The Graceview Patient

It was like something out of a nightmare, all the necessary players on the scene at just the right moment. Margaret Culpepper is twenty-six years old, and was admitted to Graceview Memorial seven weeks ago for inpatient management of Fayette-Gehret syndrome under the SWAIL protocol. Some perched on the precipice of death, some suffering back toward life, some lying motionless, all consciousness extinguished but their bodies continuing on with the push-pull of machinery. In the darkness, it was impossible to see if any had gotten on the sweater.