A-Void by Babak Govan (phonics readers txt) 📕

steel Exit door at the end of the hall, I enter into the hospital freeway. IV tubes coil haphazardly beneath empty gurneys. Where are the benumbed orderlies behind the wheelchairs? The cosmetic contents of a vinyl red purse have leaked across the floor. The backup generators must be working since the white fluorescent lights are on.

“Do you have a signal?” I look down at my forearm.

“No, Billy,” my Organelle v463.2 responds.

I aim for the elevators before recalling that the stairwell will be safer. I slam the push bar and head down to investigate the Lobby. Where are the elderly volunteers and security guards behind the Reception station? Where are the napping visitors in the Waiting Area? The Gift Shop is open but no one is inside.

Off the floor, I lift a pink sticky note and dust away shoe-marks.

To Bailey: Ford GT and safe deposit box

To Dmitri: Motorcycle with sidecar

To Lucas: Manhattan Beach apartment

To Claudette: Retirement accounts

Jogging to the Entrance, I slow my pace, worried about what I might find. Sliding doors present the wraparound driveway where cemetery weeds and tall grasses creep through the shattered asphalt, but I see no one, not even officers or firefighters.

Where are the lines of people pushing stolen shopping carts and strollers along the sidewalks? I continue walking along the side street toward Ventura Boulevard. As I arrive, I notice some cars crashed into one another, onto the sidewalks, and into burned storefronts. Among them is a PC Compliance Auditor patrol vehicle. The traffic signal turns green and I see at the intersection two bicycles trampled by cars.

What’s going on? I slap my cheek and knuckle my eyes. Nothing changes.

I need to reach Jasmine. My Organelle v463.2 again responds, “No signal. We are not connected. Billy, your heart rate is too high and you are breathing fast. I estimate you are releasing too much cortisol.”

“Shut down Body Informatics.”

I notice my heartbeat now and the cooling sweat on my forehead. I breathe forcefully a few times. If there had been an evacuation, they could evacuate only capable patients. I head for the elevators this time and a car luckily is ready. I pace it, back and forth, until I reach the Retirement floor.

I hear a heart monitor beep in the room facing my open elevator and discover that it is only a disconnection warning. On the wall, an illuminator displays the X-rays of an abdomen. Crumpled sheets rest on the bed.

Backpacks hang from the coatrack inside the Nurse’s Station. A half-full mug of coffee sits atop the crash cart beside the defibrillator, IV poles, and overfilled hampers. I wrap my hands around the mug. It is cold. On the desk, there is a candy-bar wrapper and a tray of sterilized forceps and scissors.

Recalling that I just completed the chart of a patient on this floor, I scan the names listed on the patient board: Pascal Marcos, Virginia Thames, Lu Kim. There he is, Peter Heinz. In the opposite hallway, I inspect his room, but it too is vacant.

“Wait!” I whisper to myself. I was only asleep for two hours. Are Jasmine and Isabella safe?

I peer through the steel bars on the window, to the mass morgue inside. Purple Contaminated tags hang from the railings of empty triage gurneys organized in endless rows. No one responds to my pounding on the door.

Entering the Surrogation Unit, I recall Chang and Hamid visiting Jasmine in the Birth Center after she delivered Isabella.

“Do you know what Jasmine’s work did to her?” I asked them. “They took away her vacation time because we didn’t hire a Registered Surrogate.”

“What’s a Registered Surrogate?” asked Chang, new to the States from Hong Kong. “The women who still look a little bit like women?”

“Yes,” I laughed. “Our society doesn’t want you to lose time being pregnant, it’s frowned upon. Surrogates carry other women’s children so they can stay at work.”

“There’s this larger unspoken belief,” Hamid added, “that wearing pants and ‘going to work,’ doing whatever else ‘men’ do is the right thing. It just further devalues women.”

The Cryopreservation units, In Vitro Fertilization Lab, Implantation Surgical Suite, and Parent-Registered Surrogate Introduction Center also are empty. I hear crying, but it originates from units isolated as far as possible from the delivery beds. Inside the Pet Nursery, separated with a glass partition from the Homo Sapiens Sapiens Nursery, puppies and kittens cry inside their metal cages. The human cribs are empty. How are there animals but no people?

Observing the Newborn Pet Portraits with Santa Claus on the corner looking glass, I consider taking the animals with me.

A dozen cars are parked at the McDonald’s & Carl’s Burger King across the street; two are PC Compliance Auditor patrol vehicles. Running over there, the tall steel fence bordering the restaurant darkens my fond childhood memories of the McDonald’s Play Places.

A headset dangles over the open drive-through window. The clock reads 5:23 AM. Steam billows from the kitchen into the dining room, where dirty trays are scattered across the tables. I notice the overhead marquee: “Out of XXXL Dinners.”

Outside, squealing seabirds in a messy pile scavenge scraps from the die-off in the gutter. I track a tiny flock of molting monastery pigeons from the trees above me to a streetlight. They flap their wings back into place, dislodging a few feathers that snowflake down around me, making me realize I have not seen or heard any planes. Suddenly, one of the seabirds darts upward at them and the skirr of the pigeons’ flight into the large sky is louder than I have ever heard before. I can’t figure this out.

A dog barks, and I track it to a 1980s’ blue Toyota Corolla crashed into a pole. Loud static emits from the half-down driver’s-side window. A large square-headed Black Labrador rushes from the rear seat, growling. From his focused eyes, I know he knows the game is changing.

I step away, pulling back my hair to help me think straight. “What the fuck is going on?” How far out