It was already 6:45pm when she arrived at the hospital. St. Barbara Hospital was a state-of-the-art hospital constructed in the heart of the metro, surrounded by the other big neighboring cities. It has been said that because of the hospital's status as one of the best hospitals in the Philippines, their screening process was hell and next to impossible. Anna was one of the lucky ones who made it in and had now been happily working there for years now.
She timed in and went into her ward when all of the sudden, someone grabbed her hand from behind. Anna froze for a second, before she heard a familiar voice snickering.
"Anna! You're not hearing me." Samantha smiled at her.
"Sam!" Anna sighed in relief. "Don't you scare me like that!"
"Hey, I wasn't trying to." Samantha answered back. "I was calling you earlier because Ms. Minchin was looking for you!"
"Ms. Minchin?!" Surprised, Anna grabbed Samantha's arm and yanked her. "Easy… she might hear!"
Samantha snickered as she was funnily shushed by Anna. Both women laughed as they whispered a few gossips.
"Ahem." A voice came forth from behind.
They both froze in fear, as the footsteps came closer.
"Ms. Sanbwan, I welcome you back!" A short old lady appeared in front of them.
Her hair was well-tied and bun behind her back. She wore a pristine, white nurse uniform, stockings and an old-fashioned nurse's cap.
"Ms. Min!" Anna hastily smiled. "Good evening!" Both of the friends greeted her.
The older lady squinted her eyes and lifted her chin up. "Hmmm… Looks like you have straightened out your… domestic problems, I suppose?"
"Yes, we did ma'am!" Anna's voice shivered.
"I hope it won't…happen…again." The older nurse sniffed. "Or there will be no schedules for you, moving forward." She clicked her tongue. "God, these youngsters! That's why I never married!" She mumbled as she went.
"Wow! You're lucky, Anna!" Samantha sighed. "Last one Ms. Chin spoke to someone they literally, broke down!" She said.
"Hmmm…" Anna scoffed. "We all knew what happened to Kendra. She had to do it because Kendra was getting out of hand with her partying. She skipped a week's worth of shift!" She added.
"Well, there's that." Samantha rolled her eyes. "Anyways, I'm so happy to see—"
All of the sudden, the speakers buzzed. "Attention! All nurses from wards 3 and 4, you are needed in the E.R.! I repeat, wards 3 and 4 to the E.R. now!"
Both of them looked at each other. Anna's shift was on Ward 3, while Samantha was on Ward 4. They looked at each other and rushed to the E.R. not knowing how severe the scene they would find.
Anna's heart rushed as they went closer to the E.R.; she was afraid how the thing inside her might react to the smell of blood and the sight of carnage. Would it awaken the monster inside her? She bit her lip and prayed silently as they came closer to the room.
The friends arrived at the Emergency Room, welcomed with the agonizing screams of newly brought patients.
"Good God, you're here!" The head nurse sighed in relief.
"What happened here, Louis?" Samantha asked.
"We got a bus who collided with a van, 15 minutes ago. These are just the first ones who came here. We have a bus load coming in and we need all the help we could get!"
"How hard did the van hit the bus?" Anna asked as she wore some examination gloves.
"Geez! Are you reporters?!" Louis clicked his tongue. "Anyway, the bus flipped out of the flyover. There, is that okay? Are we working now?" He asked annoyingly.
Anna and Samantha nodded and went immediately to work. The scene was bloody, it looked like a war movie. The floor was filled with blood and dirt, chaos was everywhere. Nurses and doctors were running up and about as patients filled the floor.
They had to be quelled somehow. As they began to triage their patients, it became clearer who needed their help most. Most of the patients were severely hurt, but there were far more severe injuries than others. They sorted them out and tried to help the ones they could with what they have.
Anna and Samantha went into one of the ER beds with a patient. The teen silently waited for them in the bed. She was calm and collected not batting an eye to the bloodbath and chaos in front of her. Anna noticed the bloody blanket below her waist, and she tried to grip as hard as she could to the bloodied cloth. Another teenage girl stood beside her and
"Hello, ma'am." Anna greeted them. "We are the nurses—"
"My god! Help her already!" The teen went ballistic on them.
"We shall tend to her now." Samantha stepped forward and guided the girl away from the bed. "But we need you to stay far from her so we can do our job."
"But, she needs me!" The girl pushed Samantha away. "I need to be with her!" She held the other girl's hand.
"I-it's…alright, Bing." The teen smiled. "It will be okay! Go and let these ladies do their job." Her smile wilted as she gritted her teeth.
The girl seemed to be in pain, she gripped on the blanket tightly. As her friend went further away from her, she was beginning to show her despair. Her eyes reddened as tears began to roll down her cheek.
"It'll be alright." Anna patted her shoulder.
"No, I am not." The girl looked at her in the eyes. "I am dying." She coughed.
"Dying? What do you mean—" She looked at the pulse oximeter and saw how normal her vital signs were.
"What do we have here?" The doctor suddenly appeared out of nowhere.
"Oh…" Anna was caught off guard and scrambled for the chart, but it wasn't around the bed.
"Issa dela Paz, 16 years old." Samantha popped out from the doctor's back and gave him the chart. "Below the knee injury. Her foot was severed right off."
The doctor read what was written on the chart and immediately clicked his tongue. "I need to see the wound so we can get it prepped for O.R.! Get everything ready!" He ordered at both of them.
Anna immediately prepared the kit. She took some gauze and torniquet, while Samantha took the other dressing tools from the far side of the room.
While preparing, Anna was eyeing the doctor who seemed to have a difficult time convincing the patient to show her leg.
"We need to look at the wound." The doctor insisted. "Don't be shy, I am here to—Oh my goodness! Anna, Samantha! You have to see this!"
She immediately approached the doctor who was still shocked at what he saw.
"Oh my God!" Anna exclaimed as she almost dropped the kit from shock and sheer disbelief.
The patient's leg looked like it was nibbled by something, rather than being on an accident. The sinews on her calves dangled, dripping with a black, foul blood. The entire room stank immediately like decay. The smell was so strong that the doctor had to excuse himself to barf.
"I am dying now." The girl adamantly said once again.
"No. We will fix you!" Anna answered while committing one of the biggest mistakes of her life… giving her word.
The girl smiled, "No, you won't. I can feel it in me."
The patient collapsed and all of the sudden, her eyes began to stare blankly into the ceiling, while the whites in her eyes were beginning to turn black.
"Code blue! Code blue!" Anna shouted while she touched the girl's pulse from the neck. The monitor seemed to be broken. It wasn't working at all. The girl convulsed and more bile, black blood oozed out from her wound and her mouth.
Samantha and the doctor rushed towards her and helped her resuscitate the teen, but it was already too late. The teen died in Anna's arms, after fighting for her life for twenty minutes. The doctor declared the poor girl dead.
Anna stood beside the dead girl, smelling the rotten blood still oozing from her wound. The doctor was calling other doctors to check at the wound, it was something they had never seen before.
"You say she was part of the crash? Her friend said she still had her foot earlier today!" Another doctor asked. "But why does her wound looked like they were rotting for almost a week now?!"
Both of the doctors looked at each other intrigued and confused with what they saw. Anna on the other hand began to recall the stench of the bile oozing out from the poor girl's wound. It smelled familiar. It smelled like her hair after her transformation. Just the thought of it made her skin crawl.