She led us into an empty smaller lab space and leaned into a table as if needing it for support. This room had been picked clean after Doctor M and Lori had tried to reconstruct the lab that had been destroyed. There were a few pieces of lab equipment lying about, but that was it.
“What is it?” I asked as I moved closer to her, but she put up a hand to tell me to give her some space.
I followed her unspoken instructions and stopped a few feet away from her even when I desperately wanted to hold her. She was the one who was bitten, not me. It was selfish of me to think of myself, so I pushed that need away and waited.
She looked down at the floor, and I could tell she was working herself up to say something. In my heart, I guessed what she was going to say, and, even more desperately, I did not want to hear it.
She evidently had the courage to say it, though. “Joel, you know this isn’t going to work, right?” She asked as she looked up at me. Her eyes were rimmed with tears, but she was doing her best to hold them back.
“You...we don’t know that,” I said. “This might work.”
“You have to promise me this,” she said, her lip quivering a little. “If it does not work...you will take care of me.”
My tongue felt thick and useless, and my mouth went dry. I tried to talk, but my mouth only opened and closed wordlessly for a couple of seconds.
“You have to promise me, and you have to say it out loud,” she said. “You will not let me become one of those things. I cannot live with the idea that I might hurt someone else. If you do not make me that promise right now, I will leave this room and jump out a window. Do you hear me?”
“Yes,” I said, but the word was barely more than a whisper.
“Promise me that you will do it,” she said, the tears gone from her eyes and replaced with a fierce resolve that chilled me to my bones.
I did my best to find that same resolve, reaching deep. “Yes, I promise.”
She hugged herself as the courage she just displayed washed away and said, “Okay, get Lori, or Doctor M. We can use one of the rooms at the end of the hall. I don’t want to be around the others.”
“Sure,” I said. I was becoming the man of few words. I guess facing the imminent death of the person you find most precious on this world can rob you of your words.
I watched her walk slowly down the hall, and it was as if she were walking the path on death row. In truth, she wasn’t far from it unless there was a miracle in the works with Doctor M’s vaccine.
As it turned out, Doctor M washed his hands of us and Lori elected to administer the vaccine. We both entered the room Kara selected. It was a simple affair with just a hospital bed and a folding chair for me to sit beside to monitor Kara’s condition. There was a mirror attached to the wall, but neither of us was in the mood to do a beauty check. I think it had been used to host patients used in experiments in the past. How fitting.
Lori moved the chair while Kara reclined on the bed. Being a world-class coward, I stood back in the doorway.
“Lori, what do you think will happen?” Kara asked, her voice was flat and emotionless.
Lori faced away from me, but I watched as her back stiffened. “This virus is unlike anything we’ve seen. Doctor M, Doctor Tatis, and I worked day and night searching for a cure.”
“Who’s Doctor Tatis?” Kara asked, rising slightly on the bed.
“Oh,” Lori said, and she wore a stricken expression for several seconds before continuing. “He was with us at the beginning. He was bitten in one of the early experiments. We had to…”
“I guess he became one of the experiments,” Kara said, trying to keep things light, but there was no humor in her voice.
“Yes,” Lori replied. “We learned a lot from him.”
“Like you’ll learn a lot from me.”
I stepped into the room and said, “We’ll learn that Doctor M’s concoction can cure you, or, at least, stave off the virus until we can find something else.”
Kara looked around Lori’s shoulder and smiled at me. It was the smile an adult gives a child when they’ve said something spectacularly stupid. She let her head fall back on the pillow.
“I hate that a dose is wasted on me when it can be used on one of you,” she said, putting a hand over her eyes.
“There’s not enough for everyone, so using this one won’t make that big of a difference,” Lori said. “Are you ready?”
Kara kept her arm draped over her eyes, as if not wanting to see it coming and said, “Ready as I ever will be.” She put her other arm on display for Lori. “Wait. Joel, please come over here.”
I felt rooted in the door, my body feeling as if it were someone else’s, and I were just borrowing it. It took me a few seconds to break free from my trance, and I was at Kara’s side.
“What do you need?” I asked.
“Hold my other hand, will you?” She asked.
“I can do that forever,” I said as I took her hand.
The tears were coming again, but she wasn’t all out sobbing. They were quiet ones, leaking out of the corners of her eyes. “Let’s get this over with,” she said.
“Okay,” Lori said as she opened a small plastic box and removed a syringe and a vial. She used the needle to pull the amber-colored liquid out of the vial and into the syringe. She closed the case, put it aside, and flicked the syringe to knock out any air bubbles. She looked to Kara and said, “This will sting a little.”
“Okay,” Kara said, her voice cracking a little.
Lori didn’t say anything else, but as gently as she could, she injected Kara’s upper arm with the syringe. For her part, Kara only winced a little as the needle went in. It was over in less than ten seconds.
Now, came the waiting. And the praying.
Chapter 10
The Vigil
At first, nothing happened. When the night was finally over, I wished it would have stayed that way.
Sometimes we talked, maneuvering around the reality of our situation. A couple of times, Kara had me pray with her, but that was a stretch for me. I didn’t feel all that blessed at that moment.
At other times, we sat in silence. I did everything to not look at her as if it was the last time I would see her. I didn’t want to look at her as if she might just break into tiny little pieces and blow away.
That was hard. The truth was that if the vaccine didn’t work, she would slowly die. Then she would reanimate, and I would have to do something to stop that before it started. Contemplating that was ten times worse than trying not to look at her as if it was the last time.
Every hour, Richard would appear to take Kara’s vitals. It was easy to tell that he had been a good nurse. His bedside manner was exquisite. He knew when to talk and when to be quiet.
Everything was good for about four hours, but Kara spiked a fever. It was only 101 degrees, but any sign of an elevated temperature was a bad sign for someone infected with the zombie virus. A fever was usually a harbinger of bad things to come.
Richard tried not to ring the alarm bell, but it was easy to detect a shift in his demeanor and a certain reservation in his tone. He glanced at me sideways, and I saw it in his eyes. When he went to do a blood draw, she looked away, and he used that distraction to look at me and mouth the words, ‘One oh one.”
My heart sank, but I had to think that maybe this was the vaccine at work. That it was only a matter of time before she rallied, and those fever spots I saw on her forehead disappeared. Those bloodshot eyes would go clear, and she would return to full health. Yes, it was only a matter of time.
Nothing in Richard’s eyes said anything like that, though. Instead, I only saw pity.
When he left the room, there was something in me that wanted to follow him out, but there was no escape. I would stay until the bitter end, whichever way it went.
The room was small and cramped, and I felt like a trapped animal. If I decided to pace across it, it was only two steps in one direction and two steps back. Defin
itely not aerobic by anyone’s standards.
“Joel,” Kara said, “can you please sit down?”
“Sure,” I said, and I immediately sat down beside her. Then for the millionth time, I asked how she was, and she shot me a look. I had been forbidden to ask that after the last hundred times.
She finally broke down and said, “I feel sort of cold and hot at the same time.”
What to say? Tell the truth and let her know that she had a fever and that it would only get worse from here on? Hell no.
“It’s probably the vaccine doing its job.”
“You think so?”
“I’m not a doctor, but I’ve seen one on TV.”
She coughed, and her face tightened up for a moment, then she said, “Joel,” as she shook her head. “Brave up until the very end. Always hiding behind your jokes.”
“Don’t say that,” I said, leaning in close to her and taking her hand. “This is not the end.”
“You think I don’t know I have a fever? I’m a nurse. I know all the signs. I treated Hub back at the Manor when he was infected. This is not going to work. I have all the signs that the virus is starting to go on the move. It’s only a matter of time.”
I let go of her hand and started to stand as I said, “Maybe a double dose.”
She grabbed my hand and tugged me back down into my seat with more force than I thought she should be capable of. “No, you can’t waste a second dose on me. I won’t allow it.”
“Richard’s doing these blood draws, and Doctor M and Lori are testing them,” I said. “Maybe they see something we don't?”
“My poor Joel,” she said. “Despite the sarcasm and dark humor, you are the eternal optimist.”
“Someone has to be,” I said, feeling no optimism at all. “Let me go check with them and see what they see in the tests.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Before leaving, I bent over and gave her a kiss on the forehead. It felt too warm. I whispered, “There’s always hope.”
I hurried down the hall and rushed into the lab where I found Doctor M, Lori, and Richard huddled up around a microscope. Doctor M was bent over it, fiddling with a knob. All of them looked up when they heard me enter the room.
Naveen rubbed sleep from her eyes and asked, “How is Kara?”
“Holding her own,” I said as I walked past her. I felt bad about being so terse, but I only had so much energy to give at that point, and all of it was going to Kara.
Brother Ed, who was seated in a faux leather, hospital recliner, sat up and said, “I’m praying for her.” But he had that expression people carried on their face when they had already resigned themselves to the worst.
Again, I had no energy for that, so I moved on.
When I got with Doctor M, Lori, and Richard, I said, “Tell me something good.”
Doctor M cleared his throat and puffed out his chest a little before he spoke. “Well, we’ve not seen anything like this in our trials before. It seems as if her antibodies are putting up a fight, and there are subtle changes in her proteins. It’s as if they are mutating in response to the infection in a very different way than we have seen in the past. Plus, there is a noticeable increase in lymphocytes.”
I felt a swell of hope. “And that’s a good thing, right?”
“Well, yes, and no,” Doctor M said. “When an antigen enters the body for the first time, it is the hardest fight for the body to repel it. My vaccine boosts the body’s ability to fight off the antigen by introducing a new antigen which allows the body to increase the production of antibodies to fight off the infection.”
“So, the vaccine is working even when Kara has spiked a fever?”
“We need more tests,” Doctor M said, but he didn’t look me in the eyes.
“What are you not telling me?” I asked.
Doctor M fidgeted with the microscope, and Lori had the same pitying look that Richard had shared with me back in the room.
“For fuck’s sake,” Richard said. “Stop using your tight-ass scientific mumbo-jumbo and tell him what’s going on.”
Lori shot Richard a look then darted her eyes in Naveen’s direction. “Please keep it down, young ears are listening. Don’t dash her hopes if there’s any chance.”
Richard slowly shook his head and said, “Sorry.”
Doctor M sighed and said, “Joel, as we said from the start, this is a long shot. We have seen the proteins react in a way we have never seen before, and that is encouraging, but in the end, it is only a vaccine. The damage was done when she was bitten, and there is little we can do.”
“Can’t we call the people down in Cincinnati?” I asked.
“Yes, they went in a different direction as they looked for a cure, but as you have heard, they have made almost no progress.”
I looked to Lori, but she teetered on the edge of tears herself. “Lori, throw me a bone. There’s got to be some hope. Doesn’t there?”
She closed her eyes, obviously trying to find a way to remain composed. When she opened them, she said, “Joel, there’s always hope, but it does not look good.”
When I walked back down the hall, I would imagine that I looked like a man on death row making that final walk. I made it to the doorway but stood just outside it for several seconds, trying to find the will to walk in. Searching for anything, I sent up a desperate prayer skyward but got no sense it went anywhere. You’d think there’d at least be some confirmation or something, but I had a big fat nothing.
I gutted it out on my own and walked into the room.
Kara almost immediately asked, “What did they say?”
“Doctor M says there are some really interesting things going on with your proteins. Wow, go proteins.” I pumped a fist in the air in a muted celebration. “Something could really happen.”
Her face flushed, and she, once again, put on that brave smile. “Joel Hendricks, you never were a good liar.”
Chapter 11
The Longest Night
It was all downhill from there. Kara’s temperature gradually climbed, reaching 105 degrees by midnight. By then, she was nearly delirious.
The room seemed tiny, as if the walls were closing in on us. We had a small battery powered light sitting in the corner, casting long shadows across the ceiling and leaving our faces lost in darkness with only glints of light coming off our eyes. It was the perfect ambiance for dying.
“Joel, I’m cold,” she said through chattering teeth.
“I know,” I said. “I can get you another blanket.”
“No, no, don’t leave me,” she said. Sweat poured down her forehead and face.
I had no intention of leaving, but I would rather have been anywhere else on the planet. If someone had been looking for volunteers to face off a few hundred zombies down in the plaza, I’d be first in line to sign up. But the truth of the matter was, if she had to go through it, I’d be there through every minute of it. Even though it broke my heart into a thousand pieces.
“Joel, you’ll take care of Naveen, right?” She asked.
“I won’t let anything happen to her.”
She was silent for over a minute. The only sound was her long raspy breaths.
“Joel, what would we have named the baby?”
Oh shit. That just reinforced the fact that I wasn’t just losing the love of my life, but also my child. I didn’t see how this night could get any worse. Until it did.
“I don’t know,” I said and my eyes stung with tears. “With all that’s going on, I never thought of it.”
“I always like Ella,” she said. “My grandmother was Eleanor. I know it’s old-fashioned, but I like it.”
“Yeah, that’s a fine name,” I said. Discussing the names of a baby I would never know was literally killing me. It took everything in me either not to break down or to tell her not to ask these questions, but I knew it was the delirium speaking.
“What about for a boy?” She asked.
“I don’t know, honey,�
�� I said. It felt like someone was ripping my insides out.
“Do you like Finn?” She asked.
“That’s a fine name,” I said, even though I hated it.
“I sort of like something plain, like Jack.”
“Yeah, that’s a good one, too.”
The silence stretched out longer now. The spaces between her breaths were a lot longer. There was a moment that I thought I counted ten seconds between one breath and the next. Each one of these breaths just put off the inevitable, but as much as it was tearing me to pieces, I wanted to hear each one. I wanted to listen to her voice. I wanted to feel her hand. I wanted her to stay alive.
I heard the sound of footsteps outside, and Richard’s face appeared in the doorway, his eyes looking like dark holes.
“You want me to check her again?” He asked.
A part of me wanted to ask what the point was. We all knew where this was going. Another part of me wanted him to sit with us. Being alone for the slow death of a loved one was a long, terrible road, but there was no reason for him to have to bear it with me. I knew it was selfish to ask. Still, the pain of what was happening nearly suffocated me.
“Sure,” I said.
He quietly moved into the room and was beside the bed, putting his back to me. He slipped on a blood pressure cuff and went to work with that. The sound of him pumping the cuff up was the only noise in the room. After that, he stuck a thermometer in her mouth, but it just dangled there. He waited the requisite time and pulled it free, then examined it. His shoulders slumped as he read it, and that was pretty much it.
“How high?” I asked in a whisper.
“In the hall,” he said and nodded toward the door.
I didn’t need any other cue and stepped into the hallway.
“How high was it?” I asked.
“High,” he said.
“I asked how high,” I said feeling heat in my response, and I knew it was the pain inside me talking.
“It goes to 106, and it was pegged there,”
I lowered my head into my hands and said, “Sorry, I snapped at you.”
Books of the Dead (Book 8): The Living Dead Girl Page 6
