No Accident, No Emergency

The main entrance to the hospital flew open and the paramedics rushed in pushing along a gurney, on which was lying a young woman in a dressing gown with a heavily distended abdomen, groaning and moaning loudly. The junior doctor sat by the reception desk jumped to their assistance and ran along with the gurney as it was pushed along the long white corridors.

‘Is she ectopic, not fully dilated? How far apart are her contractions?’ the junior fired questions at the paramedics anxious to project an impression of professionalism.

‘Oh, No’ one of the paramedics replied as the others checked her blood pressure and guided the gurney left and right through the hallways leading towards the operating theatres .

‘She’s not pregnant’ he said, ‘that’s gas in there… we don’t know how it started but it doesn’t appear to have stopped going in there… she’s still inflating!’

The junior looked at the woman; she was young and pretty with neck length blonde hair and green eyes, casting her eyes down the girl’s body she saw her abdomen was indeed growing bigger underneath the light cotton gown. The girl moaned as she rubbed her hands over her ballooning stomach and briefly looked the junior in the eyes with an expression of pure horror readable in her eyes, the rest of her face hidden beneath the rising mound of her abdomen.

At that moment an experienced doctor arrived on the scene looking like he had rushed over as a matter of urgency.

‘So this is the inflating girl?’ he asked the paramedic, gasping, who nodded sternly

‘We have no idea how the gas is inflating her, what it is or where it’s coming from’ the paramedic shouted.

The junior watched as the stricken girl’s belly grew far beyond the size which would be the upper limit for a pregnant woman. The doctor took the girl’s hand and she switched her fraught gaze to him as he tried to reassure her.

‘Don’t worry’ he said with a confident, paternal tone ‘you’re in safe hands now, we’ll get to the bottom of this’, but when he looked back towards the junior his expression betrayed an apprehension and disbelief of his own.

‘I don’t feel so certain’ the girl replied, her voice soft and trembling, ‘I can feel it building inside me like a pressure’ she paused, ‘I feel like… I’m going to explode!’ The doctor looked increasingly concerned as she mentioned this; the girl’s eyes widened and she lifted her arms to rub her stomach as it visibly expanded.

‘ooooh’ she moaned, closing her eyes. The junior watched as the girl’s stomach growled and swelled up beneath her dressing gown, untying the rope around her middle and allowing the straining fabric of her undergarments to become visible, stretched around the orb of her midriff. ‘It’s spreading to other parts of my body!’, she groaned in exasperation. The junior, doctor and paramedics all backed off, sensing something impending in her fear, and watched aghast as, with a deep rumbling, the bloating moved up the girl’s torso, making her egg shaped before her breasts began inflating like two balloons pushing out at the fluffy fabric of her gown. All the time her whole body blew up like a blimp, bigger and bigger. She looked round frantically at the terrified retreating physicians as her breasts swelled up to her face, forcing her to crane her neck to see over them. Her hands and her feet in their fluffy slippers twitched with fear as she watched the inflation spread down her limbs, forcing them straight until her whole body was pumping up like an overinflated parade balloon and rumbling ominously.

‘We’ve got to get out of here!’ the doctor shouted, ‘get the patients out first and block the doors with anything you can’ he commanded, cueing the paramedics and any other staff in the vicinity to go into panic, running this way and that, gathering up other patients in gurneys and wheelchairs, surrounding the expanding woman in a scene of pandemonium, of which she was clearly aware and frightened that no-one was trying to help her.

‘Come on!’ bellowed the doctor to the junior as he held the last door open, the other surrounding doors blocked with beds and furniture with, petrified faces pressed to the windows. But the junior was frozen, as if entranced. She gingerly walked forward towards the helpless woman and looked her in the eyes.

‘Do you know how this happened to you’ she enquired gently. The girl just stared back, before trying to say something

‘mmph… phhmph’ she grunted, her cheeks puffed up with the gas, making it impossible for her to speak. ‘Six…’ she managed to squeeze out… ‘six’, before she closed her eyes tightly, as if preparing for her explosive fate.’

‘Hurry up, you have to come now!’ the doctor shouted again. The junior looked up at the mass of the girl’s tightly inflated body, what skin was visible looked shiny and taut and she could hear a low creaking sound as the girl’s body tried in vain to hold out against the mounting pressure within.

‘Sorry’ she whispered softly, to the girl, whose eyes were still tightly closed, before taking off her stethoscope and placing it over the girl’s ears to block out the cacophony of groans and creaks generated by her straining flesh, stroking a hand over the smooth tight surface of her belly and running to join the doctor at the doorway. She glanced back to see the girl lying, arms and legs outstretched with her feet towards the door and her whole body bloating slightly as it strained and creaking horribly; before the doctor slammed the door and an orderly shoved a gurney across it. The junior closed her eyes and instinctively cowered away from the door.

There was a brief moment that seemed to last an eternity before the building reverberated with a loud boom which shook the air and seemed to fill the entire world. The junior heard the sounds of other people screaming and shouting and the glass shattering behind her, before being showered with small lumps of broken safety glass and knocked to the floor by the force of the gurney which had been blocking the door hitting her in the back. She lay there motionless, as the echo of the initial explosion died down, before opening her eyes and looking up from the floor. She saw some people picking themselves up from the ground, others on their feet were staring over her head with a look of fear, their hands to their mouths in horror. Stretching down the corridor away from her was the glass from the door’s window, blown out by the force of the blast. Trembling, she pulled herself to her feet with the help of the doctor who was beside her, before slowly turning to face the spot where only a moment ago the girl had been filling most of the corridor.

The scene in the corridor wasn’t as grim as she had expected; there was nothing to suggest the girl’s presence except for tattered remains of her dressing gown. The air was thick and smoky and through the clearing smoke she could see the gurney on which the girl had lain, broken in two with the two halves laying a few metres apart on the floor. As she pushed the door open she felt it swinging and noticed the top hinge had been broken, but there was something trapped beneath it, making it stiff to open. She looked round and saw it was one of the girl’s fluffy slippers. It was early morning and the girl had probably been preparing for bed when she started to swell up. The rest of the corridor was carnage, notice boards knocked from the wall; light fittings hanging loose and sparking wildly; windows blown out and other people venturing out from the other rooms surrounding it, looking tattered and bloodied like survivors of an earthquake. She bent down and fished through the debris until she found her stethoscope, blown several metres down the hallway in the blast. Standing back up again she looked towards the doctor who was coming towards her.

‘I think this is a matter for the police’ he said.