Visiting Hours Part I (Guest Post)

An unremarkable brown haired head peered over the edge of the single sheet of printer paper, which moments earlier had shielded his identifiable facial features from staff, patients, and visitors who might later be able to identify him. The page was carefully typed in fourteen point font, but contained only a few instructions, leaving plenty of room for handwritten addendums, one of which already marred the otherwise clean, white paper with a blue ballpoint scrawl.

Bruce's eyes darted around the hospital waiting room, most frequently landing on the double hinged pair of doors which he sat a barely more than a meter from. The doors burst open in their customary manner to reveal a physician clad in teal scrubs who single-mindedly hurried past the reception area, into an adjoining ward. Realizing he should have brought more than one piece of paper to hide behind as an exterior door cracked open allowing a cold whirl of suburban air to ripple across the surface of the paper, warping it like a pennant hoisted atop a seaside spire, Bruce hastily stood, searched for anyone he recognized even the slightest bit with a final series of glances about the room, and slid through the small opening revealed by the back swing of the double doors leading into the treatment wards.

Again, Bruce glanced at the paper to confirm the destination in his mind. Room 354C was on the third floor, naturally enough, but technically reception was on the ground floor, not the first, a fact he wrestled desperately with to keep in mind. He lost the thought immediately when he realized that where he started from would make no difference whatsoever once he was inside the elevator. He would have preferred not to take an elevator, for such an action would substantially lower his chances of encountering another visitor who had come to the hospital with the same aim as he. Yet, he could not ignore the knowledge gained in his lifetime from being trapped in low security stairwells, unable to find a way back into the building. It hadn't occurred more than a handful of times, but those memories were enough. The elevators would the most reliable method.

He'd been staring down at the ground like a recluse in the market while following this line of reasoning. Act as if you belong, he thought to himself while straightening his posture, and then no one will question you.

Bruce passed a bank of elevators on the way to the closest stairwell, awkwardly swinging toward one of the lifts as the doors happened to slide open as he passed. Two unidentifiable individuals sidled out of the elevator, their paths diverging around him, like motor boats navigating by buoy.

Alone in the elevator, he quickly pressed the 3 button, illuminating the numeral, along with the fifth floor button above, which he had managed to bump while fumbling to hit the “Close Doors” button. An idea dawned upon him, and he pressed all the buttons above the third floor. By the time his sabotage had been completed, a chime sounded, and the doors swung open onto the third floor foyer.

Outside of the elevator, a quick glance at an arrowed placard provided a new clue, leading him one step closer to his destination. Breathing deeply to stave off the mannerisms of a man in panic, Bruce paced down the whitewashed hallway. Along the passage, many glass paned entrances lead away from the main thoroughfare into various treatment units, but the names on the doors flashed by, unheeded by Bruce. None of them were labeled with the correct number, and that was all he could focus on in his mind. Abruptly, the hallway ended with a solid, white door, adorned only with a sign indicating that his objective lay beyond. He tried the handle. Neither it nor the door budged. An ominous black panel fixed to the wall just outside the door frame was all that met him. The panel warned him off with a dim red light.

More than a decade ago, Bruce had volunteered in a hospital while attending college. A lowly undergraduate would often have to wait weeks to be issued a keycard, well after being cleared by the safety offices. This impediment proved to be almost entirely inconsequential; the much vaunted security protocols were little more than a farce. No personnel suspected a young student with a volunteer badge, so by and large, all staff would complacently hold the door for him whenever he required access to a secure area.

In this alien hospital environment, he felt wildly out of place, for he was clearly no student volunteer. Being in his late 20's did not make him old, he knew, but he was irrationally terrified by the idea that he had become the shifty, almost mythical interloper against whom the undergraduate security awareness seminars had cautioned him all those years ago. His hands trembled, his scalp grew damp and a bead of sweat coursed down the shallow lines in his left cheek.

A loud click echoed down the hallway, and the door began to slowly swing inwards, leaving nowhere for Bruce to hide. Dashing back down the hall on the balls of his feet, Bruce lunged into the first alcove he could reach. Flattening his body against the wall of the alcove, Bruce took a few deep breaths, and then trapped the air in his lungs. Two rhythms remained, the racing barrage of heartbeats and the calm tap of women's flats on linoleum.

Bruce cocked his head to the side so that he could see the woman pass by his alcove, and know if she had been alerted to his presence. Almost immediately, he became distracted from his vigil by the hypnotic regularity of the eggshell white paint which covered the wall which his face pressed up against. Out of the corner of his eye he could see how dull the off-white pigment appeared up close, and how the perfectly random pattern of the wall's almost imperceptible bumps seemed utterly incongruous with the perfectly regular but impure white hue which surrounded him.

Then the woman was passing, and beyond the alcove, without so much as a twitch of her gently bobbing hair to indicate she was anything other than oblivious to his presence.

Bruce stepped out of the alcove on tip-toe, noting with joy that he had yet to hear the second click of the door, the signal of his doom. With giant, almost leaping strides, he closed the distance between himself and the portal, inserting a foot between door and frame, ensuring his immediate victory.
His pulse continued to pound as he walked slowly down the final segment of hallway. He had only heard of the developments recently, but he had waited, bided, and as of today, lurked before acting. Was that the right thing to do? Was this surprise, so elegantly conceived in his mind, a waste of all his effort? He knew he was not too late, but what did it say about him, that he had waited this long, that he had not told anyone that he was thinking about the developments at all?

Bruce drove trepidation from his mind when room 354C appeared in his periphery. He had succeeded. He'd spotted no one recognizable while running his gauntlet, and no one in the hospital had seemed to so much as acknowledge his existence. With his ear to the door jamb, he heard naught but silence within the room. No motion was visible through the tilted blinds on the adjacent window which connected the hall with the bedroom. They would be alone, and with the hospital closing to visitors in a couple hours, the chance that anyone else would come by was very slim. Nothing could stand in his way any longer.
Bruce turned to confront the entrance, its impassive Arabic numerals and wavy pane of glass refusing him any further clues. He knocked.

“Hello?” came the reply, muted by the thin obstruction between them. “Come in?” the voice continued, after a pause. The tone of the female voice rose at the end of the phrase, spelling uncertainty to Bruce. The words alone were all he needed.

Two deep breaths later, Bruce sharply turned the door handle, and leaned into the door.