked on some keys on her keyboard, glancing at the panicking lady that was standing in front of her. She then filed some papers in alphabetical order and scheduled a few patient appointments on each doctor’s calendar. The lady was still standing in front of her, speechless. Her eyes were wide open, red. Probably from sleepless nights. Her hair was unbrushed and tangled in a sideway bun that had strands of hair falling apart in every direction. The receptionist rolled her eyes until she finally decided to acknowledge her presence, “What is your husband’s name?”

“Pierre,” She said, “Pierre Moulin.”

The receptionist typed in the name on the computer, and after a few clicks, she asked the lady to take a seat in the waiting room. She had complained it was an emergency and that she needed to see him, but the receptionist assured her it would be a quick wait. 

The lady sat in the waiting room. She grabbed a magazine on her lap, flipping through the pages and looking simply at the images. She devoured magazine after magazine, glimpsing through the images like an elementary student that could not even comprehend the words on them. The receptionist glanced at her once in a while. Stressed with the rumbling sound of the pages the lady made. She tried to ignore her, clicking the keys faster and furiously to compete with the flipping pages. 

Luckily, it started to rain. 

The pouring rain that hit the ceilings of the paper-thin walls relaxed the receptionist. The clouds seemed to have covered the full moon that had hovered with its pale light over the hospital's windows. It was easier for the receptionist to ignore the lady with the now faint light and hitting rain, but the pounding thunder just alarmed the lady. Waking her up from her reading trance. She surged up and raced to the receptionist’s desk.

“I have been waiting for a while, can I please see my husband?” The lady bit her cuticles as she trembled her feet on the ground. 

Disgusted, the receptionist said, “I can’t see the name on the system. Are you sure he’s here?”

The lady nodded worryingly and slammed her hands on the receptionist's desk, “I need to see him.” 

The receptionist gave her most sarcastic smile and pointed toward the waiting room which was now empty for the night, “I’ll give it another look.” 

The lady simply nodded and left to the waiting room, her finger deep inside her mouth. She pressed her face to the ceiling-length window. She traced with her fingers the raindrops that rolled down. Her eyes flickered. She was tired from the long drive from her apartment. Her body pounded up her chest as she struggled to shake it awake. She finally gave in and closed her eyes, falling into a deep sleep. 

The lady rubbed open her eyes. She stared at the narrow hallway in front of her. With a surge of energy, she ran to the hallway. It was filled with doors, all the same color, and size but with different numbers handwritten on them. The contracepting hallways didn’t help at all either. She found herself lost in the sea of hallways, sprinting past the doors with no knowledge of where she was whatsoever. The only thing that kept her from the verge of desperation was the excitement of finally seeing her husband again. 

Doctors with notepads walked passed her, and nurses carried patient beds. The lady glimpsed to check if she could see her husband in some of the beds, but she could not see him anywhere. The lady was startled by this but kept running as the nurses hurried past her in shock. After turning one last time, she was too exhausted to keep running so she stopped to gasp for air, dropping her hands to her knees and breathing heavily. As she composed herself she paced with her nails digging into her cuticles until blood exploded from her fingers.

 In between stress and now the pulsing pain of her fingers., she decided to trust her gut, turning left a couple of times, convinced that she could feel her husband’s presence. She finally chose one door to open and barged in. There he was, her husband on an operating table. She gasped in shock, running towards him only to see his face deformed. His face was slit with a knife so thin that the lines looked drawn, contrasting the paleness of his skin. His eyes were closed, his lips purple. But he was alive, she could sense it. She touched his chest and felt his beating heart, too accelerated for his current condition. The lady started crying as she threw herself over her husband’s body, the numb coldness startled her, making her shriek in sadness. 

A doctor walked into the room holding a notepad. He was shocked by the crying lady and continued to remove her from the laying body. 

“Excuse me, what are you doing?” Asked the doctor. 

The lady could barely speak, her words tripped over each other as she cried. She couldn’t even face the doctor, her eyes were glued to her dying husband. “This is my husband,” She started, “I came here to see him.”

The doctor looked even more startled. He shuffled some papers in his notepad and shook his head in disbelief, “I don’t have any record of a wife for this patient.”

The lady stopped crying. She couldn’t believe the nonsense the doctor was saying. She got hysterical, pushing the doctor’s hand away from her shoulder and throwing herself at the dying body once more. She was furious at how inhumanely the doctor had treated her in a moment of pain. 

The doctor pulled at the lady once again and gripped her shoulder so hard that no matter how much the lady fidgeted she could not free herself. “You need to leave, or I am calling the cops.” He continued to push the lady away from the body as she kicked and trembled hysterically. 

“Who the fuck do you think you are? This is my dying husband.”

The doctor ignored her. Throwing her out the door and shutting it in her face. The lady knocked violently, “If you don’t open the door, I’m going to break it down myself!” She kicked and threw herself against the door but it did not budge. Her face was red and tears of anger rolled down her cheeks. She could not understand why everyone in the hospital prohibited her to see her husband, the love of her life. She didn’t give up, screaming and crying as her flying kicks took her nowhere, “I guess I am the one who’s going to have to call the cops!”

She ran to the end of the hallway and tried to guide herself back to reception. She needed to accuse this hospital of kidnapping her husband, and even worse, prohibiting her to see him. She sprinted to the hallways, glancing at the descending numbers until she finally made it back to reception. The receptionist was there talking with another woman, smiling and nodding, clicking her keyboard keys. The lady pushed the other woman away and demanded the receptionist call the cops. 

The receptionist’s smile disappeared, she was scared of the hysterical lady standing in front of her. She had minor blood stains on her clothes and her face was red with fury. She gripped the phone and tried to give the best smile she could ever give, “I’m sorry to hear that! I’ll see what I can do!” She punched a few numbers on the phone and whispered, “She’s here again.”

The police arrived shortly after. The lady ran to them, explaining her story and pointing out how the hospital had conspired against her. One of the cops nodded to her story, glancing at the receptionist in the back who nodded to indicate that it was her. 

“Ma’am, would you be kind to accompany me outside?”

The lady stopped ranting and nodded at the cop, he probably wanted privacy so that she could describe the gruesome details she had encountered in the hospital. They both walked out to the parking lot, but to the lady’s surprise, the cop did not ask more questions about the hospital. He asked where her car was. The lady pointed to a degraded red Chevy, parked a few meters away from them.

“Okay,” said the cop, “I’m going to ask you to leave these premises and never come back.”

The lady opened her mouth to argue but the cop quickly interrupted her, “I don’t think it’s safe for you right now. Don’t worry about your husband, I’ll try to find a way to get him home safely to you, let me do my job. But stay away from this hospital, I warn you”

The lady nodded in silence. The cop was right, it was of no help to have her there anymore, after all her husband was still alive and she now had the cop’s guarantee to have him back safe from those soon-to-be-arrested lunatics. She walked confidently to her car, a small grin forming on her face as she unlocked the door. She speeded through the streets she knew like the palm of her hand, bouncing her head to Helter Skelter from the Beatles.  

As she looked back in the rearview mirror, she saw her husband laying in the backseat. His eyes were closed and blood was dripping from the thin cuts on his face. She smiled at him and blew him a kiss as the music blasted through the speakers. 

“There you are. This time you are never leaving my side.”