It was only as they pulled into the hospital parking lot that Lois realized the monumental task they’d set for themselves.
They could hardly go asking if any of the patient’s had been stabbed, or bitten or clawed; hospitals had all sorts of confidentiality rules to prevent it.
Wandering the hallways aimlessly until they saw Faith might work, but what if she wasn’t visiting this afternoon. Whoever she was visiting had probably gone to the emergency room initially, and may have gone to intensive care afterwards. Either they would still be there or they would have been moved out into the general populace.
There were hundreds of rooms in the hospital, and the nurses were going to notice them wandering around lost, without a particular patient’s room to ask for.
“You’re the only one who has seen this Faith,” Clark said. “What are we going to do if she’s changed into some other sort of pants?”
“I saw her!” Jimmy said. “Not for long, and mostly I saw her pants, but I remember the basics. She was a brunette, a little shorter than you, Lois.”
“You just have to recognize her if she’d wearing something else,” Lois said.
She stared at the building. “Any idea of how we are going to find them without a name, a description or anything?”
“If I could get access to the hospital computers I could probably cut the field down a lot.” Jimmy said. “Just look for patients with a Sunnydale address who were admitted after the city fell.”
That would work. The number of people injured in the evacuation of Sunnydale had been remarkably small. From what Lois had heard, it had mostly been a series of vehicular accidents and the usual round of injuries and illnesses that would have affected anyone.
“Get that list and break it down even more. Look for people with cuts, abrasions, violent injuries. Leave out the sick people…except for heart attacks maybe.” Excessive strain, such as helping survivors escape might exacerbate heart problems.
“I doubt they are going to just let me walk up and use their computers,” Jimmy said.
“Leave it to me.”
************
Breaking into an administrator’s office was easier than Lois would have thought. With the men standing around her to shield her from prying eyes, Lois quickly managed to get the lock open.
The locks in his place hadn’t been replaced in years. After having seen the general state of disrepair here, Lois wasn’t surprised. Money for upgrades was scares, and indigent care had made hospitals in affected areas almost unprofitable.
Slipping into the office, Lois noted that someone was coming down the corridor. She closed the door carefully, and waited with the others until the footsteps passed.
The room was brightly lit through barred windows; even though this was a second floor office; apparently the administrators hadn’t trusted that someone wouldn’t try to get in.
As Jimmy mumbled about the antiquated computer terminal, Lois walked over toward the window.
Although they were on the second floor, there was a flat roof outside, explaining the need for bars. Lois glanced back. Clark was at the door, apparently watching for intruders and Jimmy was tapping his fingers impatiently as the system slowly began to boot up.
It was a fairly average office, with file cabinets, a desk, and chairs.
Lois wondered if there might be some information in the filing cabinets, although she doubted it. Information these days tended to be located centrally, with paper files being kept in medical records departments.
Cursing under his breath, Jimmy began typing.
“What’s wrong?” Lois asked.
“There’s a password,” Jimmy said. “And this is an older system I’m not familiar with. I can get through it, but it might take a while.”
“Get up,” Lois said.
Obediently the younger man did so, and watched as Lois crouched down and looked under the desk. She rifled through the drawers which were filled with standard office supplies, then lifted the keyboard.
The username and password were printed on a piece of tape underneath.
“You may know computers, but I know people,” Lois sad smugly.
Jimmy shook his head and muttered something Lois couldn’t make out. Something about how criminally lax some people were about security.
As Jimmy began to work, Lois stepped over to Clark, who was standing by the door.
He had his glasses down again, and he was staring at the filing cabinets. After a moment he sighed and shook his head.
She was really going to have to ask him about that sometimes.
There were a lot of things she was going to have to ask him about. She suspected that being superhumanly tough was only part of it.
Idly she wondered if what had happened to her had only affected females, or if it had happened to men as well. It would certainly explain at least some things, although Clark seemed comfortable in his own skin.
Lois couldn’t imagine being that comfortable after having had such a major life change in the past few days.
Still, given what had happened to the cultists and the reports of a mystery man doing feats of strength all over the world, it was clear that people with superhuman strength had preexisted the collapse of Sunnydale, even though it had become more common afterward.
Lois had looked at the reports. Mysteriously strong men had appeared in Nigeria, in China, in England, and in a number of other locations around the world. Clark had admitted to having visited many of those places over the past several years.
Lois wondered if he’d heard about the mystery men, and what he thought of the stories. It might make an interesting follow up story, after she’d gotten a few more conventional stories under her belt.
Perhaps people were evolving, slowly gaining abilities that would have been declared superhuman in the past.
More likely, there was a more sinister explanation.
“Anything?” she whispered.
“Some foot traffic,” Clark replied. “Nobody sounds like they are stopping.”
Lois heard a beep from the computer behind them, then winced at the sound of an unexpectedly lout dot matrix printer.
Jimmy winced and shrugged. The Planet’s printers were silent and fast. These took an excruciatingly long time.
At the look on Clark’s face, Lois hurried over to Jimmy.
“We’d better hurry up,” Lois said. “I’d hate to be caught in here.”
When Clark gestured violently toward them, Jimmy hurried to shut the computer off, while Lois looked for some place to hide. There was a door to a supply closet, which she managed to open.
The place was dusty, and she felt a need to sneeze, which she quickly suppressed.
Jimmy pulled the paper out of the printer and finished shutting off the computer. He moved quickly toward Lois, who moved aside to let him in.
Clark followed, and Lois was the last one in. She shut the door a moment before the outside door opened.
“They’re healing faster than is humanly possible,” the first voice said.
“You asked all the usual questions?” The second voice was impatient.
“I made discrete inquiries. The local Ano-Movic and Brachen clans know enough to give hints to the doctors in the know. There are medications they can’t take.”
“There aren’t that many species that can pass as human,” the second voice said. “Just avoid the usual allergens.”
“I’d feel more comfortable if I knew what we were dealing with.”
“Have any of them had adverse reactions to anything we’ve given them?” The second voice asked sharply.
“No. Most of them seem to be healing twenty to thirty times as fast as normal. Doctor Jamison is excited. He wants to call the CDC, write a paper.”
“I’ll talk to him. Most of them must be ready to go then.”
“All but Summers and Woods.”
“Good. They’re the only ones with insurance. Get the others out and free up the bed space. They’re indigents and they are costing us money by the day.”
“Summers and Woods have better insurance than I do.”
“What do you expect? The Sunnydale school district had to do something to attract teachers.”
“Their rates must have been terrible.”
“My sister is an insurance adjuster, and she tells me they got a special rate. Most of the people they lost died of one cause or another…and their indemnity plan didn’t pay hardly anything. Not that many people got sick."
“I wouldn’t have believed Summers could have survived that abdominal piercing.” The first voice said. “Perforated several internal organs and I’m told she still walked into the ER.”
“Decreased sensitivity to pain isn’t all that uncommon.” The second voice said. “Be sure and get any information you can on the patients before they leave. We want a shot at the federal disaster funds if the government releases any.”
“Woods will be here for a while. I don’t think he’s anything more than he appears to be, but I think Summers is going to try to leave AMA.”
“Are we likely to get sued if she leaves?” The voice was quiet for a moment. “Then let her go.”
Lois could hear the sounds of footsteps leaving the room. She then heard the computer powering up in the next room and she found herself grimacing.
There wasn’t any way to tell how long he would be working in his office. Lois slumped against the wall and resigned herself to waiting.
*************
The storage closet felt hot and stuffy. Lois wasn’t sure how the man in the other room hadn’t heard them shifting around and moving occasionally.
It had been almost two hours since the man had come into his office, and he hadn’t even talked on the telephone. It wasn’t natural. All Lois could do was stand and think unflattering thoughts about just what sort of a drone this guy must be.
Clark was better at standing motionless than Jimmy. Jimmy seemed incredibly loud, and Lois found herself wincing every time he made a small noise.
It seemed incredible that the man couldn’t hear them. It seemed that Lois could hear ever rustle of his clothes, every shifting in his seat, the click of the keys on the keyboard. It was maddening.
When Lois heard the printer start, it’s obscenely loud and slow clattering almost obscuring any other sounds in the room, she began to relax.
Then it stopped, and she heard the man cursing under his breath.
Looking behind her, Lois froze as she saw stacks of computer paper and ribbons on shelves on the wall.
She heard footsteps approaching, and she froze, looking up at Clark.
She grabbed the door handle and held it steady.
The person on the other side tried to pull the door open, but Lois held it shut. He couldn’t even turn the handle.
The footsteps retreated for a moment, and then Lois heard the sound of a lock in the keyhole. The man tried again, but the door didn’t move. This time he’d actually locked the door.
The sounds of cursing under his breath were followed by footsteps heading away.
Lois relaxed. This door, at least had a lock on the inside to prevent anyone from being locked in.
She went to open the door, when Clark shook his head. It took her a moment, but she realized that she was hearing breathing outside the door.
Clark’s glasses were down again. It was a habit that was becoming annoying, and Lois resolved to ask him about it.
They waited several more minutes before the breathing moved away.
Clark finally relaxed, and gestured for Lois to open the door. She did so, and they moved quickly to leave the office. Being seen coming out of a supposedly locked office would be just as bad as being seen going in.
It wasn’t until they were out of the hallway and into a relatively unpopulated waiting area that Lois turned to Jimmy.
“Tell me that you got it.”
“Robin Woods, Buffy Summers, and four other individuals were all admitted to the waiting room at approximately the same time, approximately two hours after Sunnydale collapsed.
Lois looked at the names on the list then gave it back to Jimmy. She approached the woman at the information desk.
“Hi. I’m looking for some of my friends. They were admitted recently.”
“Their names?” The woman at the desk looked bored. She didn’t even look up from her console.
“Buffy Summers,” Lois said.
“She just finished checking out fifteen minutes ago.”
The other girls would have done the same. “What about Robin Woods?”
“He’s on the third floor, in room 313.” The woman gestured without looking at her. “Just go through those elevators.”
Lois nodded quietly, and she and the others headed in the direction they’d been led.
**************
The hallway didn’t look much different than Jimmy’s had, except that it was busier, with nurses and visitors passing by.
Room 313 was closed, and Lois knocked gently on the door.
The door opened suddenly, and a familiar face stared out at them.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Faith’s expression was furious, and Lois could see moistness around her eyes.
