The Doctor is Out

by Sean Donaghue Johnston

It was late. The only sounds were the buzzing of the fluorescent lights, the moaning of drugged patients, and Dr Laroche’s footsteps.

A swipe of the keycard and Dr Laroche was in the common room, now empty. Another swipe and he was at the “welcome” desk, unmanned at this hour. A retinal scan got him out of the psych ward and into the main corridor of the hospital.

He went down the stairs and out an emergency exit, tossed the orderly’s keycard and eyeball into the bushes, and slipped into the dark city streets to hunt for his next “patient.”

Sean Donaghue Johnston

Sean Donaghue Johnston teaches philosophy at Niagara University and Canisius College, and lives in St. Catharines, Ontario, with his wife Caroline and their two children, Atticus and Finula. His fiction has appeared in Tales from the Radiator, Space Squid, Every Day Fiction, and Broken Pencil Magazine.