Part 10: May 22 - Elmwood Hospital
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After dropping Sam, Tim, and the horses off at South Bend, Carl drove back to Elmwood and fueled up the old bus at the gas depot. He estimated that they would have a couple of months of fuel from that supply, depending on how much they had to drive this particular vehicle. They would have to make every trip count. He then drove to the hospital. Upon entering, he was surprised to see people walking around. He stood in the lobby, stunned—what a relief to see people walking around just like normal.
A short, stocky young woman walked up to him smiling. “You must be Carl,” she said, smiling. “I’m Denise. We all want to thank you. If it hadn’t been for all of you”—she paused and choked off a sob—“we’d all be dead. Thank you.” She smiled up at Carl. “Frank told me to bring you up to the conference room as soon as you got here, so please follow me.”
Carl went with the young woman up to the second floor. People were busy walking around with trays of medical equipment, carts, and IVs. It looked, sounded, and felt like any normal hospital. He continued to follow Denise down the hallway until she motioned him into a conference room. An older man looked up from the table where Geoff, Amy, and Frank were seated.
“Thank you, Denise. Would you tell Dr. Ramsey that Mr. Lowery is here?” the older man said.
“Hello, Mr. Lowery, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Dr. Jacob.” He stood up and extended his hand to Carl as he greeted him.
“No one has called me Mr. Lowery since I took out my last mortgage. Please, just call me Carl,” he said, smiling. “I’m amazed to see so many people up and walking around—to see things looking normal.” He paused. “How many people were you able to revive?”
Geoff answered, “Not everyone could be revived. The person we lost at the campus may not have survived even if the doctors had performed the procedure. We’ve lost three out of every five people we’ve tried to disconnect.”
Shocked, Carl asked, “Why is that?”
Dr. Jacob explained, “There were several companies that manufactured the neural implants, and the brand of implant the patient chose seems to be the determining factor in who will survive disconnection and who will not. We’ve identified one specific brand of implant that failed to disconnect 100% of the time. All the patients with that brand have died during the disconnection process. Granted, we’ve lost a few people that had other brands, but that one specific brand has resulted in the patient’s death every time. We’re now trying to find a way to identify that brand of implant as part of our triage before we even bring in that person.”
Carl hesitated. “Are you saying that you’ve been bringing people in from outside the hospital and disconnecting them?” he asked hopefully.
“As soon as Dr. Ramsey was able to help us correctly disconnect,” Amy explained—identifying each doctor as she spoke—“then they instructed Geoff and me on the correct procedure to disconnect other people. We’ve had hospital staff working in shifts all night. We’ve managed to revive about half of the hospital staff. Most of them had the better-quality implants because they work in the medical field, but anyone that had the implants made by Valtech Corporation are the patients that have died 100 percent of the time. That company is infamous for its cheap medical products.”
“Most medical professionals purchased the higher-quality implants,” Geoff added. “The Valtech implants did not provide the necessary medical apps required for working in the medical field.”
Frank beamed at the two young people. “You see, if you two had not started the process by attempting to disconnect the athletes, none of these people would be up, walking, and talking.”
Geoff spoke up. “We want to get back to the university, and with Dr. Ramsey and Dr. Henson’s help, we’ll disconnect as many of those people as we can. Now that we have the correct sequence to disconnect the implants—but we need to work as fast as possible.”
Carl raised his eyebrows. “We were going to clean up the store so Nancy could bring the children in to collect more supplies.”
“Already done!” Amy said. “A group went over this morning right after we went to the local schools. Those children were all alone—they didn’t have a Mrs. Jackson to take care of them. Most of them had left the building and tried to walk back to their homes. Many of the people that we were able to revive are out searching around town, trying to locate all the children and bring them back here. We’ve set up a separate wing where we are doing what we can to comfort the children as they come in. We also went over to the store and brought in those people and revived as many of them as we could. Not only did we clean up the store, but we were also able to save a few of those people as well.” She was smiling as she finished. “And, Carl, one of those people very much wants to meet you.” She smiled at the man.
“Well,” Carl said, “all of you have had a very busy night. Mrs. Jackson will be thrilled to have more adults come to help with the children. I’ll need to hurry so I can get back to pick up Sam and Tim. I’ll stop back here to pick up supplies and whoever is coming back with us.”
Frank laughed. “I knew you’d be in a hurry, so the personnel from the hospital have already planned for the trip. With Dr. Ramsey’s advice, we’re ready to pack the bus with medical and personal supplies, standard medications, and six more adults who volunteered to help Nancy with the children—and Dr. Ramsey to assist with the athletes and anyone else on the campus who had been affected. You should be able to drop this load off and get to South Bend on schedule.”
Once all the supplies and everyone was on the bus, Carl started another run to the campus.
