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It was just a joke, a harmless prank to knock John Carter off his high horse.
That goody two shoes with his holier-than-thou attitude threatened to ruin Dale’s career over a mistake on a chart. Dale couldn’t let that go without a little pay back.
Sure, it might have been juvenile to shove Carter into the storage closet in the corner of the locker room. Dale knew he was twenty-six, not sixteen. But Dale thought he and the other interns would get a good laugh out of it and when the story inevitably traveled around the hospital, Carter would get a much needed dose of humiliation.
Dale didn’t expect the door to get stuck.
“What the hell?!” Carter shouted as Dale grabbed him by the coat and half dragged, half carried him toward the corner.
The other man was taller but Dale was stockier and he had the element of surprise on his side. Carter was never known for his grace and agility, he was always tripping over his own feet. All Dale had to do was give him a little push and Carter was tumbling backwards into the storage closet. Dale slammed the door shut and clicked the lock with a satisfied grin.
“A time-out to think about your actions will do you a world of good, John.” Dale snickered.
Carter was immediately rattling the door handle from the inside and pounding on the door.
“Fuck you, Dale! This is not funny. Let me out!” Came Carter’s muffled shouts.
“I’ll consider it if you apologize. Why don’t you beg a little?” Dale said, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Dale, open the damn door!” The pounding got louder. It sounded like John was kicking the door now.
“Take it easy Carter, you’re going to damage hospital property,” Dale said as he took a step back. He feared Carter might actually bust down the whole door frame like the Incredible Hulk. Maybe the scrawny bastard was stronger than Dale gave him credit for.
The frantic pounding continued. Dale looked around the empty locker room. This wasn’t as funny as he pictured in his head.
“Alright, fine. Don't get your panties in a wad, I’ll open it.” With that, the melee quieted.
Dale approached the door and turned the handle.
It wouldn’t budge.
He gave the lock button a few good pushes with his thumb then turned it again. Still, nothing. Dale rattled the handle this way and that, jamming the lock harder. No luck.
“Dale, just open it! Please!” Carter’s voice gained an edge of desperation.
“Give me a second. I’m trying,” Dale said, exasperated as he continued to fiddle with the handle. “It’s stuck.”
“Stuck? What do you mean, stuck?” John shouted. He started turning it from the inside again.
“Quit it, Carter! You’re not helping. Stop shaking the handle and let me do it,” Dale shouted back, his frustration growing.
Dale kept trying. He didn’t want to admit it but he was getting a little worried. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he wrestled with the stubborn mechanism. He didn’t want to have to get someone and explain the situation. It was sounding stupider by the minute.
I shoved another resident into the closet like a high school bully. Now it won’t open.
What was he thinking?
“Dale, I’m sorry, ok? Just let me out. Please.” A change in Carter’s tone made Dale pause. The heat of anger seemed to have dissipated. His voice was closer now, like he was right on the other side of the door, separated from Dale by mere inches.
“I have to get out. I can’t stay in here,” Carter continued to plead.
“I’m working on it, man. Just take a breather. Didn’t you just get off shift? Pretend you’re napping in the lounge,” Dale tried to sound reassuring. This was not turning out how he pictured it.
After a brief moment of silence, the assault on the door from the inside returned with renewed vigor. There were scraping sounds now, which Dale realized with horror came from fingernails against wood.
“John, you have to stop! You’re going to hurt yourself!” Dale shouted above the cacophony of thumps, scratches, and grunts.
After several minutes, the door mercifully stopped quaking and the sound of muffled movements replaced it. Maybe he tired himself out.
“It’s so dark in here. Let me out, please.” Carter sounded so small and distant, Dale could barely make out what he was saying.
“Hang tight, Carter. I’ll go find maintenance.” Dale gave the handle one last jiggle for good measure before he turned to leave.
“No! Don’t leave me here!” The fearful yell pulled Dale right back in.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes. You’ll be fine.”
A new sound from behind the door stopped Dale dead in his tracks. He didn’t trust what he was hearing at first. Dale pressed his ear against the door.
There it was—whimpering. Soft whines, like that of a scared pedes patient, seeped through the barrier.
“John, you ok in there?”
No response.
“Hey Carter! Answer me!” Dale raised his voice a bit more. He felt a pinch of panic in his gut. Is Carter going to pass out?
Dale rapped his knuckle against the door a couple times.
“You with me, buddy?” Dale called out again.
Seconds crawled by, a small voice finally responded.
“Bobby?”
“Uh, no. It’s Dale. Dale Edson. Carter, are you ok?”
More whimpering were followed by mutters almost too quiet for Dale to decipher.
“Please Bobby…please…”
Damnit. Dale got the begging he wanted but it did not feel satisfying at all. In fact, it made Dale feel like an absolute piece of shit.
But it wasn’t his fault. Not really. How was he supposed to know Carter was claustrophobic?
“Carter, you got to stop freaking out, man. I’m going to get help.” Dale turned to leave, he wanted to get away from whatever was happening behind that door as much as he wanted to find someone with power tools.
He headed down the hall towards the elevator, the maintenance office was one floor down. He could make up some excuse, like Carter was looking for something in the closet and the door accidentally locked. Hopefully the other man would be too embarrassed to contradict him.
It was just his luck that no one from maintenance was in the office. Dale ended up at the admit desk, asking Jerry to page someone. After about fifteen minutes of waiting, a disgruntled middle-aged man finally turned up. Dale never bothered to learn any of the maintenance staff’s names before. He squinted at the man’s nametag.
“Hey, uh Geroge. Can you help me out with something in the locker room? The door to the storage closet is stuck,” Dale said sheepishly.
“What do you need from there?” George asked, not bothering to hide his annoyance.
“Oh um, nothing. Just…someone’s inside.”
“Come again?”
“I said, someone’s locked inside!” Dale realized belatedly he had raised his voice. Everyone around the admit desk turned to stare at him with quizzable looks on their faces. Crap.
“What were they doing inside the closet?” George inquired.
“Nevermind that, can you just come with me?” Dale said with a huff and started down the hall. George followed a few steps behind.
When they arrived at the scene of the crime, it was eerily quiet and the closet door looked innocuous.
“You sure someone’s in there?” George asked.
“Yeah! Hang on,” Dale said as he approached the door. “Carter, you in there?”
Dale waited for a response but received no answer. He pressed his ear against the door and listened. What Dale heard made his heart clench behind his ribs—it was the echo of quiet sobs.
“He’s in there…please get it open.” Dale was the one begging now.
George tried turning the door handle and soon came to the same conclusion as Dale. He needed to grab tools from the maintenance office. At the look of panic in Dale’s eyes, George promised to return as quickly as possible.
Dale paced outside the door with a palm over his face. He never thought there would be a day when he would pray to see John Carter’s stupid face.
George was back in record time. He got to work drilling into the screws on the side of the handle. After some minutes that felt like hours, the handle came loose. George removed the whole mechanism and the door creaked open.
Dale stepped forward and peered inside.
At first glance, the closet appeared empty. Then as the opening widened and light reclaimed the space, Dale saw Carter. He was huddled on the floor of his cell, back against the corner. His arms wrapped around himself. Dale winced at the sight of his bloody fingernails and knuckles.
Dale almost forgot about the person next to him until George let out a gasp.
“Can you give us a minute?” Dale said more curtly than he intended.
The maintenance man spun on his heels, he didn't need to be asked twice.
Dale rubbed a hand over the back of his neck and sighed wearily.
Dale Edson recognized that he had some qualities that others found distasteful. Sometimes he was a little arrogant, but a good surgeon needed to be confident. He always prioritized himself, his years competing with cut throat peers in medical school taught him that. He did whatever it took to get ahead, but couldn’t all doctors say the same?
Dale might have been all of those things but Dale was not heartless. Though he balked at the sentimentality of it, he wanted to become a doctor to help people. Some days, he lost sight of that between competing for procedures and vying for the attendings’ approval. But right now he was looking at someone who needed his help.
The doctor stepped into the closet and crouched down in front of Carter.
“Hey man, you with me?”
Carter’s shoulders continued trembling. Muffled sobs were his only response.
Dale sat down on the linoleum floor next to the other man, their shoulders touching.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t think…,” Dale trailed off. He didn’t think—that was the problem. “The door’s open. You’re out, John. Can you look up for me?”
John’s breath hitched. Ever so slowly, he lifted his head. A tear-streaked face turned toward the light. Brown eyes blinked open.
Carter’s shoulders loosened almost imperceptibly. He let out a shaky breath then looked around, strongly resembling a newborn kitten discovering his surroundings for the first time.
“Dale?” Carter rasped out.
“There you are.” Dale smiled, some weight evaporated off his back.
“Wh...what happened?” The intern looked quizzically at Dale like he had all the answers in the world.
“You kind of freaked out in here,” Dale said, leaving out some incriminating details. “Didn’t know you were claustrophobic.”
“I…when I was a kid,” John mumbled like he was talking in his sleep, eyes still hazy. “There was this little closet under the staircase. Bobby, my brother, he used to lock me in there sometimes.” John’s voice trailed off. Dale could tell he was wandering away, following the trail of a memory.
Dale gave Carter’s shoulder a little bump with his own before the other man could stray too far.
“What an asshole,” Dale said with a smirk.
Carter looked up and met Dale’s eyes.
“Takes one to know one,” John said. The corner of his lips twitched.
Dale chuckled. “Touché.” He stood up with a groan, his back yelled at him after only a few minutes on the floor. Carter must be really sore after his escapade the last hour.
Dale extended a hand toward his cellmate. Carter studied it then grasped it. Dale hoisted him up and led him out of the closet door.
“You good?” Dale studied the other man under the harsh fluorescent light of the locker room.
“I’m fine. Let’s get out of here.” Carter rubbed his hands over his face and attempted to wipe away any evidence of recent events.
To everyone else in County, John Carter probably looked unremarkable—eyes red-rimmed from lack of sleep, shoulders slumped with the weight of a long shift. But Dale knew the truth. Carter shared a piece of himself with Dale that no one else knew. Dale held it close like a secret.
Carter gave Dale one more glance before grabbing his bag off the bench. Dale responded with a slight nod.
The two men walked out of the locker room, side by side.