Though Chris Wendir’s twenty eight years of life had seen their moments of drama and incident, she had never before woken up in the certain knowledge that she would remember the coming day for as long as she lived.
Shortly after midnight, her longterm boyfriend, Blake, had proposed to her in the middle of Brooklyn Bridge Park.  In the giddy relief following her acceptance, he confessed that he had been planning to pop the question in the Deli where they just had eaten dinner, but with the silent couple beside them, who had eavesdropped on their entire conversation, he had decided to wait a while longer.  So he suggested a walk through the darkening park, and in spite of Chris’s protest that they both needed to be up early, finally inspiration seized him, so he led her, bewildered, to the steps of the pathway.  There, flinging discretion to the chilly wind (in a most un-Blake-like way), he proposed, on one knee, in front of three down-and-outs huddled on the steps, sharing what looked like a bottle of whiskey.  It had been, in Chris’s view, the most perfect proposal, ever, in the history of matrimony.  He even had a ring in his pocket, which she was now wearing; a sapphire with two diamonds, which fit perfectly. 
All the way to work, she kept staring at it on her hand as it rested on her lap.  She and Blake had a story to tell now, a funny family story, the kind you told your children, in which his planning (she loved that he had planned it) went awry, and turned into something spontaneous.  She loved the tramps, and the moon, and Blake, panicky and flustered, on one knee; she loved the park, and dirty old New York, and the black cab they had taken home. 
The next morning started like any other day with her being jolted awake by her alarm, it was 5:30 a.m.  She forced herself to get up, smashing the snooze button on her alarm.  Blake was not in bed, because he had to get up for work earlier than Chris did.  Blake was smart, he was a head architect for the firm he worked for, Chris was just a nurse, nothing special.  Blake had a far cooler job than Chris, but this only made her love him all the more. 
Now on her way to work thinking of the night before, and of her work.  Chris was a nurse at the Manhattan Health Care Center, and hated everything about it.  She was hoping to quit her job after her and Blake were married.  She would stay home and watch after their children, just like her mother did with her. 
The cab ride from Chris’s house was about half an hour with good traffic, but it could take her several hours if the traffic was bad.  Today the traffic was the worst she had ever seen.  It was going to take several hours for her to get to work, so she pulled out her cell phone to let her boss, Abbey, know why she would be late.  Chris’s phone rang a couple of times but then, it took her to voicemail, which was strange.  Abbey almost always had her phone on her, at all times it seemed, so Chris tried again, no answer.  Chris decided she would tell Abbey once she got there. 
After five Candy Crush levels and the longest cab ride Chris has ever experienced, she arrived at the hospital.  When she got out of the cab, she noticed something was off.  It was quiet, and there were  no patients taking walks, no nurses were patrolling the grounds, and no one was leaving, almost like no one was home.  Chris didn’t think much of it as she was in a hurry to get inside.  Without a thought she ran up the steps leading to the entrance, reached for the door handle and took a moment to admire her ring one last time, and opened the door.  The inside was just as quiet as the outside. 
No one was at the receptionist's office, which was extremely bizarre, because at least one person was supposed to be at the office at all times.  This concerned Chris, and out of curiosity and fear she gave a quick shout, “Hello, is anybody here?” 
Right as she finished her question, a door flew open from the left corridor, startling her.  After taking a few moments to compose herself, from the center of the lobby she nervously started inching over to the door to investigate, and as she came closer, she could see it was the door to the emergency bay.  Behind it were all of the nurses and doctors trying to restrain someone on a stretcher.  The man on the stretcher was gigantic, and looked to be the size of a NFL lineman.  In her state of panic her nurse instincts took over and she began to ask what the doctors needed and what she could help with.  In the chaos she could catch glimpses of burned clothes and flesh.  While she was grabbing some medical gauze, at a doctor's request, the humongous person broke free of everyone and started towards Chris.  In panic Chris began to back up until her back came into contact with a wall.  With the monster hovering over her and her back against the wall she could see the malformed human more clearly, but what was even more terrifying than the monsters burnt face, was his eyes.  In his eyes Chris could see the intent to kill and murder. 
Chris was getting ready to make a run for the door when all of a sudden a group of three doctors tackled the man down and injected him with a heavy sedative.  Abbey ran up to her from the other side of the room where she was ordering nurses around, concern draped across her face she asked “Are you alright?”
“I-I’m f-fine” Chris replied shakily,
“We have a victim of a house fire here and he is resisting the help of any doctors or nurses.  We need to treat his wounds or else they could get seriously infected.  We have everyone here trying to restrain this patent.  And we don’t have any more heavy sedatives to give him so go and get some midazolam.” Abbey said.  Chris could see that this was Abbey’s way of trying to help her by getting her to leave the scene and have some time alone to collect herself.  Chris knew that midazolam was a heavy sedative, Chris asked, “From where?  I don’t have high enough clearance to access any sedatives.”
“Here, take my key card and go to intensive care to get some.”  Hypnotised by the site in front of her and by the beast that almost attacked her, Chris didn’t move, “Go!” Abbey yelled knocking Chris out of her daze.  She began to run down the corridors to Intensive Care.  Chris’s heart and mind raced as she made her way through the hallways.  That man was so strong, watching him throw and rip the EMT’s off of him, the blood lust in his eyes, his eyes, they looked pure evil.  Rushing through one of the hallways, Chris almost ran past the Intensive Care room, came to a screeching halt.  She took a few steps back, and scanned Abbey’s key card on the sensor on the wall next to the door.  The sensor flashed red.  The card was denied.  This sometimes happened when the key card was dirty, so Chris rubbed the card on her scrubs and holding her breath, she tried again.  The sensor flashed with a big relieving green this time.  Exhaling with relief, she barged in and started looking for the Midazolam and a syringe.  Searching through the counter cupboards and drawers, she couldn’t find the midazolam anywhere.  Panicking, Chris quickly researched the drawers, and finding nothing, she was washed over with grief.  She turned around and leaned up against the counter.  Then she was faced with a metal cabinet with glass in the middle of the doors, the surgery supply cabinet.  Taking a few quick steps towards the cabinet to examine the contents, she looked through the shelves and saw no midazolam. 
“No no no no!” she said panicking, and then started to scan through the shelves again when a shiny little vial caught her eye.  It had the green label like a Midazolam bottle, but Chris couldn’t read it.  There was no way for her to tell because she didn’t have the key to open the cabinet, so a thought crossed her mind.  If she followed through with this thought, then there might be severe consequences and she might even get fired.  But she was going to quit anyway and the welfare of her friends was more important than her job. 
Taking off the top of her scrubs, not worrying to much as she was wearing an undershirt, she wrapped the scrub around her hand and punched the glass.  Nothing happened, so she hit the glass several times again.  Then a terrible sound came from down the hallway.  The sound of screaming, screaming so terrible that it sent chills down Chris’s back.  Then, there was silence, a silence that Chris could only guess was because of terrible reasons.  Then she heard footsteps coming down the the hallway.   Chris jolted up and closed the door as silently as possible.  Then she sat on the floor leaning against the cabinet, she held her mouth and held her breath trying to muffle the sound of her crying.  A large shadowy figure loomed over the window of the door, the figure stopped as if listening.  Then the figured moved on. 
Chris took a gasp of air in relief.  Then she sobbed and stroked her ring to make her feel better.  The ring calmed her down.  The thought of her getting married helped her forget the amount of crap she had just stumbled into.  Sighing, she closed her eyes, and leaned her head against the cabinet and thought about what she was going to tell Abbey.  Taking a deep breath to relax her nerves and many emotions, she opened her eyes and in almost heavenly light there was the otoscope, the tool doctors used for light to look inside patient's mouth and ears.  Thoughts rolled through Chris’s head and at the click of the idea Chris scrambled up and grabbed the tool, flipped to the metal handle and dashed to the cabinet.  Then all of a sudden something stopped her, a heavy hand grabbed her by the hair and threw her backwards into the wall.  Chris’s vision failed and she could only see the outline of what looked like a man, a huge man with tattered and burnt clothes and splotches of blood everywhere.  The sight of the monster of a man shot adrenaline straight through Chris’s body.  She jumped up with her hands balled up in fist and started to swing and the creatures face.  The man took one backhand to Chris’s side and sent her flying into another wall, this time Chris felt something snap.  She couldn’t move, she couldn’t run away.  With the monster walking towards her with the intent to kill, she thought about Blake and the ring on her left hand.  Looking down at her ring and smiling at its beauty, then all she saw was Blake's face, she whispered goodbye to her fiance, and then the monster ended her happy memories.