Water Line, Like Lettuce

(Ian’s story is below.  The same experience from another viewpoint can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0ZKVPjEl1M)

Weapons drawn, Will and I advance slowly through the dark.  The ceiling’s guts have spilled out.  Exit signs dangled, motionless.  Stripped wiring hangs everywhere, volumous as jungle.  Corkboard tiles disintegrate beneath our steps as we make our way through the hall.  I glance back.  Our friends are out of sight behind the corner, waiting while we scout; the comforting glint of flashlight on switchblades gone with them.  It’s just Will’s hammer and my pocket knife.  Our target so close, the line between anticipation and actuality is explosively thin.  I can’t believe we took it this far.

It had all begun innocently enough. I’d come to the dining hall, snagged a cheeseburger, some milk, a chair. Craning my neck, scanning the place for friends and finding none, I sat facing the window. Earlier in the semester I’d made the mistake of sitting alone at a table. During froshdom, every eye was an identity-shattering critic. “Poor kid doesn’t have any friends.” How sad.” “Loser.” I put my phone open on the table and stared at the blank screen, my shoulders hunched. At the counter by the window, back to the hall, it was better. Somehow facing the window transformed me into some wistful hermit contemplating the failing light.

As I headed back to my dorm for another night of TV and video games, the sound of rubber on concrete, a flash of spokes entered my periphery. “Ian!” A pack of three bikes whisked in front of me and skidded to a halt. “It’s adventure time, maestro. You up to the challenge?” Sebastian’s camera swung back and forth across his chest as he asked me. I’d anticipated a slow night. I’d had a lot of slow nights. I put on a menacing grin.

“Bring it.”

“If you have one, bring a knife.” Will told me. I’d only been at Tulane for two months; appropriate security was not something I had a gauge for, but it was abundantly clear I wasn’t going to find out why with an RA twenty feet away.

“Flashlight too.” Eric chimed in.

“Where we headed?” I asked. Will pulled his Cheshire-cat grin.

“you’ll see.”

Shortly, we mounted and were off into the night. Only on the way did I find out what was going on. We were going to explore an abandoned building. “Lindy Boggs hospital. It was destroyed in the storm.” Sebastian informed me.

“I’ve heard th-th-th…” Will stutters. “There’s a homeless man who lives there named Al.”

There were steep hills which entered into sallow plunges. At high speeds through the tight gaps in the sidewalks we dove and swooped, wheels wild. I hadn’t the faintest clue where we were, or how I’d get back. But that’s out of my mind now. The hospital was in view.

Lindy Boggs is old and massive, its long white face stretched across the horizon, punctuated with jet boxes of varying dimensions, some with glass in them, others with none. It’s a practical building, just a huge box of cement. The street was dead quiet at that hour.  Dandelion-colored streetlamp light splashed across its surface and made the slick black of the parking lot shine.  Weeds came up through the crumbling concrete; there wasn’t a single square yard without them.  A tall chain link fence surrounded the lot, punctuated with no trespassing signs.

We locked our bikes far from each other to avoid suspicion of our exploratory crime, found a place where the fence was torn and bent back upon itself. One of the glass doors was bashed in. We slipped inside.

Immediately, my nostrils flared – the stench of mold was overpowering. The room was big with tall ceilings. The floor in that room, like everywhere else in the building, was covered in debris – computer parts, ceiling tiles and the metal gridding that should keep them there, piping, fire detectors. Hard plastic signs were everywhere, one read “Ambulance patients, please stop here and check in at front desk.” The walls were saturated with black mold. We didn’t notice any of this at first, though. We noticed only one thing. Sure as the sun rises we heard it: the steady hum and flutter of snoring.

It sounded like it was coming from the second floor. Of course we had no idea what to expect. We hadn’t established what was normal, or if, in this place, there was a “normal.” That snoring became a baseline, the frame of what we expected from the rest of the night. It’s why we went as far as we did.

We did as we’d agreed beforehand, not wanting to startle anyone into violence. Will called out loudly: ” Hello?” No answer. “Al?! Are you there?” The name Will heard by rumor was our best guess.

Over the course of the night this refrain seared into our minds, so often did we utter it. It was perhaps our greatest defense, though still a helpless one – declaring our presence to the unknown, like wearing a bell in bear country.

Despite our calls, the volumous snoring continued to pierce the dark. We moved along.

We found ourselves in the hospital gift shop. Merchandise and other junk scattered the floor. There was broken glass everywhere. A single teddy bear sat in a dusty display case. Rows of religious and self-help books covered a small shelf. I went ahead into the black room, my cell phone light providing sight. There was a calendar there, opened to August. The water line bisected it – the bottom half was coated in thick black mold, weighing it down, the top curved like wilted lettuce. Photos of staff were strewn about the floor, distorted.

This was the closest we newcomers could be to what happened – abandoned buildings, filled with evidence of lack. Its wholeness was entirely foreign to us.

We found an odd room with long windows and what looked like a stage. There was some incomprehensible red powder on the ground and a glass figurine of a child playing a lute. Sebastian pointed his flashlight through it from the other side. The result, the child glowed, the dark around him. The cheeks and nose were brightest.

After a few hours our lungs were creaking, so we went outside. We sprinted out a door to the cover of a concrete barrier, as if under enemy fire. Every time a car zoomed past on the street we ducked a bit further down, huddled together, no line of sight between us and them. We whispered and smoked cigarettes, then went for a new door.

We were in the main lobby of the hospital. This place was different. Reams of paper were strewn everywhere. In an adjacent room a large medical imaging device hovered on its metal spine. We spread out across the room, searching, but before long Eric called us back together. “Guys, come here. You need to see this.”

I navigated my way around the collapsed counter to where Eric was. He had his flashlight shining on a single sheet of paper, brown and curling. On its face read the words: I’m in the doctor’s on call room. Don’t let me drown. Dana” Our playground wasn’t.