章 39: Fiora Mallory, the Nurse from the Hospital
I woke up to much brighter surroundings, before realizing that I had fallen asleep with a lying position instead of sitting like I intended to. I also saw Jonathan right on my right side still sleeping with his arms folding. Since I felt that he must have been very tired from the ordeals that he had encountered, it did not feel quite right for me to wake him up, so I just let him continue sleeping.
I proceeded by standing up, and immediately checked my watch. When I looked at it, I saw that the time was already at 08.07 a.m. I realized that I had slept for roughly six and a half hours. The next thing I noticed was that there was no one else at the platform besides me and Jonathan, yet I heard that there were some voices somewhere nearby. Just then, I realized that perhaps the rest of the others were gathering at the second floor. Therefore, I decided to head downstairs to catch up with them after I took my submachine gun with me.
As I was walking down the stairs, the voices were getting vivid. It turned out that my hearings were true after all, since I saw most of the others with the exception of Virgil and Della to be there, and each of them sitting at each of the scattered benches.
"There he is…" Captain Quentin greeted me warmly.
When Captain Quentin said his words, every single one of them turned to my direction. The first person I glanced to was none other than the nurse from the hospital, who no longer showed any signs of fear and panic in her eyes.
Captain Quentin then continued by saying that they were starting to wonder when either of Jonathan or me would wake up, since there were some valuable information that all of us should know about. The nurse also followed by thanking me for saving her the night before.
"I was wondering when you will get down here…" the nurse said with a warm smile, "I really owe both of you for last night…"
"You are most welcome, ma'am." I responded to her.
"Ah, of course… where are my manners…" she continued as she stood up, "My name is Fiora Mallory, but you can just call me Fio…"
We shook our hands as she introduced herself, before I sat down on one of the benches nearby as well. To be honest, I had not expected her to have a Scottish accent in her voice at all. But then again, there were few things of her that I felt like very distinguishable from the rest of the others.
First of all, it was her unique voice. I did recall that when she asked both Jonathan and I about where we were taking her to, it felt like I had heard a rather uncommon accent. However, I quickly brushed it off then as I thought that it was some sort of my own imagination. As it turned out, she actually had a somehow soothing yet strong voice.
The next thing that I recognized was her wide, blue eyes. I had not realized it the previous night since I was too focused on heading straight back for the station, and besides it was more or less pitch black out on the street and inside the hospital to begin with. However, when I finally had the chance to look at them clearly in the day, they were actually very beautiful.
The last, if not the least that I recognized from her was her long, ponytailed silver hair. Obviously, I could not have been able to realize it at the night before due to the very same reasons. For once and a brief moment, I was able to feel like I might have been doing myself another favor after all.
However, as soon as I realized that it was already more than enough for me to get my mind ran blankly like that, I quickly focused back, and asked what they were just talking about before I went downstairs. Since it turned out that they had been talking for quite some while then, Ryan and Kyle reviewed what she had told them thus far.
Fiora was originally a nurse for another hospital at the Northern side of Chicago, before she was assigned to the hospital that both Jonathan and I visited the night before. She was transferred around a week before the night of the invasion to the latter hospital. As the story of her journey went on, I was expecting to hear more about how she managed to survive those days before we met her. However I was put down to a bit of disappointment real soon.
It turned out that she had passed out inside one of the hospital staff resting room for quite some long time at the night when the invasion just started, and when she regained consciousness she noticed there was a little chunk of ceiling right beside her head. Since there was no other logical explanation, she assumed that some sort of quake that had took place at the same time made some little parts of the ceiling to cave in, unfortunately on top of her head.
When she could finally stand up, she realized that it was already dawn. The two unusual things that she noticed immediately was the dense fog that surrounded the hospital, and that the rest of the other staffs except for her had already gone, that and she also noticed the electricity was off. She was confused at first, but then she decided to check the conditions of the rest of the other patients admitted there.
The first patients room that she had gone to, was the one on the third floor of the hospital, since that floor had the most patients compared to the other floors that had no more than 3 patients on average. She then went to the rest of the other floors only to find out that the other patients had either returned home or just gone.
Realizing that she was at the hospital alone with several other patients, she was in complete doubts on what to do next, until she realized that the patients too need nutrients to be fulfilled. She immediately rushed for the kitchen section, and was quite surprised to realize that the food supplies were still sufficient for five days for the very least for her and the rest of the other patients.
Therefore, starting that day and until the night when Jonathan and I had encountered her, she had been surviving with the rest of the patients based on the food supplies. Whenever night fell, she used her lighter stored on her left pocket to light her surroundings.
It was the fact that she brought a lighter which made me had the idea about her being an active smoker, although I did not ask her about it. Thinking about it, Della also had her lighter with her, however since she was a baker I assumed that she was using her lighter for baking purposes. I was also wondering about how the aliens had not noticed her presence as well as the other patients along those times.
As two days had gone by, she had become more worried regarding the food supplies since she thought that if she was to go outside from the hospital to look for them, and a patient was in urgent need of her help, she would not be there. Thus, she brushed the idea of going outside unless it was of most urgent importance. Then, it was on that night when she realized that something really bad was going on.
It all started with a couple of very loud thudding sounds seemingly coming from the rooftop of the hospital. Shortly after, the thudding sounds were getting closer and the direction it was coming from was no longer only heard from above her, but also from the floors below. As she became more scared to find out about it, she planned to head for the surgery room located on the second floor.
Unfortunately for her, as she had just started walking on the patients' room hallway, a shadowy figure of the bulky alien emerged just beside the doorway, forcing her to hide inside the nearest room. It turned out that the room was the one where we eventually met.
As the thudding sounds were getting closer, she also heard metal clanging sounds between each of several of the thudding sounds. When the thudding sounds were heard just outside the room she was hiding in, she thought that it was all over for her. However, it turned out that for an unknown reason the bulky alien seemed to decide to skip the room.
Very shortly after that, she was really surprised to notice that the door was opened without any sound. She thought that it was the alien, and so she had attempted to push it from behind, although perhaps futilely. Instead, she immediately realized that it was Jonathan and me who entered the room right after Jonathan restrained her. The rest of her story caught up with what the three of us had gone through.
Not long after I had caught up with how Fiora had managed to survive so far, Jonathan emerged from the stairs and approached to our direction. Ryan greeted him warmly, to which he responded by a couple of nod and if not with a slight of smile. Fiora also stood up again and thanked him properly the exact same way she did to me, but strangely Jonathan replied her with seemingly a little cold response.
"Good morning…" she said to Jonathan with her warm smile, "Oh, I… really do not know what I should do to thank you for last night, Lieutenant… My name is Fiora Mallory."
"Jon…" he responded her, very shortly as they shook hands only for a brief moment, without even smiling.
I had to admit that it was the first time for me to see Jonathan acted so coldly towards a woman. Other from the probability that it had something to do with him having less rest after what had happened last night, I had no idea on what might have caused his cold response towards her.
Then again, it could be only my imagination although I somehow felt like Captain Quentin and Ryan also noticed it. Fortunately, the atmosphere did not turned tense as Jonathan also had something to say to us.
"Has Virgil been attempting to do something about the circuit boards?" Jonathan asked us.
"Maybe he wanted to make an upgrade or something." Ryan responded, "Not that I have seen it directly, though…"
"Well, he had been mentioning a couple of times that he may have the idea on how to make the power source more efficient…" Kyle also replied, "But he has not told me how yet…"
"In that case, I may have a suggestion for him." Jonathan said, "And I need you all to come with me…"
As soon as he finished his words and started to walk back upstairs, the rest of us stood up and followed him as if we were enchanted towards his sentences. It was also at that moment that I began to think that if the power source was to be upgraded, which would also impacted the effectiveness of the Morse code machine, then it might also meant that perhaps we were more ready to face the second wave of the aliens' assault than I thought. Not that I expected the attack to take place sooner however…
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