You Pay For What You Take [FICTOID]

“What are you doing to our hospital?!?!?”

“Carving it,” said Leon Skum, wielding a jackhammer.

“But why?”

“I want a castle.”

“But you’re a gazillionaire!  Build a castle to your own specifications!”

“Takes too long.  I can just modify this hospital instead.”

“But what about the patients?”

“They need to go.  Have you seen them?  Yuck!  All sick and injured and mutilated and dying in pain, dripping blood and pus and urine and feces everywhere.  Get them out, can’t have them in my castle.”

“But this isn’t your castle!  It’s our hospital.”

“It’s my castle now.”

“You don’t even own it!”

“I don’t need to own it.  I’m a gazillionaire.  I just tell people I own it and they believe me.”

“We’ll stop you!  We’ll go to court -- “

“Own them, too.”

“You don’t even live here!”

“What difference does that make?  I want a castle, this hospital is the right size, I’m taking it.”

Bit by bit Leon Skum carved away at the hospital.  He cut off water and electricity, causing patients to die on the operating table, in the emergency room, in intensive care.  He ordered his minions to load all non-ambulatory patients on wheelchairs and gurneys then rolled them six blocks away, dumping them on the sidewalk while returning the wheelchairs and gurneys to sell to a medical supply house.

He not only billed the patients for transporting them, he also billed them saying their illnesses and injuries forced him to clean and carve the hospital before he could use it as a castle.

Skum capped everything off by using his influence to silence all public health officials and agencies in the United States.

In China, however, there was an outbreak in one of their labs and a strain of genetically modified lizards escaped into the wild.

These lizards -- genetically modified to grow into dragons -- made their way to the United States, seeking a home.

With no public health warnings, they bred with impunity.

At last they found a place to establish their nesting colony:  Leon Skum’s hospital-cum-castle.

“You can’t have this!” Leon shouted at them.  “It’s mine -- MINE!  I’m a gazillionaire!”

“No, you are delicious,” said the dragons.

© Buzz Dixon