“I love you, Dad.” Melanie stiffened. “But I gotta go. I’ll see you soon, okay?”

Soon. Would it be another month? Two, perhaps? Three? Longer? “I love you too,” he replied stiffly.

Melanie kissed him on the cheek and walked to the front of the lobby, right to the front door of the building. The portal to reality. She wiped away her tears and punched in the code. The door swung open, releasing her from the barricaded confines of the facility. Gabriel watched morosely as she returned to her normal, fatherless life. Within moments, it was as if she’d never visited.

Natty shrugged and shuffled toward the break room. The thin man returned to his chess game. Gabriel put on his fedora, buttoned up his trench coat, and sat down next to the fishes again. He stared forward, his eyes fixed on a pair of brown-grey slugs crawling up the outside surface of the glass. More slugs? The damn things were everywhere.

He refocused his attention on the fish. They swam in circles in the tiny amount of space. Did they have children on the outside, in the ocean? Fathers? Mothers? Were they alone, too?

Somewhere in the distance, the Crooner’s never-ending singsong echoed through the halls. Looking to his side, Gabriel noticed that Edna Foster had rolled her wheelchair up next to him. Her sons were gone, too. Together, they were childless parents of parentless children.

“Hi,” Edna said.

“Hi.”

“Oh, look at ’em go. I come and see ’em every day. They’re my friends. I think they must sleep, don’t you?”

“They do.” Gabriel smiled. “But they don’t have eyelids, so it’s difficult to tell. Many fish still swim while they’re asleep.”

“Yeah, they kinda swim around all pointlessly, doncha think?” Edna winced, squinting. “Over and over again, in the same li’l old place. It’s madness. Glad I’m not a fish.”

Chapter 5:

Revelation

Gabriel suddenly woke up with a start. He sat bolt upright. Tense. Terrified. Quivering. The lights were out. The room was dark. The curtain divider was pulled shut.

He listened carefully. He needed to make sure he’d heard what he thought he’d heard.

Yes. He’d heard it. Robbie Gore, his roommate, was choking. The tattooed man’s hoarse, congested gasps rattled the air like a trembling earthquake. The fluid in his lungs sounded as if it were rising up like floodwater. He was croaking like a desperate toad.

“Robbie?” Gabriel whispered.

The darkness brought no reply but the sound of gagging. Nauseatingly mucus-filled gasps of air. Drowning.

“Hssshh… lllp! Hel…ll…sppphhh shh…glllugghh…hel gllsss…”

Gabriel stabbed his trigger finger at the little red call button, setting off a tiny distress beacon in the hallway. Then, with great effort, he forced himself out of bed. His crusty old joints ached. His varicose veins felt poisoned, and he felt lightheaded. Grabbing his cane, Gabriel hobbled over to Robbie’s side of the room.

“Plssshhhh… gaannnrrrrssss!” Robbie’s eyes were enormous, nearly popping out of his skull. His oxygen concentrator was running but not doing a hell of a lot. Drool poured from the corner of his mouth, forming a sticky puddle on his chest. His face was dark purple, with blue veins popping up on his forehead. He had too much fluid in his lungs.

“I called them, Robbie,” Gabriel said.

“Mmmmfff! Glll… ghell… gll…”

“They’re coming, Robbie,” Gabriel said anxiously. “I called them. They’re coming.” He hobbled over to the doorway, thinking he might flag someone down.

Before he could make it out to the corridor, Samantha, one of the night LNAs, whizzed right past him and stopped at the foot of Robbie’s bed. Her eyes widened. She looked at Robbie then at Gabriel. She grabbed the remote attached to Robbie’s bed and raised his head. It didn’t appear to have any effect.

“Oh, shit,” she gasped.

“It just started,” Gabriel said. “He just started. He—”

“I’m getting Beatrice. I’ll be right back. I’ll be… I’ll be right back!” Sam cried, running from the room.

The clock was ticking. Robbie’s lips were getting blue. Blue was never a good sign. But he was still breathing, albeit barely.

Gabriel wanted to take his hand. He desperately wanted to help Robbie, to ease his pain somehow. “They’re coming,” he whispered. “Stay calm, Robbie. They’re coming.”

Gabriel slunk back to his side of the room. He sat down, quivering with inability. The curtain divider was pulled, so he couldn’t see Robbie’s gasping, purple face anymore. But he still heard the man gasping for air.

“This is a Code Blue!” someone shouted in the hallway. “Code Blue!”

Several nurses in multicolored scrubs piled into the room. Gabriel tried to pick out their faces, but they hurried by too fast. They raced over to Robbie’s bed, pulling their machines along with them. A nebulizer beeped to life.

“Wait. He’s not a DNR, right?” one asked.

“No! Full code!”

The curtain swayed as the nurses rushed about. Gabriel looked away. He wanted to leave the room, but the thought of doing so made him feel sick with guilt. He stared at the photographs on the wall and attempted to identify the different nurses by their voices.

“He’s still here!” a male, Tanzanian-accented nurse shouted. That was Baraka Okafor. “He’s still with us! Hey, you! Can I get a heart rate?”

“Sure thing.” Beatrice.

“What’s going on with him?”

“Fluid in his lungs! C’mon, guys. He’s a full code! We’ve got to—”

“What’s that heart rate?” Tony Johnson. No, Johnsbury.

“One twenty.”

“Here, hand that thing to me.”

“C’mon, Robbie! Stay with us, Robbie. Keep breathing. In and out, in and out!”

They were stubborn. They were determined to help Robbie live to fight another day. But determination didn’t win every battle. Because no matter how hard they tried, no matter how hard they swam against the rising tide, they were going to fail. Robbie Gore was going to die that night. All of them knew it. So did Gabriel.

As nurses, machines, and loud voices continued to flurry around him, Gabriel fell into a daze. Everything was blurry. Hectic. Vague. Since coming to Bright New Day, he’d seen the same scene a million times, and in nine out of ten incidences, it didn’t end well.

“Heart rate? Hello, what’s the heart rate?”

“It’s… it’s—”

“There’s nothing left, Tony. He’s gone.”

“He’s—”