I am very, very happy to begin Spawn. Please read; I hope you enjoy the very beginnings of my biggest novel yet.

Word Count: 3386

I’ve sat on this bench at the edge of the hospital wing every day from two to three since I began working here. Above me was always a painting and a very off-white wall; in front of me was the long hallway and patients rushing by as though they were normal pedestrians rushing to their jobs. The hospital was always full of hustle and bustle – from two to three every day is my time of solitude. The bench had no back to it, but was made up of four wooden planks. I can remember feeling each plank beneath me, making my sitting less pleasurable. I would turn around and stare at the wall, then look up at the painting. Look at the hallway. Look down, at my lunch.

It was a late lunch.

It was a late lunch because I realized, after several years of medical school, that patients do not wait for lunch. Very few things wait for lunch – life does not wait for it. It did not wait for the man who choked on his lunch last week. But I was happy to find that I had the time to eat and think, and sit for an hour, at my job. The hospital is a dreary place, but it is a place of passion. It is a place where revolutions begin – the biological kind of revolution. So, at a hospital, one can encounter many strange incidents. These incidents don’t always affect other people – and they are not always the direct result of other incidents, such as those that brought the sick person to the hospital. They are the incidents that make you stop, think, and observe your surroundings to look for an answer to a very, very pressing issue.

I have had to do this on many occasions, so much so that it’s become second nature for me to observe a problem and fix it. I suppose somebody could say that I was the hospital’s repairman, but that wouldn’t be correct. I am much more than that – I was much more than that. I became much more than that when the strangest patient I would ever meet was rushed through the hospital doors.

I was eating lunch then. Of course, the man couldn’t wait for my lunch. I huffed and picked myself up, brushed some of the crumbs off of my pants, picked them up and threw them in the garbage. I was being called upon to check this guy out – apparently he was in quite critical condition and his chances of recovery were slim. But that wasn’t what shocked me. What shocked me was that he was absolutely healthy – at least, when I saw him – and it didn’t seem as though anything had happened externally to put him in any sort of condition. His name was Shane Evans, and he was the most astounding patient I have ever encountered. He was the most astounding because he did not live.

Shane Evans was an older fellow, possibly a little over sixty, who had recently returned from a vacation of one month. He had been away on business, but used most of his time for leisure. He especially enjoyed playing tennis, which, thanks to his nimble in-shape body, he was able to excel at. The business trip had been planned for a long time, possibly a year or so. His wife, Noah Evans, tended to their household while he was away. They had no children; they had decided that children would be too much of a burden on their older existences. Noah told me, eventually, that it was not a choice many couples decide to make, but that they were not most couples – they loved each other so much that they would not allow kids to rip them apart. I was surprised, but I couldn’t blame them either. Children have a knack for pulling off obnoxious stunts. Perhaps they were right to choose the path they did.

Shane himself was quite a rowdy youngster. He broke his arms and legs multiple times as a child, mostly from climbing trees. He even built his own tree house – completely on his own – then broke his left arm after climbing up and spotting a raccoon inside the tree house. Shane had tried to grab the animal while he was still on the ladder. So I learned that he was quite used to hospitals already. I’m sure that’s what his unconscious self was thinking, at any rate. If his unconscious mind wasn’t thinking about how used it was to hospitals, it certainly comprehended its eventual death. This might have been the whole “life flashing before his eyes” bit – which is, in part, why I was told these tidbits about his past and childhood. Although Noah could not stop weeping, she also could not resist chattering for hours on end. I told her that I needed silence – and privacy – to examine her husband, and I was granted this luxury.

The world opened up to me in that room. Well, perhaps not the world, but Shane’s statistics certainly brought some information to light. He had been jogging when he collapsed. No records of any heart failure. In fact, there were no records of him having any injury that he did not cause himself. He must have been even wilier than his wife described, because there was quite a large list of injuries – several of which were permanently damaging. I didn’t see any damage done to his head, so I assumed he was mentally stable – at least, in theory, though I could not prove it – and went on to continue examining him. He was slender to the point where he looked feeble, though I was told his appearance was deceiving. He was taller than an average man and looked to be in perfect health, save that he was unconscious and barely breathing. He hadn’t gone bald, his skin was hardly wrinkled. If I had only seen him on the streets, and not seen him like this in the hospital, I might have assumed he was twenty years younger than he actually was.

Perhaps that’s what made this so saddening for his wife. I had to break the news to her, and it was not easy – I could not understand what was wrong with her husband. Granted, I’d done this many times before and this was no different than any other time. Yet this patient seemed strange. He was hardly breathing; I believed he would pass from this Earth soon. I did not want to leave him alone but unless I was about to conjure an explanation for his collapse there was no point in remaining. It had grown late in the evening, and my hours were long done. I packed up my things, and had another doctor take over monitoring Shane. I left the hospital in an inquisitive state, my face contorted to express the many questions floating around my mind. I’ve only had one other friend who was able to put such an expression on my face. Edwardo Nambet, my long-since deceased childhood friend, but my family just called him Edward. I didn’t know anybody who called him Ed – maybe that’s why we called him Edward. It sounded more American.

I rubbed my temples. I was getting a headache. I opened the car door, annoyed by the clicking sound that cars make when doors open and when locks unlock. Edward hated that, too, until he got his first car. Once he received his license the young man drove until the car ran out of gas. He stranded himself on the highway, and forgot his cell phone on top of that. He waved his hand out into the highway, hoping some nice person might stop and help him. It took an hour before a single man stopped to lend him a phone. His mother called AAA, and he returned home safely.

But I never understood what he did, or why he did it. He would pull of crazy stunts, and my face would contort as it was while Shane was in the hospital. My face remained that way the entire drive back to my home. I thought of Edward constantly during that ride, and how he would taunt me for making that face. But I could not decide what was wrong with Shane, and I felt upset about leaving Noah around his lifeless body. I would find out soon just how lifeless it was, but before I did I pulled into my driveway. My contorted face had gone numb and reverted back to a standard grimace. I opened the door – there was the clicking noise again. Locked the car – clicking once more. I winced, and watched the garage open, then walked inside.

I find it much nicer living in the suburbs than in the city, even though all the hospitals I’ve worked at since medical school were nearby some sort of metropolis. I ate my dinner, cooked in the microwave. It was a TV dinner; I was not worthy of a full meal. I ate the artificial goods beneath a copy of the same painting that hung in the hospital wing. That was the second strangest thing about the building where I worked; the painting in the hall was the same as the painting in my kitchen. Perhaps that is why I feel comfortable eating under it there, as I do at home. Perhaps it reminds me of home, and allows me to get through the day.

I have nobody waiting for me in my house. I am not married, and never plan to be. I am young, so I have plenty of time to change my plans.

I fell asleep that night to strange dreams, to images of the painting above my head. I saw the man in the painting look down at me, condescendingly point at me and shame me. “But sir, I have done nothing!” I pleaded to the painting, but he would not listen. He dismissed me, and I fell, landing on a pile of soft grass. The grass engulfed me, washed me in green, and I smiled – I was dismissed, but I was not unhappy. My will was strong in this dream, stronger than my will was in real life at that time. Although the sun beat down on the grass, it remained cool and refreshing. It cooled and refreshed my spirits – I saw my contorted, questioning face with the single raised eyebrow vanish – it appeared in the sky, then evaporated into nothingness. I closed my eyes and continued to let the grass wrap around my body. The wind began to cool, the sun set. At some point – I don’t know when – I had picked myself up and travelled down a nearby flight of stairs. I must have been at some sort of park. Next to me was a phone booth, and inside the phone was ringing. I picked up the phone – not knowing that I had actually unconsciously picked up the phone next to my bed and was speaking into it.

I woke up just in time to catch myself saying “hello.” It was the hospital calling to report that Shane Evan’s critical condition was prevailing and that he was likely to pass at any moment. I said I would be there soon to check up on the man and try to save him, but I fell asleep after looking at the clock – it was one in the morning, and I was far too tired to get myself out of bed. When I awoke, five hours later, I felt disgusting, as though I were covered in thick, viscous ooze. I was just barely able to life myself out of the bed – the weight upon my feet made walking feel like a good workout. My body was heavy, and my face in the morning mirror made me less enthusiastic about the day. I prepared myself, got into my car – click, click, slam, click – and drove to the hospital, looking as normal as possible. Unfortunately, Noah was not looking normal. Her face was twisted, her jaw hung as though a heavy weight had been put upon it. Her deep red hair was a complete mess, as though the strands had decided to unravel and create chaos atop her head. Her eyes squinted, and through her tears she tried to see my face. Those liquid lenses eventually gave way, and she saw me. I wanted to run backwards, but knew my duty as a doctor.

“What happened?” I asked.

She was sobbing uncontrollably, and could barely speak. “You killed him,” she sputters, huffs in between words. I wanted to explain that I had done nothing to harm her husband – it was my job to save his life – but that would have been lying. I knew well that I was probably the man at fault for letting him slip away, all because I had felt too tired to get out of bed not so long ago. I went over to the body, which had been covered by a sheet, and removed the sheet. He looked unchanged, but his pulse was indeed stopped. He was cold. There was nothing more that could be done for him, so I replaced the sheet and walked out to greet Noah.

“Shane… your husband… are you absolutely sure he didn’t have any medical condition you didn’t report?” I looked at her twisted face. Where there were previously no wrinkles there now appeared canyons.

“Absolutely. He’s always been healthy, unlike all these silly Americans,” she sobbed.

“You’re not American?”

“No, we were Irish.”

I heard the pain of the past tense sink in. We were Irish, as though she had lost a part of her humanity, the part that defined her race. Without Shane she was no longer herself, and thus no longer a whole being. I began to lose my indifference, but I struggled and fought with myself to remain composed. I could not allow her to see me falter. It would only have made her cry more, perhaps enough to faint, or lose her breath for a little while. I realized at this point that I had never even asked her if Shane was dead. I had seen her face and known that it was the face of death. There is no other reason for a face to look like that. I feel so very sad for recognizing that face, both before and now. I fetched a tissue to dry her tears and held it up for her to take, but she already had a store of them in her pocket. It turns out that she had been up literally all night watching her husband, waiting by him, hoping he would awaken. But he convulsed one moment and stopped breathing. The interns on call were unable to do anything to help him. They, like me, were utterly clueless. This man was a complete medical mystery – for now.

There would be an autopsy. Then we would know his killer. The medical world would rest easily once they knew his cause of death.

I explained this to Noah, who was, in truth, too disoriented to listen. It made me feel better about losing this patient to have her stare at me statically. Her eyes were completely empty now – tears had ceased to flow, left were only empty orbs. Her wrinkles were filled with liquid; her forehead looked as though it had been scrunched up and then released, as though it were a crumpled piece of paper. Her hands trembled, and she did not speak. She absorbed what I said, I’m sure, but she did not respond for as long as I spoke.

“I understand, Mrs. Evans, that your husband is deceased… I understand this all too well. I’m going to reassure you that we will find the cause of death during the autopsy. There is no doubt about that. I’m slightly worried that, due to the recent changes in our morgue system, there may be a slight amount of backlog. In the meantime, I will continue searching all of the resources I know for information on how he died. I would appreciate it if you could write me and tell me exactly how he went… I know it is painful, but if you ever wish to know what caused this, it might be your only choice. Know I’m very sorry… truly.”

She shivered. “Can I give you my email?” I asked. No response. I walked away, got a piece of paper, then walked back once my email was written upon the slip. I handed it to her. She would not take it, because she would not move. I put it in one of her pockets, and she did not resist. I was glad she did not resist – it would have made things too complicated if she did. I needed her knowledge, because I had foolishly left this knowledge behind me at one o’clock in the morning.

We both looked at Shane’s dead body, covered in the sky blue sheet. His feet protruded further than any other part of his body, farther than his face. It looked strangely inhuman, but I did not say this out loud. It was neither the time nor the place. I would say it out loud to myself later that night, at home. I would go home and sit under the painting that matched the one at the end of the hallway in the hospital, and eat my dinner again as I had the day previous, and go to bed as I had the day previous, except this time mumbling that something about Shane Evans had not seemed human.

I knew about Shane now. Shane, as a person, was friendly and caring. He was a connector. He knew many people – friends that he gathered over the years stuck with him – a trait he had that most all of us on Earth lack. Many of his childhood friends were also the same type of people. Perhaps some of his friends were some of my friends, or some of his friend’s friends. The connections could reach anybody, and the whole world would know Shane Evans.

He spent some of his childhood in Ireland, but moved to America with his family when his father learned that his passion as a university professor was better pursued overseas, where the colleges held to a higher standard of education. He spent time at his new home breaking his arms and legs climbing trees. Apparently he was the only boy who would willingly risk jumping off of a highly elevated, thick tree branch – which resulted in only one minor leg fracture. With all of the man’s limb fractures, one would think it astounding that he could have moved around and played tennis at all, much less walked normally. Perhaps he played tennis for the same reason he jumped off of trees.

He met Noah while visiting colleges as a teenager about to graduate from high school. They only had a quick glance at one another when they stopped to ask for directions, but she had slipped him her cell phone number before he left. He noticed it in his pocket when he arrived at the university.

“This is my university, Shane,” his father told him. “I teach here, as you know. One day, if you come here, you might have me as your teacher!” His father looked at him and smiled, but Shane was busy looking at the piece of paper from his pocket with the phone number on it.

It would take him until he was home again to figure out whose number it was. He immediately called and inquired about the slip of paper. Noah told him that the number was just in case he ever needed directions around the area again.

So, naturally, Shane made sure that he went to the college nearby Noah. They would meet every day, for she went there as well, and he would play along and ask her where the different buildings were. She knew, of course, and played the game with him. They were only acquaintances at this point, but in the coming years they spent more and more time together, until eventually they were a couple, and the entire campus knew their named. They were Shane and Noah, and they were inseparable.