The Doctor’s Experiment

It was a hot, summery mid-July day when an old, wrinkled woman sat out on her

front porch. It was too hot inside, and with the nice breeze blowing on her, she let her

mind wander. She usually tried very hard not to do this, because whenever she did, her

mind drifted back to that summer about three years ago. What a horrible summer

that was! It had all started when her mother was put in the hospital because she

was diagnosed with terminal cancer…

The day she had gotten the news had been the hardest. A close family friend had

called her from the hospital, saying that they were going to operate in half an hour and

that she should come right away. Of course, she had gotten into her car and driven to the

hospital right away so that she could see her mother at least one more time (the doctors

weren’t sure if her mother would survive the surgery or not). Upon arriving at Memorial

Hospital, which was just outside of her small hometown, she was given hasty directions

to her mother’s room. She rushed up the several flights of stairs between her and the

room, not wanting to wait for the elevator. However, she slowed her pace just outside

room 513, her mother’s room. She lay there, upon the white hospital bed, surrounded by

white walls and too-clean metal machines that beeped and whirred. The very thought of

her mother in so much pain brought tears to the girl’s eyes. Then the woman felt all of

the air whoosh out of her when she saw who occupied the chair at the head of her

mother’s bed. It was her father. He had left her mother and her behind when she was only

two because he wasn’t ready for the responsibilities of being a father. She had had no

contact with him since, and up until this moment had believed her mother hadn’t, either.

For awhile, neither of them spoke, but then she slowly walked over and sat in the other

chair. They began to talk, and she soon learned that he was now a father to two daughters.

He lived not even an hour away from her house because he couldn’t bear to be too far

away from his first wife and eldest daughter. She wasn’t sure whether to feel gratified by

this, or to be upset. After about twenty minutes of awkward silence, several nurses

walked in and wheeled her mother down to the prep room for surgery.

The hours that followed were agonizing. Her father had left right after her mother

had been taken away, telling her to call him when she was out. Her thoughts went around

in circles, occasionally taking her down in a spiral of despair. She waited alone in a

relatively empty waiting room, dreading what the doctor might say when he came back.

She spent most of her time there thinking of all the memories she had with her

mother. Since her father had never been there, they had spent most of their

waking hours with each other, despite her mother’s job and her own schooling. She tried

to think positively, but at the same time she knew that she must be prepared for the worst.

This very thought made her want to cry.



Several hours later, a nurse came into the waiting room and called her name. She

said that her mother was resting peacefully in her room and she could go see her then.

The woman bee-lined up to room 513 and quietly sat in a chair. Her mother’s eyes were

closed, but she wasn’t sure if she was awake. Her mother seemed to read her thoughts,

because she suddenly spoke.

“Lissa, is that you?” the woman’s heart ached at her mother’s words that seemed

to take every effort to form.

“Yes, it’s me, mother. You’re going to be okay.” After this exchange, they sat in

silence for some time, and eventually her mother drifted off to a deep sleep. Not wanting
to disturb her, Lissa got up quietly and went home.


A few weeks later, when she was just ending another visit with her mother at the

hospital, a nurse came in the room and asked to speak with her privately. The doctors

had been doing constant check-ups and the most recent one showed that her mother had

developed a rare reaction to some of the medication used to cure the cancer during

surgery. She was going to have to go in for yet another one the next day. At that point,

Lissa broke down. After she had calmed down a little, she went back to her mother’s side

and told her the news. Soon after, she had to leave, but she promised her mother that she

would be back the following day to see her before the operation.


The next day, Lissa was late getting into the hospital because traffic had been held

up. She was very distraught that she wouldn’t make it to see her mother, but her worrying

was all for nothing, because she reached her mother’s side as they were wheeling the

gurney down the hall to the prep room. She held her mother’s hand and told her

everything would be fine. Those were the last words she spoke to her mother before the

surgery.


This time, a male doctor came to her in the waiting room. He was rather beefy and

corpulent, giving him an air of someone who meant business. It was at that moment that

she knew something was very wrong. Normally, doctors only came into the waiting room

to let a loved one know that their friend or family member was dead. He very blatantly

told her that the surgery had not gone well and that her mother had had another reaction.

She needed to be transferred to a special hospital that could take better personal care of

her. In fact, he worked there full time and assured her that it was a very reputable

hospital. He told her that her mother was being transported right as they spoke and that

she should meet the ambulance there. He then proceeded to give her directions. She

followed them closely until she reached the street. When she read the street name, she felt

uneasy. This was the hospital that her cousin had told her about. He had worked there as

an intern for a time, but had been let go because he had discovered some ugly secrets

about the place. He said that they used patients for organs and body parts when they

went into strange reactions and comas. Now, as she turned into the parking lot and found

a space, she studied the building. It certainly did look as dark and dim as a prison. She

walked inside and found that all of the rooms were empty. There wasn’t a receptionist or

anything! Slowly, she peered around the corner of one of the patient rooms and saw that

it was as gloomy as a prison cell. A woman suddenly spoke from behind her.

“Can I help you, miss?” Lissa jumped, startled.

“Oh, I’m just here looking for my mother, who was taken here in an ambulance a

few minutes ago.” The woman’s look turned distinctly cool as she regarded the younger

woman.

“If your mother was transported here for care, then I am afraid you will have to

wait at least forty-eight hours before seeing her. That allows us to see to her immediate

needs and provide her with a room that suits her perfectly.”

Lissa thought that this was all rather strange and was wondering whether to ask

the burly male doctor from Memorial Hospital to take her mother back on as a patient,

when suddenly an alarm went off.

“Oh dear, another poor soul has wandered off the tour again,” the old woman

muttered. “I am very sorry, but you will have to excuse me. Noshlik will show you out.”

A very well-muscled Norwegian-looking man stepped out from the shadows of the

hallway and grabbed her upper arm. He pulled her to the front doors and shoved her

through them. After he was sure that she was out, he locked the door. Very angry and

upset, she got into her car and drove home, determined to come back the next day and

demand to see her mother-no matter what she had to do.


However, that’s not exactly how it wound up happening. Apparently, the older

woman she spoke to put her on some kind of list at the hospital, so that she wasn’t

allowed in at all! She tried calling, but there was never any answer. Finally, she looked

up their website and found out when she could sneak into one of the tours. She was able

to do this, and so feeling quite proud of herself, she wandered away from the group. She

saw a door marked “Hospital Employees Only” and went in. She found out that it was a

locker room for the doctors and that they stored extra uniforms there. She hastily put one

on and marched out. No one stopped her from going through the door marked “Keep

Out”, because they saw the uniform. However, what she saw made her stop in her tracks.

There was her mother, dangling by the legs from the ceiling. She was utterly horrified.

Trying to keep her façade wasn’t easy, but she managed to collect herself in time to ask a

passing doctor what her mother was doing there hanging from the ceiling. What he told

her rocked her to her core. Apparently, while she was being operated on in the other

hospital, they had given her a type of drug to make her heart rate slow down, putting her

into a non-reactive state. They then sent her to this special hospital to be tested on, kind

of like a lab rat. They were using her specifically to test the reaction of certain drugs with

people who have cancer. She was a special case because of her type of cancer and the

things she was allergic to, such as anesthesia. He went on to say that she had been hard to

test on so far because of this specific allergy. The doctors working on her were trying to

develop new ways of putting people under that weren’t as dangerous to people with that

allergy.


After he was done explaining all of this to her, he questioned her as to why she

wanted to know. She told him that her schedule had been switched around and she was in

charge of this patient now. She had him help her unhook her mother from the ceiling and

carry her to an empty room with a bed in it. After he took his leave, she locked the door

and began working on a pan to take her mother out of the hospital and report this place to

the authorities. She had no idea how to do this, so for now she left her mother there and

left to make a mental map of the layout of the building.


The next day, she snuck in through a pipe she had found the previous day during

her explorations. Then she navigated her way through a bunch of hallways to the room

where she had left her mother. However, when she entered the room, it was empty! She

panicked for a moment, and then decided to get another uniform and go in search of her

mother’s records. She was able to obtain a uniform, but when she reached the front desk,

she saw the lady that had put her on the list the first day. Now there was no way she

could get her mother’s records. Instead, she went in search of the doctor that had helped

her the previous day. Since she didn’t even know his name, she just opened every door

she came to and peeked inside. Behind the door of room 13, she beheld a gruesome sight.

There were many bodies hung from the ceiling the way her mother had been before she

rescued her. There was no one in this room, but there was a computer, so she logged on

and started to read all of the statistics and information. It was truly horrifying! These

doctors had been conducting research with several hospitals all over the country, but the

research they were doing was inhumane. They took patients with terminal diseases and

put a drug into them that made them have “allergic reactions” to something used in

surgery. These reactions weren’t actually natural, but induced! Then they took this

specific, hand-picked group of people to special labs in the hospital and tested on them.

They were finding out why people had reactions and creating a “breed” of humans that

would be perfect in every way—no allergies, blemishes, or flaws of any kind. However,

there was one question that was bothering Lissa. How did the doctors pick which people

to test on? She found the answer in yet another file on the computer. They only wanted

people with specific qualities to test on. They had to be at least forty, had to have a

terminal illness, and had to be allergic to something that was unusual. In her mother’s

case, it was anesthesia. Lissa, not wanting to loose this evidence, emailed it to herself so

she could print it out at home. Then she quietly logged off the computer and made her

way back to the pipe.


Once at home, she printed out the statistics and pictures and put them in a folder.

Not wanting them to get lost in the mail, she got in her car and drove to the police

department. They immediately called the facility and also sent some officers to check the

place out. They found other evidence and all of the patients were released. The hospital

was shut down and the doctors were all imprisoned.

All in all, it should have been a happy ending—but not for Lissa. Her mother was

never found at the hospital. All of her records were deleted and the body was nowhere to

be found. The police officers couldn’t do anything, so it was dropped for several days.

Then, on the third day, the body was found in a ditch several streets away from the burly

male doctor’s house. He was questioned, but never found guilty. Eventually, he

disappeared.

Now she pulled herself back to the present. There was a familiar-looking man

coming up the walk to her house. His entire body was immense and he had a mutinous

expression on his face. He was carrying a gun.