Shock

Once they were in the fourth-floor corridor, Joa

They reached the fire door leading to the tower. Without discussion they traversed the tower and passed through the opposite fire door into the north wing. Except for an occasional creak of a floorboard, they were silent, each consumed by her own fears.

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?" Joa

"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 Joa

Deborah quickly went over to the sterilizer, and while Joa

"What about this?" Deborah asked.

The sterilizer was about three feet in diameter and about five feet deep. Joa

"I guess you're right," Deborah said. She let go of the sterilizer and hurried over to the co

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, Joa

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," Joa

"Shine the light in!" Deborah repeated.

The moment Joa

"Oh God!" Joa

"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 Joa

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, Joa

Deborah grabbed the chair and returned it to where she'd found it.

"Where are you going?" Joa

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 Joa

"This is not going to work," Deborah said. She twisted to the:e. and dropped back to the floor.

You've got to hurry," Joa

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 Joa

With a little leap and Joa

"Try to close the door as much as you can,' Deborah whispered from the recesses of the ventilator.

Joa

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 co