Ten minutes later Ellen was feeling more herself. She had no idea what on earth might have made her agree to such a silly idea. But here she was getting into a cab with the very odd Mister Trout. “I don’t even know your first name.” She said.   “What?” He looked simultaneously confused and crestfallen.

  “Your name! You’ve come to my flat very late at night and talked me somehow into this stupid trip to the place I work, where I generally spend too much time as it is, to bother a poor injured man, and might I add unconscious, I tend to almost every day, on the pretense that he is somehow deceiving not only the world at large, but every doctor in the ward.” As she spoke faster, she knew she was beginning to sound less "confident, adult, and professional," and more "petulant child needing a nap;" her words even began to run together. It was a failing she would have to live with.

  “I mean, really. What in Heaven’s name are you hoping to accomplish? What...when…How did you talk me into doing thi…?” Ellen found herself at a loss for words with no recourse but to turn her head to stare out the window as the passing humble rowhomes of her neighborhood slowly gave way to the more opulent homes and taller buildings of the civic center where St Alban's was located. Dark brown bricks, light tan trim, and heavy exposed beams of lumber were indicative of some particular architectural style, no doubt, but to her these homes would always look as scrunched, huddled, and claustrophobic as some of the small fishing villages to the north, near the coast, had always looked to her. And if she were honest, tightly packed and claustrophobic is how her head now felt. No amount of mental acrobatics would allow Ellen to fully wrap her head about why she was in this cab, heading back to work, and talking to Mister Trout.

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   All speaking abruptly stopped as a sudden cacophony, a sound like the shattering of a church's worth of windows assaulted Nurse Lindsey and Mr. Trout. With the decompression of what must have been the entirety of the first floor lobby of the hospital, the set of front doors, and accompanying windows of the hospital flew outward from their usual resting places to attack the street, the front of the taxi, and the every business front on the street for tens of meters on either side of St Albans. This unprecedented act by the building's front windows, and doors, coupled with the quick deceleration of the cab, caught both the tall and short passengers by surprise, as the vehicle slewed into the incoming lane to avoid the exploding frontage.