by Rob Horner
Cliff did as he was told. Marcus stepped around the foot of the stretcher, heading for the slide balanced on end near the counter.
Something brushed Cliff’s belt buckle.
Startled, he looked down and saw…
…a bloody hand, fingers curved into claws, visible only as a silhouette under the sheet, reaching…brushing his belt buckle with her fingernails…
“Shit!” Cliff yelled, dropping the sheet and backing away from the stretcher until his butt bumped into the wall.
“What?” Marcus said, turning around. Then, “Why’d you let go?”
“She…she—” he swallowed, forcing the words out. “She touched me.”
Marcus laughed.
“What? I…she did!” Cliff pushed himself away from the wall, approaching the stretcher again. The body lay still, the colder air of the morgue somehow heavy enough to have weighed down the covering sheet, molding it to the contours of Lisa’s body. The right arm was just a shape across the abdomen. Nothing moved.
“It’s okay, man,” Marcus said, bringing the slide close enough to grab as soon as it was needed. “It’s a creepy place, even with two of us in here.”
Cliff swallowed again. “What, no medical words to describe muscle spasms after death?”
Marcus shrugged. “You saw what you saw. Who am I to argue? Now, do you wanna get done and get out of here, or wait to see if she moves again?”
“Screw that! But I’m getting the slide this time.”
Marcus laughed again.
Together, they rolled Lisa’s body. Marcus held while Cliff placed the slide. Then, together, they pulled her off the stretcher and onto the tray. The whole process took less than a minute, then Marcus was pushing the tray back into the drawer and closing the thick door. Cliff immediately started wheeling the stretcher out of the room, anxious to be away.
“Hang on just a second while I log her in,” Marcus said.
“I’ll wait out here, if that’s okay,” the big cop replied.
Marcus just laughed, shaking his head as he went to the logbook.
“Just tell them we can’t bring new patients back until the police give us the go ahead,” Tina said into the phone. She blew out an exasperated breath, feeling the air run through her bangs. “I know they’re pissed, Grace, but it is what it is. You give them the printed response. They aren’t being turned away. They can stay and wait. Or they can drive to Spartanburg. If they decide to go, you’ll call ahead and try to speed their path through the waiting room, but no promises. Probably half of them don’t need an ED anyway, and waiting would be good for them.”
Tina laughed. “That’s right, girl, waiting builds character. We call it ‘Fluorescent Therapy.’”
A pause.
“Thanks, and don’t worry. We’ll let you know when we can bring more back.”
Tina hung up the phone and noted the time on the display. 8:30. The ED had been closed for an hour and a half and, to hear the receptionist tell it, that ninety minutes was the end of the world for half of Gaffney. There were people banging on the triage doors, sure their complaints were minor enough for Fast Track to deal with, they just needed an antibiotic, or a work note.
If they know their complaints aren’t that serious, then why the hell were they in the hospital in the first place?
Tina sighed. That wasn’t fair, and she knew it. Most of them had nowhere else to go and never had. They grew up believing that the ED was their OB, their pediatrician, their family practice, and their urgent care. Obamacare hadn’t changed that, just added legitimacy to it.
Fast Track was secure from the waiting room, but not from the back of the department, which is why no patients could be allowed in. Letting someone in to be triaged was the same as giving them access to the back, which would violate the lockdown. If they’d had any patients ready to be discharged, they wouldn’t be allowed to leave for the same reason.
Sighing, she rose from her computer and walked around the side of the station where Sonny slept in room 6 and Derek lay in room 8. The doors to both rooms were open, a requirement when a patient was in restraints. But other than Mrs. Butler turning her head as Tina passed, nothing moved. She thought to go into the break room, maybe to offer a few words of encouragement to Jessica, but a quiet sob stopped her.
Room 9’s door was still closed, having not been opened since the fertile Ms. Cumberland rolled down to ultrasound. The sound had come from inside.
Probably left the television on, Tina thought. Still, she stood by the door for a moment, waiting to see if the sound repeated. I should be able to hear music, the dramatic soundtrack that accompanies all good sniffling scenes.
But there was nothing.
Telling herself that she just wanted to turn the television off if it was on, save a few pennies, Tina eased open the door.
There was someone in the bathroom, an indiscernible dark shape outlined by the bathroom lights through the thin privacy curtain. The sob sounded again, a soft exhalation, and Tina pushed inside.
“Who is it?” the shape asked.
“Tonya? It’s Tina.” She hadn’t seen the stout nurse since Kristie attacked her.
“I’ll be right out,” Tonya said. “Had to go and…you know…the other bathroom is still—”
“Hey, it’s okay,” Tina said, crossing to the curtain. “You don’t have to cry in here by your—” She pulled the curtain aside just as Tonya turned to look at her. “What happened?”
Tina expected to see the small bandage on the side of the nurse’s face. It was where she’d been scratched. What she didn’t expect was to see the skin around the bandage puffing out like a MRSA abscess, a rapidly expanding, pus-filled growth that can spring from pimple to softball-sized in 24 hours. That this had happened in just an hour was even worse. The bandage was almost swallowed by the overgrowth of angry, red flesh, which had sent out spidery lines of blue and red that traced around her left eye and back along the side of her head, running into her left temple.
Those are her capillaries and arterioles, venules and veins.
“It hurts, Tina,” the nurse said. “Like a knife just poking into my skin, just the tip, turning and digging.”
“When did that start?”
Tonya turned back to look in the mirror. “It started hurting when the little bitch did it. Well, right after, I guess. Just a few minutes ago, my face started feeling tight, so I reached up to touch it and felt…this!” She traced a finger over the swollen contour. “So, I came in here.”
“We need to get one of the doctors to look at this,” Tina said.
“Can’t you just…you know…bring him here? I don’t—” she took a breath. “I don’t want anyone else to see me like this.”
Tina understood. “Okay, just wait here. I think Dr. Crews is still in Room 10, but I’ll get Dr. Patel.”
“Shit, we’re going to need blood from him,” Dr. Crews said as soon as they entered the room.
There was no need to undo the sling and swathe that held Danny’s right arm immobile. The twisting, writhing mass of arteries and veins was visible above all of it, riding his biceps up into his shoulder.
“There’s no way it’s been like this all day,” Buck said. “I’d have noticed.”
“I’m sure you would have,” the doctor replied. “Jordyn, get me a butterfly and a collection set. Bring culture bottles and two of every color tube you got.”
“Was I right?” the big paramedic asked as the petite brunette scurried out of the room. “Could it be some kind of weird delirium brought on by an infection?”
“Help me roll his upper body toward us,” Dr. Crews said, slipping on the large gloves he’d grabbed before coming into the room.
“Just a sec,” Buck replied, reaching outside the room for another pair.
“To answer your question, Buck, I just don’t know. It’s one thing to know that a UTI can cause granny to show her ass. But it’s a big leap from ornery to cannibalism and murder. Nothing more than an assumpti
on, really.” He held up his hand, forestalling Buck’s argument. “It’s an intelligent assumption, don’t get me wrong. And seeing this arm makes me all the more curious as to what’s going on. At the end of the day, though, I don’t know that we’ll find anything that prevents your friend from going downtown with the officers.”
Buck grunted but couldn’t find anything in the statement to argue with. At least Dr. Crews had been willing to come look, and he was going to order tests. Maybe the blood work would provide a reason, or at least an excuse to keep looking. “What about a CT?” he asked.
“We’ll see. I think it’s more likely that whatever…this…is will give us more to work with than a CT. Personality-changing brain lesions don’t just happen during the course of a day. And anything that did happen that fast would have other symptoms.”
The doctor moved to Danny’s right side, getting himself into position.
Jordyn hustled back into the room, hands loaded with individually packaged needles, tubes, and culture bottles. Her teeth gripped the rim of a Styrofoam cup of ice, which would be needed to transport the gray-topped tubes, if they were used.
“Hand me a tourniquet, please,” Dr. Crews said. Then, “Buck, get your hands under his right shoulder and lift a bit, so I don’t have to fight the swathe.”
“You don’t want me to get the blood?” Jordyn asked, and Buck was reminded of his thoughts earlier that day, how you can tell an ED nurse by her “let me get it” attitude. He regretted them now, wondering if he’d been nicer to Danny from the outset if the day would still have turned out the same way. It made no sense and he knew it, but he couldn’t shake the feeling.
“Nah, you gotta let an old doc get his hands dirty once in a while,” Crews replied.
He wasn’t old by any stretch, though his brush-cut salt-and-pepper hair did lend him a certain…what was that word the media used when George Bush was running for president? Gravitas, that’s it. Dr. Crews had gravitas.
The doctor threaded the tourniquet between Danny’s bicep and chest, then slid it up high, into his armpit.
“Do you even need that?” Jordyn asked. “Looks like a blind man could hit his veins with a dart from across the room.”
“Being able to see them and keeping them from deflating are two different things,” Crews replied softly, pulling the blue rubber band tight and tying a quick knot. “Also, if you don’t block off flow back into the heart, nothing will come into the needle. The blood will just bypass it, preferring the path of least resistance.”
“I didn’t think of that.”
“Okay, hand me a swab and the needle please. Then be ready to feed me tubes.”
“Got it.”
“You good, Buck?”
“He’s not that heavy,” Buck replied. “But don’t take too long.”
“Okay, here goes.”
Buck had a flash of vivid memory, Austin opening his eyes and flopping over onto him as he stuck the IV needle in, but it faded when nothing happened. He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
“I’ve got good flash,” Crews said. “Hand me an adapter.”
“Use this one first,” Jordyn said. “Got to get the culture before anything else.”
The doctor attached the adapter to the butterfly hub, then inserted the proffered culture tube into the adapter. “Looks darker than it should,” he said.
“The tubes are dark glass—” Jordyn began.
“I mean even considering it’s in the culture tube,” Crews interrupted.
“Sorry.”
The doctor allowed the tube to fill for a few seconds before removing it from the hub, exchanging it for an empty tube with the nurse.
Looking down, Buck almost dropped Danny when he saw the man’s eyes were open, watching each of them avidly. The corneas were blood-filled now, a dark red that made his hungry gaze even more frightening. “Uh, doc. He’s awake.”
“Damn, his eyes,” Jordyn said.
“Just keep him still,” the doctor said, “we’re almost done.”
Danny’s shoulders moved, an experimental flexing of muscles. Whatever else he’d become, he remained smart enough to realize that struggling against his restraints was futile.
“Okay, let him down,” Crews said, taking a small wad of gauze and a strip of Coban from Jordyn. With one motion, he popped the tourniquet loose and depressed the button that retracted the needle into its housing, rendering it safe. He bound the small puncture wound and stepped back, joining Buck at the side of the bed.
Danny lay on the bed, not bothering to raise his head or test his restraints. Only the eyes moved, flicking back and forth from the paramedic to the doctor, dark spots within a field of red. There was no recognition there, no humanity.
Looks like he wants to eat me, Buck thought.
“You’re awake,” Crews stated. “Can you talk?”
Danny grunted a response.
“What was that?”
Another grunt.
“All right then. We’ll have to see what the blood shows. Come on, Buck.” The doctor walked out of the room.
Buck hurried to follow. “Why’d we leave? It looked like he was trying to—”
“He wanted one of us to lean in close so he could bite,” Dr Crews said. “I prefer not to give him the chance.”
Chapter 19
The second trip to the morgue went much smoother, as far as Cliff was concerned. He wasn’t even sure why he went, since the patient’s death wasn’t a police matter. He was just some schmuck who got sick and didn’t get better. But he’d have to escort the third body, once the photographer was done. Might as well keep the team together.
The halls were just as empty, the wheels just as clicky, and the morgue just as creepy. But no ghostly hand reached out for a feel, and the transfer from stretcher to drawer went smoothly. Marcus was right about one thing though: the dude was heavier than the nurse, and he’d been on a diarrhea diet all day. How much worse was the old guy gonna be?
“What’s behind that door?” Cliff asked as they left the morgue, pointing to the only other door on the short corridor.
“That’s the power room,” Marcus answered.
“Like a server farm?”
“No, like a crapload of circuit breakers, sensors, that sort of thing. The back of the hospital is right on the other side of these walls, you know? Allows funeral homes to pull up to unload from the morgue, and it’s also where the MRI truck parks. They have a couple of two-twenty-volt lines right into the power room.”
“Huh,” Cliff grunted. “So, there’s no basement?”
“You don’t live in Gaffney, do you?” Marcus replied. “Very few homes or buildings are on high enough ground for a basement, including the hospital.”
For some reason, that made Cliff feel better. Not having a basement meant no chance of being stuck in one near a bunch of dead bodies. It also meant that he’d probably spent too much of his youth watching horror movies, but what could you do?
“So,” Cliff said, trying to make small talk as they walked back to the ED, “what do you do when you’re not…you know…nursing?”
Many bacteria and viruses do not survive long after their human host dies. A person who dies of malaria, for instance, is not considered contagious even as the body decomposes. Bubonic plague, or The Black Death, is known to only live a few hours, as is Cholera (though infected fecal matter can harbor the bacterium for up to fifty days.) Tuberculosis victims might support the bacterium for a few days, and Ebola casualties can keep the virus alive for up to a week.
Other bacteria have a purpose in promoting decomposition, though their methods are often considered disgusting, as with the buildup of corpse gas within the bowels of a deceased person. Embalming allows a person to decompose at a more sedate pace, as the bacteria-containing fluids are removed and replaced with a mixture of formaldehyde, methanol, glutaraldehyde, and a few other solvents.
There are some viruses that are considered active and contagi
ous long after the body shuts down. One of these is smallpox, the carrier virus used in the creation of Avaxx. Smallpox is considered so virulent that if a scientist were to discover a grave with the body of a person who died of smallpox fifty years before, it would still be considered a biohazard.
Another particle known to survive the host’s death is the prion. In New Guinea, for example, the prion responsible for Kuru is transmitted through the cannibalistic ritual of cooking and eating an elder’s brain, which the practitioners believe shows a great respect for the deceased. Even cooked, the prion is unharmed and able to pass into new victims.
Prions kill by attacking the brain, boring holes in the tissue and destroying cells. They cause rapidly developing dementia, personality changes, and difficulty speaking, among other neurological symptoms. They are always fatal. And they don’t die with their hosts. They multiply by altering protein structures: brain cells, viral carriers, and bacterial agents alike. What such an amalgamation might mutate into, given a viable human host, is unknown, even to the scientists who created it.
It hadn’t been tested, after all.
“I need to cut this, Tonya,” Dr. Patel said, “like a boxer in the ring. If we can get the swelling down and the pus out, it will be less painful and more receptive to antibiotics.”
Tonya lay on her back on the bed in room 9.
“I’m right here,” Tina whispered, holding Tonya’s right hand.
Dr. Patel sat on a rolling stool on the nurse’s left side. Near to hand was a Mayo stand, lowered to an appropriate height, on which the doctor had spread a sterile cloth. On the cloth were the tools he planned to use: a number 11 scalpel, a bottle of quarter-inch wound packing, a wound culture tube, a small package of cotton-tipped swabs (to collect a pus sample for lab analysis), a mountain of four-by-four gauze swaths, a bottle of betadine, a bottle of 2% lidocaine, a 10 ml syringe, and several different needle tip sizes.
