LOUIS
Dr. Hubbard, how's Mom? You said on the phone that she had to go into surgery right away. Did you operate? Did you get all the cancer? Or is it ... like Dad's cancer when I was a kid. Is it too late?
Dr. Hubbard removes his pipe again, turns it over and over in his hands and stares at it.
DR. HUBBARD
This is a filthy habit, Louis. I gave it up a year ago, but still carry the pipe around ... can't get used to not having the thing with me...
Louis sits up in spite of the pain, grips the doctor's white coat and pulls him closer.
LOUIS
Tell me, damn it. How is she? How serious is the cancer? Is Mom going to be all right?
DR. HUBBARD
Louis, I've known your family for years ... I was your father's doctor when you were just a child, all during his long struggle...
Dr. Hubbard looks straight at Louis, all business now, his voice brisk. DR. HUBBARD
When I spoke to you before your mother's oper-ation ... before your accident
... I had some hope that the surgery alone might eradicate her cancer. But the metastasis was more rapid than we thought and now ... well, we'll have to take it one day at a time now. There's always some-thing else to try... Louis is stunned, speechless. Dr. Hubbard grips the younger man's shoulder. DR. HUBBARD
We're going ahead with radiation treatment, Louis. We have new drugs now, medication to help diminish the pain of the ... of the coming weeks. We can hope for a remission. New proce-dures are being perfected all the time...
LOUIS
Where is she, Dr. Hubbard? Is Mom nearby?
DR. HUBBARD
She's right down the hall, Louis. Room 2119. You can visit her in a couple of days ... when we're sure you're better. The kind of head injury you sustained can have all sorts of nasty side ef-fects...
Louis struggles to get his legs off the bed, to stand up.
LOUIS
Mom!
Dr. Hubbard restrains him, forces him back onto the pil-lows.
DR. HUBBARD
(shouting over his shoulder)
Nurse!
A syringe is brought to the doctor. He checks the contents, administers it via Louis's IV.
DR. HUBBARD
You can see your mother tomorrow. Right now you have to rest. This will help you sleep.
Again in Louis's P.O.V., we see the doctor go out of focus and the overhead light glow brighter, brighter...
DR. HUBBARD
(as if from a great distance)
There's nothing you can do tonight, Louis. Just rest now. Rest. Rest... CUT TO:
3. NIGHT. HOSPITAL ROOM.
Louis awakens to see the hospital room transformed by night. The curtain is drawn around the bed next to him. Rain taps against the windows and tall shadows are thrown on the opposite wall by the single nightlight in the monitor panel on the wall above his bed. Louis sits up, groans, re-moves his IV drip, and swings his legs over the edge of the bed. He is still groggy, half out of it.
LOUIS
I'm sorry I wasn't here, Mom ... They wouldn't let me in to see Dad ... I was too little...
Louis gets to his feet, sways, and staggers to the far wall, using it to brace himself as he moves toward the door.
LOUIS
I'm coming, Mom.
CUT TO:
4. INT. ANOTHER HOSPITAL ROOM. NIGHT.
The door to a hospital room slowly opens and we see Louis in his hospital gown. He is hanging on to the door-frame and obviously exhausted and in much pain. He moves into the room, weaves, and leans against the wall to keep from falling. There is a single bed in this room. It is dark and a curtain is drawn most of the way around the bed, but Louis can see his mother's head and shoulders through the opening. She is asleep, obviously sedated, and Louis is shocked at her appearance.
LOUIS
Mom! Mom it's me!
Louis steps forward and throws back the curtain.
LOUIS
Oh, my God...
There is a figure leaning over his mother. It is the size of a child, but this is no child. The body is thin and white ... fish-belly white ... and the arms are skin and tendon wrapped around long bone. The hands are pale and enor-mous, fingers three times the length of those on a human hand. The head is huge and misshapen, brachycephalic, reminiscent of photographs of fetuses. The eyes are bruised holes from which two yellowed marbles, striated with mucus and yellow cataracts, stare out blindly ... but even though the thing must be blind, the yellow eyes dart back and forth purposely. The thing has no mouth, but the bones of its cheek and jaw seem to flow forward under white flesh to form a funnel, a long tapered snout of mus-cle and cartilage which ends in a perfectly round opening. This opening pulses as Louis watches, pale-pink sphincter muscles around the inner rim expanding and contracting as the thing breathes. It is a CANCER VAMPIRE.
LOUIS
Oh, dear God...
Louis staggers toward the thing, grasps the back of a chair to keep from falling. His expression changes from revul-sion to total horror as he watches the cancer vampire slowly, almost lovingly, pull back the thin blanket and topsheet above Louis's mother. The cancer vampire lowers its head until the opening of its obscene proboscis is inches above Louis's mother's chest. A SLIDING, RASP-ING is audible. Something appears in the flesh-rimmed opening of its snout ... something gray-green, segmented, and moist. Cartilage and muscle contract and a five-inch TUMOR SLUG is slowly extruded from the cancer vam-pire's proboscis and hangs wiggling above his sleeping mother.
FADE OUT
END ACT I
FADE IN on: ACT II
5. INT. HOSPITAL ROOM. NIGHT.
The moist slug falls softly onto his mother's bare skin. It coils, writhes, slides across his mother's chest, and bur-rows quickly away from the light. Into flesh. Into his mother.
LOUIS
Stop! ... Aw, no ... no
Louis staggers to the tray table, throws a glass at the can-cer vampire. The creature lifts its head as if sensing Lou-is's presence, stands, extends its impossibly long fingers, and drops out of sight behind the bed ... it remains stiffly upright as it disappears, as if a hydraulic lift were lowering it through the floor.