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“Are you sure this is a good idea?” The question flew out of Jerome’s mouth before he could catch it, and the daggers Rob shot him made it regret it that much more. He couldn’t help it though, the feeling in the pit of his stomach, the feeling that most people follow in order to avoid trouble, was telling him just that; “Get out man, before it’s too late”, but Jerome knew that was out of the question. He couldn’t, or rather didn’t dare, to cross Rob or try and talk him out of this newest “bright” idea. He knew better; self preservation kicked in before anything else.

“You couldn’t seem to come up with anything better, so just shut up and stick to the plan,” Rob snarled at his friend as they continued their walk from the employee parking lot towards the back entrance of the hospital. Jerome went over the plan in his mind again, looking for any serious holes that would surely send him down in flames alongside Rob. He was interrupted halfway through it by Rob nudging him in the side.

“Earth to J, come in J,” he chided with a smart-as s grin on his face. “Got your security badge?” Jerome reached into the pocket of his pants, feeling the smooth, laminated object with his fingertips. Before they had left his place, he and Rob had created fake ID badges, the same ones the hospital staff wears, to allow them safe passage through the corridors of the facility. As long as they had on hospital garb and those badges, they would be free and clear.

“Yeah, I got it, of course,” Jerome responded with a roll of his eyes. Rob always considered himself the smarter of the two, but tonight, Jerome had clearly observed that wasn’t the case. If it hadn’t been for me we would never even have these dam n badges, and then where would we be? I’m not as dumb as you think I am Rob!

The two men casually approached the employee entrance, swiping the barcode on the bottom through the detector and waiting for the buzzer to sound and the door to release, allowing them entry. It did, and the plan was set in motion.

“This way,” whispered Jerome as they entered a hallway, trying to find the way towards the men’s locker room. Jerome knew quite well where to go; his cousin had been a candy striper in this hospital for several years and he had come to visit her on many occasions, thus providing him extensive knowledge of the layout and locations of many of the “staff only” areas in the building.

Rob followed Jerome blindly, trusting his friend to lead him where he needed to go without raising any suspicions. He couldn’t afford to get caught, not this early in the game anyway. Do to me what you will, he thought dryly, but only after my will is done.

It wasn’t until they approached a door that said “locker room” on it that Rob realized he had been holding his breath the whole way down the corridor. He exhaled vehemently, somewhat relieved that they had made it through the hardest part of the journey. Once they were secured inside the locker room, dressing in “their” hospital garb, they were untouchable. No one would bat an eyelash at two doctors, hard at work at Baptist Memorial Hospital.

The hospital was such a large facility; there was no way to know every single employee by name, and that fact played quite well into Rob’s plan. No one would question him or give him the “I don’t know you” look, when there were sure to be several dozen other people, seemingly unknown, wandering around this place at that time of night.

“Green or blue?” Jerome asked, grabbing two pairs of clean scrubs off of the laundry cart.

“Green…it matches my complexion better,” Rob responded, chuckling a little as his own joke. Jerome chimed in, happy to have a little break from the seriousness the evening had bestowed upon him. The two men quickly changed from their street clothes into the scrubs and then carefully tucked their clothes into an empty locker, securing it with a padlock Jerome had brought from his house.

“Alright man, here we go,” said Rob quietly as he turned around and headed towards the door leading back into the hallway. “Let’s find her room.”




The clock on the wall of the brightly lit cafeteria read seven minutes to four, and Nick was on his third cup of hospital grade coffee. The first sip of the first cup almost had him reconsidering his decision, but he soon figured out that with enough sugar, anything was possible. His mind wasn’t exactly focusing on the coffee in all honesty anyway as he sat there contemplating the past twenty-four hours, so he could have been drinking sludge and probably wouldn’t have noticed, or really cared for that matter.

Twenty-four hours ago, I was in Cali, laying in my bed, not able to sleep, thinking about how I was going to see Roslyn in a few days and what I was going to say to her, and now, here I am. How do I always get myself into these less-than-desirable situations?

He had been relatively left with peace and quiet in the almost hour and a half he had been down in the cafeteria, allowing him full, uninterrupted access to his thoughts, but that changed as two men, obviously employees of the hospital entered the room. One was dressed in green scrubs, the other in blue scrubs, and they both had surgical caps on their heads and surgical masks covering their mouths.

They each grabbed a Styrofoam cup from the stack on the counter and proceeded to fill it with coffee out of the pot that had not been freshly brewed in at least the time Nick had been in there.

Doctors never sleep I guess, Nick thought as he turned his attention away from them. They continued to talk amongst themselves and Nick did his best not to listen to them; he had his own problems to worry about.

So much would be fixed if I could just find Rob, he reflected, reverting back to his internal account of his afflictions. Once he’s put away, Roslyn wouldn’t be afraid anymore; she wouldn’t have to worry and we’d be free to move on with, well, whatever we wanted to move on with. He sighed a little, the thought of creating a life with Roslyn seeming a little too out of reach at the present moment.

I know she’s going to need time to get over all the trauma she’s suffered, but I’m going to be there to help her. I want to be there to help her. But what if she isn’t the same person anymore? They say traumatic events can change someone completely; and what if she turns out to not be the Roslyn I fell in love with? But I know the real her! I’ve known her even before Rob came into her life, and I know the person she can be. I’ll just have to help her get back to that again too I guess.

“Dammit Jerome, watch what you’re doing!” Nick was pulled from his thoughts again, this time rather rudely, by the sound of the one of the doctors yelling at the other one. He turned around to look at them and noticed the one, obviously named Jerome, had spilt coffee down the front of the other one’s shirt. “I didn’t realize it was ‘piss on Rob day’,” the doctor continued to scoff, berating his colleague further.

With a handful of napkins, the two men walked past Nick towards the door, and the doctor with the spill on his shirt was manically slapping at the stain with the napkins, but to no avail. He bumped into the table Nick was sitting at his hip as he strolled by, more focused on his shirt than anything else, and then turned around and snarled a “watch it!” to Nick as he passed, refusing to take any of the fault on himself, before walking out of the cafeteria.

For that brief, rude interlude, their eyes locked, striking a bad tune with Nick. What a prick, he thought to himself as he shook his head, trying to blow off the bad attitude that doctor left clouding the room. Remind to never have Doctor Jerome or Doctor Rob be my surgeon; the one is clumsy as an ox and the other acts like someone pissed in his cheerios.

He thought for a moment, wondering why those names sounded so odd rolling off his tongue….then it hit him. “Son of a bitch,” he hissed as he fumbled his cell phone in his hands trying to dial Marcus’s number while his body shook violently, barring him from being speedy about it. When he finally managed to hit the number three on the speed dial he could barely manage to squeak out the urgent message.

“Rob…he’s here!” he screamed into the transmitter, standing up so quickly the table in front of him overturned as he plowed up underneath it.

“Stay there Nick, do you hear me! Stay there! You are not prepared to approach him!” Nick didn’t hear the pleas that Marcus shouted to him though, his phone was on the floor next to the over-turned table and he was already running down the hallway towards Roslyn’s room.