These Halls Are Never Empty

It had been two weeks and the most Tom had to clean up was puke. He had become almost immune to the sounds, sights, and smells around him. In fact, he now enjoyed putting on the jumpsuit (albeit he tied it around his waist like Dmetri and simply wore a wife beater as a shirt) every day and going to the hospital to work. Plus, the friendship he and Dmetri had made was flourishing. For the time being, Dmetri would hang out with Tom an hour before his shift started. Tom took days from seven to three, Dmetri took afternoons from three to eleven, and another janitor named Seth who Tom barely knew took nights from eleven to seven.

“Just got in a bad crowd, you know? Thought I was invincible and nothing could happen to me. I got busted for vandalism twice, just random spray painting and shit, so you’d think I’d have thought otherwise on the nothing-could-happen-to-me part.”

“Is that what got you here?” Dmetri asked, putting a red six on a black seven, starting a game of solitaire.

“Nah. Broke into a Cadillac and jacked the stereo.”

“Why?”

Tom shrugged. “Dunno. Guess to prove I could.”

Dmetri rolled his eyes. “Dumbshit.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Ah, it has its perks. You get to flirt with all the cute nurses and interns.”

Tom laughed, looking up from his magazine. “Oh yes, that is quite the perk.”

Tom’s beeper went off. He looked at it and smiled.

“Hey look, a cleanup on the mysterious fifth floor.”

Dmetri picked up a spray bottle and brandished it like a gun. “Those germs don’t stand a chance.”

Tom smiled and pushed his mop and bucket out of the room.

~+~

The mess turned out to be nothing more than a nurse accidentally spilling a food tray, though, on that floor, Tom had the most exciting experience he’d had since he got to the hospital.

As he cleaned and Dmetri pretended he was a gay slave driver, to Tom’s amusement, a high-pitched, crazed scream filled the air. Both boys looked up to see doctors rushing in a room. All of a sudden, a patient ran out of the room. His mouth was open; the horrible scream was coming from it. He looked around with wide eyes and began to advance on Tom and Dmetri.

Dmetri backed against the wall, but as the crazed man passed by them, Tom stuck a foot out and tripped the man. Before he hit the ground, Tom grabbed him by the arms and held him against his chest, gripping tightly as the man struggled. A doctor rushed up to the man and shoved a needle in his neck, pushing down the plunger and pouring the sedative into his veins.

The man immediately slumped against Tom. A few other doctors came up and half dragged him back to his room. Tom let out the nervous breath he had been holding in and wiped his sweat-ridden forehead. The whole ordeal took less than a minute, but Tom’s pounding heart made it feel like hours.

“Well done, Mr. Kaulitz, well done! Thank you so much,” one of the doctors said to him. Tom shrugged.

“I might as well do something useful.”

“It is well appreciated.”

The doctor walked off. Dmetri slapped a hand to Tom’s back.

“Way to go, dude.”

Tom stared at the wall and sighed. “Holy Clorox, Batman. That was fucking scary.”

Dmetri laughed. “Come on, let’s go get some soda.”

As the two boys walked off, they paid no mind to what they thought was an empty hallway. At the very end of the hall, barely looking out of his room, was a presence. He had silently watched the entire thing. His hand was curled around the doorframe, scraggly, jagged, unkempt nails digging into the wall, his hand like a claw. One dark eye, surrounded by sleepless dark circles, watched them walk away. Black hair, unnaturally, horribly black, framed a thin, gaunt face. With an intense, analytical gaze, he stared after Tom and Tom alone.

~+~

“It sounds like you had a very eventful day.”

Tom nodded as he ate his dinner with his mother, Simone. His stepfather, Gordon, had to work late.

“It was crazy! The guy was just screaming and they sedated him while I held him back.”

“Well, I’m glad you helped the doctors. And you should have Dmetri over sometime soon.”

“You would really like him, Mom. And he knows all sorts of card games, like pinochle and –”

“Sweetie, slow down! My goodness, you seem to really like him.”

“He’s a sort of role model, I guess. The person that can show me that my ways can be changed. They already are starting to change.”

“I’m proud, sweetie, that you are taking this seriously.”

Tom felt a swell of self-worth rise in him. “Thanks, Mom.”

Tom helped his mother clear the table, put the dishes in the dishwasher, and then went to his room to play his guitar.

Back at the hospital, a kind nurse was delivering the fifth floor patients their dinners. As she walked into room 522, she tried, as she always did, to make conversation.

“Hello, dearie,” she said to the sickly thin figure, curled in on itself with a thick pad of unruled paper, a sketchbook, balanced on bony knees.

The figure paid her no mind. The curve of its spine became rigid, the tendons showing below every inch of visible skin.

“I see you’ve broken the rules again. Why do you crush those charcoals and oil pastels and paint them in your hair? Your natural color is so nice.”

Again, no response.

“You need to stop painting your hair, honey. You know what the doctors say about it.”

The figure continued to ignore her.

“What are you drawing?”

For the first time since she entered the room, the figure responded. He looked at her with intense yet dead eyes, color from sleep deprivation painted around them. He handed her his sketchbook, his right hand stained black and silver from the charcoal stick he had in his hand. The nurse looked the drawing over.

“Ah, this is Tom, that new janitor. You liked him?”

The boy wouldn’t look at her.

“You know he won’t be here everyday.”

Nothing.

“And you’re not allowed to leave and find him.”

Still nothing.

The nurse sighed and pushed the tray of food to the table on the right side of his bed, eyeing the thin being. An IV could only go so far.

“Please, sweetie, eat.”

The figure paid her no mind, only curling tighter into himself and scribbling faster.

The nurse nodded solemnly and walked closer to him, grabbing his left arm and pulling the needle for the IV closer to the apparatus in his wrist. Before she could stick it in, however, his right arm shot out and grabbed at the container of generic pasta, his hand bony and in extreme resemblance to a hawk’s talons. She smiled and handed him a spoon (forks were not allowed on the fifth floor) so he could eat. He put it into his right hand awkwardly and slowly began to eat. The nurse gave his hair a quick pat and she left.

Slowly, methodically, he shoveled the spiral noodles and bland meat sauce in his mouth, not to satiate hunger, but because it gave him something to do while he thought about Tom, that new janitor.