The wards in the north wing were a mirror image of those in the south wing, arranged lengthwise along either side of a central corridor. Each ward was separated from its immediate neighbor by side rooms, and each ward had twenty to thirty beds. Most of the beds were covered with bare mattresses although a few also had moth-eaten blankets.
"Any ideas about where we should hide?" Joanna whispered nervously.
"Not yet," Deborah said. "I suppose we could climb into cabinets in one of the many storage rooms, but that might be too easy."
"We don't have a lot of time."
"Unfortunately I think you're right," Deborah said. She directed Joanna to shine the light into the room between the last two wards on the northwest corner of the building. Instead of being a storage room like most of the others, it had been set up as a minor procedure room with an iron examining table and a sink. The opposite wall had a large, glass-fronted instrument cabinet. Pushing through a connecting door they found a small storage room for linens and dressings along with a large, old-fashioned sterilizer.
Deborah quickly went over to the sterilizer, and while Joanna held the light on it, she pulled its door. It resisted at first, but then slowly creaked open.
"What about this?" Deborah asked.
The sterilizer was about three feet in diameter and about five feet deep. Joanna shined the light inside. There were a number of stainless steel boxes sitting on a metal grate. "Only one of us would fit even if we took the stuff out," Joanna said. "And even that would be a squeeze."
"I guess you're right," Deborah said. She let go of the sterilizer and hurried over to the connecting door leading to the end ward. Joanna followed her with the light, continuing to keep the lens mostly covered. When Deborah pushed open the door, Joanna turned out the flashlight. A meager amount of moonlight filtered in through the windows, enough to illuminate the larger objects in the room.
The ward was the same size and decor as the others but differed by having in it a six-foot-long, horizontal cylinder mounted on legs. It stood about waist height in place of one of the beds lining the interior wall of the room.
"Now there's a possibility,' Deborah exclaimed.
"What?"
"That cylinder," Deborah said, pointing at the large object. " remember reading about them. They were called iron lungs and were used for people who couldn't breathe, like patients in the nineteen-fifties with infantile paralysis."
The women walked as quickly as they could through the dark ward and approached the old-fashioned ventilator. It had appeared light gray, but as they got closer they could tell it was yellow. Along its sides were small, round, glass viewports. The end facing out into the ward was hinged and contained a central, black rubber collar to fit around a patient's head to make a seal. Just above the collar was a small mirror oriented at a forty-five-degree angle. Below the collar was a platform for the patient's head.
While Deborah unlatched the front cover, Joanna nervously glanced around. She was concerned about too much time passing. They needed a hiding place, and they needed it sooner rather than later.
As Deborah pushed the iron lung's door open, it squeaked but not as loudly as the sterilizer.
"Shine the light in," Deborah said.
"Deborah, we can't be fooling around here," Joanna complained.
"Shine the light in!" Deborah repeated.
The moment Joanna did as Deborah suggested, a distant fire door banged against a wall followed by the flickering of a flashlight beam out in the main corridor.
"Oh God!" Joanna voiced. She turned off the light.
"Well, this has got to do," Deborah said. "We're hiding in here." She grabbed a side chair from between the beds and shoved it under the front lip of the iron lung. She gripped Joanna's arm. "Quick! You first, and feet first!"
The play of flickering light increased in intensity through the open doorway to the main corridor.
"Quick!" Deborah repeated.
With some reluctance but feeling she had little choice, Joanna climbed up on the chair. Holding on to the upper edge of the cylinder's rim, she got one foot inside. With Deborah supporting her backside, she got the other one in as well. She then slid her body in.
Deborah grabbed the chair and returned it to where she'd found it.
"Where are you going?" Joanna demanded in a whisper when Deborah disappeared from her view.
Deborah didn't answer but reappeared almost instantly. "I've got to get in without the chair," she said. "It would be too much of a giveaway."
Using the strut between the iron lung's two front legs as the first step, Deborah rose up so her chest was above the iron lung's top. Finding a narrow toehold in the top of the leg where it was welded to the iron lung's body, she draped herself over the top. Then by swinging around, she was able to get her feet into the cylinder's opening. But then she ran into trouble. She couldn't fig-Tire out how to get the rest of her body in without falling to the: or, even if Joanna tried to hold onto her legs.
"This is not going to work," Deborah said. She twisted to the:e. and dropped back to the floor.
You've got to hurry," Joanna rasped in a whisper. The light in the hall was brighter still and was now accompanied by voices.
It was the two men coming all the way to the end of the corridor.
Deborah stuck as much of her upper body head first into the iron lung as she could. "Grab onto me, and pull," she told Joanna out of desperation.
With a little leap and Joanna's help, Deborah managed to get herself into the iron lung but not without scraping the front of her thighs and shins on the front lip of the metal cylinder. She had to claw herself into the depths. Because of the tightness of the space, the two women ended up on their sides pressed against each other head to toe.
"Try to close the door as much as you can,' Deborah whispered from the recesses of the ventilator.
Joanna reached out and grabbed the rubber collar and pulled. The door slowly began to close, but as soon as it squeaked, she stopped. It was none too soon. A flashlight beam came into the room and moved about. For a brief moment the beam came directly inside the iron lung through the three glass side ports on the side facing the door. Then the beam dropped and arced around the room beneath the beds, searching out the recesses.
Both women involuntarily held their breaths. One of the men quickly walked up and down the center of the ward, passing within ten feet of the half-open iron lung not once but twice. He was bent over and swinging the light from side to side beneath the beds to illuminate their undersides, particularly up under the heads and along the sides of the intervening tables.
"See anything?" the man suddenly shouted, causing both women to start.
From the ward across the hall the other man answered with a negative.
A moment later the man who'd come into the women's ward could be heard in the connecting room rapidly slamming open cabinets and cursing loudly. The flicker of his flashlight could still be seen by Deborah through one of the viewports until he moved beyond the procedure room and on into the next ward.
Almost in unison the women let the air out of their lungs and took in deep breaths. For Deborah it was hardly fresh.
"That was almost as close as the freight elevator," Joanna whispered.
"They must be sweeping the building as you suggested," Deborah said.
"Let's stay put for a while in case he comes back," Joanna said. "And we'd better start thinking about what we're going to do to get ourselves out of here."
Time dragged by, especially for Deborah, who began to feel claustrophobic wedged down in the base of the narrow cylinder designed for one person. For her the situation was hardly conducive to thought. The smell of the old bare mattress was ripe and the dust bothersome. On several occasions it took sheer will for her merely to avoid sneezing. Eventually she began to perspire and experience a progressive shortness of breath.