Inoculation

She was waiting for him.

He didn’t know what hit him.

When he woke she had duck taped him to the chair. She was sitting across from him on a stainless steel lab stool. She had long legs in knee high suede boots, black turtle neck sweater, arms crossed, long black hair, high cheek bones, full lips, steady blue eyes. He watched her, head aching.

“What do you want?”, he asked.

She stood up and placed one long finger on his lips.

“I’ll ask the questions.”

She turned and walked back to the counter by the sink where she picked up a lap top computer. She brought it back and placed it on a stainless steel tray next to him. He turned to look at what she wanted him to see. They were clearly MRI scans.

“I want to know about these,” she said

“What do you want to know,” he asked pulling against the tape.

“All of it,” She said sitting back in the chair across from him. She had a scalpel in her hand now he’d not seen before. Her eyes bore through him.


“What are you doing?”

“All of it, “ she repeated.

He looked back at the MRI.

“I wasn’t a part of it. I just read the films. It’s a slow growing tumor that’s caused by a virus. I had nothing to do with it.”

“They didn’t know, did they?” she asked.

“No. They would have acquired the virus years before.”

“When the patients were in the hospital.”

“Yes”.

“A psychiatry ward?”

“Yes”.

“How did you know?” she moved the scalpel to her other hand.


“I didn’t know for sure. I guessed. It’s a rare tumor. When I looked for older films they all came from the same hospital. The psychiatric facility and they all had the same doctor. ”

She didn’t answer him, just slowly moved the scalpel to her other hand.

“And you only read the films?”.

“Yes.”

She cut the duck tape off one of his arms leaving the scalpel in his free hand.

Then she was gone, high heeled boot sounding in the empty corridor.

He guessed he could have called someone. Especially after he read the morning paper.