White Space Season 1

silence drifted through the room, absent even the usual sounds of a hospital. While he hadn’t ever been admitted to the hospital, his doctor’s office was located in the hospital, as was the case with everyone on the island. The hospital provided steeply discounted medical services in exchange for huge tax breaks for Conway Industries, who owned the hospital.
    “Hello!” Milo tried to murmur over the tube in his throat.
    There was a sudden shuffling outside his door, and Milo saw a shadow beneath the door, of someone just standing there and not coming in.
    What the hell? Come in!
    The door opened so slow it seemed as if an infant were trying to push it, rather than an adult.
    But it wasn’t an infant.
    Mr. Heller stepped inside his room.
    His eyes were gone, replaced by black pits of dried blood. The entire lower half of his face was bloody, much of his bottom jaw missing and what was there, barely hanging by shreds of muscle. Small chunks of teeth had migrated from his mouth to speckling the outside of his chin, held in place by blood.
    “Eleven,” Heller’s voice groaned like a brain dead zombie as he moved closer to Milo.
    Milo screamed, shuffling back in the hospital bed, and shoving his back hard against the pillows, as he grabbed the tube and began to pull it out so he could scream.
    “Hello, Milo,” Heller said, approaching Milo’s bed.
    Milo was frozen, tube still in his throat, and his left hand pressed the “help” button repeatedly. But no help was coming.
    Heller looked up and down the length of Milo for several seconds, despite having no actual eyes, then sighed deeply, turned toward the corner of the room, retrieved a briefcase sitting on a chair, then brought it over and laid it on Milo’s lap.
    “I’ve very sorry,” he said, his words not at all inhibited by the lack of a functioning mouth. “But it seems that in all the madness, I almost forgot to kill you.” Heller opened the briefcase, pulled out a gun, and casually aimed it at Milo.
    Milo pressed the button again and again, desperately.
    Heller pulled the trigger.
    Milo screamed into a symphony of static and roaring engine as Beatrice’s BMW crashed through the front of the grocery store.
    Milo’s world went black.

    Milo woke up, his entire frame furiously thrashing against the bed, his fingers yanking wires and tubes from his body as the steady beeping from the machines beside him rose in pitch and raced in frequency.
    Milo reached down and tried pulling the catheter from his penis, but it felt like he was pouring fire inside an open wound. He wanted to scream but couldn’t.
    “You’re okay,” a nurse said three-seconds later, rushing into Milo’s room. She placed a calming hand on top of Milo while her other hand fiddled with the monitors and machinery.
    She continued to pat him until she was finished tweaking the machine, checking him over, and said, “You’re safe, Mr. Anderson. You’re in the hospital.”
    No one called Milo “Mr. Anderson,” except Mr. Heller.
    “How did I get here?” he asked, wondering if the crash was a dream, but knowing it wasn’t.
    The nurse was young and pretty, with short red hair. Milo had never seen her before. That wasn’t unheard of on the island, but it was slightly unusual. Even if you didn’t know everyone, on an island the size of Hamilton, it was reasonably easy to spot the locals. The nurse’s name tag said, “Betty,” and her voice was almost as pretty as she was.
    “What happened?” Milo said.
    “You were in an accident,” Betty frowned. “It was bad.”
    Hardly an accident when you’re foot’s bricking the accelerator.
    “How did I get here?”
    “An ambulance, of course.”
    “How about Beatrice,” Milo asked, hating himself for the seven or so seconds he wished his stepmother dead.
    Betty said nothing.
    Milo repeated, “Beatrice, my stepmother. Is she okay?”
    Betty smiled, then said, “The doctor will want to speak to you,” and left the room without another word.

    * * * *

CHAPTER 5 — Jon Conway

    “How did they find me?” Emma asked the same question in a new way, for the third time in less than five minutes from her spot on the hospital bed.
    “Well,” Jon said, “when we couldn’t find you at first, Cass suggested we follow the trail of cookies.”
    “What cookies?” Emma asked suspiciously.
    “The cookies you stashed in your purse at the dessert table the other day.”
    Emma looked at her blanket, then back up at Cassidy,