Shutdown by Jeff Crouch

THIS IS THE FIRST INSTALLMENT OF AN INTRIGUING SERIALIZED STORY BY JEFF CROUCH. THE INDELIBLE KITCHEN WILL POST NEW INSTALLMENTS OF THIS PIECE AT LEAST ONCE A WEEK.


Shutdown


At the Emergency entrance, those who could walk on their own were permitted to leave, but there was no where to walk. A few fleabag motels were about a mile away, but there were no sidewalks—only oncoming cars, apartments, gas stations, beer stores, topless bars, and an abandoned lumberyard.

Who among the leaving would know where to go anyway? A car was required.

City buses had been commandeered to take those who could sit up and hold on to their IVs and bladder bags to a downtown recreation center. Mats had already been unrolled for their arrival, and these patients had been told to hold onto their sheets and pillows. Most did so nervously.

Two security guards watched over their medication.

A few ambulances were carrying the more chronic to nearby hospitals, and they had two or three gurneys a piece. The hospital visitors, let alone the patients, were noticeably upset. The hospital had shutdown.

Tow trucks were available to move the cars not gone before 10 PM.

Large moving vans were lined up in the parking lot. A paper shredding operation was in full grind.

Like a line of army ants removing everything from a picnic, the movers rolled the hospital beds out the front door, to the parking lot, and into the trucks.

The generators had yet to kick in. Several men orchestrated the move with flashlights.

John Largent was on his cell phone to his boss. “I thought the fax order came from you. It was a secure fax.”

The power went off at 7:08 PM, and the backup generators had failed. At that point, John Largent put the shutdown order into effect.

The morgue had been emptied into one of the smaller moving vans. John Largent now knew there were six bodies without paper work, one of them his boss’s father-in-law and one of them his boss’s adopted son.

John Largent was going to have a busy night. He walked over to one of his favorite doctors and asked for a prescription to help him with his diet.

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