{"id":178,"date":"2013-07-21T12:21:47","date_gmt":"2013-07-21T12:21:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/?page_id=178"},"modified":"2025-05-08T22:30:45","modified_gmt":"2025-05-08T22:30:45","slug":"chapter-22","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/story\/chapter-22\/","title":{"rendered":"Chapter 22"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chapter 22<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

Why be a nurse, if not to nurture?\u00a0 Why be a caretaker, if not to care?\u00a0 Why work in a hospital, if not to heal?\u00a0 Why study medicine, if not to save?<\/i><\/p>\n

I am a nurse.\u00a0 I am a caretaker.\u00a0 I worked in a hospital.\u00a0 I studied medicine.<\/i><\/p>\n

I tried to nurture.\u00a0 I did care.\u00a0 But those people, those poor people, I could not heal.<\/i><\/p>\n

The souls who succumbed on Reaper\u2019s Sabbath, I could not save.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

Saturday, April 14, 2012<\/b>
\n7:00 a.m.<\/b><\/p>\n

In Tampa, it was the phone that woke Jo.\u00a0 She snapped into consciousness and fumbled for the cell phone on her bedside table.\u00a0 Blinking the sleep from her eyes, she squinted down at the name flashing at her on the screen and frowned.\u00a0 Work?\u00a0 Did she have the day wrong?\u00a0 It was supposed to be her day off.\u00a0 She had specifically requested April fourteenth off.\u00a0 Why, oh why, did the hospital have to call her on this, of all mornings?<\/p>\n

She got rid of a hearty groan before she flipped open her phone, instantly brightening her voice to its \u201cpleasant bedside manner\u201d tone in time to answer, \u201cHello?\u201d<\/p>\n

The voice on the other end wasn\u2019t at all pleasant.\u00a0 It was panicked.\u00a0 \u201cJo?\u00a0 It\u2019s Mike.\u00a0 Can you come in?\u201d<\/p>\n

Jo sighed.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t like the ER unit coordinator to be so abrupt, so she tried to turn him down gently.\u00a0 \u201cMike, I\u2019m off today.\u00a0 Sounds like you\u2019re slammed, but it\u2019s Gabby\u2019s birthday.\u00a0 She\u2019s having a party later.\u00a0 Can you call someone else?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve tried; there\u2019s no one else.\u00a0 We need you here; we need all the help we can get.\u00a0 It\u2019s bad, Jo\u2026 really bad.\u00a0 Everything\u2019s falling apart; people are dropping like flies.\u00a0 I think\u2026 I think I\u2019ve got it, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jo drew in a sharp breath as she sat up in bed.\u00a0 \u201cWhat??\u00a0 Got what?\u00a0 What\u2019s going on?\u201d<\/p>\n

Mike\u2019s voice was incredulous.\u00a0 \u201cDidn\u2019t you see the news yesterday?\u00a0 I mean, before it went off the air?\u00a0 It\u2019s this virus\u2026 it started up in the Northeast yesterday, but it\u2019s spread…\u00a0 This has got to be the same thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

An icy finger traced the length of Jo\u2019s spine, leaving shivers in its wake.\u00a0 Quickly, she thought back to yesterday.\u00a0 She\u2019d gotten off work at seven in the morning.\u00a0 She\u2019d picked up Gabby from Makayla\u2019s house, then gone to bed.\u00a0 She\u2019d slept until afternoon.\u00a0 She had tried to turn on the NBC Nightly News while she cooked dinner, but she\u2019d gotten only the rainbow color bars that signaled the station was off the air.\u00a0 The CBS Evening News was also having trouble; all she\u2019d seen on that channel was the CBS logo, frozen on the screen.\u00a0 And ABC had been simply static.\u00a0 She\u2019d flipped through the channels in confusion, noticing that some of the cable channels still worked, but many were simply dead air.<\/p>\n

Passing through the kitchen, Gabby had commented that it was weird and, with her head half in the fridge, babbled something about planes flying over Washington, D.C. that morning.\u00a0 Distracted by her cooking, Jo hadn\u2019t even caught it all, let alone connect it to what was happening with the TV.\u00a0 Must be a problem with the television signal<\/i>, she\u2019d thought, and wondered if she should call the cable company.\u00a0 She had shrugged off the notion, figuring her neighbors would have taken care of that by now.\u00a0 All she could do was wait.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t bother her.\u00a0 She wasn\u2019t a big television viewer, anyway, and Gabby could certainly live without TV for a night.<\/p>\n

They\u2019d put on a movie, instead, while they ate, letting the comedy on screen take the place of dinner conversation between them, or lack thereof.\u00a0 Even the stupidest of movies was better than awkward silence.\u00a0 When it was over, she and Gabby had each retreated to their separate rooms to read.\u00a0 Jo had nodded off, as she always did when she read in bed, and now it was morning.\u00a0 She had no idea what Mike was talking about, but she sensed she had missed something major.<\/p>\n

She let out her breath in another sigh.\u00a0 \u201cSo you need me to come in,\u201d she said, accepting her plight.\u00a0 Hopefully she could put in a few hours, until they got some back-up, then head home for Gabby\u2019s birthday sleepover.<\/p>\n

\u201cDesperately.\u201d\u00a0 Mike\u2019s voice was pleading.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlright.\u00a0 Give me half an hour or so.\u00a0 I\u2019ll be in.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSure.\u00a0 Thanks, Jo, you\u2019re a lifesaver.\u00a0 Oh, and hey \u2013 wear a mask.\u00a0 If you don\u2019t have one at home, stop at Walgreens on the way and get one, alright?\u00a0 This thing is serious\u2026 I don\u2019t want you gettin\u2019 sick.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cO-okay\u2026 I will,\u201d Jo replied, feeling that shivery sensation sliding down her spine again.\u00a0 Every ounce of instinct protested as she pushed back the covers and forced her legs out of bed.<\/p>\n

She ignored the bad feeling, dressing quickly and quietly in a pair of dark purple scrubs, in honor of Gabby\u2019s birthday.\u00a0 Purple was her favorite color.\u00a0 She slipped on a pair of Crocs and tiptoed up the hall, into the kitchen.\u00a0 She was in the middle of scrawling a note for her daughter when she heard a small voice ask, \u201cWhere are you going?\u201d<\/p>\n

Jo looked up, her pen poised over the notepad.\u00a0 Gabby was standing on the threshold in her pajamas, dark hair in tangles, eyes sleepy, yet suspicious.\u00a0 \u201cI thought you weren\u2019t going to work today.\u201d\u00a0 Her dark eyes flashed, wounded and accusatory.\u00a0 Her mouth puckered at the corners, scowling.\u00a0 \u201cOr did you forget it\u2019s my birthday?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course I didn\u2019t forget,\u201d Jo assured her, laughing.\u00a0 \u201cMike called; the hospital\u2019s jam-packed and short-staffed, and they need my help.\u00a0 Just for the morning, until they can bring some temps in.\u00a0 I\u2019ll be home in a few hours, I promise.\u00a0 Plenty of time to get ready for the slumber party.\u00a0 You go back to bed and don\u2019t worry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gabby heaved a huge sigh.\u00a0 \u201cI should have known you\u2019d get called in, even on your day off.\u00a0 Even on my birthday<\/i>.\u201d\u00a0 She rolled her eyes and turned on her heel, flouncing dramatically back to her bedroom.<\/p>\n

Jo shook her head after her daughter, now an official teenager.\u00a0 So this was what she had to look forward to for the next seven years.\u00a0 With a sigh of her own, she found her keys and her purse and slipped out of the house.\u00a0 The last words she shouted to Gabby before she closed and locked the door were, \u201cI\u2019ll be back later!\u201d<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Even through her surgical mask, Jo could detect the change in the air as she left the clear, bright Florida morning and entered the emergency room.\u00a0 The air inside the building was stagnant with the stench of vomit and death.\u00a0 Looking around in dismay, she could see why.<\/p>\n

The halls were lined with patients on gurneys, overflow from the already-full rooms.\u00a0 Some were writhing in misery; others appeared lifelessly still.\u00a0 The curtained areas were packed with still more sick people, as were the waiting rooms.\u00a0 Jo tried to block out their frightened cries as she hurried past them.<\/p>\n

An old woman with wide, half-crazed eyes reached out to her with a gnarled, sore-spotted hand, ranting, \u201cAnd God said to Noah, \u2018I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them!\u00a0 Now I am going to destroy them along with the earth!\u00a0 I am going to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life!\u00a0 Everything that is on the earth shall die!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNot if I can help it!\u201d Jo shouted over her shoulder as she jogged by, heading for the nurses station.\u00a0 For as jam-packed as the emergency ward was, she would have expected the central hub of the ER to be bustling with activity.\u00a0 She was surprised when she found the nurses station all but deserted.\u00a0 She set her purse down on the hexagonal counter and stepped around to the inside.<\/p>\n

A weak groan drew her eyes to the floor.\u00a0 There, slumped against the counter, was the very man whom she\u2019d spoken to on the phone less than an hour ago.\u00a0 Instantly, she dropped to her knees beside him.\u00a0 \u201cMike?\u201d\u00a0 She gently shook his shoulder.\u00a0 The large man lifted his drooping head; his blonde curls were plastered to his scalp with sweat, and there were flecks of dried vomit caked in his stubble of beard.<\/p>\n

He looked at her blearily, blinking a few times, as if trying to focus his vision.\u00a0 \u201cJo,\u201d he croaked.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, Mike\u2026\u201d\u00a0 She shook her head, looking at him in pity.\u00a0 \u201cI had no idea it was this bad.\u00a0 On the phone, you-\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s worse than I thought.\u00a0 It comes on quick\u2026 kills even quicker.\u00a0 You shouldn\u2019t have come,\u201d he murmured, closing his eyes.\u00a0 \u201cI know I called\u2026 but you shouldn\u2019t have come here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou need my help,\u201d Jo asserted, struggling to keep her voice calm while her heart slammed against her ribs.\u00a0 \u201cI can help.\u00a0 Let\u2019s start by getting you into a bed.\u00a0 Can you stand?\u201d<\/p>\n

She reached out to help him, but Mike shook his head.\u00a0 \u201cThere are no beds.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSure there are; we\u2019ll find something.\u00a0 I\u2019ll get some help.\u00a0 Where is everyone else?\u201d<\/p>\n

Again, he shook his head in defeat.\u00a0 \u201cThere is no one else.\u00a0 Not that I\u2019ve seen.\u00a0 They\u2019re all gone.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGone?\u00a0 What do you mean, gone?\u00a0 They left??\u201d\u00a0 She stared at him incredulously, unable to believe that her coworkers could have bailed and left the ER like this.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo\u2026 dead.\u00a0 Or close to it.\u201d\u00a0 He began to cough then, racking coughs that shook his heavy body.\u00a0 \u201c\u2019Fraid I\u2019m not far behind them,\u201d he whispered, as he looked up at her miserably, his blue eyes full of tears.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t say that,\u201d Jo ordered briskly, giving him a little shake as his chin started to droop to his chest again.\u00a0 \u201cStay with me, Mike; I\u2019m not going to let you die.\u00a0 Wait here while I find some help\u2026 I\u2019ll be right back.\u00a0 Just hold on.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Jo stood up, a little voice in the back of her head told her not to leave him, but the logical side of her argued with it.\u00a0 Surely, there had to be someone left who knew what was going on, who could help.\u00a0 There had to be a doctor on call.\u00a0 This was the hospital; this was the Emergency Room.\u00a0 Even when it was understaffed due to illness or bad weather or whatever it may be, there were doctors on call.<\/p>\n

She headed for the staff lounge first, expecting to find at least someone at the coffee pot, loading up on caffeine to get through the morning.\u00a0 But at first glance, the lounge, like the nurses station, appeared empty.\u00a0 The coffee pot was half full, but one whiff told her it was stale.\u00a0 It had likely been sitting there half the night.\u00a0 She turned, and that was when she noticed the lone figure slumped over the length of the couch, one arm dangling to the floor.<\/p>\n

Jo approached cautiously and knelt down on the floor beside the couch.\u00a0 As she did, the smell of vomit overpowered the faint aroma of the coffee.\u00a0\u00a0 She pushed aside a wastebasket, which had been dragged up alongside the sofa.\u00a0 Congealed vomit ran down its sides.\u00a0 The woman on the couch was lying on her belly, her dark hair in her face.\u00a0 It, too, was crusted with vomit.\u00a0 Gingerly, Jo brushed it out of the woman\u2019s eyes.\u00a0 When she recognized her face, she drew in a low breath and released it shakily.\u00a0 \u201cDr. Tavarez?\u201d she asked, rubbing the shoulder of the resident with whom she\u2019d worked the occasional night shift.\u00a0 \u201cAna?\u201d<\/p>\n

There was no response from the young doctor, not the slightest movement.\u00a0 Fearing the worst, Jo reached for her wrist.\u00a0 Picking up her arm, she saw that it was covered in open sores, the same kind she\u2019d seen on the old woman in the hall.\u00a0 Mike, she recalled, had had some on his face.\u00a0 They looked like chickenpox, only larger, deeper.\u00a0 She wished she was wearing gloves, but there was little time.\u00a0 Touching only where necessary, she pressed her middle fingers against the radial artery in the doctor\u2019s wrist to feel for a pulse.\u00a0 She felt nothing.<\/p>\n

Noticing Dr. Tavarez\u2019s own stethoscope lying on the floor next to her, Jo picked it up and slipped it into her ears.\u00a0 She slid its round end down the front of the doctor\u2019s scrub top and listened, but there were no breath sounds and no heartbeat.\u00a0 At first, she kept moving the scope around, thinking surely she was missing something, surely she wasn\u2019t listening in the right place.\u00a0 But soon, disbelief gave way to dejection, and she let the stethoscope fall.<\/p>\n

Dr. Tavarez was dead.\u00a0 How many others would she find in the same state?<\/p>\n

Trying to keep her mind focused on the task at hand, and not let it wander, Jo washed her hands at the sink, scrubbing until they were pink and raw.\u00a0 She covered them with latex gloves.\u00a0 Slinging her own stethoscope around her neck, she left the lounge.\u00a0 In the hall, she paused and looked around.\u00a0 With gurneys lining the halls and no other staff in sight, the ER suddenly seemed overwhelming.\u00a0 How was she going to get to everyone, all on her own?<\/p>\n

She decided she would start by checking on Mike.\u00a0 Then she would make rounds, seeing every patient, starting with the ones in the rooms, then the ones in the hall, and finally, those in the waiting room.\u00a0 She would do what she could to treat them and make them comfortable, and while she worked, she would look for the rest of the staff.\u00a0 It seemed as good a plan as any, and so Jo jogged back to the nurses station.<\/p>\n

Her composure quickly lapsed back into panic when she rounded the counter and found Mike in the throes of a grand mal seizure.\u00a0 His eyes were rolled back in his head, exposing only the whites, and flecks of foam bubbled at the corners of his gasping mouth, as his body convulsed violently on the floor.\u00a0 One arm kept knocking against a cabinet as it jerked, putting an audible rhythm to his spasms.\u00a0 Thwack.\u00a0 Thwack.\u00a0 Thwack.<\/i><\/p>\n

Jo had witnessed plenty of seizures in the ER, but that didn\u2019t stop them from being scary.\u00a0 Especially when it someone she knew twitching like that.\u00a0 But she couldn\u2019t let her emotions get the best of her.\u00a0 She knew what to do.\u00a0 She could stop it.\u00a0 Dilantin<\/i>, she thought.\u00a0 That was the drug of choice for treating a seizure.\u00a0 As an R.N., she wasn\u2019t allowed to prescribe it herself, but in this case, she didn\u2019t care about the rules.\u00a0 There wasn\u2019t a doctor in sight, and if she didn\u2019t medicate Mike and stop the seizure, he could hurt himself, even suffer brain damage.<\/p>\n

Without a second thought, she went racing to the drug lock-up and tore open the cabinet where the Dilantin was kept.\u00a0 She knew this room like the back of her hand, had helped organize it, even.\u00a0 In trauma situations, she was usually the one sent scurrying to get whatever medication the doctor ordered, and so she knew just where the Dilantin would be.\u00a0 Or should be.\u00a0 But the shelves were hopelessly empty.<\/p>\n

Breathing fast, she rummaged through the other shelves, other cabinets, checking labels on bottles and boxes before she shoved them aside.\u00a0 But there were no anti-seizure drugs to be found in the ER.\u00a0 And then Jo realized\u2026\u00a0 They must have used their entire stock on the influx of patients with the virus.<\/p>\n

Sighing in defeat, she left the drug lock-up and returned to check on Mike.\u00a0 Thankfully, his seizure had stopped.\u00a0 He lay motionless on the floor, unconscious, but still breathing.\u00a0 There was not much else she could do for him until she had a hospital bed with medical equipment for him.\u00a0 With that thought in mind, she set about her original plan, to scope out the rest of the ER.<\/p>\n

The patient in the first room she checked was a man, about her age, and he was dead.\u00a0 The patient in the second room, a woman, was also dead.\u00a0 Her attention was drawn to the third room by the unmistakable noise of a heart monitor sounding an alarm, and she rushed in to find a young man, no older than twenty-five, unresponsive in his bed.\u00a0 His dusky skin was blemished with the same sores that plagued the other patients and Dr. Tavarez.\u00a0 Oxygen was still flowing through the mask that covered his mouth and nose, but the waves on his EKG did not rise and fall with any sort of regularity.\u00a0 The line on the monitor was chaotic, like a child\u2019s scribble, a cardiac rhythm she recognized as ventricular fibrillation.\u00a0 The man\u2019s heart wasn\u2019t beating, only fluttering.\u00a0 It was not pumping any blood, and she knew that if she did not do something to restore it to its normal rhythm, it would stop altogether, and the man would die.<\/p>\n

She looked around for a crash cart.\u00a0 If she could shock his heart, she might be able to save him.\u00a0 There was no defibrillator in the room, so she rushed out into the hall, searching wildly.\u00a0 She spotted one of the red carts that carried a defibrillator parked next to a teenage girl on a gurney.\u00a0 The girl was dead and topless, her shirt torn right off her chest so that she could be shocked back to life.\u00a0 Whoever had done it had been unsuccessful.<\/p>\n

Swallowing with difficulty, Jo grabbed the crash cart and dragged it into the room with the young man.\u00a0 She got the defibrillator ready, charging the paddles and slapping pads onto the man\u2019s chest and side to take the shock.\u00a0 When she defibrillated him, his whole body jerked up from the bed with the surge of electricity, but the rhythm on the heart monitor didn\u2019t change.\u00a0 She shocked him a second time, and then a third, when the monitor suddenly flatlined.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo\u2026\u201d Jo moaned, throwing the paddles aside.\u00a0 She began chest compressions, trying in vain to keep blood flowing through the man\u2019s virus-ravaged body.\u00a0 She could feel the fever on his skin, and the pustules popping beneath her palms as she pumped his bare chest.\u00a0 She knew she was over her head, with no one around to assist her, no one to monitor his oxygen or inject his IV with drugs that might stimulate his heart.\u00a0 After some time, she knew it was over.\u00a0 The man was dead.\u00a0 She was not going to bring him back.<\/p>\n

She took a shaky breath as she stripped off her gloves and wiped the perspiration from her forehead with the back of her wrist.\u00a0 Her eyes shifted to the clock, as they always did when a death was called, but as a nurse, it wasn\u2019t her right to pronounce a death.\u00a0 Only a doctor could do that.\u00a0 Even so, she found the man\u2019s chart by the foot of his bed and noted the time on it.\u00a0 8:34.<\/p>\n

Shoulders slumped in defeat, she made her way into the next room, and the next.\u00a0 There was nothing in either to encourage her.\u00a0 In one of the trauma rooms, she found one of the attending physicians and two of her fellow nurses, people she had known and worked with for years, slumped lifelessly on the floor around the gurney that held their patient.<\/p>\n

Every last one of them was dead.<\/p>\n

The situation in the hallway wasn\u2019t much better.\u00a0 Most of the patients who had been brought in too late to get a real bed had passed away in the hall.\u00a0 Even the raving old woman who had shouted Bible verses at Jo as she\u2019d come in was now silent and still on her gurney, her sore-covered arm hanging limply through the metal rail.\u00a0 There wasn\u2019t even a clean sheet nearby with which to cover her.<\/p>\n

She returned to the nurses station to check on Mike.\u00a0 She wouldn\u2019t have thought there was much more that could shock her on that morning, but she got a terribly familiar jolt when she knelt down to check his breathing and pulse and found both vital signs absent.\u00a0 In the time it had taken her to circle the ER and fail to save the only other living person she\u2019d encountered, he, too, had slipped away, another countless victim to the virus that had taken over the hospital.<\/p>\n

Letting his wrist droop to his chest, she felt the prickle of tears behind her eyes, as her former panic descended into despair.\u00a0 She sank all the way to the floor, letting the coolness of the tile seep through the seat of her scrubs.\u00a0 She was already shivering, but it had little to do with the cold.\u00a0 There was nothing else she could do, and as a nurse, there was nothing she hated more than feeling helpless.<\/p>\n

Uninvited, thoughts of Luis entered her mind, the memory of sitting on the cold, tiled floor of her kitchen while her husband died in her arms.\u00a0 Even though she\u2019d witnessed the same thing happen to far too many patients in the ER trauma room, even with a team of doctors and nurses working on them, she had always blamed herself for not being able to save him, or least keep him alive until the ambulance got there.<\/p>\n

And now she wondered, was there no saving anyone this virus struck?\u00a0 Were they all doomed to die of it, every last person exposed?\u00a0 How long would it take for the symptoms to claim her, too?<\/p>\n

Swiping her eyes with the back of her hand, she took a deep breath and forced herself to get up.\u00a0 She left the nurses station, where Mike lay, dead, but still warm, and wandered back down the hall.\u00a0 She came across the dead girl she\u2019d found the crash cart near, still lying half-naked on the gurney, her small breasts pointing towards the open air.\u00a0 She looked only a few years older than Gabby, and Jo\u2019s heart twisted with agony as she looked at her.\u00a0 The girl was far past feeling, but Jo felt for her, remembering how self-conscious teenage girls were about their bodies.\u00a0 Dead or not, it wasn\u2019t right to leave this girl exposed in the hallway.<\/p>\n

There was no one else around to see her, no one living, at least, but still, it made Jo uncomfortable to leave her there, and so she wheeled the gurney towards the elevator.\u00a0 If she could not save her, the least she could do was take her down the morgue, where she could find something with which to cover her.<\/p>\n

The elevator came unusually quickly, for there was no one else trying to ride it, and indeed, when it opened, it was empty.\u00a0 There was no elevator music playing, only eerie silence, as Jo pushed the gurney in.\u00a0 She pressed the button for the ground level and stared at the closed doors for the short ride down.\u00a0 She could not look at the dead girl next to her.<\/p>\n

When the doors slid open again, she pushed the gurney into the hall.\u00a0 It was chilly down on this level; they kept the air conditioning cranked up high for the sake of the bodies.\u00a0 The air only got cooler as Jo entered the morgue.\u00a0 Her mouth fell open as she looked around in dismay.\u00a0 Every autopsy table, every drawer that was open, held a body.\u00a0 They were nearly identical in death:\u00a0 ashen skin, pocked with festering, purple-red lesions.\u00a0 All victims of the virus.<\/p>\n

Several of the corpses had already been dissected for autopsy; their chest cavities were open wide, flaps of skin drawn back.\u00a0 But where was the medical examiner?\u00a0 Jo looked around and noticed a closed door on one side of the room.\u00a0 She hadn\u2019t spent much time down here, but guessed it led to an office.\u00a0 She strode across the room, taking care to avoid looking at any of the corpses, and knocked twice on the door.\u00a0 No answer.\u00a0 She knocked once more and waited a few seconds before tentatively turning the knob.<\/p>\n

Opening the door, she found herself looking in on the medical examiner\u2019s office.\u00a0 It was typical of any doctor\u2019s office \u2013 well-stocked bookshelves, filing cabinets, a large desk with a computer, and a leather office chair\u2026 in which a man was slumped, facedown over his keyboard, as if he\u2019d simply collapsed in the middle of typing a memo.<\/p>\n

Jo rushed to him, knowing, from previous experience, that she was already too late.\u00a0 Indeed, the coroner was without a pulse, the heat already leaving his body.\u00a0 She sighed behind her mask, feeling even more desperate than before.\u00a0 But before she turned away, she noticed the cursor flashing on his computer monitor, where he had, indeed, been typing a memo of some sort.\u00a0 His findings on the effects of the virus, it seemed.\u00a0 Jo paused to read it, her eyes skimming over the text.\u00a0 Disturbing phrases popped out at her.\u00a0 \u201c\u2026 virus of unknown origin\u2026 effects primarily nervous and digestive systems, leading to cardiac and respiratory failure secondary to brain deterioration\u2026 causes high fever, skin lesions, vomiting, headache, seizures, leading to death\u2026\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

On a sticky note placed on the desktop to the side of his keyboard, where his cold hand now rested, he\u2019d jotted a few extra notes.\u00a0 These were the most jarring of all.<\/p>\n

strain:\u00a0 unidentified<\/i>
\ncause:\u00a0 unknown<\/i>
\nincubation period:\u00a0 short!\u00a0 <10 hrs<\/i>
\ntransmission:\u00a0 airborne<\/i>
\nmortality rate:\u00a0 ~100%<\/i><\/p>\n

Trembling all over, Jo stumbled back, afraid, for a moment, that she would faint.\u00a0 She didn\u2019t faint, though.\u00a0 She regained her composure enough to scramble out of office.\u00a0 Leaving the girl she\u2019d brought down with the other bodies, she ran for the elevator, and when its doors did not open instantly, she took the stairs.\u00a0 She welcomed the noise of her pounding feet echoing in the stairwell as she jogged up, and she didn\u2019t stop after one flight.\u00a0 She continued up a second flight, and then a third, bypassing both the ER and the surgical floor.\u00a0 Finally, panting, she stopped on the third story landing and hunched over, hands on her knees, to catch her breath.\u00a0 Then she pushed through the heavy door.<\/p>\n

She was in the Neuro wing now, where patients with head trauma were admitted.\u00a0 As she entered the quiet corridor, Jo thought for sure she would find staff here who could help.\u00a0 No one with the virus should have been brought to this floor.\u00a0 But as she started down the hall, she quickly discovered she was wrong.<\/p>\n

At first, she thought the lumps of hospital blue and sterile white were piles of discarded scrubs, tossed aside like soiled bed linen.\u00a0 But as she came closer, she recognized hair and shoes and realized they were people, doctors and nurses and custodians, slumped on the floor where they had collapsed and died.\u00a0 After checking for pulses on the first two she came to, she knew she did not need to check the others.<\/p>\n

Fighting tears, she continued down the hall, checking patient rooms, on the off-chance she might find someone alive.\u00a0 But the sights and sounds were the same in every room:\u00a0 a patient or two, lifeless in bed, with EKG alarms wailing out the solitary tone that signaled cardiac arrest.\u00a0 Every heart monitor that was on showed a flatline, the numbers representing heart rate, blood pressure, breaths, and oxygen saturation reading zero.<\/p>\n

There were no signs of life on this floor.<\/p>\n

That was, until she reached the very last room.\u00a0 Thumping sounds attracted Jo\u2019s attention outside the room, and she ran to the doorway.\u00a0 But any last ounce of hope she\u2019d held onto drained away when she looked in and discovered the source of the sounds:\u00a0 they were the product of the rhythmic convulsions of a blonde man in the midst of a seizure.\u00a0 She got close enough to his shaking bed to realize that she recognized him:\u00a0 he was the same man she had treated for a concussion and scalp laceration during her last night shift in the ER.\u00a0 Surely, he\u2019d never expected to enter the hospital with a bump on the head and succumb there to a virus that offered virtually no chance of survival.<\/p>\n

Watching him convulse, his spittle foaming up in the corners of his mouth, she remembered Mike, and she couldn\u2019t stand it any longer.\u00a0 She turned and ran, ran almost blindly, until she slammed against the door through which she had come.\u00a0 She yanked it open and practically threw herself back into the stairwell, but once there, she stopped, clutching at her chest for breath.\u00a0 She could feel herself starting to hyperventilate.\u00a0 Shrinking back into the wall, she slid to the floor, bending her legs at the knees.\u00a0 There, she clutched her knees to her chest, hugging herself in a ball.\u00a0 And she rocked.<\/p>\n

The motion evened out her hysterical breaths, and she released the emotion that had been building in her chest since she\u2019d first set foot in the ER.\u00a0 The dam which had been holding back her tears broke, and out they poured, as she began to sob.<\/p>\n

Eventually, the tears gave way to sniffles, and finally, nothing but her regular breathing to break the stifling silence of the stairwell.\u00a0 She sat there, on the landing, for much longer than needed, but what else was there to do?\u00a0 Where else was there to go?\u00a0 She dreaded the thought of checking another floor, and finding more bodies of people like her, hospital staff she recognized, but she could not go home.\u00a0 She feared the virus was on her now, in her, no matter the precautions she\u2019d taken to protect herself.\u00a0 If she carried it home, she\u2019d risk exposing others… most importantly, Gabby.<\/p>\n

She would stay at the hospital, and if she fell ill, like the others, then she would die there, too.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter 22 Why be a nurse, if not to nurture?\u00a0 Why be a caretaker, if not to care?\u00a0 Why work in a hospital, if not to heal?\u00a0 Why study medicine, if not to save? I am a nurse.\u00a0 I am … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":8,"menu_order":22,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"onecolumn-page.php","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/178"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":595,"href":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/178\/revisions\/595"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}