Trick or Treat

Trick+or+Treat

It was November 6, 2017, one week after Halloween, this is when they started showing up. It started with a little girl named Amber having to go to the emergency room. Her parents brought her in because she had swelling in her throat. I did a check up on her and it revealed that her throat was closing and cutting off her oxygen. We immediately got her an oxygen tank and started pumping the air through a tube in her mouth to keep her breathing. The young girl was adamant that she did not eat it or swallow it to the best of her knowledge. 

As soon as she was stable a nurse burst into the room and said, “Doctor we need you now.” I followed the nurse after telling Amber’s parents that I would be back soon.  The nurse escorted me to a little boy who was laying in a bed with sadness in his eyes. I had the nurse update me on what was going on with the young boy.

The nurse explained to me, “He came in an hour ago saying he had stomach pains and we completed an x-ray which you need to see.” She handed me the paper which revealed inside his stomach was a small object. It looked sharp on the edges and was made of metal. I realized he had a razor blade inside his stomach and if moved it could slice through organs causing damage or internal bleeding.

As I discovered the foreign object in the boys stomach Just then a nurse came in and said, “We have three more children needing immediate help doctor.”

The next five hours were agony having to help these kids with each new child a new symptom was discovered. For hours it pained me to tell Amber’s parents that I couldn’t help there little girl. Their hearts were broken as I could tell.

However, they did allow me to further my investigation of her to see if I could find out what caused this. As I was examining her I noticed that the inside walls of her throat were red due to inflammation and scratching. Her lungs also had severe damage to them as if they were cut through. I still could not figure out how this object would have gotten to her stomach if she did not knowingly eat it. 

At around 11:30 pm kids were no longer showing up so I decided to go home. As I was driving home I could not stop all the possible explanations from running through my head. However, I still could not piece it all together. The razor blade, the scratches in the throat, and the cut up lungs all seemed out of the ordinary to me.

I got home and made my way upstairs to crawl into bed with my wife after a nightmarish day. I walked in and noticed she was nowhere to be seen. As soon as I realized this I heard something fall from what sounded like in the basement. I grabbed a flashlight from our closet and made my way to the basement while calling out my wife’s name. I walked down the hallway and opened the door to the basement. I descended down the stairs and turned on the lights to find a terrifying sight. There were bags of candy from Halloween and boxes of razor blades, pills, and chemicals. I dropped my flashlight out of horror and turned around to see my wife blocking the stairs with a gun in hand and her staring directly at me. She looked me dead in the eyes and asked, “Trick or Treat?”