Read The Broom of the System for Free Online Page B

“Yes,” Mr. Bloemker was saying. “Yes. Please.”
    He hung up gently and went back to blinking moistly at Lenore. Lenore had a thought. “All right, but what about Mrs. Yingst, in the next room?” she said. “She and Lenore are like this. Mrs. Yingst is sure to know when she was last around. Have you talked to Mrs. Yingst?”
    Mr. Bloemker looked at this thumb.
    “Mrs. Yingst is ... around, isn’t she?”
    “Not at this time, unfortunately, no.”
    “Meaning she’s missing too.”
    “I am afraid I must say yes.” Mr. Bloemker’s eyes shone with regret. Lenore thought she saw a bit of egg in his beard.
    “Well, listen, what exactly’s going on here, then? Is everybody gone and you have no idea where they are? I think I just don’t understand the situation, yet, completely.”
    “Oh Ms. Beadsman, nor in truth do I, to my profound grief,” a, movement in one side of his face. “What I have been able to determine is that at some point in the last, shall we say, sixteen hours some number of residents and staff here at the facility have become ... unavailable to access.”
    “Meaning missing.”
    “Yes.”
    “Well how many is ‘some number’?”
    “At this time it looks to be twenty-four.”
    “Twenty-four. ”
    “Yes.”
    “How many of them are patients?”
    “Twenty residents are at this time unavailable.”
    “Meaning twenty patients.”
    “We prefer to call them residents, Ms. Beadsman, since as you know we try to offer an environment in which—”
    “Fine, well, but don’t a lot of the missing ‘residents’ need IV’s to get fed and stuff? And little things like insulin, and antibiotics, and heart medicine, and help dressing and taking showers? Lenore can hardly even move her left arm this summer, and plus it’s pretty cold for her, outside, for very long, so I just don’t see how they could—”
    “Ms. Beadsman, please rest assured that you and I are in more than complete agreement on this. That I am as confused and distraught as are you. As disoriented.” Mr. Bloemker’s cheeks yielded to the force of his beard-abuse, began to move around, so it looked like he was making faces at Lenore. “I find myself facing a situation I, believe me, never dreamt of possibly encountering, monstrous and disorienting.” He licked his lips. “As well, just allow me to say, one for which my training as facility administrator prepared me not at all, not at all.”
    Lenore looked at her shoe. Mr. Bloemker’s phone buzzed and flashed again. He reached and listened. “Please,” he said into the phone. “Thank you.”
    He hung up and then for some reason came around the desk, as if to take Lenore’s hand, to comfort. Lenore stared at him, and he stopped. “So have you called my father over at Stonecipheco?” she asked. “Should I call him? Clarice is just over in the city, my sister. Is she in on this news?”
    Mr. Bloemker shook his head, his hand trailing. “We’ve contacted no one else at this time. Since you are Lenore’s only really regular visitor from among her family, I thought of you first.”
    “What about the other patients’ families? If there’s like twenty gone, this place should be a madhouse.”
    “There are very few visitors here as a rule, you would be surprised. In any event we have contacted no one else as yet.”
    “And why haven’t you.”
    Mr. Bloemker looked at the ceiling for a second. There was a really unattractive brown stain soaked into the soft white tile. Light from the sun was coming through the east windows and falling across the room, a good bit of it on Bloemker, making one of his eyes glow gold. He leveled it at Lenore. “The fact is that I have been instructed not to.”
    “Instructed? By whom?”
    “By the owners of the facility.”
    Lenore looked up at him sharply. “Last I knew, the owner of the facility was Stonecipheco.”
    “Correct.”
    “Meaning basically my father.”
    “Yes.”
    “But I thought you said my father didn’t know