Archive of Our Own

With a loud and annoyed groan, the Head Nurse of the hospital closed the door of the office behind her, the thick wooden door making a loud thud as it fell in the lock. Resisting the urge to rub her face with force, she made a beeline over to the sink, washing her hands wordlessly, before disinfecting them properly.

“Long night huh?”, was the sentence with which the Secretary greeted her, making her turn her head.

As always, the boney man who looked as if he was already middle-aged, despite only being in his early 30s, the stress visibly getting to him, was sitting on the worn out black office chair, in his hand a cup with steaming hot coffee.

However unlike sitting like he sat usually, posture straight, eyes narrowed, entirely focusing on the patients in front of him and his long blue hair tied back in a neat low ponytail, he was now sitting leaned back in his hair, the back of the chair bend a bit backwards, his eyes tired, slouched into the chair and his hair opened, the hair tie now on his wrist, next to the watch he always wore.

On the counter on his right, one of the four Interns sat, the one with a buzzcut, their hair dyed pink, a cup of coffee also in their hands.

They looked at the Head Nurse with the same empty and unsettling eyes as the other three of the quadruplets, who became their new Interns a few months ago.

Their eerie empty eyes and the weird smile, which almost never faded no matter how dire the situation was, never failed to make the Head Nurse shiver, even if she was one of the workers who had seen the most creepy or outright terrifying things already.

Next to them, stood the Intern with the green hair and the messy almost grown out wolfcut, sipping from their own coffee cup, entirely unbothered, not even looking up once.

“Don’t even start”, was the Head Nurse’s grumpy reply as she dried off her hands.

Her body was aching and her mouth was watering alone from the smell of the coffee which had spread through the entire office.

She felt as if she aged at least five more years during this half of the shift and it was only the first half of the night.

Sighing, the middle aged, tall and lanky woman, took her hair tie out of her own white hair, opening her neatly made bun, before ruffling through her own hair.

All which she hoped was that opening her hair for the break would help a bit with the headache which started to make its presence known.

Later she would tie her hair back together into the bun, her hair slicked back, not a single strand out of the tie's hold, making her appear strict yet professional but right now, this tight hairstyle only made her head and scalp hurt.

Over all these years in which she had worked as a Nurse, and since quite a few years as a Head Nurse, she had learned how to ignore the headaches which came from keeping her hair like this for hours but right now she was desperate for a break, given how the night was going so far.

“Again, I apologize for letting that one anomaly in, it didn’t show ANY signs. I mean it.”

With his apology, the Secretary tore her out of her thoughts again.

With a bitter grimace, she looked back at him, trying not to appear too angry about it.

Staring at him for a second with a look that barely hid her true feelings about the accident, she then sighed before shooting him a calm and collected smile. A professional one which she had practiced since she was in college and which she had mastered by now.

“Don’t worry, nobody died so it’s fine.”

“Honestly I am surprised that nobody died by now”, chimed in the co-worker with the messy jet-black shoulder length hair, startling her a bit.

She had not noticed their presence in the office at all.

Walking away from the coffee machine, they stepped up to her, handing her a cup of hot steaming coffee, causing her to utter a bit spooked sounding “Thank you”, making the other nod firmly, before they made their way back to the coffee machine again, standing next to the Intern with the short yellow hair, who stood in the corner of the room, next to the coffee machine, and with their own cup of coffee in their hands.

Glancing at the two from the corners of her eyes as she carefully took a small sip from the coffee, relief immediately washing over her as she tasted the savory yet bitter hot liquid on her tongue, feeling it run down her throat, burning only a bit so that it was a pleasant burn, bringing some life back into her worn out bones, she furrowed her brows a bit.

She had no idea why the black haired, lanky, tall and seemingly rather well-trained, in an athletic kind of way, was working here and who they even were.

They had stood in front of the office a few months ago, a couple of papers in their hands, claiming to be a Nurse from another hospital, having quit working there due it shutting down, just like countless other hospitals, and now wanting to work here, in one of the last hospitals which were still open, not closing down and not scared to face the situation with the Anomaly outbreak.

Everyone had been suspicious but after running, way too much and probably unnecessary, check-ups, taking a bit too many photos of them, staring at them through the videocams for way too long, asking a dozen questions and after the Head of the hospital himself, Doctor Harlow, had been called, inspecting the papers thoroughly but not finding anything suspicious either, he had personally accepted them into the hospital and granted them a new job as a new nurse.

Strangely enough, the new “nurse” was spending way more time in the office and "accidentally" tearing down posters than anything else.

Another strange thing was, that during their first time there, they seemed to be entirely new to how the work during a night shift in a hospital went down but therefore they were faster at spotting anomalies than anyone else.

It was a bit creepy, the way in which their hazel eyes were narrowing at a patient in front of the office and the way they pulled out their gun faster than anyone could react, shooting them down without any hesitation, without even showing any kind of reaction, as if they had been working with a gun and with weaponry in general since forever, not even the Head Nurse being able to shoot down Anomalies without flinching despite all the things she had already seen in her job, still unused to having to wield and actually use a weapon despite the fact that the outbreak had been going on for quite a while by now, and the creepiest thing, it was always an Anomaly. They were never once wrong.

The Head Nurse couldn’t shake the feeling that they were in fact not a nurse, but someone sent by a higher organization.

Almost like a secret agent.

Yet they were friendly and almost protective towards their co-workers, despite how weary everyone was around them.

The only one who didn’t seem to be weary around them anymore, was the intern with the yellow hair.

After a few months of the new “nurse” working with them, the two of them were sticking together all the time. It was strange yet a bit sweet to watch. Especially since during the first few months, there was so much unexplained tension between them that the Head Nurse used to worry it would escalate into a fight one night. She still didn’t know what it had been about. She was just happy that this tension was resolved by now.

She could have even sworn that she had seen them a few days earlier, leaving the parking lot of the hospital after a night shift, holding hands, but maybe she had just been seeing things.

“Don’t jinx it man”, was the pink haired intern’s reply, to the black-haired “nurse’s” comment about people dying.

“Yeah please”, the Secretary said, rubbing his temple with his one free hand, the other still holding the cup of coffee, resting on the armlean of the office chair, “I can’t handle Harlow being all pissed off again, scolding us again. He’s always so…-”

“Fucking creepy then?”, chimed in the green haired intern.

“Language”, was the only thing the Head Nurse sternly called out, earning her a “Sorry M’am!”

However, while nobody dared to agree outloud, she, as well as everyone else in the room, had to quietly admit that the Doctor was in fact “fucking creepy”, whenever something went wrong.

He wasn’t loud, he wasn’t yelling, he wasn’t threatening them, but he was creepy then, his voice cold and quiet as he scolded them for letting somebody die, his weirdly hollow and dead eyes seemingly staring right into their souls, his glance feeling like daggers on their skins as his usually tired eyes became wide, staring at them coldly without blinking even just once.

The words he spoke were harsh and even though he still appeared calm and professional, the workers couldn’t help but feel as if it was just a mere facade, as if he tried to desperately keep the facade up in order to not let them see what was truly behind it. As if he was holding something back.

The entire air around the Head Doctor seemed to shift then and the Head Nurse couldn’t help but feel the same cold shiver running down her back which she always felt whenever faced with a more powerful anomaly.

She just hoped that she wasn’t the only one feeling this eerie shift of the atmosphere then, otherwise she would have to worry about her sanity even more than usually, but given the look which the black-haired “nurse” had given Doctor Harlow the first time they had experienced one of these “crashouts”, if one could even call it that, she was sure that she wasn’t.

The black-haired one had stood in the back of the room, quietly observing the Doctor as he harshly spoke to them, unfazed by his words, unlike the rest who looked as if they saw a ghost, not moving at all underneath the Doctor’s cold gaze.

Upon seeing him like that, the “nurse” had raised their eyebrows, listening to the Doctor, watching him, almost scanning him with their watchful eyes, crossing their arms as their look changed to something that looked like an expression of surprise, mixed with suspicion and something else which the Head Nurse couldn’t read.

After the Doctor had left, leaving the room filled with his workers behind dead silent, nobody daring to say or breathe too loudly until they heard the heavy metal door to his office at the end of the hallway fall shut with a loud clack echoing through the empty building, the black-haired one had been hastily scribbling something into their little notebook, which they always kept somewhere in the pockets of their hospital attire, for the following half hour.

The sound of someone entering the office again, broke the dead silence which had formed inside the office after the comment of the green-haired intern, who was by now drinking their coffee again as if nothing had happened, and also tore the Head Nurse out of her darkening thoughts, which started to get filled up by the image of the Doctor glaring down at them, once more.

For some reason, she then always felt strangely relieved about the fact that a thick wall and a glass window had been between them and for some reason she then always felt her fingers itch to hastily press the red button, closing down the metal lids, making her wonder afterwards why she had reacted like that in the first place, blaming the patient’s death, which was the cause for the Doctor scolding them in the first place, and her being overworked, going hours without a coffee break and without eating anything, always on the edge and scared of anomalies the entire time, on her weirdly scared reaction towards the Doctor who had been, rightfully, scolding them for messing up.

After being torn out of her thoughts by the sound of someone entering, she hastily looked at the door, ready to shoot who- or whatever had made its way into the office, but she immediately calmed down the second she saw that it was her wife entering.

The short, chubby, middle-aged Nurse with the warmest smile the Head Nurse had ever seen in her entire life, with the kindest eyes on earth and who kept her long wavy dark pink hair hair with the light pink highlights in two, a bit messy, low buns, one on each side of her head, stood there, closing the door behind her and looking at the other workers with worry in her eyes.

“It’s so silent in here. Are you all okay? Did something happen?”, she asked, her voice dripping with concern.

It was the Head Nurse who was the first to reply, a warm smile forming on her own lips, which was a rare sight for all the other workers, aside from the Nurse, walking up to her wife, kissing her softly yet shortly before answering: “Nono don’t you worry love, we are all okay. We just had a bit of a weird conversation- BUT it’s all good. Do you want my coffee? The machine is still brewing. I just took a small sip and it’s still hot.”

“Ah no don’t worry, you need it more than me after dealing with that anomaly disturbing the operation which you’ve led today”, was the reply of the Nurse, who smiled back at her wife lovingly. “I can wait that minute.”

“Okay if you say so”, answered the Head Nurse gently, then adding a: “Thank you.”

The Nurse just nodded, still smiling, before making her way over to the sink, proceeding to wash her own hands and disinfecting them afterwards.

“I can only apologize again”, voiced the Secretary between his sips of coffee. “In my defense, it was the first anomaly which I’ve let in on accident this month, and the month is almost over.”

“I know. It’s just that exactly this anomaly decided to bust into room 8 while I was working with one of the interns on a critical patient. I have no idea how we killed the anomaly and kept the patient alive at the same time”, sneered the Head Nurse back.

She did not intend to be that harsh towards the Secretary, after all they were both working for almost the same amount of years at this forsaken facility and after all they were pretty close, she would even consider him a friend, even if she struggled with trusting anyone, now even more than before the outbreak, but the situation had been so awful, she couldn’t help it.

Yet she did feel a slight pang of guilt in her chest, the second the harsh words left her.

Before the Secretary, who now looked overtaken by guilt as well, could reply anything, the Psychologist of the workers chimed into the discussion, another one she hadn’t noticed before.

She really needed this break. At this rate, she wouldn’t recognize an anomaly if it was standing right in front of her.

Taking a very big sip of her coffee, she listened to the Psychologist.

“Before this escalates once again, may I ask, where even was our sniper in that situation? Usually they are there the second you hear the screech of one of these beasts.”

“Sniper”, was the nickname the yellow haired intern had given the new “nurse” after they had flawlessly shot down every single anomaly, even from a distance, before anything could happen, during a shift in which the green haired intern had needed to run the office, the Secretary having called in sick, letting in way too many anomalies, causing the shift to become a nightmare.

By now, everyone used it for their black-haired co-worker.

“My sincerest apologies. I had taken a restroom break so I couldn’t be there in time”, came the answer from the “nurse”, who was still standing close to the yellow haired intern, in the corner of the room next to the coffee machine.

For some reason, the Head Nurse couldn’t shake the feeling that this explanation was nothing but a blatant lie.

She had caught them once already, right after they had started working at the hospital, sneaking around in the hallways and then around the entrance to Dr. Harlow’s office and when she confronted them about it, they blamed it on getting lost due to them being new.

It had been a good excuse, since they really had been new and since the hospital was in fact big and a bit difficult to navigate in, so she had no other choice than to let them go.

Ever since then, she didn’t catch them acting weird again but she couldn’t help but feel like they didn’t stop putting their nose into things nobody ever should, but instead just got more careful.

Maybe she was just paranoid.

Maybe she really needed to sit down with the Psychologist again in a quiet minute when both weren’t busy.

Maybe that really was for the best.

“Let’s just be glad that nothing worse happened, that the patient and that we all are alive and healthy and that the worst got prevented”, said the pink haired Nurse who was standing in front of the coffee machine, waiting for her coffee.

She always tried to look on the bright side of things, and maybe that was the reason why she was the only one able to calm down patients, treating them so kindly and with such a feeling of safety radiating around her, that they all let her treat them without anxiously moving around, making it unnecessarily difficult for everyone involved.

Maybe that was also the reason why she was still pulling up to work despite the fact that she just barely survived, always chugging down tons of coffee in her short breaks, covering up her true nervous and anxious nature behind positive manifestations and a warm smile.

Since nobody wanted to argue against this statement, admitting that it was the better way to look at things instead of trying to place the blame on someone and instead of bashing in their heads over an accident which could have happened to anyone of them, the room became silent again, only the sound of the coffee machine and of drinking audible.

It was both uncomfortable and calming at the same time.

“Where is the blue haired intern? And Paramedic? I know that Security Guard called in sick but where are the other two? I could have sworn I saw them earlier today”, the Nurse broke the silence after a while and after she had finally grabbed her own cup of coffee, standing next to her wife again, rather closely so that their bodies were touching, the Head Nurse feeling her wife’s warmth against her own, cold skin, the touch feeling comfortable and creating a feeling of safety.

“Blue is currently treating the last patient”, replied the Secretary, “And Paramedic is sleeping in the ambulance.”

The Nurse just nodded as the Head Nurse swallowed down a comment about letting an intern treat a patient on their own.

She was too tired to discuss, yet also too tired to head to the room and keep an eye on the intern.

Praying silently that they wouldn’t mess up, she took another sip of her coffee.

“By the way, what “weird conversation” were you all having to make the entire room go quiet?”, the Nurse asked, making all the employees, besides the three interns, glance at each other awkwardly before the green haired intern gave her a straight-forward answer.

“They were talking about how Dr. Harlow is acting when we mess up and loose a patient and I said that he’s fucking creepy then, because y’all are too scared to say it out loud. Not me tho. I can say it again gladly, he is fucking creepy when angry. “

Raising her brows, the Nurse stared at the intern, who was still standing next to their pink haired sibling, who was still sitting on the counter, in front of one of the two, now temporarily closed check-ins.

“I mean…You aren’t wrong”, muttered the pink-haired woman into her cup, which she had already put against her lips, before taking another sip.

“THANK YOU! Girl you are the first one to have the balls to openly agree with me here! The rest always just looks at me as if I said a forbidden thing out loud and as if I’m about to get stricken down by lightning as punishment at any second.”

Hearing this, the Nurse chuckled a bit.

“If I were you, I would keep your voice down a bit”, grunted the Secretary, glaring at the intern.

“Why? Y’all act as if he’s sitting in the walls of this office and is about to fire you if you say any critique.”

“Yeah good question”, chimed in the black-haired Nurse. “Are you all scared of him? Do you feel like something is off about him?”

Staring at him in silence, the other workers were seemingly frozen in place, now that someone actually voiced that one question, the one about the feelings which they all mutually shared whenever the Doctor was angry.

“Not off…It’s just as if he’s holding back anger issues or something and that worries me a bit”, was the poor excuse of the Psychologist, earning him a laugh of the pink haired intern.

“Brother is holding back his demons or sum shit.”

The whacky conversation was stopped once more by someone entering the office again, making everyone snap around to look at who entered.

Closing the door behind them, the blue haired intern looked at them weirded out.

“Did I interrupt something or what?”

“Nono dear we just thought that you were…someone else”, replied the Nurse awkwardly, yet smiling, as the blue haired intern just shrugged, making a bee line to the sink and the bottle with disinfection spray and then to the coffee machine, greeting their siblings while doing so, now all four of them together in one room, before sitting down with their coffee on one of the many boxes with folders in them which were standing around the office.

“What happened with the patient?”, the Head Nurse asked, her voice a bit cold, making her earn an eyeroll from the blue haired intern while they drank from their own cup.

“Oh my god what do you think happened?? I treated them and guided them to the exit as soon as they felt well enough to get up again. They were just dehydrated. I can treat that just fine.”

“Good.”

“That means we won’t have to face Harlow now.”, she added in her mind, thinking exactly what half of the people in the room were thinking as well.

“So now my question, you guys look as if I caught you talking about plotting a crime, what’s up, what did I miss?”

“We are talking about how Harlow is keeping his buttcheeks clenched to keep in his demons, or whatever issues he has, when we lose a patient and that this makes him act creepy as hell”, explained the green haired intern, making the blue haired one’s empty eyes lit up a bit as their eerie smile grew a bit bigger, making the Head Nurse shudder against her will.

“FINALLY!! Shit-talking about Harlow. I was waiting for so long but you all never dare to do anything other than to praise him.”

“He is a good doctor”, replied the Head Nurse in a slightly annoyed tone.

The interns were all in their mid-twenties.

It was beyond her how they could be so hungry for gossip and for shit-talking about their boss, almost like teens during their first internship.

“Good doctor my ass. Have you ever seen him actually do anything?? When he isn’t angry, he’s useless if you ask me”, replied the blue-haired intern, swaying the cup in their hand around in circles so that the milk which they had put in their coffee, mixed a bit more together with it; being the only one of the workers who drank their coffee with milk.

“Running away, pissing his pants when an ambulance is coming, letting us do all the work and if he isn’t there to give us instructions like some NPC or do the only good thing he ever does, give us a bonus payment, I never see him! Such a good doctor for real. At least he’s not underpaying us. I would have quit otherwise.”

Their rant, made them earn some slight nods and made some of the other workers exchange some glances.

Neither could argue back, they were in the right. Almost at least.

“I have to agree, it’s a bit weird that he lets interns do full treatments on their own, has them take care of emergencies on their own when an ambulance comes and lets them do critical operations. I get that we are severely understaffed, I mean god we have exactly two nurses, one head nurse, a single secretary, a single psychologist, a single paramedic- you get me you know our team, but he’s here too isn’t he? How come we have a doctor, a head doctor at that, who’s also a trained surgeon, yet he never does anything and is always just sitting in his office. He is the most qualified for all these emergencies we are facing and for this pandemic. He would be such a great help. And he’s our only doctor in this facility. It’s his facility too”, muttered the Secretary eventually, breaking down the last walls which prevented them from entirely giving in to gossip and shit-talk.

“It is!” Surprised by herself, the Head Nurse awkwardly took a sip of coffee, before sighing. “It really is. I was so scared when I came out of my ten minute coffee break and saw that everyone was so busy that one of the interns had to go and do an emergency operation, the first time that this situation happened. And these situations keep happening. I keep seeing the interns alone in emergency operations. Something like that wasn’t allowed back when I did my first internships and I am sure it still isn’t allowed.”

“Maybe he’s all for the hands-on-learn-by-doing-experience”, was the sarcastic sounding reply by the pink haired intern. “I wanna be paid more then tho, if I manage to save a patient in an operation which I shouldn’t even be doing anyways.”

“We all wanna be paid more”, groaned the Psychologist, currently downing his second coffee of the break. “The payment is not even the issue.”

“Yeah it’s having a head doctor who does nothing except running away from the ambulance and not doing shit”, chimed in the yellow haired intern. “But for us, the payment is also an issue. At this point us interns are doing more than the Doctor himself. Can we get the Doctor’s title instead at this point? Just, skipping all the stages before that. I am sure we are qualified by now. We are doing way more than regular interns, and that during an anomaly outbreak-pandemic as well, but still get the intern payment.”

“Fair”, was the reply of the Psychologist, twirling his mustache between his fingers.

“You look evil when you do that”, was the remark of one of the pink haired interns, shooting him a disgusted look. “Anyways, I think the Doctor looks like an anime girl when running away from the ambulance. What is he even there for? How did he get through his university time when he bails from an emergency?”

“Draw him in Moe Artstyle I beg you”, giggled the green haired intern next to them, making the Secretary roll his eyes.

“I appreciate it that you, arguably, didn’t go insane by now and that you are still able to make jokes, but can you please be a bit more mature in this setting?”

“Look me straight in my dead eyes and tell me that he doesn’t look like an anime girl from a 2000s anime when he bails. Do it”, was the dead-pan reply of the pink haired intern next to him, as they turned their head to look at him, the Head Nurse thinking for just a split second that they turned their head too far than possible for a human, before shaking her head and walking over to the coffee machine once more. She really needed more and she really needed to have a chat with the Psychologist soon. She was seemingly starting to see things.

The Doctor wouldn’t let them work with anomalies, no matter how weird he sometimes acted. He used to be her friend. He wouldn’t put them in such a danger. At least she hoped that. At least she hoped that somewhere deep inside this turned distant and weird acting person was still the same friend she once knew.

Zoning out as she watched the coffee machine fill up the coffee can made out of glass painfully slowly, she ignored whatever stupid discussion was going on in the back. She was clearly too old for this.

“To stop this discussion about Moe Anime before I go insane here at the thought of Harlow in that artstyle, does he really never help at all?”, was the question of the black-haired nurse which caught her attention again, as it was the first thing that was being said which made some amount of sense again, which she felt as if it was worth giving her attention to.

“If not, are you guys sure that he’s in the building at all?”

For some reason, all the questions the black-haired person asked felt like an interrogation. Maybe it was just their way of speaking and their collected and mysterious way of acting that made it feel like one.

She didn’t want to break her head about it any further right now, not wanting to realize any further how well their way of asking precise questions fit into her theory of them being a secret agent and how well it fit into them being used to interrogating people.

She already had enough of a headache and she already was worried enough for her sanity. Besides, she still had half of a night before her.

“He usually comes out of his office to help when we are so severely understaffed that we would not manage to treat anyone in time. Or he comes out randomly really”, explained the pink haired Nurse who had previously listened to the discussion in amusement, enjoying her coffee, while keeping an eye on her wife, having already noticed that she wasn’t feeling too well.

Knowing her wife's ego, she would later ask her in private, what was up.

Right now, all she could do was lean against her in quiet support as soon as the Head Nurse stood in her place next to her again, gently taking her hand and caressing the back of it with her thumb.

All she wanted right now, was to take care of her wife, to lead her to their car, drive them back home, get her out of this attire which weighted heavy on their shoulders, get her to wear her most comfortable pyjamas after a nice hot shower, washing off the grime on them, and to drag her into their soft bed, wrapping her arms around the Head Nurse, pulling their blanket over them, trying to shield them from the world outside which was tearing down their sanity each and everyday, guarding her as she slept for once, finally getting a bit rest, even if the Nurse knew that her wife was unable to sleep for long, usually disturbed by night terrors, but even then she would be there, comforting her wife while her professional facade crumbled as she sobbed in the Nurse’s arms.

Yet, she knew that this was impossible right now.

They still had to work for half of the night and they couldn’t just leave their co-workers alone now.

Not when they were the only two actually doing the job of a nurse well. Not when tonight was one of the first nights where they weren’t that painfully understaffed.

Obviously they were always understaffed but for their circumstances, having ten people up and working in one night were amazing circumstances.

By now, all of them were used to navigate through shifts while working together with maybe two other people.

“That is interesting”, mumbled the black-haired one, seemingly thinking hard about the answer of the Nurse about the Doctor only ever leaving his always locked office when the hospital was severely understaffed or, as the nurse had called it, “randomly”.

“You, and Head Nurse, are taking most shifts here, my respects by the way, so can you say for sure that it is “randomly”?”, they then asked.

Humming, the Nurse thought about all the times in which she had to work together with the Doctor during a shift.

“Well usually I really only see him when I am working a shift alone or when I am working together with just a single other co-worker.

That’s usually when he leaves his office after a while, to treat patients himself.

He works incredibly fast and so professional, he never messes up and treats more patients in half an hour than I do in a full hour.

I watched him once.

The way he effortlessly took a blood sample and then put an IV into the patient's arm without missing a vein just a single time and without spending much time searching for one amazed me.

He really does deserve the title of a doctor if you ask me.

But I am trailing off. I am sorry”, she laughed awkwardly, scratching her neck.

She did admire the Doctor’s skill and she was so easily impressed by the way he worked, the way he carried himself, the way he treated patients…

She couldn't understand why he never showed himself during the night shifts. Or during any shift if she really thought about it.

Everything would go so much smoother if they had this sheer talent working with them but at the same time, she was glad that he was never there.

Working underneath his gaze or even just him looking or talking to her made her weirdly nervous, in a negative way, feeling as if she needed to run out of the room as fast as possible.

She couldn’t explain this reaction to herself.

Instead, she blamed it on her anxiety which had gotten worse the longer the outbreak went on and the longer she worked at the hospital, barely able to keep her sanity intact, so she didn’t mention it at all.

She also didn’t mention it to her wife, too scared that she would worry way too much about her.

She was way too worried about everything going on already, even if she didn’t show it openly during work, having to keep it together in order to professionally treat people and to give out properly thought through orders. She was the head Nurse after all.

The Nurse also didn’t mention to her wife that she was wondering how she herself was holding up so well, her sanity way more unstable than the one of her wife, given her own mental illness, wondering how she didn’t end up in the asylum by now.

It would only make the Head Nurse spiral in worry.

She would probably not be able to carry out her job as well anymore knowing this, too caught up with keeping an eye on her wife, scared about her finally going insane.

Taking another sip of coffee, she tore herself out of her thoughtspiral before looking back at the black-haired one.

“Other than the occasion of being understaffed, I really can’t put my finger on what causes him to randomly come out of his office to help us.

Usually I am only ever prepared to see him stand there in his full doctor attire, starting to give me orders and taking patients when I see that I am alone or just together with one other person.

Any other time he’s just suddenly there, he's always giving me a heart attack the second I firstly spot him

He moves so quietly, I never notice him coming out of the office.

I always think there’s an anomaly in the hallway before I recognize him, he always spooks me.”

“Mh”, was the short reply by the black-haired one, curling their index finger and putting it on their chin, staring at the floor with furrowed brows, lost in thought.

“Oh but he is often there when this one tired office guy is there…How was he called again”, she added, snapping her fingers a few times before her face lit up again.

“Ron! Ron was it. Ron from Accounting. The poor man is always dehydrated and has the driest eyes I ever saw in my career.

If he’s here, it’s a fifty-fifty chance that I see the Doctor as well.

He already sent me away a couple of times when I wanted to treat Ron when we were understaffed, so that he could treat him instead.

He was always a bit stern and tense then, if I remember correctly.”

“Oh that’s interesting”, the black-haired “nurse” called out.

In the corner of her eyes, the pink haired Nurse could have sworn she would have seen that the green haired intern forcefully did a big frown in order to prevent themselves from grinning, before looking in their cup again, swaying their cup in circular motions, before drinking again.

She didn’t pay any attention towards that, knowing that the interns were a bit…immature as she would call it. Sweet but immature. Yet she grew to be very fond of them, always taking them under her care, becoming her (and the Head Nurse’s) mentees as well as her responsibility quickly.

“How did you forget his name, as often as that guy is here”, groaned the Psychologist.

“Everytime I have to take the office shift, I already print out his name tag as soon as I see him enter, way before he can talk my ears off again, putting the entire flow of patients wanting to check in to a halt.”

“Isn’t it your job to listen to people?”, asked the yellow haired intern with a sly smile on their lips.

“He always rants about the same things, besides, he isn’t one of my patients anyways.”

“Maybe Harlow and Ron know each other. Didn’t that guy…Matthew was it, saw something about the people with a big black suitcase all working on the same thing? And both Ron and Harlow always have one. Ron hardly ever gives it to me too when I try to set it away for treatment. I always found it weird”, asked the pink haired Nurse.

“ I know that Ron worked here for quite a while after the hospital had first opened up but I never talked much with him. He was working at the office so I didn’t see him often. Then one day he was gone and when I first saw him again after months, he was working at accounting. But since I haven’t really gotten to know him, I don’t know if he really knew Harlow closer than just Harlow being our boss”, said the Head Nurse, by now finding herself fully invested in the conversation, too tired to try and stay out of it when literally the entire room was part of one big conversation.

She couldn’t deny it, it was an interesting one too.

“Matthew seems kinda paranoid to me if you ask me”, the Psychologist chimed in, commenting on the pink haired Nurse’s theory about the suitcases.

“I don’t know how much of what he says is true and what is just him making up paranoid theories. From what he's been telling us, if it's all true, he has been through some shit already. That leaves a mark on people.”

“They do know each other”, grumbled the Secretary suddenly, over the rim of his coffee cup.

“Ron is my cousin, I don’t have any contact with him though.

He has turned pretty much into just another stranger to me, so don’t ask me anything about him.

I just know that he and Harlow used to be very good friends and that Ron used to work here at this hospital together, as it was Harlow’s wish that Ron worked here together with him, until suddenly, a time after the anomaly outbreak, Harlow fired him without a warning and without an explanation.

Ever since then I completely lost contact with Ron aside from checking him in when he comes into the hospital. ”

“That explains why you two look so similar”, answered the Head Nurse, sounding a tad bit betrayed about the fact that he never told this to her, the black-haired one next to the coffee machine taking out their little notebook, flipping through some pages seemingly searching for something.

They were really acting so not nurse-like.

“As if he’s that biased that he only comes out to treat his ex-best friend and then bail again”, muttered the yellow haired intern, rolling their eyes.

“He really just wants to see us suffer.

I bet he’s sitting in his little office watching us, kicking his feet at his desk and giggling, seeing us try to manage the entire ambulance emergency together with the other patients, throwing fists at the coffee machine and generally getting overworked as shit while he’s in there, only coming out to patch up his ex-bestie, to aura farm, run away from actual work and to act as if he’s gonna eat us alive when we dare to mess up.”, suggested the pink haired intern in agreement.

“What is he even doing in that office? Must be super important”, grunted the blue haired intern.

“Maybe he’s doing masses of paperwork. Keeping a hospital open and running during a pandemic like this one must cause a lot of paperwork and us messing up certainly doesn’t help with that, I can imagine”, thought the pink haired Nurse out loud, a hint of guilt in her voice.

“Maybe. From what I can recall, he always used to have this habit of overworking himself to threatful amounts”, added the Psychologist, making the Head Nurse laugh dryly at the memories of the Doctor rushing out of his office to fill the pockets of his long coat with painkillers, the ones specifically against headaches and migraines, before chucking down a concerning amount of coffee in the main office, his long light brown hair a mess, more stubble on his face than usual, the glasses on his nose crooked and with deep dark eyeshadows underneath his eyes, stumbling over his own steps and massaging his temples all the time in pain, then running back into his office again, his long white, stainless coat wavering behind him like a long cape as he ran down the hallway and back into his office, in order to drown himself in paperwork again.

Even when he was off-hours he would work on it, taking it home with him. He had accidentally revealed it to her once, making her lecture him for a long while in which he just awkwardly tried to reassure her that he was doing fine, rubbing his neck and laughing nervously at her anger, stemming from her worry for her co-worker.

She could imagine that this habit had gotten even more worse by now, if that was even possible.

That guess of the Psychologist wasn’t even that far off in her opinion. It was more than likely. Still it didn’t fit entirely.

Not when the Doctor’s entire personality and the way he carried himself, the way he interacted with his co-workers, even with the ones he knew the longest, with whom he even formed a bond that was somewhat a workplace relationship, always wanting to make sure that everyone was doing alright, helping them whenever he could and even if he couldn’t due to the paperwork, he would still every now and then stop by the office during breaks to check in with his workers, sometimes even drinking his own coffee with them to get updated about the events of the shifts.

He didn’t do any of these things anymore.

Instead he had suddenly gotten cold, harsh and overall a strange presence in the hospital, randomly appearing in front of the office or in rooms without making a noise, after they went long periods without seeing him at all, just to treat a few patients, never to check in on them or to have a lighthearted chat anymore, always talking in very short sentences, often just talking with them to give orders.

And then there was the fact that he would never remove the surgery mask anymore.

“Oh he did overwork himself to horrible levels. I was always scared that we would need to treat him due to him passing out”, she muttered.

“But then again, he always came out to stack up on painkillers and coffee and to have a short chat. He doesn’t do any of that now. He’s more of an invisible, looming presence by now.”

“Maybe he got his own coffee machine and his own stack of painkillers by now. I mean he is the Head Doctor. He should have the money for that”, replied the Psychologist. “And maybe he’s too stressed to chat with us.”

The Head Nurse just shrugged.

Something about this didn’t sit right with her.

Once again since the outbreak, she found herself wishing that the Doctor would hear her out just once, that he would allow her to ask what was up with him in the last time and that he would let her and the other’s in on his issue, whatever it was, because there was certainly a big issue he had to face. It was the only logical explanation for his sudden shift in behavior, in his entire personality.

Sometimes she felt as if she spoke to a different, twisted version of the Doctor. One that was a stranger to her. One she didn’t know and which she never met.

She needed to find a good moment in which she could ask the Secretary, the only one besides her who was left of the original staff, one of the only ones that had met a different Doctor Harlow, the version of Doctor Harlow before the outbreak had happened, if he felt the same as her about the Head Doctor’s strange change of character and behavior.

“Maybe he’s trying to find a cure for the ones that are infected. Didn’t he have a bit of a savior complex? Always struck me as if he had one”, threw the Psychologist in.

“Don’t be silly. That would be too big of a task for just one person alone in a little office. And besides, nothing is known about what is infecting the anomalies and about the anomalies in general. He would need to experiment and he can’t do that locked in an office by himself”, replied the pink haired Nurse, waving the Psychologist off and the Head Nurse quickly tossed a very dark, and very paranoid thought into the darkest pits of her mind, before it could develop fully.

One which she immediately scolded herself for.

One which made her feel sick nonetheless and despite its absolutely stupid nature.

One which made him experimenting alone in his little office for hours possible.
One which involved Harlow being the one thing which he had to be in order to experiment on himself.

While she tossed it as quick as she could, guilt washing over her for just thinking something like that, she tried to ignore that the black-haired nurse immediately moved closer to the yellow haired intern, whispering something into their ear, both seemingly very invested into the utterly idiotic theory of the Psychologist.

“If we are all just making up otherworldly conspiracy theories about Doctor Harlow let me make one too.

Maybe he’s part of a top secret operation which rose from the chaos of the anomaly outbreak. One that tries to find out what the anomalies are, which experiments on them, which tries to find a cure but which keeps messing up and due to this their operation takes an awful amount of time or something like that”, groaned the Secretary. “At this rate, nothing surprises me anymore.”

In the corner of her eyes, the Head Nurse saw the black-haired one furrow their brows in thought and for a second she thought that she had seen the yellow haired intern flinching a bit.

As if these two really took that horrible theory for a serious accusation. If so, both of them, especially the black-haired one, were even more gullible than the Head Nurse had expected.

“That’s just bad. Straight out of a history channel past midnight”, argued the Psychologist back in amusement, making the Secretary roll his eyes, a smile on his lips for the first time since tonight’s shift had started.

“And you know that because you watch history channels after midnight orrr??”

“Maybe he’s just scared of emergencies, pissing his pants whenever he hears the ambulance, now that there’s a danger of anomalies. Maybe he’s scared shitless of anomalies. Maybe he’s scared of infection and lets us do all the dirty work and puts us at high risk of getting infected, his image of the intimidating and skilled doctor just a facade.

OR maybe he’s just a lazy bum and sleeps all night”,the pink haired intern piped up.

“Maybe he’s slacking off playing minesweeper”, giggled the blue haired intern as a reply. “Not now intern number three. You take care of the patient brutally dying in the back, I’m busy playing minesweeper”, they imitated Doctor Harlow’s dark and raspy voice mockingly, earning them a loud laugh from their pink haired sibling and a quiet chuckle from their yellow haired sibling.

“Now now”, stopped the pink haired Nurse the interns, biting down a giggle herself. Sadly, she had to admit that the humor of the interns, even if bad and immature, cracked her up every single time.

“Whaaat”, whined the pink haired one back. “If he’s NOT part of a crazy top secret, 2010s action-movie-like–organisation, if he’s NOT trying to find a cure making Frankenstein-like experiments on god knows what or who in his office, if he’s NOT slacking off while sleeping or playing video games, if he’s NOT literally sitting in the walls of the main office eavesdropping, if he’s NOT a pussy and chickens out because he’s scared of anomalies, emergencies and infection, if his intimidating and skilled image of a good yet “mysterious” doctor IS REAL, if he does NOT leave the building, really just staying in his office the entire time and if he’s NOT drowning himself in paperwork, probably passing out every now and then if that’s really the case, then WHAT is he doing in there. Staring at the wall or what? Then he should turn himself in I think.”

There was a long silence. It was a good question. Either one of these theories were true, or he was doing something beyond their range of possible ideas.

Both of these options were horrifying the Head Nurse the longer she thought about it.

It would mean that either, the Doctor was up to no good anymore, that he was putting himself actively in danger, that he had become an entirely different person, that he had maybe always been entirely different from what she thought that he was like or that he was really just a bad boss, slacking off in ways she couldn’t defend anymore.

It was all bad.

The longer she thought about him locking himself in his office for shift after shift, the worse it seemed to her.

Before she would never think much about it anymore, just complaining about him not doing anything to help them out.

Now she regretted ever putting much thought into it, even if just for a short while.

Something was up with him and the office situation was a massive prove.

The silence felt deafening, everyone trying to come up with an answer on what he could have been doing the entire time, until the green haired intern piped up for the first time since a while, after being uncharacteristically quiet since the discussion had started, just an eerie grin on their lips nearly the entire time, aside from very few visible reactions, as they listened and drank their coffee, but the grin was nothing new by now. It was just annoying that it was an unreadable one.

“Well I’d say that at least for a bit of the time, he’s probably getting freaky with Ron from Accounting or something like that”, said the green haired intern in a deadpan voice, not looking up , continuing to stare into their black coffee lost in thought.

Their voice and their body language did not match their smile at all, but that was something that all the interns did so nobody paid any attention to it anymore, even if it was unsettling, nobody wanting to question it any further.
Their “sniper” hasn’t been doing anything about them and all four of them also didn’t do anything to anyone and were rather nice instead, actually helping at the job unlike the doctor, actually eager to learn and all four of them were actually really good at spotting anomalies, especially the yellow haired intern going as far as shielding co-workers with their own body from anomaly attacks to protect them in dire situations, so everyone kinda accepted them as interns, even if they were painfully immature and nerve-robbing sometimes, so they all rather just turned a blind eye on any weird behavior the four of them displayed from time to time.

The behavior was nothing like Doctor Harlow’s.

It wasn’t creepy, it didn’t make anyone feel threatened.

It was just mildly unsettling. Maybe it didn’t mean anything at all.

After the green haired one’s remark, the room immediately went quiet, aside from the Head Nurse’s loud coughing from choking on her coffee, her wife immediately patting her on her back in worry, her own expression confused nonetheless.

“Pardon”, was everything the Head Nurse managed to cough out.

She never minded the immature and out of the pocket comments of the interns, she was so used to getting one of them flung at her in the most unfitting situations ever by now, but this one did in fact catch her off guard.

Looking around the room, she clearly wasn’t the only one.

Everyone looked caught off guard by the remark, besides the other interns who snickered.

The green haired one however stayed deadpan, staring at the others now.

“What does that even mean???”

“That he’s sleeping with Ron from Accounting. That he’s getting f-”

“I KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN GOOD LORD STOP”, shrieked the Head Nurse, briefly losing her entire composure, the image which was forming in her mind making her question her sanity.

Fiercely she pinched the bridge of her nose, squeezing her eyes shut.

No matter how much she started to grow fond of the interns, these interns would really be the cause of her going insane after all these years of trying so hard to stay sane and put together despite all the horrors she was facing.

“I mean, how do you even come up with that? What makes you come to this conclusion? Why Ron especially? Because they are weirdly tense around each other and because Harlow always wants to treat Ron himself and sends us out then?

Either way, I beg you, stop making jokes like that, I still need to look at them normally and act normally around them…"

“Oh but it isn’t a joke. At least I don’t think so?

I sneaked into the Doctor’s office a few weeks ago after my shift had ended and he and Ron were inside, making out as if the world was ending, I mean, I would argue that the world is ending so that’s fair, Harlow sitting on his desk, hand in Ron’s hair, god that haircut looks even worse from behind than from the front, legs wrapped around Ron, the other hand on Ron’s back with this guy’s fuckass round glasses in it and all. I wish I had someone to kiss like that it looked meaningful as fuck.

I then just left again”, they explained, talking as if they were talking about the weather outside.

The rest of the people inside the room were staring at them, their expressions varying.

The Head Nurse looked at them in bewilderment, the other interns in both betrayal and amusement, the yellow haired sibling even grunting and walking to the blue haired one, handing them ten dollars, the Nurse looking surprised yet a bit as if she thought of the relationship as cute-ish, always having a soft spot for love-related themes, the Secretary had a look of absolute horror written all over his face before he groaned loudly, pinching the bridge of his own nose, the Psychologist spat out his coffee, luckily back into his cup, and even the black-haired “nurse”, looked up from their notebook, looking at the intern with one raised eyebrow.

For a moment it was quiet, before everyone was yelling out questions.

“Why didn’t you tell us???!”, whined the pink haired intern, slapping the green haired intern on the back of their head.

Other than that, various questions from “Are you SURE that you didn’t dream that?”, “Are you SURE that you didn’t hallucinate?” and “Are you SURE that it was Ron from Accounting???????” were heard until the Head Nurse sat down her cup with a loud thud.

“HOW did you even get inside his office? And WHY did you even do that. What did you want in there?”

In all her years of working side by side with Doctor Harlow as his most valued nurse, until he suddenly started to distance himself, becoming incredibly weird whenever they were talking, sometimes even voicing things that were of rather brutal and unsettling nature in regards to the patients, (which was something she had noticed yet kept a secret from everyone else besides her wife), she never once set a foot inside his office ever since he had become that weirdly distant, the head metal door always locked shut and him never allowing anyone to come inside.

She could barely remember the last time Harlow had let her inside in order to drink some coffee and to have a chat with the Head Nurse about whatever was on his mind.

It must have been long before the outbreak..

While she did deem it as suspicious, yet another thing added to the long list of him acting weird, she never tried to get inside, not asking him about it, never once even just touching the door’s handle, even if she too really desperately wanted to try and get inside to see what he was hiding inside.

Maybe inside she could have found clues to why his personality suddenly took a 360 degree turn, this change becoming more and more noticeable with each passing shift.

And now, some lousy little intern claimed to have successfully gotten inside, without getting their head ripped off, and as if that wasn’t enough already, they then went as far as claiming to have discovered a secret relationship.

If she really thought about it, it wasn’t even that unlikely, not even that hard to imagine that these two had something going on, given the fact how weird they acted around each other but at the same time, she also could not imagine it, the Doctor being far too closed off and Ron being far too paranoid.

Besides that there was also the fact that, from what she had heard, Ron spread so many rumors and so much shit-talk about Harlow, behind the Doctor’s back and in his own hospital, to his own workers at that too.

She knew that Harlow knew about it and that he could not stand Ron due to that.

At least that was how she interpreted his weirdly tense and even colder behavior whenever he spotted Ron entering the hospital.

“The door was open.” A lie. Everyone knew that much.

“And I was still at the hospital anyways. It was after the end of that nights shift, the sun outside was already rising, the Security Guy and the Psychologist with whom I was working that night had already clocked out and I was still there cleaning up and then changed back into my own clothes inside the office.

I did have a question which I wanted to ask the Doctor about something in regards to the anomalies, don’t ask me what, I forgot again.

That’s why I wanted to ask him that morning instead of waiting for the next time I would see him, my memory sucks ass, so I wanted to knock on the door but it was open so I went in.

Then I just left again.

I didn’t tell you guys-”, they looked at their siblings, “Because I just wanted to forget that image.”

That they had thought that everyone besides them had left the hospital, that they had stayed behind to leave as the last person on purpose, that they had actually disabled the cams and opened the door to Harlow’s office with a bobby pin which they had previously stolen from the Nurses toiletry bag inside her locker earlier that nights shift, that they had gone inside, not to ask something, but fully hoping that the Doctor wasn’t there so that they were able to snoop around the office and most importantly though the files which he hid in there, in order to try and find certain files about an experiment, one involving a certain set of quadruplets, hoping that they were right and that he was in fact involved in it in some way, but also hoping to find any clues proving that they were right about their theory that he was just like them and their siblings were, just with his sanity less intact and without any treatment to counter his new true nature and with that infected side of him taking over entirely from time to time; all of these things were aspects which they did not tell.

Instead they pulled a badly made lie out of their ass, kind of starting to regret that they could not have kept their mouth shut about it, regretting that revealing this had been way too tempting, regretting that they forgot about the issues this could bring them, as well as their siblings, into.

For now, only their siblings and the black-haired “nurse”, who wasn’t a “nurse” at all, could tell why they truly had tried to get in there.

The Head Nurse also didn’t look as if she believed their story but at the same time, she did not argue back, not having anything to prove that they were lying.

Instead she ruffled fiercely through her hair with just a bit too much force, groaning loudly.

“If what you say is true, then all I can say is that this isn’t any of my business and shouldn’t be any of yours either. We’re all adults here. So act like one. If he finally found someone he’s happy with and who managed to reach out to him, that’s great for him.

What I can say though, is that if I catch you or anyone here trying to get into Doctor Harlow’s office, I will have to make a request to the Doctor to cut your payment short for some time, let’s say, due to causing issues during work. You can’t just enter rooms in which you aren’t allowed to.

You should have written down that question. If you forgot it anyways, it couldn’t have been that important to go as far as to want to knock on the Doctor’s office door and to pester him with it.”

Given the situation, she was proud about her professional reply.

She would have preferred to threaten them with informing the Doctor about them entering the office or with telling the Doctor about what they did, just to scare them a bit, but at the same time, she couldn’t shake the feeling that if she would really have to do such a thing, something she would later blame herself for would happen to the intern, even if she couldn’t possibly imagine what.

It was an irrational thought, she knew the Doctor since years, she knew that he could speak harshly and that his anger felt like a merciless storm but at the same time she knew that he would never go as far as hurting anyone physically, so she didn’t want know where this feeling came from, but at the same time it was too strong, too intense, so instead of questioning it any further, she just settled on this threat, even if it meant lying to her boss and old co-worker.

“Jeez okayokay”, replied the intern, rolling with their eyes, their voice unable to hide the relief they felt however, which made her even more suspicious.

“That would explain why Ron comes here so often”, groaned the Secretary, still looking as if he was about to bash his own head into the wall, his sanity visibly dropping.

“My stupid cousin can never stay out of trouble, that’s one of the reasons why we broke contact. He’s always head first into issues or snooping around in things which he shouldn’t stick his nose into. And if I view the Doctor correctly, he means nothing but trouble.”

“I just thought he was a severe case of a hypochondriac”, the Psychologist said, stifling a laugh.

“Or actually a secret agent who is trying to investigate this place, given all the weird stuff he talks about.”

“Well what if he is one, or both, or these things and is together with Harlow, in some way, at the same time?”, chimed in the Nurse, playing with her little golden necklace with a golden heart locket on it, a photo of her and her wife on their wedding day inside.

“To be honest, I wouldn’t have ever guessed that they are a pair.

Ron is always talking such awful things about this hospital and about the Doctor and yet he comes here all the time, it really makes him seem as if he’s trying to investigate the place, even if his sentences never make sense,and given how they always react so tense when seeing each other…

At first I was worried that if I let Harlow alone with Ron they would have a fight or an argument or something.

Maybe they do argue whenever Ron comes here. I mean I see them through the door’s window, they really do just talk and he’s always only treating him, from what I saw, but they are both always weird after Ron’s treatment is done.

Harlow is always weirdly quiet for the rest of the night then.

Whatever they have going on, there is a lot of negative tension between them.”

“Doomed toxic workplace situationship I’m calling it”, murmured the pink haired intern overly serious.

The Head Nurse rolled her eyes, seeing that in the corner of her eyes, the yellow haired intern was quietly whispering something with the black-haired “nurse”.

She frankly, did not want to know what was being plotted in that corner.

All she wanted to do now was brew some more coffee before this forsaken break ended.

She had hoped for a bit of peace and quiet but now she had to come up with a way on how she could continue to face Harlow and Ron normally, while also praying that the interns could keep their mouths shut, knowing they they always failed to keep it together, busting out laughing loudly as soon as they were faced with something they had an inside joke about.

Standing at the coffee machine she massaged her temples.

In the background, her co-workers and her wife were eagerly chatting about Harlow, Ron and god knows what else.

She did certainly not want to know any more stuff.

While she was happy that he old co-worker seemed to have found someone he was together with, even if it was likely just a plain situationship, maybe even one which formed out of nothing more than out of the sheer stress and tension both parties had most likely to face and probably also out of painful yearning to find comfort in old friendships during this horrible outbreak of an anomaly pandemic, she still couldn’t shake the feeling that whatever was between the two of them was something so utterly complicated, that it went deeper than just a random situationship and that something was up with both of them.

That Harlow wasn’t this distant, creepy and weird without a reason, that the reason for Ron’s frequent visits were much deeper than just a situation- or relationship, than him being scared for his own health, than him trying to find something to prove his paranoid ramblings.

Their relationship made the entire thing even more confusing.

Something was going on here, something much more concerning and horrifying than the anomalies.

This hospital was gonna be the reason why she ended up in an asylum for sure.