Mind the Bleep

2 | That's Your Right

Caliana would be fibbing if she said she hadn't arrived at the hospital nearly fourty-five minutes before the beginning of induction. Her night had been loaded with fervid tossing and turning; repeatedly tugging the blanket away from her body because she was too hot, and then hauling it back on, only seconds later because she was much too cold.

She'd gained only a couple of hours of shut-eye at most. Perhaps, she should've let Roscoe and Amari know she had left early, but by the time she'd remembered that she now had housemates, she had already left the premises.

Caliana had resisted searching up Little Oaks Hospital after Roscoe and Dawn's earlier revelations, but there she had been at the ungodly hour of four a.m. on page eight of a Google search. The hospital had indeed, been forced to close down in two thousand and seventeen after being classed as a failing hospital. It reopened in the early two thousand and twenty but remained under special measures with regular inspections of the premises, and staff alike. She'd even scoured the net for further information on Dr Isaac Rhys, and the man had a rather remarkable inventory of accomplishments.

Turned out, he was one of the younger registrars at the hospital. He had a shockingly extensive number of publications under his belt, the most recent being ground-breaking research on infectious diseases only the year prior. Caliana had even felt her fingers betray her as she scavenged for an image of the man, but much to her dismay, she was left with an unquenched thirst.

Now, she peered down at her rose-gold watch, her teeth chattering in response to the breeze whipping against the nape of her neck as she sat on a wooden bench outside the hospital's entrance. Ten minutes remained before the introductory lectures began, so she began to idle into the building. She halted in her tracks when she heard a cry for help in the near distance.

She swivelled on her heel, unable to pinpoint the source of the voice. She ambled towards the bustling car park.

"Hello? Can I get some help over here?"

She trudged towards a cerise BMW with the driver's door wide open. She squinted towards the floor and sure enough, there was a middle-aged Caucasian woman, lying unconscious on the hard concrete. Her hair was splayed around her, and a line of burgundy lipstick trailed down to her jaw as though she had collapsed mid-application. Her left high-heel had fallen away from her foot. Caliana noticed that her left calf was mildly swollen compared to her right.

Strong, muscular hands currently resided on the woman's mid-chest, providing rigorous compressions. The man in question donned teal-coloured scrubs with a matching navy stethoscope shroud around his neck indicating that he was a Little Oaks doctor. "I just found this woman here less than a minute ago. She's pulseless and there's no evidence of breathing effort. I've started CPR. Can you go to the hospital and put out a cardiac arrest call?" He said in an unperturbed voice.

"Me?! It's actually my first day as a doctor and -"

He glared at her incredulously, as though she were speaking a foreign language. "Just go into the hospital, and ask the receptionist to put out a cardiac arrest call. Oh, and get a crash trolley while you're at it. I'll continue compressions in the meantime."

"Okay, sure!" She let out the words as a yelp. "Wait, where would I find a crash trolley?"

"Oh, for God's sake! Just go in there and get some help. Now! Before this woman dies." He glowered up at her, the irises of his eyes radiating all the acerbity of a blue flickering flame. She was close enough to him that the faint aroma of his cinnamon aftershave intermingled with the lemon-and-lime scent of his body wash was invading her olfactory nerve.

"Okay, okay!" In her haste, she almost tumbled over the woman's heel but managed to catch herself before she struck the ground. She heard the man behind her expel an exasperated sigh, and she internally cursed herself for her gaucheness before racing towards the hospital.