My mind was blank as my feet were hitting an unfamiliar surface, having no set destination. My body moved on its own as the scene of the man being killed by that soldier played over and over again in my head. Only when I passed a nurse on my way, I was able to come out from my daze. It was then when I noticed the presence of people gathered in a hallway that stretched out before me, some agitated, others trying to calm their worries or arguing among themselves to decide what they could do.

I realized that at some point I had gone up to a second floor and I informed the nearby people about the situation.

“Don't go to the first floor, there's a soldier who killed a man!”

Now that I could think more clearly, I had the idea to call the police. I pulled my cellphone out of my pocket and marked the number. However, the call didn't connect. I only heard static.

As I stared in shock at my cellphone, as if it had turned into a brick of darkness before my eyes, I felt a hand grab my left forearm.

“Aren’t you listening? What do you mean, a man was murdered?” the nurse I had passed earlier said to me, anxiety etched on her face. Now that I looked at her closely, I curiously thought that she looked too young to be a nurse, perhaps she was a girl in her first year of work.

I blinked a few times before answering, my response directed at both, her and the people around us, as the weight of their uncertain gazes that were crushing and nullifying my fear, were getting heavier under the gravity of certainty that accompanied my next words.

“It's just like I said. A soldier entered the waiting room, fired a few shots to the ceiling, and finally killed a man.” I looked at the ground, my eyebrows furrowed in worry. “If we go down to the first floor, we might get killed too.”

“So what do we do?” the nurse said, her grip tightening around my left forearm, the anxiety deepening and darkening her expression.

I looked at her for a moment. I sighed and closed my eyes for a second to prevent her emotions from contaminating my judgment and, consequently, me.

“I already tried to call the police, but the call didn't connect,” I said while I was looking around at the people listening to me and slightly moving my left forearm so the nurse would let go of me. “Maybe it's a problem with my cellphone. Could you try it with yours?”

With that, doctors and nurses grabbed the cellphones saved in their pockets and used them. Some patients entered the rooms, perhaps to look for their own phones.

As the minutes passed, the responses, which reflected the same result I got, repeated. In response, we tried using the internet to communicate with someone through our social networks, but we didn't have internet access either. Apparently, there was something blocking our wireless signals. I looked at the people around me before turning my head over my right shoulder.

It’s possible that the soldier might be gone, I thought as I looked at the stairs I used to get to this place, located behind me. As I turned to face the people and opened my mouth to speak, the words died in my thoughts. A shot that rang out in the distance froze time and halted everyone’s movements. A few seconds later, a second shot pierced the collective paralysis spell and conjured a chaotic panic spell. I quickly made my way to a nearby medic, a worker who I assumed knew this place better than I did.

"Is there any other way out apart from this one?" I said, pointing with my chin towards the stairs behind me.

“No,” the doctor replied quickly. “But those stairs and that elevator lead to one of the parking lots. A back exit that connects to other buildings.”

“One of the parking lots...” I answered thoughtfully, looking at the elevator that was located next to the stairs. “Well, we should go now that the shooting has stopped.”

However, as if to dismiss my suggestion, a couple of seconds passed before the shots were heard again, this time more clearly and closer. And most disturbingly, they were heard in different locations. There was more than one firing pin.

My consciousness stopped, as if it had been imprisoned in my brain. My mind showed me a single outcome. That most likely prediction was as realistic and accurate as the simplest mathematical calculation. This situation would have no other ending than fatal.

I looked at the hallway in front of me and felt like a bug trapped in a metal box. However, the next second, I could see tiny holes in that box, with the light of hope illuminating the way out.

"We should escape through the rooms’ windows!" I shouted over the deafening chaos of voices, which were even able to mute the gunshots that were getting closer.

“How are we supposed to do that? We’re on a second floor!” said the young nurse which I had spoken to earlier, exasperated as she pointed with her open, trembling hand at a woman sitting in a wheelchair. There were three people in total in that state.

An idea slowly formed in my mind as I replied, “We could… make a rope out of sheets and…” I stared at the old woman’s wheelchair. “Let someone else to go down with one of the wheelchairs before we get the disabled people down.”

I looked the nurse to the eyes. She held my gaze for a moment before shifting her eyes to the floor and nodding slightly. I spoke to the doctor I had spoken to earlier.

“That parking lot you mentioned earlier, which side is it on?” I looked at one of the rooms on my left and then at another on my right as I continued. “On the left or on the right?”

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“Huh… Over there!” The doctor pointed to the room to my right.

“Listen, everyone!” I spoke to everyone. “Get the sheets from the stretchers in your rooms and bring them here!” I said as I headed to the room on my right, which was near the stairs.

It took us a couple of minutes to tie the sheets and make a doctor go down through the window of the room with a wheelchair on his back. When he reached the ground, he waited for a disabled elderly man who was climbing down the rope of sheets. When the elderly man reached the ground, the doctor held him in his arms and sat him in the wheelchair.

"There are no more gunshots," said a patient next to me absentmindedly as he watched the next able-bodied person get out down with a wheelchair, so as not to damage it.

“I don’t think I can get out down like that,” an elderly woman in a wheelchair replied, frowning and bringing even more wrinkles to her forehead. “I have no strength in my arms,” she continued, looking at all of us.

I considered for a moment what they had said. It was true. The shooting had stopped a few moments ago. If that old woman couldn’t escape by this means, she would have to do it through the elevator. Another couple of minutes passed without any more shots being heard.

“Ah! Perhaps they’ve already left? If you want, I can accompany you to the elevator,” the young nurse, whose name I didn’t know despite having exchanged words with her before, suggested hopefully.

"Are you sure?" replied a patient in his 60s, giving the nurse a look of fatherly concern.

A slight smile curved the young nurse's lips; she looked at the patient and then looked down at the floor.

“The parking lot is in front of the elevator, remember?” She looked at the patient's bandaged left leg. “Unlike you, I can run,” she said, smiling wryly.

Did the impulse of her vocation lead her to offer her help without thinking about the risks or other options? I thought, disconcerted by the nurse's recklessness. I could volunteer… but it’s too risky. We don’t know what’s going on down there. Would I be willing to risk my life to help someone else? Could I surely approach death when the opportunity to completely evade it is waiting right in front of me?

It was then that I remembered the man being executed in the waiting room. At that moment, my body screamed at me with all its might to get away from this place as soon as possible.

I can’t…, I thought as my gaze was attracted to the outside I saw through the window. I hoped with all my being that they wouldn’t notice my presence and that they wouldn’t think that I had overheard their exchange. And although that wish displeased me, the thought that was generated in my mind after that made me feel my human identity was fragmenting into a thousand pieces and then burning until made even its ashes disappeared.

If I suggest them to wait and not take any risks, they might see me as a better option to help that old woman. I shouldn’t interfere.

“Well…,” said the young nurse as she walked to the back of the old woman's wheelchair to take control of it, the slight tremor in her voice nullifying the simplicity of her words and the serenity of her actions. “Then we’ll go just the two of us alone.”

Although my attention was directed outward, I could feel her gaze devouring my face for a moment that seemed eternal. Despite losing the perception of time in that brief moment, I knew she watched me long enough to materialize her concern and her longing for help. However, I ignored her, keeping my impassive gaze fixed on the outside.

I heard the wheels of the chair scratching against the floor as the young nurse maneuvered it to direct its orientation toward the exit of the room. It was then that I felt the birth of an idea in my mind.

We could throw a mattress onto the ground outside where the old woman could fall…

The sound of the wheels moving across the room was closely followed by the young nurse's footsteps.

But the old woman would get hurt…

My inner attention could only focus on the nurse's footsteps walking away, marching to the hymn of an imminent death.

In that case, I, who is in the best physical condition of all the people here, could go down with the old woman on my back…

The footsteps stopped in front of the elevator. Then, with a bell, the doors to an illusory underworld opened.

Since the old woman does not have the strength to support her body with her arms, I could tie and hold her body attached to my back with a sheet, just as a mother would carry her baby.

At that moment, I moved reflexively and ran towards the exit of the room. In front of me, the elevator bell announced the extinction of all chances of possible salvation. I stopped a few meters away from the elevator, watching the closing of its doors, with the worry frowning my eyebrows and, with the fear, accelerating my heartbeats. The nurse noticed my presence and our eyes met. The flash of a gratitude smile flickered on her face before the elevator doors closed completely.

A rising torrent of panic drowned my consciousness and paralyzed my body in place. For some unknown reason, I felt like I had orchestrated a tragedy under the direction of my own selfishness.

I decided to descend the stairs next to the elevator. I went down quickly but stealthily. Once I cleared the first flight of stairs, I heard the elevator bell. When I was about to turn right to descend the last flight of stairs, the cacophony of gunshots devouring screams of terror stopped my movements.

I understood that several shots had been fired, but uncontrollable nausea, which disconnected me from reality, prevented me from counting them. Only when I heard the elevator bell followed by two more shots, I was able to come to my senses and quickly ascend the stairs to the second floor. I headed to the room that had become our escape route and shouted from the entrance.

“Everyone, go to other rooms and escape through their windows! There's no time to wait for everyone to come down one by one!”

The elevator’s bell suddenly caught my attention and I turned around quickly. My instinct screamed at me to run, but my body didn’t listen its warning. As the doors began to open, I could only see signs of an inert, bleeding body, slumped in a wheelchair wearing a patient’s clothing, before I turned my shaking body around and turned my back on the elevator.

The last memory I had of the nurse flashed through my mind, her gratitude expressed in a fleeting smile that completely ignored my earlier selfishness. But that only made my aversion to seeing her corpse intensify. I didn't want to see my victims in that state, nor the old woman who met her death trying to escape from it, nor the nurse who lost her life before she could begin to live it.

The screams of horror from the people who were coming out from the room in front of me, and saw the elevator’s massacre brought me back to reality.

I quickly turned to the people, becoming a human wall that didn’t allow them to see the macabre exhibition of the elevator, with my mind focused on not directing my gaze towards it.

“Listen, you must go to the other rooms! Escape through the windows, throw a mattress if possible!” As I spoke, the eyes of the health officials and the unfortunate patients, which were slowly filling with tears, turned to me. “Now!” I finally shouted.

One by one, people entered the rooms, some in groups, others alone. I watched them in silence for a moment, gritting my teeth, until I could hear footsteps coming up the stairs.