“Why are you running, Mr. Genneth?” Andalon demanded.

Talk later!, I thought.

I’ve heard of “thinking on your feet” before, but this was ridiculous.

I ran down the hallway. Jonan’s words echoed in my thoughts, like thunder. Hearing it for the first time had been like a lightning bolt.

Ileene Plotsky is septic, and the fungus has penetrated the placenta. The fetus is fucking infected!

I’d immediately set off in a run, ignoring the protests from my legs. My feet might as well have been stones, and my tail was probably going to give me friction blisters on my thigh, but I wasn’t going to let any of that stop me.

Ileene was in danger, and not just her, but her unborn child, too.

I’d never dealt with a septic patient before, but I was acquainted with stories—horror stories—that Ani, Cassius, Heggy, and others had shared with me over the years. Once the chaos was all over—assuming it would ever be over—I suppose I’d have a story of my own to add to the pile. And I think this one would take the cake.

After Jonan had burst onto my console screen with his announcement, Ani had taken matters into her own hands (literally) and explained the rest of the situation to me with fire in her eyes and worry in her heart. Jonan couldn’t have stopped her from doing so no matter how hard he tried.

We needed to decide whether or not to abort the pregnancy.

Talk about a can of wyrms.

Andalon passed ahead of me, but not by running. She didn’t run; instead, whenever I passed far enough ahead of her, she teleported forward, phasing back into existence further down the hall.

“Mr. Genneth… what’s a aborshun?”

My answer was a moan of mental distress.

It’s complicated! Horrible and complicated!

Abortion was…

Ugh…

I wanted nothing to do with it. My conscience would not let me support it, nor would my conscience let me take any action to force my views onto anyone else. There was enough pain in the world. I didn’t want to be responsible for adding to it.

Life was sacred. I felt it in my bones. It didn’t matter whether life was the Triun’s handiwork, or if it was the product of random nature and her blind watchmakers. Life was light in flesh. I could not endorse abortion for the same reason I could not endorse war, capital punishment, torture, slavery, euthanasia, sex-trafficking, animal cruelty, and all the rest. It was the same reason I continued to hope for a universal basic income policy to be passed by the National Diet, no matter how forlorn that hope might have been.

I had already endured the loss of a child. No one else needed to lose theirs. I didn’t care whether the child was aged five weeks old or five decades. There would be no point in it—no point but cruelty—and there was enough cruelty, I could not abide another drop.

I couldn’t abide cruelty at all, and that made the fact of its existence all the more unbearable to me. There was no reason for it. No justification. Try as I might, there was no way I could justify the pain and suffering in our world and reconcile them with the Angel’s promises. If pain even had a purpose, the only half-reasonable one I could ever give it would be to teach us what it was, so that we could know it, and recognize it, and do everything in our earthly power to prevent it from ever happening to anyone or anything ever again. If losing a loved one wasn’t enough to sway a soul to never allow themselves to inflict pain ever again, then their loss was truly in vain.

I slowed my run to a jog after Andalon’s next teleportation. My stride shrank and then petered out altogether.

She was crying.

“Andalon doesn’t want anybody to die, Mr. Genneth,” she said. “Miss Leen… and the little one…” Andalon looked me in the eyes. “You have to save them, Mr. Genneth! Please!”

I reached to wipe the tears from my face, but my fingers came up against my plastic visor.

And I’m darned sure going to try.

I’d already been through a similar hell before. Prior to Rale’s death, his special healthcare needs had presented a winding, unpredictable road of discomfiting issues for Pel and I to navigate. The legal arcana was the worst of it. The laws and procedures regarding patients’ rights, consent to treatment, consent to surgery, and the authorities and obligations present in both physicians and the legal guardians of the young or incapacitated was an utter quagmire. By law, for an unmarried young woman of Ileene’s age, the woman’s parents—and, also, the baby’s father (if available)—had authority co-equal to the woman herself with regard to any healthcare decisions which would tend to adversely affect the health or viability of a in utero. Given that Ileene was little better than the average Quiet Ward patient, she was hardly in the condition to make decisions, and that was before she’d gone septic. Her parents had quite the decision waiting for them. And, of course, it had fallen to me to be the one to inform them. I could hardly blame Ani for being too squeamish to do it herself, nor did I want Jonan anywhere near Mr. and Mrs. Plotsky for the time being. As a doctor, I respected his unquestionable talent, but I doubted his particular beside manner would be of much use here, and, if ever there were a time or place for a teachable moment, this was not one of them.

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“W-who’s that?” Andalon said, sniffling. She wiped the tears from her face.

I stopped.

“Cassius?”

Dr. Arbond turned to face me, having just come out through a pair of double-doors with porthole windows, stepping into the hallway through a side-corridor

“Ah, Dr. Howle,” he said, “this is about that pregnancy, right?”

“Yes,” I nodded, “I’m glad to not be going into this on my own.”

“I know what you mean,” Cassius said, with a solemn nod of his own.

I glanced back at Andalon. This is Dr. Cassius Arbond. He’s a friend, a teammate, and a really talented surgeon.

Cassius slapped the lower reaches of his PPE gown. “Well, c’mon, let’s get movin’! There’s no time to waste!”

And off we went.

“Are you going to operate now?” I asked.

Dr. Arbond shook his head. “No. Dr. Marteneiss asked me to attend to the Plostky family’s troubles as a consultant. ‘Sides, in all likelihood, I’m probably gonna be the one who gets saddled with whatever surgical interventions the parents end up choosin’.”

“You think so?”

The expert surgeon nodded enthusiastically. “I know so. I put in the request myself!” He smiled, flashing pearly white teeth.

In addition to being the spiritual capital of the world, Elpeck was also the dental capital of the world. Why, I had no clue.

“Cassius, lives are at stake here. Aren’t you being a little blithe?”

“Howle,” he replied, glaring at me, “open fetal surgery is the shit. Well,” he waved his hand dismissively, “I’d also put open brain surgery in that category, but neurosurgeons are another species of surgeon all their own.”

Andalon popped up ahead of us.

I took the glare Dr. Arbond had given me and passed it to her.

Andalon, remember: this is serious. Please don’t distract me.

“Should I go to the not-here-place?” she asked.

I inhaled sharply. I didn’t have the emotional fortitude to answer that question one way or the other.

“Howle, If you’re wonderin’ why I’m excited,” Cassius said, “I suggest you take a good look at what’s been on the news lately.”

“I am aware of it, Dr. Arbond.”

“Well,” he replied, “excitement’s one of the few ways to send grim tidings a-scatterin’, so forgive me for tryin’ to find a silver linin’ in this crucible of bullshit, even if I have to shove that lining in place with my own two hands.”

I sighed. “I suppose there are worse ways of coping with difficult circumstances,” I said.

Such as lying—by omission—to my colleagues about my medical condition.

But my guilt was thrust into the back of my mind as Dr. Arbond and I heard yelling further down the hall. We flinched for a moment, and then got our wits together and rushed ahead. Cassius might have been something of a crotchety old fart, but he was in great shape. Even if my feet hadn’t been numb, I don’t think I’d have been able to keep up with him, not with the way he raced ahead of me.

As we rounded the next corner, the source of the commotion came into view. My loafers skid to a stop on the vinyl floor of the brightly lit, new-old hallway. I felt like my stomach was leaking up my throat.

We didn’t need to find Mr. and Mrs. Plotsky. As fate would have it, they had come to us.

I thinned my wyrmsight at the brightness of the aura of the fungus within them.

Both of Ileene’s parents wore hospital gowns. Mrs. Plostky had one hand tightly clasped around the middle of the rolling stand that bore her IV drip. A glance at the bags up top—their colors and labels—told me she’d been loaded up on saline, vitamins, painkillers, and antifungals, though I wondered how much of a difference they were making. The woman was gaunt, pale, and miserable, with bloodshot eyes and a deep cough that made her wince in pain every time it belted through her chest.

Of the two of them, Mr. Plotsky’s condition was the worst. Fungal hyphae had crawled up through the skin on the side of his head in a claw-like shape. A ragged-edged ulcer in the middle of the darkness split his flesh open like the kiss of burning crescent Moon. His breaths were shallow pants. Globules of dark, lime-dusted ooze stained his teeth where it clung to his gums.

He shouldn’t have been out of bed, as in he shouldn’t have been, and I didn’t know how he managed to stand on his own two feet, and yet, he was intent on pushing forward. He leaned onto the side of the hallway like a dying slug, using his arms to brace himself and provide leverage as he shuffled forward on his unsteady legs. If it wasn’t for the fungal horrors plainly in view, I would have thought he had just experienced a massive stroke, or possibly was suffering from Hereditary Chorea or some other form of ataxia. There was no denying he was experiencing severe neurological damage. One second, one of his limbs would spasm, as if trying to move in too many directions at once; the next, the same limb seemed like dead weight, too rigid to move and too hefty to lift.

Babs’ arm rattled as she gripped the IV stand. She reached for her husband, speaking plaintively. “Jed, please,” she pleaded, “don’t you recognize me?” Her wet eyes glistened in the hallway’s fluorescent lights.

It was heartbreaking to watch.

Slowly, the ailing man looked over his shoulder at her, but only briefly. Then he looked ahead once more and pressed onward.

“I… I…” he muttered. He spread his fingers wide and pressed his palm against the wall. He quivered. “No! I—”

—He was bludgeoned by a coughing fit.

“There’s something important,” he said, weakly, “I know there is.” His skin was drenched in sweat. His hair wiry and clumped. “I just can’t remember.”

He turned back to the wife he apparently no longer recognized.

“You’re trying to trick me.” He tried to point at her, but his finger would stay still. “You’re trying to make me remember something that isn’t real.”

Babs was openly sobbing now. “Jed,” she said, waving her arm, “it’s me. It’s your wife! Oh Angel, please, don’t let me lose you, too.”

I couldn’t watch this anymore.

“Mrs. Plotsky,” I said, “what happened?”

She turned to me, weeping. “I don’t know,” she wept, “he… Jed said he was feeling tired. I thought I saw him fall asleep, but then I saw he was gone and,” she coughed, moaning in pain, “and then I go out,and I see him here, but, Oh God,” she raised her hand to her mouth and coughed into, spewing out slime in black and green. She gagged and shuddered. “He doesn’t know who I am anymore!”

I gulped.

They’re… they’re losing their memories?

Another twist in the yarn.