1)
Dr. Jennifer Eckels woke suddenly with a jolt.
"Oh, what the--?"
She groaned loudly as a thundering pain threatened to split her head open.
"Whoa, whoa... Just lay back, Doctor." A disembodied voice came from above, and Jennifer felt hands on her shoulders, gently guiding her back down into a supine position. "There was an explosion. Just lay back. You're going to be ok."
Jennifer complied, wincing at the soreness she felt all over her body, eyes shut as she grimaced in pain. Dimly, she was aware that she was lying upon crisp coarse sheets in a hospital style bed, likely in the medical wing.
Now, she could somewhat recall coming into the lab that morning, a day starting out like any other, hunched over a microscope, and then a loud hissing from behind, one of the lab techs shouting,
"Look out!"
, a deafening, chest rattling bang, and then nothing.
Jennifer turned her head to the side to see a medical doctor, one she didn't know, standing beside her bed, writing on a clipboard. She was a little disconcerted to see he was wearing an air mask on his face.
"What... what happened?" she asked groggily. "Is everyone else all right?"
The man scribbled on the clipboard intently for a few more moments, brows drawn together, before looking up with a sigh, and then finally addressing her.
"It was a pressurized tank explosion. I'm sorry to say, your other two colleagues in the room didn't make it."
Jennifer felt a shock run down her spine as she realized what a close call it had been, and simultaneously a deep sadness -- she really didn't know the labs technicians from this morning very well, but she still at least saw them on a somewhat regular basis, and they would greet each other in the labs and hallways...
"Anyway, please don't concern yourself with that right now," the doctor continued. "The important thing is you're going to be fine.
"In fact, there isn't even a need to keep you here for much longer, or have you admitted. Your husband has been notified already, and he's on his way.
"When he arrives, he can take you home."
***
Edward Eckels drove frantically, the wheels of his sedan squealing as he turned into the Gen-U-Tech Labs parking lot. It just figures, he thought distractedly as he whipped into a parking spot. Jennifer had had her reservations about coming to work for a company like this, and he'd felt rather the same.
And now this.
He had gotten a call from an admin from Jennifer's work saying that she had been involved in some kind of lab accident and to come quickly. The bitch wouldn't provide any more details than that, leaving him to rush out of the office frantically, his mind racing with concern and worry to match his breakneck pace of driving.
Running into the sprawling, polished lobby, Edward was maddeningly waylaid by the front desk, the security guard disinterestedly asking for identification and calling upstairs for clearance with no urgency whatsoever. Rather than being provided with any sort of escort, he was unenthusiastically directed by the guard to a paradoxically small and undecorated room down the hall, which held only an unoccupied desk and a few uncomfortable chairs, one of which he sat in as he waited.
It was nearly twenty minutes later when the door was knocked upon and opened without waiting for a response, and a man in a smartly dressed business suit came in.
"Hey... Uh, it's Evan right?" he said, holding a hand out.
"Edward," Edward said curtly, shaking his hand cursorily. "Where's Jennifer?"
The man in the suit sat down in the desk across from him, giving the tabletop a small frown and brushing it off distractedly before shuffling a few papers into a neat stack and setting them back down again. Only then did he deem it fit to reply.
"Now, I don't know what you've been told, but your wife is totally fine -- we just want to assure you of that. And just so it's clear, this was caused by an employee's wanton disregard for our laboratory safety protocols."
Edward blinked at the man for a few moments at this banal non-answer. "Are you seriously doing this right now..?
"Do me a favor..." Edward solicited, his tone dangerously causal. "Can you just please take a minute from trying to cover your ass and tell me something?
"Where the hell's Jennifer?!"
"Ok, ok," the man said, holding his hands out in front of him in an infuriating gesture of placation. "She's coming right now, but we just have to get some papers signed to authorize her release, acknowledge waiver of liability, etc, etc."
"Listen, you fucking weasel," Edward snarled, reaching out across the desk and grabbing the man by the front of his expensive tie. It was just then that the door opened again, and Jennifer was pushed in on a wheelchair by an orderly in scrubs, dressed as though for surgery, including a hair cover and mask.
"Edward!" His wife exclaimed in shock at the scene before her. "What're you doing?!"
Edward immediately released the man, his outage instantly forgotten as he went to kneel down in front of his wife, gripping the arms of the wheelchair. The orderly behind her silently departed.
"Oh Jennifer, God, I was so worried. They didn't tell me anything.
"Are you ok, babe?"
"I'm fine," she answered. "They said I'll be sore for the next week or two, but otherwise, I'm fine."
Relief flooded in. She would be all right. She certainly looked well enough, like her normal self. Her brown hair was a touch disheveled, her light gray eyes slightly bloodshot, and perhaps the shadow of a bruise to come on her cheekbone, but otherwise she seemed uninjured. He wrapped his arms around her.
