A wise man once said that happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have. As for me? Right here, right now?

I wanted to go home. I really wanted to go home. I wanted to go home and hug my wife and kids and tell them I love them and stay up late with my kids watching the latest anime dubs on Toon Network’s late-night line up—the weekend started tomorrow, after all!—Rayph wouldn’t question it, and Jules would join up soon enough once she saw her brother and I having a good time—and then we’d all go to bed and I’d kiss my wife as we snuggled under the covers, being just enough of a pest to get some one-on-one attention before finally letting myself drift off to slumberland.

That’s what I wanted.

So, yes, by any reasonable definition, I was not happy

Clumsily, I donned my gown and mask and visor and gloves—and clumsily, because I couldn’t get my hands to stop shaking.

I’d been hedging a lot of denial around myself, far more than I would have anticipated. It was only now, in hindsight, that I saw the bricks of denial I’d set up around myself. I watched them crumble before my eyes.

I made myself hurry through the airlock a little bit more quickly.

“Mr.—”

—Andalon flickered before me, but only for an instant.

“Are—”

—I heard her behind me, and spun around, but by then she’d already disappeared.

I stepped out of the airlock and back into the hallway.

Andalon flickered in and out of existence. She was a visual warble, invisibly teleporting from one spot to another, sometimes close, sometimes far. Sometimes reaching for me. Sometimes touching.

“—Genneth—”

“—You—”

“—What—”

“—Doing—”

“Andalon?”

A wave of dizziness shot through me. Dozens of Andalons appeared all around me, vibrating in place like an unsteady signal.

And then they all vanished. Heat burned in my chest, alongside my racing heart.

I had to force my lips shut to keep myself from screaming.

Honestly, I preferred my old panic attacks to these new ones. Losing consciousness or entering a dissociative state was more pleasant than living through my own step-by-step decline into madness.

Should I just get a gun and put myself out of my misery?

No. Fudge. No.

I needed a distraction stronger than mere news. A patient. A colleague.

I banished Andalon from my thoughts. I banished everything from my thoughts, everything except the lagging electrochemical impulses dancing up and down my nerves as I ordered my legs to move faster and faster and faster.

Anything—just, anything other than me, myself and Andalon.

Flinging open the old stairwell door, I barreled down the steps, huffing and puffing, the railing cold and slick beneath my passing fingertips. I burst out into a hallway the instant I hit the ground floor, before realizing exactly where I’d just come out: Admissions. Not Ward E admissions. Admissions admissions. The big kahuna.

The main entrance to West Elpeck Medical Center was the front entrance to the Administration Building, accessible from within the Central Courtyard. Through its new old doors, one entered the imposing marble grandeur of the Hall of Echoes, otherwise known as the Main Lobby. “Hall of Echoes” always struck me as a perfect fit for the site where the Templars once walked. The large, multi-storied atrium had the air of a temple or a tomb. Its floor was a labyrinth of polished marble alternating in dark and light. Twin rows of stoic columns lined the length of the chamber, supporting equally smooth semicircular arches which held up the roof high above. A set of massive automated sliding glass doors stood at the back of the Hall, beyond which lay Admissions and myself, peering out through the glass.

Everything was madness.

The only sign of night was the great darkness that peered in through the entrance to the Hall of Echoes, or through a window glimpsed through an open room as late arrivals were slid into their beds. The brightness of the fluorescent lights made me wince.

“Out of the way!”

Before I could react, a hand pushed on my chest and shoved me into the corridor’s wall. A bedded patient passed me by like a freighter in the bay. Doctors followed in the bed’s wake.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Physicians, paramedics, surgeons, and Angel-knows who else raced through the Hall of Echoes, Admissions, and everywhere else, more often than not with bedded patients in tow. Bundled up in their hats and coats and mittens, the worried public formed thick lines in the Hall of Echoes and its adjoining corridors. The corridor I’d stepped into was nearly filled to bursting, and just as much with noise as with people.

Wheezing coughs, manic muzak, shouting voices, and beeping consoles made a hazy, impenetrable cacophony that roared in my ears, making them ring. And I had no idea what was going on.

I slunk back through the door to the stairwell, panting heavily. The sound of the frenetic activity thrummed through the door, echoing up the hexagonal stairwell shaft like distant rain. After spending a moment re-orienting myself, I figured out the best path forward.

I’d climb over and descend to Ward E. Hopefully, the Ward would be calmer than the hospital’s main entrance. For good measure, I went up two flights of stairs instead of one, and was rewarded with a calming sight.

At night, to conserve power, our hallways’ light fixtures were set to dim whenever enough time passed without their sensors detecting people or movement. This lent a twilight mood to the placid third floor. Shadows gathered in sparse islands on the checkered vinyl floor where dimmed lights failed to reach. Plastic plants in bone-dry pots cast shade of their own. The hallways seemed to follow people, swelling with brightness as people traveled through them.

I made my way over to Ward E’s upper reaches. As I walked, I saw that the third floor had also felt the touch of the same chaos that I’d seen playing out in Admissions down below. But the chaos on the third floor had morphed into a different form. It was quieter. Surreptitious. I found it not out in the open, but in the faces of all our staff who had chosen to brave the night shift. It took the form of the storm within: the doubt, rush, the racing thoughts, and the panic; the desperate hope for some kind of miracle.

I soon got to where I needed to be, but—just to be safe—I pulled out my console and checked the map feature.

Yes, I was now on Ward E’s third floor.

I took the stairs and descended to ground level.

The situation in E Ward’s ground floor was busier than the upper reaches, but still nowhere near as bad as out front. If it wasn’t for the sparse patches of dimmed lights or the glimpse of darkness in the window of an occasional patient’s room, I would have thought it was still midday, and that I was still on duty.

“What are you doing?”

I turned to face a nurse.

“I…”

“Make your rounds, Doctor. Please. Stay alert, and don’t stop walking. Something might happen at any time.”

Down the hall, the door to a patient’s room swung open, spreading a fan of light onto a dimmed section of the hallway. A physician darted out and locked his eyes onto the nurse beside me.

“Kevin,” he said, “I need epinephrine in here, now!”

The male nurse—Kevin walked off in a hurry.

“Can I help?” I said. “Yeah!” he said. “Make your rounds! And watch out for Dr. Derric!”

“I certainly will!” I said, trying to sound cheerful, and then immediately feeling bad for having had the insensitivity to bother trying.

At this point, losing myself in tedious round-making felt like an absolute godsend. What better way to take my thoughts off my dead, cursed corpse than by focusing on the hard work of bringing the sick back to health and life. I walked off in the other direction, scanning over the summaries posted on the consoles beside the doors to patients’ rooms. Fifty-seven seconds after starting I heard an absolute furor of coughing. The patient winced in between each cough, groaning in pain once the fit finally left them in peace.

I rushed into the room. The dimmed lights instantly perked up at my arrival. As I entered, the patient in the bed was curled forward in pain. I was halfway to his bedside when another coughing fit seized him, spurting green and black sputum over his gown.

I fetched some sanitary wipes from the dispenser by the sink, next to the night-light and wiped off the gunk, tossing the used towelette into the medical waste-bin. The gleam of the night-lights and the multicolored glow of the ECG and other diagnostic equipment faded with the brightening of the ambient lights.

I tapped the wall-mounted console to check his charts.

Jerrick Jacobs. Male. Age 43.

“Please,” Jerrick panted, “water. Water…”

Going back over to the sink, I pulled a cup from the dispenser and filled it to the brim with cold water, some of which spilled onto the floor as I rushed to bring it to him. Jerrick grabbed hold of it with both hands.

Both were trembling.

Concerned, I slipped my fingers beneath Jerrick’s jaw and gently helped him lift his head to drink. The sleeves of Jerrick’s gown drooped as he raised his arms, revealing splotches of bruise-like discolorations on his skin. Ghostly black lightning bolts ran through the middle of the discolorations. As I continued to look, I noticed small nicks on the discolorations’ darkest parts.

My thoughts flashed back to the horrible images Director Hobwell had shown during my briefing.

Were these nascent ulcers? And if they were, what did that mean?

Meanwhile, Jerrick stared at with glazed-over eyes. A seer’s eyes.

“Marvin…?” he asked. “Where are you, Marvin? I’m so cold…”

Jerrick started to cough again, wracking his body with pain. A long, low groan escaped between his lips as the fit ended. He let his head slinking down to the base of his pillow as he curled up on his sides and shivered.

“Who’s Marvin?” I asked.

“I…” he wheezed. His voice sounded like someone had knifed furrows in his throat. “I don’t remember.”

Swallowing hard, I pursed my lips. My breaths pooled hot in the gap between my mask and my mouth. I felt terrible for him.

Was the infection affecting his memory?

Andalon’s words rose to mind.

I have a power. I can keep people from being destroyed. That’s why you saw that bad man last night. He was gonna get eated by the darkness, but… I saved him.

And more:

I save people. I won’t let them be lost.

I couldn’t help but try to make a connection. Was this the “destruction” of which she spoke? Literally losing our minds?

The thought made me shudder.

It had to be only a matter of time before we found a way to treat NFP-20. However, a vaccine—ideally, a fully preventative one—was going to take, at minimum, a couple of months to develop. Even so, whether by therapeutic drugs or prophylactic vaccination, that wouldn’t count for much if half the population lost their memories.

By the Angel…

A shiver ran down my spine.

If half the population lost their memories… that would pretty much be the end of the world.

Darkness, indeed.

Suddenly, Jerrick looked up at me with jittering motions of his head. He stared at me as if he was seeing me for the first time.

“Who… who are you?” he asked.

“A doctor,” I said. “Is there anything I can do for you? Anything to make you feel more comfortable?”

Jerrick coughed and groaned. “Coughing tires,” he muttered. “I’m tired of coughing.” He closed his eyes. “I’m so tired.”

“There!”—a voice hissed behind me.