Short horror for a world that can't stop talking.

"Babel"

With the heel of her boot, the young woman tapped an erratic rhythm into the waiting room’s tiled floor.

            The sound hit every hard surface like a shot and filled the otherwise silent space with a comforting presence that saved her from her thoughts. The rhythm was from the newest single flooding the radio. The song threw disjointed, electronic sounds around other, just as mechanical sounds, but the beat was catchy, and catchy was all it needed to be for a summer hit. She had been listening to it on the way to the hospital, had used it to drown out the sounds coming from the back seat. The sounds of her wailing child.

            She looked at her baby where he was nestled in the cocoon of her husband’s arms. Her little boy was a year old tomorrow and had a head of hair that would have made any two-year-old jealous. Her little boy was strong, her little boy was clever, her little boy was named after her father. And now her little boy was sick. The baby let out a sudden fit of giggles that broke the young woman from her daze. With a frown, the husband rocked their baby with renewed gusto.

            The young woman looked away. She could not stare at him for too long.

            A clock on the check-in desk by the vending machines chimed then, tolling out the hours in time with the young woman’s beating heart. Before the clock reached its ninth chime, a family stumbled into the waiting area. Two parents, three kids. Two toddlers lounged in a stroller and the third child—a kid bouncing and doing all the normal things kids do—hung onto his mother’s hand.

            The young woman glanced over at her husband again. Sure enough, his eyes had found the crowded family, too. She wondered what he was seeing. A possible future? Or a future they had just lost as of seven am that morning when they realized they would be spending the day—the year—in the hospital with their first baby? Their last baby. They wouldn’t be able to have another after this.

            The nurse behind the check-in desk gave a nod and a smile to the new family and handed the father a clipboard without a word. He filled out the necessary forms with a few practiced strokes of his pen and then joined the rest of his family where they had taken an entire row of seats. The toddlers began fidgeting against their restraints, and their older sibling was still bouncing. But they were quiet.

            The young woman had only half a second to glance back to her husband before the buzzer in her hand vibrated. As if by instinct, she stalked toward the desk, not checking to see if her husband was behind her because he always was. The nurse took the pulsing buzzer and with her other hand passed the young woman a small electronic pad with the map of the hospital on it. The instructions flashing on the glass screen were bright. Follow the route until you reach your assigned room. A green dot appeared where they were standing; a red counterpart popped to life a few corridors away in the pediatric wing.

            The young couple paced down corridor after corridor, neither husband nor wife saying a word. After the third white, empty hallway, the husband balanced their baby in the crook of one arm and used his free hand to grasp onto his wife’s trembling fingers. The young woman almost relaxed with that one gesture; usually she and her husband operated so much on the same frequency that a touch was the only communication they needed. Besides, their baby was making enough noise for the entire population of the hospital. With every gurgle, every giggle, and every clumsy word that fell from his mouth, passing nurses and doctors looked up from their clipboards, frowns on their faces.

            Finally the couple reached their room and waited. Five minutes in, a nurse entered to check their baby’s vital signs; ten minutes in, another nurse came in with paperwork for the couple; fifteen minutes in, the director of the hospital and several men in medical uniforms delivered another brick of paperwork; and finally, thirty minutes in, the doctor arrived. The doctor was an old man whose jaw looked like it had locked in place twenty years ago. He prodded their baby, but their baby only giggled.

            As the doctor worked, the young woman paced the small space in front of her chair, her husband a silent mound of confusion next to her. She looked up to the wall, but pressed her lips together when she realized there wasn’t a clock in the room. She could check her phone, but that meant she might see the messages her mother had been sending her all morning, or news updates telling her how her situation wasn’t really as bad off as it could be, or calendar notifications informing her she was late to work because she couldn’t muster the courage to explain to her boss why she even needed to take her kid in for a checkup…

            The doctor left the room without warning. The young woman turned to the blank monitor hanging on the far wall at the same time her husband did. They waited again. After five minutes that couldn’t possibly have been long enough to qualify as any amount of time, the monitor blinked on.

            The standard information scrolled across the screen: The young couple’s name, their DOBs, their medical insurance information, the doctor who had seen them. After the mundane information passed, their child’s symptoms appeared. There was only one symptom, and seeing it flashing above her made the young woman sink back into her seat. It was almost as if the problem hadn’t existed until the words were written down. The symptom disappeared, and a red badge with the words Level 5 appeared and blinked with the urgent emptiness of a hotel vacancy sign. But it was the short paragraph under the warning badge that sent the young woman’s husband into tears. It was a personal, handwritten with a stylus onto the screen, message from their doctor.

            Given the uniqueness of your child’s case, we will need to examine the patient further in order to confirm potential lasting harmful effects of his condition. However, considering the symptom of speech, it is unfortunately clear that your son (12 mos., male) is displaying blatant patterns of what, in our records, we label as Broncho-Linguaphilia. While cases of BL are extremely rare, our doctors are prepared to treat the disease.

           Your child will be appropriately handled.