Nov 17, 20172 min read

Garden Grove: 4 Sick Workers and Senility – The Hospital by LV Gaudet

Garden Grove Cover - McNally - front cover

At the hospital, men groaned in pain and thrashed on gurneys, rolling feebly to vomit furiously into too small jellybean shaped hospital blue plastic dishes. Even more disconcerting were the ones who just lay silently suffering as if they had given up, their eyes looking haunted in their emotionless faces.

They all looked like hell.

The men in intensive care looked even worse. Their ashy pallor left their skin grey looking and their blue-tinged lips were not a good sign. Hospital staff worked on them furiously, their anxiety making the seriousness of their conditions clear.

Dave was one of the lucky ones. He had mostly stood there holding the tray of pastries and thinking how strange it was that this little old lady brought them baking out of the blue, while the other guys eagerly grabbed handfuls of the delicate little pastries and wolfed them down with delighted noises of enjoyment.

Dave only managed to have one of the fluffy little treats, and had just taken a bite of it when the first men started to stagger weakly and vomit violently.

He had quickly spat it out before he had a chance to swallow.

Not knowing what they were poisoned with, the hospital staff had made a best guess and gave those who could manage to keep it down a foul tasting drink they hoped would counteract the poison or at least minimize the damage to their stomachs.

Dave looked around at the guys around him, his crew and friends, weakly trying to sit up, to roll over and vomit some more. They were so sick; worse than that time some of the guys had food poisoning after eating at that questionable little hole-in-the-wall restaurant, and that was pretty bad.

He wondered if some of the sicker guys would make it.

Poisoned! He could not believe it. The doctors were sure it was some kind of commercial poison, not just a simple food poisoning.

But they did not know what poison or why.

Was it an accident? Had the old woman just grabbed the wrong container of something, making a dangerous error because of her aging eyes or mind? She wouldn’t have poisoned them on purpose, would she?

“Nah,” he thought. “It had to just be a mistake.”