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He motioned at me, and I was lifted from the gurney and deposited on the exam table once again. My arms were both pulled away from my body and bent at the elbow 90 degrees. Then the stockinet came out and was pulled over both arms right up over the armpits and a bit onto the shoulders. My thumbs were pulled through holes and a shorter piece of tubular bandage covered both of them past the tips. The cast padding began to cover my arms tightly, going from the knuckles all the way up to my armpits and included both thumbs as well. Once that was done wet plaster began to wrap my arms firmly, forming the final part of the casts that I was going to be wearing. Again it only took a minute for the casts to be finished, and they were completely dry and hard once finished. I was able to sit up and found that both casts extended right up into my armpits on the inside and to the tip of the shoulder on the outside, holding my elbows bent at 90 degrees. My hands were both turned palm down with the wrists bent down at about a 45 degree angle, with both thumbs encased out to the tips and pointing out to the sides. My fingers were free, but in this position with my thumbs held as they were my hands were almost completely useless.

While the casts were being applied this time I felt some mild pain and a great deal of unusual discomfort, and Elizabeth was screaming in my head as if she was being tortured then suddenly went silent as if she has passed out.

“You bastard!” I yelled at Dr. Brown. “What did you just do to me! And to Elizabeth! She was screaming bloody murder while the casts were being applied and now I can’t get her to respond to me! On top of that I also felt pain this time unlike last time when you put these damn walking casts on my legs!”

He laughed evilly at me and said, “I told you that you would be punished if you got caught, and the terms of that punishment was never discussed which left it up to me to decide what would happen. I also said that since you were trying to disguise yourself as someone else then you would get her casts. Of course to have a cast, there needs to be an injury to go along with it.” His eyes narrowed briefly at this. “Hm, yes that is correct, there should be an injury present for every cast. Now I do believe it’s time for you to start your search again, is it not? Tick-toc tick-toc, time is running.” And as he faded away from view I barely heard him say, “Be careful of those legs of yours now,” and I was left there alone.

I moved my legs down over the edge of the table and carefully allowed myself to slide off landing on my feet, but this time I was met with a great deal of pain from the sudden impact of landing. I nearly toppled over it hurt so much, and I actually bent over sideways and caught my self on my right elbow to stop from falling down. This only served to bring me more pain from my right arm. That bastard had apparently given me all the broken bones that Jennifer had suffered, as well as broken bones in my feet and ankles! Not only was I going to have a hard enough time trying to manipulate anything with these casts on my arms and walking in these casts had not gotten any easier, but now I was going to have to worry about how much it was going to hurt trying to use my fingers and walk around too.

Once the initial pain had subsided, I took a few steps and found that while painful I could still walk about the same as I had been, it was just a dull pain now with each step. I did my best to walk lightly and made my way on out into the hall. I figured that if I had been caught as a girl named Jennifer up on the 6th floor then I had to be in the right area, so I headed back to the same bank of elevators I’d used earlier. I was careful to peek around corners before actually going around them, and I hid in a couple doorways to avoid hospital staff and made it all the way to the elevators once again. While I was walking along I inspected my arms and there was something different about either them or the casts holding them immobile, but I could not tell what it was. I carefully pressed the button for the elevator, only receiving mild pain in my hand for using a finger to push with. The elevator dinged and when the doors opened up there stood the same nurse as before pushing an empty wheelchair, the same one who I had told the doctor allowed me to go about on my own.

She took one look at me with my arms now in casts and frowned. “Sweetie, I don’t think you need to be moving about by yourself. Look at you, you’ve obviously fallen and hurt your arms. Now you sit right down in this chair here and we’ll take you to the doctor and have him make sure you didn’t hurt anything else out here on your own.”

I was busted, again. And this time I could tell she was not going to accept any excuse I came up with this time. I carefully sat down and she lifted my legs up onto the leg rests that she extended up to seat level, then she wheeled me right back to the ER and stuck me in an exam room and put me up on the bed. A few minutes later Dr. Brown came over and chuckled. “Didn’t make it very far at all this time did you? Well now, the nurse tells me she is afraid you may have further injured yourself walking around all by yourself just now, so let’s take a look at things shall we.”

He took a few minutes to poke and prod at me, which actually caused considerable pain around the tops of my short leg casts. “I think that we need to take some pictures down here from the looks of things. An orderly will be right along to take you to x-ray.”

I tried several times to get Elizabeth to respond to me, but she was out of it. I could tell she was still there though as I could carefully pick up and move things around when I was left alone and tried. An orderly showed back up with a wheelchair, and even though he carefully lifted me onto it I still felt a sharp pain from both of my legs. He then wheeled me down to x-ray where I was treated to the torture of having my legs moved around several times to get the correct positions for the pictures the doctor had apparently ordered. I was then loaded back onto the wheelchair and taken back to the cast room I had visited twice before and moved up onto the cast table. By this point I had figured out what had been done to me, and all I was waiting for was to see what the treatment would be.

It didn’t take long at all for Doctor Brown to arrive and start in on his spiel, “Let’s take a look at these pictures now and see what we’ve got.” I just rolled my eyes at him when he looked over at me. “Oh, very well. I’m sure you’ve already figured out your legs have been further broken by now. I’m feeling generous at this point, what with you having been caught and brought back so quickly, and I sense that Elizabeth is not entirely with you right now. So, I will allow you to keep your walking casts, but now they are going to be long leg walking casts, with rubber heels on the bottom.”

He waved his hand and the short casts on my legs both just disappeared. My legs were pulled up into the air again, this time the gown I was wearing being pulled up to my waist. My knees were bent slightly as the stockinet was pulled over my legs, going all the way up to my hips. The rolls of padding were next, tightly swathing my legs from the toes all the way up to my crotch. The plaster came last to finish it all off, wrapping its way around my legs starting from the toes and working up to the hips and back down again several times, smoothing out as it went. Once it finished I again had toes plates restricting any downward movement of my toes. The bottoms of the casts were very thick, but this time is was because a rubber walking heel had been added in to the cast. The doctor happily showed me one of them before it got applied, and it was made of red rubber. It was about as wide as my foot and at least 2/3rds as long, and had several grooves cutting across it in different directions for the plaster bandages to fit in and hold it securely to the cast. The casts held my knees firmly bent at about a 10 degree angle and both came up the inside of my legs right to the crotch, while the outside continued higher to the level of my hips. I had already experienced trouble lifting my arms up much further than shoulder level because of how they had been formed up to my shoulders the way they were, so I figured I was going to have a similar problem with my legs in some manner. Probably not being able to spread my legs out to the side very far was my guess. Not to mention that if I actually got up to walk the inner edge was going to be digging up into my privates. And I still had no underwear on, that could be painful.

This time when the casts were being wrapped I felt a lot of pain and unusual discomfort just like when the arm casts had been put on me. It took longer this time too, taking about 2 minutes to be completed. Apparently it affected Elizabeth also and she woke up yelling.

“Oh shit! What is he doing to us now!” she screamed.

“Shhhh, it’s going to be alright. Don’t say anything right now while I ask him something, then we’ll figure this out together when we’re alone.” I said.

I quietly asked Dr. Brown, without looking up at him, “I don’t suppose I can request an orderly to take me up to my bed can I? I’ve suffered a lot of trauma here and I’m going to find it hard to move around.”

He got a thoughtful look on his face and said, “Why, that was never brought up, was it? It’s not against the rules, so yes, I’ll have an orderly come get you and take you to your bed. Well done, boy.”

The doctor left, and a few minutes later the same orderly who took me to x-ray showed up with the wheelchair, got me into it, and rolled me out and on my way up to the orthopedic ward and my bed. While I was being wheeled along I took the time to examine my legs. My toes could hardly move again, and the casts were tight enough that I could not move my ankles at all and now my knees as well. Once again there was something different, something I couldn’t quite figure out, just like my arms. But, with so much plaster covering everything I just couldn’t tell what it was, or even if it was my legs or the casts themselves that was wrong. We reached the 6th floor and the orderly turned to the left down the same hall I had gone down before. He took me through a door on the left side of the hall and wheeled me up to a bed. I noticed there was a chart hanging on the end that had my name on it, so supposedly it also had a record of my current injuries.

As he got me up into bed I asked him, “Are there girls here to?”

“The girls are across the hall from here on the right,” he answered. “The entire wing on this floor is dedicated to orthopedics with boys on the left and girls on the right.” He finished adjusting me in bed then took the wheelchair and left. I looked around and there were several others in the room with me, but nobody appeared to be awake, and in most cases did not appear to be able to talk at all. I was probably the least encumbered with the casts I was in compared to what I could see around me. There was a large amount of plaster present here along with a good deal of metal and plastic in the form of splints braces and various external fixation devices as well as multiple breathing apparatus’ and other medical tubes sticking out of various parts of their bodies. All of which appeared to be rather extensive.

“Holy christ,” I said to Elizabeth. “Are these some of the poor souls that Doc Brown has trapped here?”

“Yes,” she replied. “These are the people he has cursed and continues to torture by inflicting them with what ever medical procedure he deems fit at the time. Rarely does any one of us ever have as little done to them as you have right now.”

“How was it then that you got free with nothing on you at all when I met you?” I asked her.

She sighed. “Now that I think about it, I think I was let go just to let me believe I had gotten away. In reality I was the bait to firmly trap you here. If you don’t win and get out by dawn, then you’ll be just another patient for him to torture until you die. Then you’ll be just like us, trapped here forever.”

“Wow, he really is an evil bastard,” I said. “But, we need to figure out a couple of things first. What happened to you when he was putting these arm casts on me? You were scared before it even started, then you were screaming until you passed out. What did he do?”

“I knew what he was about to do to you. I know Jennifer, she’s right across the hall. And I know what she suffered before she died. I tried to draw as much of the pain as I could away from you of having your arms broken. It was terrible, and I guess I passed out from the pain.”

“Well it worked, that time. It hurt, but not nearly as much as I suppose it should have. Thank you. That was a very brave thing to do for a stranger. I had figured out what he did shortly after that, he basically told me that to have a cast meant you should have an injury to go with it too. That meant he also gave me broken bones in my legs to go with the short casts I had on already. I never even made it off the first floor after that. I got caught at the elevators and taken back to the ER again. This time I was treated to the pain of having x-rays done, then the pain having these new casts applied to my legs with further broken bones to go with them. I noticed I have a chart hanging on the end of the bed there. Do you think you can take a look at it and tell me the extent of my injuries?”

“Oh, I can tell you exactly what’s been done; I’m inside your body after all and can tell. Starting from the top down, both your upper arms have been broken between the elbows and the mid point of the humerus. Both the bones in your forearms have been broken at least once, twice on the ulna. Both wrists have been broken, nearly shattered really. Both scaphoids have been broken along with the thumb bone next to it.”

“Jesus, Jennifer’s father did that to her with a hammer? And that was only one instance of a beating? I hope he got the justice he deserved.”

“I have no idea what happened to him, he never came here so I never saw him. Continuing on down, both bones in you lower legs, the tibia and the fibula, have been broken twice. Once up next to the knees and again down near the ankles. Your heels, the calcaneus, have been broken once each as well. None appear to be displaced though. That explains why the casts go up so high on the hips, and the reason for the toes plates to further immobilize the feet, while still allowing you to have walking casts. Although I wouldn’t recommend too much of that; it would be too easy to cause something to move out of place if you slip and fall.”

“That’s a lot of ouch you just described. We’ll have to risk the walking though if I’m going to win this challenge and get us out of here. There’s something else wrong with these casts, on both my arms and legs, but I can’t figure out what it is just yet. What ever it is, it does not seem to be slowing me down any more than the casts would normally so I won’t worry about it right now. Can you get up and take a look around to see if there is any hospital staff near by? We need to get over across the hall and find your bed. I’m pretty sure it’s over there, since you said you know Jennifer and her bed is right across the hall. Let me get these sheets off me first before you get up, that’s what trapped me the first time and landed me with these arm casts.” I pulled the sheet off my legs so that I could get out of bed without Elizabeth around, then she took over and tried to exit my body.

“Ok, I’ll go out and come right back this time. I’ll just ... I ... I can’t! I can’t leave your body! I’m stuck! I can’t pull my arms and legs out of these casts,” she wailed. “Oh my god! That’s what is different about the casts! It’s not just the casts either! You and I have been fused together somehow! The casts look different because they are smaller than they should be! Somehow those are MY arms and legs in these casts, on your body!”

“That son of a ...! That explains the unusual feelings I experienced when the casts were being put on! He was fusing us together which transformed my arms and legs into a likeness of yours! I’m going to get free of him and come back and have him exorcised if I can! Dammit! Well there’s nothing we can do about it now, we’ll just have to deal with it. I’m going to get out of bed and make my way over to the door.”

First I used the bed controls to lower the bed as far as it would go, then I carefully slid our legs around and let them gently slide down so the heels touched the floor. Next I turned over onto my stomach and carefully pulled my feet up under me and used my arms as best I could to support me while I straightened up to a standing position. Once I got my balance I slowly made my way over to the doorway and stopped so I was leaning against the wall right next to it.

I asked Elizabeth in my mind, “Can you still lean out far enough to look down the hall?”

“I’ll try,” she said, and then I felt that uncomfortable feeling of her leaving me while she leaned her head around the corner and looked. She pulled back around and once we were over that she said, “All clear, I didn’t see any one.”

I got us moving and carefully walked across the hall to the girl’s side of the wing. There were just as many beds here with just as much plaster, steel, plastic, and misery as in the other side. There were a few empty beds, but only one with a patient chart hanging from the end of it. I hobbled over and was able to pull the chart up enough to find Elizabeth’s name on it. Elizabeth Montgomery.

“Well, we’ve found your bed. Now I guess I have to lay down in it like I said in the rules to prove I was here.”

“I don’t like this. Something is not right.”

“The rules have been set. Like it or not I have to lay down here.”

I went around to the side of the bed and sat my butt on the edge of it. Then I was able to reach over and lower the bed down so it was not so high up, and twisted around to the left while carefully lifting up our left leg onto the bed. Once I got that done I leaned on over and slowly scooted us up onto the bed completely so I was resting with both legs in the middle of the bed and my head was up on the pillow. I breathed a sigh of relief with the effort that took and rested there for a minute before trying to get back up again.

Suddenly, the bed began to rise up on its own. I tried to get off the bed before it got too high and found I was not able to move! I was stuck there as if I was paralyzed! The bed finished rising up to the same height I had found it at and stopped. I heard a clapping sound and was able to look over at the doorway as Dr. Brown walked into the room.

“Well done you two. You managed to find her bed.” He smirked at us again, and I was getting real tired of seeing that look on his face. “Now that you’ve completed the first part of the challenge, you have to now complete the second part. It would seem that 5 of your 8 hours are gone though. That still leaves you 3 whole hours to get yourself out of the hospital. In your current condition I’d have to say that is not going to be much of a challenge, now is it. And as we’ve already agreed a contest must be challenging. So what can we do to make the next part a challenge?”

He looked to be in thought for a moment then he spoke again. “I bet Elizabeth has not been exactly forthcoming about her personal condition, now has she. In fact, I seem to recall that she has remained rather insubstantial and hidden her legs from view, hasn’t she. Tsk tsk tsk. Shame on you Elizabeth. Why don’t you come out here and show your brave champion what you really look like Elizabeth. Oh, that’s right,” he said as he snapped his fingers, “you can’t right now, can you? Here, let me help you.”

He reached down and into my chest and I could feel him grab Elizabeth and start to drag her out of me. This was worse than when she voluntarily entered or left my body, and it apparently hurt her a great deal in the process. Once he had pulled her free he grinned evilly at us and said, “There’s a good girl. Now just show Jeff here what you really looked like just before you died.”

Elizabeth moaned in anguished, but it was apparent that she was being forced to do this by the power he had over her. She remained floating in the air where I could see her, and quickly began to become more substantial and her whole body came into view from head to toes. What I saw was a girl who appeared to have been in a terrible accident. She was in a body cast from here toes all the way up to her neck, with the support structure for a halo brace embedded in it and attached to a halo ring that was screwed into her skull. Her arms were free of any casts though, and she could no longer talk as there was a breathing tube going down her throat and a feeding tube going up her nostril. There also appeared to be a catheter dangling form her crotch as well to complete the indignity.

“Oh my lord,” I said. “This is what you looked like while you were still alive? What happened to you?”

Dr. Brown responded back, “Oh, she was brought in following a car wreak. Her parents had been killed in the accident, a head on collision by the way, but she had been in the back seat and survived. When I examined her I found that she had been extremely lucky. She had only suffered a case of whiplash and a sprained ankle in the accident. I wanted a new toy to play with in my ward, and she had no other immediate family in the state to worry about. I diagnosed her with multiple broken bones in her legs and pelvis, multiple damaged vertebrate in her back and neck, and probable spinal cord damage. Of course I immediately ordered her to surgery to try and repair as much of her injuries as possible and prevent further injury to her spinal cord. When she came out of surgery she looked much as you see her here, with very real injuries to match what I had diagnosed her with. While in surgery I also performed my little ritual to bind her to me, so that if she just happened to die of her injuries then she would be mine forever. Unfortunately it was one of her relatives who got suspicious of me and exposed me with the help of the police and the board of regents for the hospital. I killed him, but could not perform my ritual on him so he got away. And I died too as a result. It took me a week to regain my strength and start to take care of my last 3 patients on the ward. Elizabeth here was the last to go. If I remember correctly, it was an unexplained overdose of medicine caused by an automatic drip machine was it not? As it was, at the time she died Elizabeth here had a crushed pelvis, multiple breaks to her femurs, tibias and fibulas, crushing injuries to her ankles and feet, several broken vertebrate along her back, 3 crushed vertebrate in her neck, unable to breathe on her own or feel anything from the neck down due to spinal swelling from the neck injury, and probable permanent paralysis from the waist down. Just between you and me, they couldn’t tell with all the other injuries, but I had actually severed her spinal cord at the T-12 level.”

I just gaped at him after that explanation of what he had done to this poor girl. I couldn’t come up with anything to say that would sufficiently describe the horror and rage I felt towards him right then. Dr. Brown just stood there and grinned for several minutes, letting it all sink in.

“Well now that we’ve gotten all that out of the way, I do believe all that along with what you’ve already got would be more than sufficient to make your escape from this building extremely challenging, would it not?” In a flash he grabbed poor Elizabeth with both hands and shoved her back down into me just as he was saying “Now back you go into your new home darling!”

As soon as Elizabeth was shoved back down in me, we were both hit with excruciating pain and there was a sudden flurry of bandages all around us. I felt the pins from the halo ring being screwed into my skull. The casts on my legs were reshaped, bending the knees to a 30 degree angle while the walking heels were removed and a spreader bar was added between them just below the knees. More stockinet, cast padding, and plaster bandages flew out of nowhere, attached themselves to the leg casts, and continued to wrap around my hips and on up my torso right up to my neck just like Elizabeth’s cast was done. The support rods for the halo ring also appeared and were embedded into the plaster cast forming on my body. Once the actual cast was done I felt the feeding tube being inserted into my nostril and down into my stomach followed by the breathing tube going down my trachea to my lungs. Finally the catheter was inserted into my urethra and the balloon inflated in my bladder. It took only about 3 minutes for all this to be accomplished, leaving the plaster fully dried and as hard as the rock it was.

While all this was going on, I was also experiencing the discomfort of having my entire body transformed. It shrank and warped until I was an exact match for Elizabeth. Everything was altered, top to bottom, inside and out. Once it was done I was physically a 15 year old girl who was encased in a huge combination dual hip-spica cast with embedded halo brace attached, had casts on both arms from the shoulders to the knuckles of her fingers and included thumb spica on both hands, and who was currently paralyzed from the neck down. I was laying there helpless, unable to move or feel and hooked up to a ventilator to breathe, the only visible skin below my shoulders being my fingers and toes, and my newly reconfigured genitals which was fully exposed to the world. The pain and shock of what had just happened, finding myself back in my original body again, was too much. No, that was Elizabeth’s feelings, not my own, but still they were mine too as it had all just happened to me as well, and I began to cry. It was the only thing I was capable of doing on my own right then.

“Oh, now that couldn’t have been too bad was it? There were two of you to share it all together. I suppose that if you can’t actually move then you don’t really have a chance to get out, do you.” Dr. Brown waved at us, and suddenly I had feeling down to my waist again and I could move my arms. “There, the spinal swelling has been removed. Now you have a chance to get out. Better get to it, you’ve got a little less than 3 hours at this point.” And he walked away laughing at us and the predicament he was leaving us in.

For several minutes I just lay there crying, and I could hear Elizabeth doing the same thing in my mind. Finally I started to get a grip on my emotions and get myself under enough control to take stock of the situation. I was encased in plaster from my toes to my neck, with extensive and debilitating casts on my arms. I could move my shoulders, with some restrictions, and my fingers minus my thumbs. My head was held immobile by a halo ring screwed into my skull and attached to the body cast I was in. On top of this I was completely paralyzed from the waist down, unable to feel or move anything below that level, and while I could feel above that and probably breathe on my own I still had a ventilator attached to a tube going down my throat that was currently breathing for me. And the person who had been trapped here for who knows how long, and was currently stuck inside my mind, was completely losing it. I gently waved my arms around to test how much movement I still had with them in this giant body cast that I now realized even went up over the tops of my shoulders too. It wasn’t a lot of movement, but I hoped it would be enough. In the process I also figured out that the bed rails had been left down, so if I could manage to move my body around I could potentially get out of bed. I waved one arm up as high as I could in front of my face, and saw it come in contact with the long blue tube leading over to the ventilator. Knowing it would be difficult, and possibly harmful, I worked up the courage to forcefully wave both arms up in front of my face at the same time. What I was hoping for happened; I hit the ventilator tube hard enough to knock it loose from the tube going down my throat. The endo-tracheal tube was pulled on rather hard before it disconnected but was not dislodged from my throat and remained in place. I waited a moment to see if I could breathe on my own, and praying fervantly that I would, and to my relief I was able to breathe ok through the tube left in my windpipe.

This was enough of a shock to pull Elizabeth out of her hysterics and get her to calm down a bit. “What did you just do?!? You could have killed us. Are you nuts?!?”

“No Elizabeth, I’m not nuts. By the rules of the game Dr. Brown has to give us a reasonable chance to escape, no matter how hard it is. I’ve just taken the first step to getting us free. This is not going to be easy, and I don’t know how we’re going to do it, but dammit all we’re going to win this! Now, please calm down and help me to remember. When we got into the room and to your bed, what did you see around the bed? Also try to remember what you saw while he had you hanging there in the air in front of me. Was there anything we could use to move us around? I recall al kinds of monitors and support machinery like the ventilator, but was there anything else?”

Elizabeth quieted down and I could feel her thinking. “Yes, I think there was a pair of underarm crutches leaning on the left side of the bed. They may be just in reach if you can manage to turn us over onto our side.”

With the restrictions of the cast holding our legs spread out, and the paraplegia reducing the amount of muscle available to use, this was not going to be an easy task. I started by simply testing if I was able to get my body to move at all by moving my left arm out to the side and pressing down with the elbow of my right arm. After a moment of nothing but pain in several parts of my arm and neck I actually noticed that I was starting to roll over. The angle of how I was pushing with my arm wasn’t right to get me all the way over though, so I stopped and adjusted my right arm some and tried again. The second time I was able to roll over partially before I could not go any further and I could just see the crutches beside the bed when I looked upwards with my eyes. I tried to hold that position and still adjust my arm to push me farther but I lost my balance and rolled back down. I knew I could do it now, and it only took three more tries until I was lying on my side and panting heavily from the exertion. My left arm was pinned underneath me, so I was going to have to use just my right arm to grab the crutches that I could now see a bit above my head. I carefully reached over and was able to touch the crutches before the two casts made contact and stopped my arm from going any more. I reached a little more and I could barely get my fingers over the handle of one of them before I was stopped dead by the casts pressing against one another. Very slowly I pulled the crutch up with my fingers until I had the handle firmly held under my fingers. I then pulled it up towards me to where I could get the fingers of my left hand on it as well. Once I was able to hold it with both sets of fingers I was able to slowly move it around until it was up on the bed with us. I then used that crutch to carefully reach over and pull the second one over to where I could grab it more easily and get that one up on the bed as well. I pushed myself back over onto my back after that so I could rest and let the blood go back into my left arm again.

“Alright, that was a pain, but we’ve got them,” I said. “Now, was there anything else you remember around us that we might use? I don’t recall anything that would be useful myself.”

“Neither do I,” she replied.

“Ok then, let’s rest for a few more minutes then we can find out if the wheels of this bed are locked. While we are resting, do you recall how high the gurneys in the hallway are?” I asked her.

Elizabeth replied, “I think they are about the same height as the bed is now. If I remember that made it easier for the nurses and orderlies to transfer us over when we would be moved around.”

“Good, that may or may not come in handy later on. Guess I’m ready to try and move this bed around. Cross your fingers.” I then picked up one of the crutches and began reaching up over my head with the foot of it until I hit the wall. I took a couple of breaths then pushed as hard as I could, praying that the wheels on the bed were not locked. It hurt more than trying to roll over did, but the bed moved. I pushed as far as I could away form the wall then stopped to let the pain of what I was doing die down and take a breather. “God that hurts, but at least we’re moving,” I said.

“Let me try to remove some of the pain from you like I did earlier,” she said. “I think I can handle it better this time.”

After a minute I felt the pain subside noticeably, it was working! Elizabeth was able to take some measure of the pain away, and I felt that I was able to keep going. I began ‘rowing’ with the crutches as best as I could, going from one side to the other using both crutches. Instead of trying to swing one crutch up over the bed to the other side, I’d drop one crutch on the bed and pick up the other one that I put on the other side of the bed so I could go back and forth between them. It was slow and arduous work, with many pauses to rest or back up to get unstuck from another bed that we ran into. Eventually, we made it over to the doorway and out into the hall.

“I have no idea how long that took us, Elizabeth. But it took a while and I don’t think we have enough time to maneuver this bed into an elevator and outdoors. Do you remember if there is a clock anywhere in the hallway? How are you doing with all of this? Your help by keeping some of the pain away has been superb.” I could feel her exhaustion so I knew this was taking a toll on her.

“I’m still here,” she said. “I’ll make it through. I think there is a clock just behind us.”

I moved the bed around so we could see the other way down the hall and there was the clock. It had taken me a lot longer than I thought to get us this far though. We had only 30 minutes before 6 AM, and sunrise was just a couple minutes after that.

“Not good,” I said. “You’re going to think I’m crazy, but is there a window at either end of this hallway?”

“You are crazy. You could kill yourself if you are thinking what I believe you are. And yes, there is a window at the far end of the hall.”

“It’s either risk everything, or accept the less pleasant alternative of staying here forever with the not so good doctor. We need to get onto one of those gurneys. Hopefully the slick surface and lack of any foot board will allow us to slide right off, and the lighter weight will let us build up enough speed to crash through the window when we hit.”

I moved us around again so we were facing down the hall and got up next to a gurney. I was able to push the bed sideways right up against the gurney pinning it between the wall and the bed so it would not move. I began the task of moving the dead weight of our cast over from the bed onto the gurney. At first all I could manage was to spin around on my butt which was getting us nowhere. Then I managed to spin around just far enough that I could reach the wooden hand rail going down the length of the hall and begin a series of pulls and twists that finally got us on the gurney and several more minutes to get us centered on it. I had no idea how long it took me to do it, but I knew we were running out of time. I pushed the bed away so I could get the gurney moving and started my rowing trick again, this time using just one crutch, the other one having been left behind on the bed.

Using the walls and floor I got us moving down the hall, praying that I was able to build up enough speed. We came to the end of the hall with a large picture window looking outside, going as fast as I could get us going. My guess about the slick surface of the gurney was right, and as soon as it hit the bottom edge of the window sill it stopped dead and we kept going, sliding right off it. We, being heavy plaster cast Elizabeth and myself, hit the window hard and it was fast enough to break the glass and keep going through from 6 stories up. Now I could experience the definite fear of falling from a great height that I had been trying to ignore up until this moment. I would have screamed if my vocal cords had not been blocked by the endo-tracheal tube. The only thing I recall from the landing was pain. A LOT of pain.

“Oh my god, you did it Jeff. You did it! Look! Please Jeff, open your eyes and look! We beat him before the time limit, we’re out!” I managed to open my eyes to see the pre-dawn horizon hanging pale in my sight, and no more than a minute later the sun broke the horizon and it was the dawn of a new day. We had made it, with only one minute to spare. “Jeff, I’m outside that hospital for the first time in years! I’m free! Thank you Jeff, thank you! In return for setting me free, I give to you all my experience and knowledge. I’m afraid you’re going to need it.”

Then I felt something I hadn’t felt before, as if Elizabeth were somehow pouring herself into me. “Elizabeth? What did you just do? Are you still there?”

I heard her whisper, as if from a great distance, “It’s ok Jeff, I’m finally free. Thank you.” Then the pain overwhelmed me and I passed out.

Epilogue

Well, that’s my story. Not a lot to tell after that. Miraculously, I was found alive and completely naked lying in the ditch beside the road, my body bent and twisted in places that it should not be. I was still in the body of a 15 year old girl too. An ambulance was called and I was taken to the nearest hospital where I was diagnosed with the exact same injuries I had been inflicted with by Dr. Brown. I was put into a body cast from my toes to my neck, with a halo ring screwed into my skull and attached to the cast. My arms were put into casts just like I had been wearing during my contest and struggle to get free of that accursed place. I even had to deal with the ventilator due to the spinal swelling from the shattered vertebrate in my neck, and the permanent paralysis from a severed spinal cord at the T-12 level. I had my first menstrual cycle while in the hospital and on life support and I’ve never really felt anything from any of the others I’ve gone through since then, being a complete paraplegic. The paralysis from the neck injury took a month to start going away, then another two months before I didn’t need some level of assistance from a ventilator any more. You can still see the scar from the tracheotomy tube they cut my throat open to insert while I still needed the ventilator. Speaking of scars, if you look closely you can see the marks where the halo ring was screwed into my skull. It took 6 months before the doctors felt it could be removed and a rigid, but removable, neck brace replaced it. The body cast stayed around for 3 more months following the removal of the halo, although they did change it for a fresh one twice during those 9 months I was in it. At least the arm casts got changed for smaller ones after a couple months, and then for splints and braces 2 months after that. Physical therapy had my arms back to fairly good working order before I was out of my huge body cast, although I’ve still got some minor nerve damage and minor loss of flexibility in my hands and arms that I’ll probably never fully get rid of.

Oh, that name Elizabeth Montgomery? When I was brought into the hospital of course I couldn’t talk, and I was put on the ventilator pretty quick, so a picture was taken and someone went through a database of missing people and news articles. Wouldn’t you know it, a perfect match was made with that name on it, and my distant relatives were notified that Elizabeth Montgomery was alive and being treated in the hospital for multiple serious injuries. Turns out that once they accepted me as their relative I was basically adopted into their direct family. Not a bad deal since they are an old family with a good bit of ‘old money’. What ever Elizabeth did for me at the end, it gave me enough knowledge about herself and her family that I have no problems now as both a girl and a Montgomery. The closest I can figure it, she gave up what ever defined her as ‘Elizabeth’ and finished the bonding or merge that had been done to us, completely melding her soul with mine and leaving me as the only one in this body. I’ve accepted her gift to me, and have strived to live my life over again.

I do mean live it over again too. While it took the better part of a year of me being in a hospital, and many months in a rehab facility, I’m now a 16 year old teenage girl with all that entails. I happily scoot around high school again in my sleek little manual wheelchair and get nearly straight A’s for grades. I wasn’t a dummy the first time through high school, and with that knowledge still there this time is even easier. I have my own car with manual hand controls and I passed the driving test to get my license a few months ago. I have a bunch of girl friends I hang out with, and I even have a boy friend now. Apparently Elizabeth left me enough of herself so that in no time at all I got used to the fact that I’m a girl. A heterosexual girl. One who likes boys. Sure, I’m a paraplegic and use a wheelchair to get around, but that doesn’t seem to bother Donald. If we ever get past the shy kissing and holding hands stage, I’m sure we’ll figure how to make it work out.

As for the abandoned and haunted hospital that I swore to come back and exorcise Dr. Brown’s evil butt out of? It seems the building was bull-dozed and torn down a decade before I ever found it. There’s just an empty field where the damned thing used to stand. I still convinced a couple of priests to go out there with me and perform an exorcism ritual on the location. I have no idea if it worked, but it made me feel better afterwards and just maybe it will keep someone else from suffering a horrible fate like I almost did. Just in case though if you ever go out that way and see a building in a flash of lightning just behind a small rise, don’t go anywhere near it. Turn around and go the opposite direction. You’ll be glad you did.

The End