Belize

Chapter Eleven

The storage rooms were downstairs on a lower level, halfway between the clinic and the hospital. It was an out-of-the-way area that didn’t get a lot of foot traffic. Rebecca hopped down the stairs two at a time and walked down a wide, mostly empty hallway. No one else was down there now. There were three small rooms on the left and a single lonely elevator farther down the hall on the right. Rebecca hadn’t ever seen anyone using the elevator and wondered why it even bothered to have a door on this level. At the other end of the hallway was another set of stairs going back up to a hallway on the ground floor, but Rebecca had never gone that way and didn’t know where that hallway led.

There were some metal shelves on the wall with flat cardboard boxes full of various old paper sheets and forms, and reams of old computer paper for dot matrix printers that had probably been replaced long ago. Rebecca didn’t know why they kept their supply rooms down here in the first place, she thought it would make more sense to have at least one storage closet in the clinic itself.

One of the doctors had asked her to gather supplies for the exam rooms since she didn’t have anything else to do at the moment. Work was slow today, so Rebecca decided to take her time, since she was in no hurry. She went into the first storage room and flipped on the light. There were shelves and racks with all kinds of supplies and items, everything from tongue depressors to thermometers to complete first aid kits.

Rebecca grabbed a cardboard box on the floor and started tossing packages into it. Packs of latex gloves, hairnets, face masks, and anything else that would fit. She figured she might as well grab a little bit of everything. When the box was almost overflowing, she picked it up and walked to the door, trying not to drop anything. She turned off the light with her elbow and then shuffled sideways back into the hall. She bumped the door with her hip to close it.

“Here, let me help you with that.”

Rebecca turned and almost did a double-take. Billy was there, holding out his hand to help her carry the box.

“What? Huh? Billy, what are you …?”

“I asked my boss for the afternoon off,” he said with a vaguely embarrassed smile. “I wanted to, uh, well, I wanted to surprise you at work.”

She let out a relieved laugh. For a second there, she thought something was wrong. “Well, you certainly did surprise me.”

He held out some flowers. “I got you these too.”

She stared in shock and nearly dropped the box. Finally, she had to just kneel down to set it on the floor. She took the flowers and put her arms around him. “Oh, thank you. Billy, you didn’t have to do that for me.”

“I wanted to … I wanted to do something nice for you. I know how stressful everything has been lately. I think we’ve both been on the edge a little bit. I haven’t really told you how much I appreciate you … you staying here with me.”

“It’s all right,” Rebecca said, holding the flowers against her chest as if afraid they would fly away if she let go. “I know. I know you do.”

“If I was here by myself, I don’t know how I’d manage.”

“I’m sure you’d be fine,” Rebecca said. “But I’m happy I came with you anyway. Nothing has changed my mind about that.”

The relief was clear on his face and he let out a half-sigh, half-chuckle. “I know, but sometimes I worry a little bit.”

She put her arms around him again and stood on her toes to kiss him. “We’re in this together, Billy. I don’t think either of us thought it was going to be easy.”

“I wanted to take you out to lunch. Maybe we could take the rest of the day off,” Billy said. “We could go down to the beach and spend the day together.”

“That would be so much fun, but I really can’t. In fact, I should be getting back to the clinic. It should only have taken me a few minutes to –”

Without warning, the lights above them blinked out, leaving them in darkness. Rebecca flinched suddenly and looked around. Some light filtered down from the stairs behind them, but other than that it was completely dark.

“What happened?” Billy said.

Rebecca held his arm nervously. “A power outage?”

Red emergency lights suddenly burst to life and began to flash, and before Billy and Rebecca could process what was going on, huge solid metal blast doors slid down and slammed shut at both ends of the hallway with loud booms that seemed to shake the floor. Rebecca shrieked in surprise. There was no alarm or siren to indicate what was going on, just the flashing red lights and eerie silence. Rebecca held on tightly to Billy’s arm.

“What the hell’s going on?” Billy said.

Rebecca shook her head. “I have no idea.”

They went over to one of the blast doors. Billy pounded his hand on it and looked around for a control panel or a switch of some kind.

“Are these doors for a fire alarm or something?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Rebecca said. “I didn’t even know they were there. Why would they close like that and block this little hallway off? That doesn’t make any sense at all.”

“Come on, let’s try the elevator.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, the elevator dinged and the doors began to open. They hurried over and then stopped in their tracks as a man practically jumped out of the elevator and nearly ran into them. For a second, Rebecca thought he was a doctor at the hospital, because he wore a long white lab coat. He was in his mid-twenties, with a handsome, clean-shaven face and dark hair. The look on his face, however, was enough to make Rebecca back away.

“Oh! God, get out of my way,” he blurted out, rushing past them.

“Hey,” Billy said, “What’s going on? Those doors just shut and trapped us in here.”

Rebecca went to the elevator and stood in front of the doors so they wouldn’t close. If a fire alarm had gone off, then they shouldn’t use an elevator at all, but how else were they going to get out of there? She guessed there must be some kind of emergency on one of the upper floors, and the man from the elevator had simply pressed the button for the lowest floor.

“How do we open these doors?” the man shouted. “Why are they closed? God damn it, we have to get out of here!”

Billy tried to talk to the man again. “Listen, calm down, all right? The doors are closed and we can’t open them from this side. Someone must have set off a fire alarm or –”

“It’s not a fire alarm,” the man said with a bitter, humorless laugh. “God, it’s so much worse than that. We can’t stay here!” He ran his hands along the edge of the door, looking for a switch or a lever that might open them once more. The more he searched, the more frustrated he got.

“This is the basement level,” Rebecca said. “We have to take the elevator up to the main floor. Come on, Billy. Let’s go find out what’s going on.”

Billy just shrugged and got into the elevator with her. He poked his head back out. “Hey man, are you coming or what?”

“We need to get these damn doors open!” the man shouted in response.

“Whatever,” Billy sighed.

Rebecca hit the button for the main floor and waited, but nothing happened. The doors didn’t close and the number button on the panel didn’t light up like it should have. She tried it again and pressed it harder, but nothing happened at all.

“What’s going on?” Billy asked. “Is it broken or something?”

“I don’t know. It just won’t work.”

She paused and looked closer at the panel. The hospital had five total floors, including the basement. The number panel showed numbers for floors one through four, plus the letter B for basement. Next to that was the letter L.

“Lower level?” Billy suggested.

“This is the lowest level,” Rebecca said slowly. She suddenly looked around the interior of the elevator and a strange feeling came over her. It was like the opposite of déjà vu. Instead of feeling like she’d been there before, she realized that she had never been inside this elevator.

“Billy,” she said, a tiny edge of worry in her voice, “This isn’t the same elevator as the one upstairs.”

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