Trucy Wright looked at the message on her phone and she started running.

She ran until her feet were burning and her lungs felt like they were full of dust. She ran so fast that people pointed and stared at her from the other side of the street, but she barely saw them. Her vision had gone blurry, she could barely see anything anymore and her heart was beating double time.

"Please, please let him be alright," she said, each word like a prayer between long, panting breaths. Trucy wasn't much of a believer, but she'd always believed in him, just like he'd always believed in her.

She swerved in front of the ice cream parlor on the corner of the street, racing toward Healsome Hospital. It was midday, but this particular road was empty.

People didn't like to drive past Healsome, what with the rumors and everything. Trucy used to think those rumors were stupid. She didn't think that any more. All she could think about was the text she'd just received. All she could think about was him.

Ema sat on a bench outside the hospital and stood up to greet her, but she only slowed down enough to ask one vital question.

"Is he going to be OK?"

The detective gave her a sympathetic smile, one she recognized from spending too much time at crime scenes and around the relatives of the recently deceased. They must teach you how to smile like that in police academy, she thought to herself. The thought would be funny if she was anywhere else, but now it made her want to cry.

Without waiting for an answer, she sprinted into the hospital, hearing Ema cry out: "Trucy, no! Stop! Come back!"

She couldn't stop running if she tried. Her feet felt like they belonged to someone else. They propelled themselves through familiar corridors, to a flight of steps that she'd descended only once before.

It was only at the final barrier, a large and imposing door, that she slowed to a walk, feeling a twinge of pain in the muscles of her back. This was it. No going back now.

She was about to open the door when someone came out of the room. He was tall and frail-looking, like someone had taken out his organs and replaced them with tightly wadded tissue paper. He had white, papery skin and thin, faded hair, the color of unwashed socks.

"Doctor Gutts," she gasped, but it wasn't that much of a surprise. Of course the hospital's only resident pathologist would be waiting for her at the morgue. "What happened? Is he...?"

The doctor only smiled. It was the same smile that Ema had given her already and seeing it once had been enough for a lifetime. She noticed that his teeth were as grey as his labcoat and then berated herself for wasting precious moments on such a pointless observation.

"You may enter," said Doctor Gutts, in that strange accent of his, that was halfway between German and Japanese.

He spun on his heel and walked up the steps, footsteps echoing on the hospital's regulation plastic floor. If he'd been wearing a cloak, it would have billowed dramatically behind him.

But, there was no cloak. There was only Trucy, left alone in the hallway that was too bright, too plain, with terrible, pastel green wallpaper. Only Trucy and the large, imposing, terrifying door.

She placed her hand against the metal of the door handle, took a deep breath and walked into the morgue of Healsome hospital.

A moment later, one, single scream resounded through the corridor.