E.R.

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The yellow crosswalk sign blinked incessantly, its light reflecting off the red EMERGENCY PATIENT PARKING sign painted on the concrete column near my car. There was no one standing there to see it but me, yet it continued flashing with the stubborn reliability of something that had no idea my world had gone completely off the rails. 

I knew I needed to go inside. I just didn’t want to. Two cars passed behind me and followed the downward curve to the floor below. I watched until their taillights disappeared, buying myself another few seconds before I finally pulled the keys from the ignition and opened the driver’s-side door. “I can do this,” I whispered.

The words sounded more convincing inside the car. I stepped out, closed the door, and pushed the lock button. The car beeped twice. Such a normal sound. I stood there for a moment listening to its echo fade through the parking garage and wished normal sounds still meant normal things. 

Across the driveway, a security guard watched me struggle toward the entrance. He looked bored. I wondered if anything rattled him anymore. Working outside an emergency room, he had probably seen some pretty “out there” stuff. Not this, I thought. He hasn’t seen this. One foot in front of the other. Breathe slowly through the nose. Out through the nose to a count of— What was the count supposed to be?

The closer I got to the doors, the harder each step became. I pulled my mask from my pocket, took off my glasses, and attempted to hook the mask around my ears without poking myself in the eye with the car keys. It took two tries, but eventually everything landed where it belonged. Success. One crisis handled. The ER doors slid open. Several nurses sat at the station to my right. The waiting room wasn’t full, but there were enough people scattered among the chairs to remind me that everyone who came through those doors had a reason for being there. A man held a towel around one hand. A woman rocked a crying toddler against her chest. An older couple sat shoulder to shoulder without speaking.

Normal sick people. I envied them. One of the nurses motioned me over. “May I help you?” I froze. No one could help me. Not anymore. 

A few days earlier, I’d started experiencing what I thought were COVID symptoms and stayed in bed, trying to sleep them off. My temperature kept climbing anyway. I started hallucinating. The fever would break and give me a few hours of relief, then return even higher. That had been frightening enough. Then, on the second day, my skin started moving. At least, something under it did.

The first time I saw the lump travel along my forearm, I told myself it was a muscle spasm. Then it appeared in the other arm. Later it moved through my leg. My stomach. Whatever it was, it was about the size of a ping-pong ball, and when it moved, it hurt. God, it hurt. 

Sometimes the skin would split for a second or two before closing again. The first time that happened, I could have sworn I saw an eye peering out at me. An eye. I had a high fever. I was hallucinating. There had to be an explanation. Was there blood? Of course there was, but because the wound appeared and disappeared so quickly, there was never much. For a while, I managed to convince myself none of it was real.

Then my blood turned blue. Not bluish. Not purple. Deep blue. That was when I stopped trying to convince myself. 

Now I stood in front of a nurse trying to decide how much of the truth I could tell her without getting myself locked in a psychiatric ward. “I’ve been having trouble breathing and running a high temperature,” I said. “I tested negative for COVID.” 

There. Normal. Reasonable. Nothing about eyeballs peeking through my skin. The nurse came around the desk and took my temperature and oxygen level before wrapping a blood-pressure cuff around my arm. 

The machine flashed ERROR. 

She adjusted the cuff and tried again. ERROR.

Her eyebrows drew together. She moved to another machine, wrapped a fresh cuff around my arm, and repeated the process. ERROR. 

“We’ve been having issues with the machines lately,” she said, although the way she looked at the display suggested this was news to her. “I’ll just do it manually.” Fine by me. She pulled over a manual cuff and began squeezing the pressure bulb. I could hear the air filling it and, just as quickly, hear it escaping. She checked the tubing, repositioned the cuff, and tried again. Same result. After the second attempt, she gave both me and the cuff a strange look. “Hey, Maggie, can you come check this out?”

Before Maggie reached us, two machines sitting nearby suddenly began beeping. 

They weren’t connected to anyone. 

The noise startled everyone around us. Maggie hurried over and began pushing buttons, but nothing happened. “Nora?” So the nurse examining me was Nora. Good to know. If I survived this, I could send her a thank-you card from the psychiatric ward. Nora grabbed the cord and yanked the plug from the wall. The machine kept beeping. Maggie stared at it, then unplugged the second machine. It continued shrieking too. The beeping grew louder. Nora looked at the plug in her hand as if it might bite her. Then, just as security came running into the room, both machines stopped.

The sudden silence felt worse. I looked at the machines, then at Nora, then Maggie. I had nothing. 

I was really scared now. What was happening? Not just to me. What was happening, really? Nora and Maggie dropped the cords and began calming the other patients. I could only stare. 

“Ma’am, let’s get you into a room.” Nora helped me from the chair and guided me past the nurses’ station toward the examining rooms. She pretty much shoved me into the first available one, told me to strip and put on the gown, then closed the curtain and glass door behind her. Once the door shut, the noise from the main section of the ER seemed to disappear.

I sat on the edge of the gurney and waited for someone to come back. I expected questions. Blood tests. Maybe several doctors standing around pretending they had seen blue blood before. Mostly, I expected someone to point a finger at me and demand an explanation I didn’t have. 

Eventually I lay back. Time slowed to a crawl, as is wont to happen when you’re waiting for something you desperately don’t want to happen. Somewhere along the way, I fell asleep. 

I had no idea how long I’d been out when I woke, but something felt wrong before I even opened my eyes. It was quiet. Too quiet. My phone wouldn’t respond, so I looked at the battery-operated clock hanging on the wall.

The hands were moving backward. I stared at them for several seconds, waiting for my brain to correct what my eyes were seeing. It didn’t. Slowly and steadily, the hands continued turning to the left, as though time itself had changed its mind and was trying to go back where it came from. 

I sat up. “Okay. That’s new.” 

I tried not to freak out, but really, this was getting ridiculous. Holding the back of the gown closed with one hand, I stepped into the hallway and called toward the nurses’ station. “Nora?” Nothing. I moved farther into the ER. “Nora?” Still nothing.

The nurses’ station was empty. A cup of coffee sat on a desk, and when I touched it, it was still warm. The chair beside it had been pushed back as though someone had stood up only moments earlier. 

I checked the other patient rooms. Empty. Every one of them. The patients were gone. The nurses were gone. Security was gone. Everyone was gone. I kept looking because there had to be someone. Anyone. My heart began pounding. 

What had happened? Was I the only person here? I pushed against the door leading into the waiting room. It barely moved. I shoved harder, but it felt as though I were trying to open it against a wall of running water.

I let go of the back of my gown, planted my feet, and leaned into the door with both hands and all my body weight. It opened a few inches. Someone was on the other side. Someone was trying to keep it closed. I caught a glimpse of a face and heard a voice shouting something I couldn’t understand. Then more weight slammed against the door. It flew shut. I

 fell backward, my butt hitting the cold tile hard enough to send me skidding across the floor. “What the hell?” I scrambled to my feet. The overhead lights flickered. Off. On. They stayed on for several seconds, flickered again, stopped, then started. There was a pattern to it. I knew there was. I just didn’t understand what it meant.

Was I hallucinating again? I didn’t care. Hallucination or not, I wanted out. I tried several other doors with EXIT signs above them. None would open. 

Then I spotted a television in the corner of the lunchroom. Information. Maybe somebody could tell me what was happening. I turned it on. Static. “Static? Seriously?” In this day and age, we didn’t even use antennas anymore. I hit the side of the television. It worked. Of course it did. I grabbed the remote and found a local station. What appeared on the screen was much worse than static.

A reporter stood outside the hospital. Helicopters circled overhead, their lights flashing across the ground while other lights strobed across the parking lot. I turned up the volume. Nothing. The reporter’s lips moved, but no sound came through the television. It was like watching an old black-and-white movie, except in color. What were they looking for? The camera suddenly swung away from the reporter toward a stand of trees. Someone ran out. Or at least, something that had once been someone. Its skin was completely blue. Its teeth were elongated, and its eyes bulged from its head, dark vessels running across them. The vessels weren’t red. They were blue.

I stepped backward and dropped heavily into a chair. My blood. My blue blood. I tried the volume again, then moved closer to the screen and attempted to read the reporter’s lips. 

Something about fast moving? The reporter suddenly looked frightened. I saw her mouth, “What the—?” She looked down. Then she disappeared. Her hands flew above her head as her feet were yanked out from under her. The camera swung toward whatever had grabbed her and went flying. For a dizzying second, the entire world tumbled across the screen. Then black. 

I changed channels. Kittens. Another channel. A cooking show. Another. A car race.

Nothing about the hospital. Nothing about the blue person. Nothing about whatever had dragged the reporter away. My skin began to itch. 

Then I felt it. The ball. It had been quiet for so long that I’d managed to convince myself maybe, just maybe, that part really had been a hallucination. It wasn’t. Something moved beneath the skin of my stomach and traveled upward toward my neck. Then it changed direction and started down my right arm. I watched the lump move faster. The pain was like the worst tattoo imaginable, so intense I wanted to scream but couldn’t find the breath to do it. The lump reached my wrist. My skin began to split.

I held my arm as far away from my body as I could, as though that could somehow help. It wasn’t like I had anywhere to go to get away from myself. There was nothing I could do except watch. An eyeball pushed through my wrist. Not peeking this time. Coming out. I screamed. 

It dropped onto the table with a wet plop. For one impossible second, it simply sat there. Looking at me. I knew eyeballs couldn’t look without being attached to something. I knew that. I knew a lot of things that apparently didn’t matter anymore. Then it rolled. Once. Twice. It crossed the table and dropped to the floor.

I stared at my wrist. The skin had already closed, leaving only a thin line of blue blood behind. No hole. No gaping wound. And the pain was gone. 

Movement caught my attention. The eyeball was rolling across the floor. Not randomly. It stopped, changed direction, and rolled directly toward a crash cart before disappearing beneath it. 

I backed away. The cart moved. Just an inch. Then another. Something made a wet clicking sound beneath it. The cart jerked sideways.

For an instant, I saw the eye again, except now something pale had begun spreading from behind it. It looked like tissue unfolding, thin at first and then thicker, stretching outward into shapes that hadn’t been there seconds earlier. The cart moved again. 

“Nope.” I ran. 

Whatever that thing was doing, it could do it without me. I slammed the lunchroom door behind me and backed into the hallway. The main exit still wouldn’t budge. Then something struck the lunchroom door from the other side. Once. Twice. Harder. I needed to hide. 

The fever was returning, bringing the sluggishness with it. My limbs felt heavy, as though I were moving through molasses, but I forced myself back to the exam room.

Thank you. The sliding glass door had a lock. But seriously? A glass door? 

There didn’t seem to be any supply rooms or other places with real doors, and I certainly wasn’t going back into the lunchroom, so I made do. I locked the door, pulled the curtain closed, and shoved everything I could find against it, even overturning the gurney with a crash. 

Then I wedged myself into the small space between the wall and the bed. If I couldn’t see whatever was out there, it couldn’t see me. Yes, I knew that made absolutely no sense. I didn’t care. 

I was so tired. I fought it. I couldn’t fall asleep. What would I wake up to? A tremendous crash came from the lunchroom.

Something slithered across the floor. I couldn’t see it, but I could hear it. Wet, sucking noises followed its movement through the hallway. Closer. I pressed myself against the wall. The sound reached my room and stopped. Something touched the glass. A soft tap. Then another. I covered my mouth with both hands. The shadow beneath the curtain was far too large to belong to the little eyeball that had rolled under the crash cart. Except I knew. I didn’t know how I knew, but I did. It was the eye. Or what the eye had become. I waited for the glass to break. It didn’t. The thing remained outside my room for several seconds. Then the wet movement began again, traveling away from me.

Toward the exit. 

BOOM. 

The impact shook the room. Another crash followed, then the unmistakable sound of breaking glass. After that, nothing. I fought to keep my eyes open. And lost. 

When I woke again, I had no idea how much time had passed. The clock on the wall was no longer moving backward. It wasn’t moving at all. I looked at the Fitbit on my wrist. 

My blue wrist. My now blue wrist. “This can’t be good.” The electronic numbers were there, but the hour, minute, and second never changed. I stood slowly. Blue legs. I looked down the front of the gown, then twisted around to see the skin exposed where the gown gaped open behind me. Blue. All the way around. 

This was definitely not good.

Then another sensation overwhelmed everything else. Thirst. I was incredibly thirsty. And I really had to pee. I unlocked the door and cautiously peered into the hallway. Nothing moved. No one spoke. I remembered the water dispenser in the lunchroom and headed that way. 

As I passed the other exam rooms, something blue moved in the glass beside me. I froze. Something had found me. Then I realized it was my reflection. That stopped me cold. 

The lunchroom door was bent drunkenly against the wall. A wide, glistening trail crossed the floor from the crash cart, through the doorway, and toward the shattered hospital exit. I stared at it. The eye. No. That was impossible. Wasn’t it?

Whatever had come through that door had been huge. Whatever had left that trail had been huge. And the trail began exactly where the eyeball had disappeared. I didn’t want to think about it. 

The thirst became unbearable. I hurried to the sink. The faucet was too low and the basin too shallow to get my head beneath it, so I yanked open the cupboard above the sink and found a glass. 

Better than nothing. I filled it, threw the water back like a shot, and immediately refilled it. 

Water overflowed onto my hand. Something began growing from the blue skin where the water had touched it. A pale, white, wart-like mass. It pulsed. Once. Again. I knew that should matter, but the water mattered more.

I drank three more glasses before the terrible thirst finally began to ease. 

When I looked at my hand again, the white growth had stopped pulsing. Slowly, it shrank until it disappeared. My hand looked normal again. Well, as normal as a blue hand could look. Note to self: Don’t get wet. 

Unfortunately, drinking all that water created another problem. 

I really, really needed a bathroom. And if a few drops on my hand had caused that, what the hell would happen if I peed myself? 

I cautiously peered around the wall. No nurses. No patients. Blue smears streaked the floor, but I couldn’t tell whether they were blood or something else. Then I saw it. A unisex bathroom.

For once, something went right. I took care of business without splashing anything on myself. I desperately wanted to wash my hands, but whatever those white pulsing things were, I wasn’t prepared to deal with two hands covered in them. 

Apocalyptic hygiene standards would have to do. I had been avoiding really looking at myself. There was no avoiding the bathroom mirror. I had never been a beauty. Now I was a walking nightmare. My hair had turned completely white. My skin was blue. Nice contrast. 

My once-blue eyes were now entirely blue, dark blue veins running through them. And my teeth. The teeth I’d had fixed many years ago were jagged and elongated.

Great. This was like the worst Muppet movie ever. And I was the monster. I stared at my reflection. How could I look like this and still be me? 

Because I was. I knew I was. I had my thoughts. I was scared. I could reason. I remembered who I was. I wasn’t some bumbling psycho zombie. I was still me. Wasn’t I? I opened the bathroom door and cautiously looked around. Nobody. The sliding glass doors leading outside opened this time. I walked through the garage, past rows of parked cars, and emerged from beneath the hospital overhang into the parking lot. No helicopters. No police. No reporters. Where was everyone? I checked my Fitbit again. Same time. Same minute. Same second.

Was I the only person left in the world? Then I noticed the silence. 

Absolute silence. No traffic. No voices. No birds. Not even wind. Nothing. 

I stood there for a while trying to make sense of it, but thinking made me tired. The thirst was returning too. I went back into the hospital, drank several more glasses of water, and tried to decide what to do next. I needed my clothes. My keys. My phone. I needed to go home. Home. Of course. The word brought such a rush of relief that I nearly laughed. Home meant familiar things. Home meant normal. 

The fever hit me so hard I had to grab the counter. “No.” Every time the fever returned, something else changed. My blood. My skin. My eyes. My teeth. What was left? My knees buckled. “No,” I whispered again. “I’m still me.” I said my name aloud. It came easily. For some reason, that comforted me more than anything else had. See? Still me. I knew my name. I knew where I was. 

Hospital. I was in a hospital. I knew what a hospital was. Doctors. Nurses. Medicine. People came here when they were sick. I was sick. I was: The floor tilted. I reached for the counter and missed. Everything went black.

Light filled the room when I opened my eyes. For a while, I stayed where I was and stared at the white walls. There was glass nearby, a bed beneath me, machines along the wall. I knew these things. At least, I thought I did. Where was I? The answer came after a moment. Hospital. Yes. Hospital. Why was I in a hospital? I looked down at my hands. Blue. Something about that mattered. Blue was... Bad? I turned my hands over and studied them. Why was blue bad? My head hurt when I tried to remember. I looked around again. Hospital. Hos... I frowned.

The word had been there. Hos... Something. I waited. Nothing came. Room. Yes. Room. I was in a room. That was enough. Heat rolled through me, and my mouth felt dry. Thirsty. Water. I knew water. I stood, swaying until the floor settled beneath my feet. Across the room was a glass wall with a door in it. My hand reached for the lock before I had to think about what to do. Turn. The door opened. Good. Outside was a larger room. No. Not room. Something else. I knew it had a name. I stared at the walls, the floor, the ceiling. Sides. Top. Bottom.

Box. Yes. Big box. That worked. There were small boxes inside the big box. Easy. My throat hurt. Water.

I knew where it was. How? I tried to think. Didn’t know. Didn’t matter. Go. 

I walked. A blue figure stepped out of one of the small boxes ahead of me. I stopped and stared at the white hair, blue eyes, long teeth. Like me. Another appeared behind a desk. Then another came from farther down the hall.

I looked at my hand. Blue. I looked at them. 

Us. 

The word came easily. 

Us. 

Something inside me relaxed. One of us walked past me, and I followed. Water. The place with the water was still there. I found a cup and filled it from the tap. Cup. Tap. Good. I drank.

Drops splashed onto my hand, and I jerked away before I understood why. No wet. Tiny white bumps pushed from my skin. Bad. Yes. Bad. No wet. I wiped my hand against the cloth around my body and watched the bumps disappear. Good. More of us had gathered nearby. I left the tap running. 

Us need water.

The thought felt right. The big box had a way out. Door. Glass. Light. Go. Several of us moved toward it. I went too. The moment I stepped outside, sound rushed over me.

Birds called from the trees. Leaves moved in the wind. A dog barked somewhere nearby. A  thing chirped at the corner, and the traffic light changed from green to yellow to red above a street where cars sat in strange places, some along the curb, some stopped where they shouldn’t be, one with its door hanging open.

The world was loud. Alive. I liked it.  I remembered some words.  Why did that matter?

Wind touched my face. Cold. The cloth I wore was open in the back. I pulled it around the other way and found strings. Tie. I tied them in front. Warm. Good.

More of us came from the buildings across the street. One stood beside a car with its door open. Another sat on the curb and stared at its hands. Two walked together beneath the traffic light. Car. I knew car. Cars did something. Go. Fast. There was more. I waited. Nothing. Car was enough.

We walked. No one told us to. Some went one way. Some went another. I stayed near the ones around me. 

Us. Birds hopped along the sidewalk and flew into the trees when we came close. The dog barked again. Dog. I smiled. Dog. Then something moved beside a parked car. I stopped.

It was low to the ground, pale and wet-looking, round through the middle with long parts beneath it that bent and straightened as it moved. In the center was an eye. Eye.

I knew eye. It looked at me. Something moved inside my head. Pain. Room. Wrist. Roll. I looked down at my arm. Blue skin. No mark. The thing came closer. I stepped back.

It stopped. Eye. Bad? I waited. No answer came. It moved toward me again, slow this time, then stopped beside me without touching. I looked at it. It looked at me.

One of us wandered into the street. The eye-thing moved fast.

It crossed in front of him and blocked his way. He stopped. The thing shifted to one side, and he turned back toward us. The eye-thing returned. I watched it.

Something in my head said fear. But why? I couldn’t find why. The thing moved ahead, stopped, and looked back at us. Go? One of us followed. Then another. I followed too.

The thing knew. Enough. We walked. More streets. Trees. Birds. Wind. Cars. Big boxes. Small boxes. Some words came. Some did not. It was fine.

The eye-thing stayed near us. When one of us stopped, it waited. When one wandered away, it moved in front until we turned back. More eye-things came.

One from beneath a car. One from a door. One from far down the street. They moved with us. One of us fell. An eye-thing stopped beside him. Us stopped. Us got up.

We went on. Safe. I knew safe. Safe. A sound grew louder. Crash. Wait. Crash. Wait. Crash. I liked it. I knew it. 

The sound had a word. I tried.

Nothing.

The air smelled sharp and clean.

Salt. Salt. Good. The hard ground ended. Soft ground moved under my shoes. Sand. Yes. Sand. Ahead was blue. So much blue. It went on and on. It moved in. Moved out. Crash. I knew this. I knew the word. O...

I waited. O... Gone. Blue. Blue was enough. All of Us stopped. The eye-things stopped too.Wind pushed my  hair across my face. Birds cried above us. Then I saw red. A great red-orange circle hung low above the blue. Light stretched from it across the moving water. I knew this too. Warm. Light. Day. Sun. Pretty. The sun moved down. It touched the blue. Us watched. The eye-thing beside me settled into the sand. Its eye watched too. Something stirred inside me. Something big. Something from before.

A place. A life. A name.

My—

The sun slid farther down, leaving gold on the blue. Pretty.

The thought went away. I sat in the sand beside us. The eye-thing stayed close. Safe. The last red slipped away. The sky changed. Birds called. Wind touched me. Us. Safe. Good.

© 2026 Susan (Susie) Hanson. All rights reserved.