An Escape

It’s the night shift again. Lea takes a sip of the fourth cup of coffee for the day as she reads through her patient’s medical record. Her eyes scan the document, but even the coffee isn’t helping her tonight. The lack of sleep in the past week is finally catching up to her, as her eyes start to close.

“Dr. Gilbert wants to meet you in her cabin.” One of the resident doctors informs her. Lea puts away the record and quickly dashes towards Bella Gilbert’s cabin. Bella is a renowned physician with multiple awards in the medical field. Lea idolized her since she was a teenager.

When Lea got selected to work at Rosemary Medical Center, which is the best in the country, she felt like her life was complete. Bella saw herself in Lea and very quickly, Lea became her protégé.

“She’s an asset!” Bella informs the director of the hospital as Lea stands at the door smiling with glee. Bella motions her to come in, giving her a wide grin. The director greets her, remarking how rare it is for patients to request a resident by name.

Lea thanks him politely and catches Bella smiling ear to ear. Bella is too impatient and can’t contain her excitement any longer as she goes behind her desk and pulls out a paper. “It’s an offer to be a doctor full time at Rosemary Medical Center. You’ll also be giving a speech next month after your residency is over since you’re an idol to everyone here.” Bella tells her, handing her the offer letter. Lea bursts into tears and hugs Bella.

“I’ll make you all proud.” Lea tells both of them as she steps out of the room. A wave of dizziness passes over her but the euphoria from the good news gives her enough strength to walk back to her room.

***

Just one more patient and then Lea can go back home. She enters the room of Deborah Williams, her last patient for the day. Lea takes one look at her and notices Deborah trembling. Lea’s mind quickly runs with all possible ailments she could be suffering from but she struggles to focus.

“High fever. It’s viral.” Lea weakly tells the nurse and sighs, sitting next to Deborah. She places her hand reassuringly on her shoulder. Deborah is an anxious patient and Lea knows that due to the amount of times Deborah requested to stay overnight at the hospital for minor health issues. She’s an elderly woman with no family, so the anxiety is warranted.

“You can go home, ma’am. Get some sleep. You’ll be better by tomorrow. I’ll write you something for the fever.” Lea tells her, writing down on the prescription pad. “Take care.” Lea says handing her the prescription.

Deborah looks at her with gratitude and tells her for the hundredth time how she reminds her of her late daughter. As Lea is about to leave, Deborah calls out to her. She frantically waves her hand, motioning Lea to come close.

“Did I ever tell how I lost my daughter?” Deborah asks her. Lea shakes her head.

“She was the top lawyer of this city. Didn’t lose a single case. But one day, she just disappeared into the forest behind this hospital.” She informs Lea. “I’m telling you this so you never go near the woods. You’re just like her. So, I’m telling you what I couldn’t tell her.” She says.

Lea promises her that she’ll never ever set foot in the woods.

Leaving Deborah’s room, Lea struggles to walk back to her car and her eyes refuse to stay open. She can’t drive like this. She heads home in a cab.

***

Lea gets up to start her shift again. She had the same nightmare as she always does. That a ring of light swallows her as she’s searching her way out in a dense fog, surrounded by many trees.

It’s 10am though and she’s not afraid anymore. She enjoys the gentle sunrays of winter morning on her skin. She prepares her first coffee for the day and heads out to the hospital.

It’s the usual rush in the waiting room and the typical glances from the other doctors as she walks past the others to Bella’s office. After their usual pleasantries, Bella discusses Lea’s next course of action once she joins the hospital.

Lea looks at Bella hesitantly after they conclude their discussion and decides to just ask her what’s been on her mind for a while.

“Have you ever been to the forest behind our hospital?” She asks Bella, who rolls her eyes and sighs deeply before she speaks. “Of course not. Who would? I barely get the time to walk around my backyard.” Bella tells her.

Lea gives her a weak smile. “I’ve just been hearing so much about it for so long. People are really scared of the woods.” She says.

Bella shrugs her shoulders like the conversation is a waste of her time. And Lea considers that it probably is so politely thanks Bella for her advice and leaves the room.

***

The view outside the large windows at the waiting room shows tall trees of the forest which look so inviting. Many times, Lea wanted to walk through them to get her much deserved peace from daily routine. The warnings would ring through her mind every time she wanted to explore the woods. And after the conversation with Deborah last night, she just wants to erase the existence of this tempting place from her brain.

Suddenly, the nurse calls her to the emergency room. She informs her that the patient had collapsed in her front lawn and the neighbors called the ambulance. It’s an elderly woman who has multiorgan failure. Lea stops in her tracks.

“What’s her name?” She asks the nurse.

“Deborah Williams.” The nurse tells her. Lea’s legs give out and she falls to the ground. Deborah seemed fine yesterday. Although she had high fever, Lea assured her she just needed rest and some painkillers for her occasional headache.

Lea runs to Deborah and sees the nurses trying to revive her with a defibrillator.

“Looks like she got worse.” The nurse says out loud. Lea lets out a sob and darts out of the room feeling like her world just collapsed. Sending Deborah home was a mistake. How could she fail to see she was so sick.

***

The hospital is being sued for ten million dollars due to gross medical negligence. The director gives Bella an earful for letting Lea make the rounds on her own and not keeping an eye on her work. A resident doctor is not supposed to have so much control. It’s on Bella now to repair the situation.

Lea waits impatiently for Bella to come back.

Bella walks back into the room. At first, she keeps her gaze fixed on the floor but when she meets Lea’s eyes, her gaze is angry and disappointed.

“You sent an elderly woman battling a severe infection with a fever medication? You didn’t request any tests despite her making rounds to the hospital for days. Why on earth would you just assume it’s viral?” Bella loudly questions Lea.

“I… I don’t know. I just felt like….I couldn’t think of anything else. I didn’t think it could be fatal or an infection…” Lea tries to explain but Bella cuts her off. She tells her to not only say goodbye to the position at the hospital, but also to her dream of becoming a doctor.

“You made a mistake that even a first-year medical student won’t make. You’re now untrustworthy and therefore you’ll have no future in medicine. While you’re suspended, consider going back to college and find something different. Because you’re done.” Bella sternly tells her. Lea’s oversight, despite not being completely her fault, has consequences. Bella is a reputed doctor and this is a huge stain on her legacy.

It's understood that doctors make mistakes. But Lea made a costly one. And there will be consequences. Consequences that she is too tired to face.

Now, Bella's license could be revoked for not monitoring Lea. The son-in-law of Deborah involved the news reporters too as they swarmed the hospital a week ago bombarding the hospital and accusing them of malpractice and medical negligence.

Lea's world is collapsing.

Without saying another word, Lea leaves Bella’s cabin knowing that it’s the last time she’ll ever see her.

All Lea wants to do, is disappear. And she knows just the right place. She eyes the main doors and dashes straight to it, pushing the main doors of the hospital with only a single agenda on her mind, ‘to disappear in the woods and never come back.’

***

The forest seems harmless on the outside, tall trees covering most of the view. She takes one step forward and remembers the first time she set foot in the hospital; Bella complimented her on her amazing cover letter and outstanding grades. She never imagined her world would turn upside down due to a single mistake.

Lea takes one last look at the hospital that was once her biggest goal. Now it’s just an old grey building with overworked and lonely doctors.

She runs so deep that she loses her sense of direction. She can’t leave even if she changes her mind. The fog is dense and the sun is setting. Lea sits down at the base of a willow tree, feeling safe and calm for the first time in her life, despite the lack of visibility just four inches in front of her. She wishes that it doesn’t start snowing, but even if it did, she’d rather freeze to death than face the reality of her stone-cold job.

All of a sudden, the dense fog starts to clear up and she sees a circular glowing ring floating mid-air in front of her. Curious, she walks up to it, and when she puts her hand in the ring, her hand is no longer visible. It doesn’t go through on the other side.

Hesitantly, she takes a step forward and enters the floating ring, stepping into a beautiful new world that she can never even dream of. She’s standing atop a hill. The sun has not set yet. The hills and ground are lush and green with colorful flowers growing everywhere. Her eyes land on a sparkling waterfall and the sound of birds chirping happily fills her with comfort.

A woman greets her. “Welcome! We’ve been waiting for your arrival.”

Lea asks her about the place.

“You’re safe now. The life out there is not for kindhearted people like us. All the honest and hardworking people find this place when they are discarded after helping so many.” The woman says.

Lea is so amazed that she doesn’t fight back and ask many questions. She feels like she belongs there. Why not just enjoy it? What’s even left of her life anyway out in the real world?

***

Lea spends many days in the new place which they call ‘Lostcrest’. If she has any craving, the food manifests from thin air as if the world was moulded to her needs. It’s just the perfect place. She even made a couple of friends.

Although life is good here, Lea had moments where she would think of the real world. Lostcrest is a happy place. But that’s all there is to it. It feels one dimensional. But when Lea imagines her life if she had stayed, her body would tense up.

One day, the queen of Lostcrest invites her for the grand dinner. Over some rare and expensive wine and food, that Lea has now gotten accustomed to, the queen decides to break the news.

“This isn’t permanent Lea.” She announces. Lea looks at her like she has seen a ghost, terrified of losing the comfort.

“But if you want to be here forever, you’ll have to complete a task.” She tells Lea.

“What? I’m ready to do anything. I don’t want to back out there, please.” Lea starts pleading.

“You need to tempt another person to join this world. Make them so miserable that they’d want to disappear in the woods. Just like you.” The queen says handing her files of all the burnouts in the city.

Lea takes the document from the queen and nods her head, promising her that she’ll do as she was asked.

She walks out and notices a woman by herself, sitting at the edge of the lake. She walks up to her and the woman looks up at her with a smile. Lea immediately recognizes her eyes.

“You’re Deborah’s daughter.” She tells the woman.

“I told them to bring you here. Welcome aboard.” She tells her pulling Lea into a warm embrace. “Her death wasn’t your fault.” She adds, telling Lea just what she needed to hear.

Lea knows she’ll stay. If she was saving people before for a living, she now has to uproot their lives to give them a new one. There’s a rough patch to get through before they can step in the safe haven, which is Lostcrest.

Lea opens the document and sees a familiar name – Bella Gilbert. She borrows a pen and starts to write.