I was too upset to stay in the conference room, but too broken and desperate to storm off to somewhere quiet and lock myself away where I belonged.

Instead, I settled for sitting on a bench that, by some miracle, wasn’t already occupied. Was it a sign that my efforts with Hobwell and the uninsured were having a positive effect? Or, maybe, it was because the caseload of new infections was lessening?

Or is it because everyone is sick and dying?

At that moment, there were too many thoughts and feelings in me to give it much more thought than that. And, honestly, I had a headache. Not a cough, nor a fever. Just a headache—the kind that aspirin was for. People walked down the hall, some of whom approached me, but instead of giving them my usual sunny reception, I looked down in dejection and ignored them until they stepped away.

Without reaching to feel if they were solid, I wouldn’t be able to distinguish between the real, flesh and blood people and the ghosts of the dead who were to accompany me for the rest of eternity. And I wasn’t going to start feeling up every person that crossed my path. I didn’t fancy getting punched in the face, as much as I felt I might deserve it.

After a couple of minutes, I mustered enough audacity to raise my head. For whatever reason, the painting across the hallway caught my eye.

No, not for whatever reason. I knew exactly why.

The painting was a dramatic, oil rendering of the Angel, abstracted slightly, in the Fractured style: as if viewed from different angles simultaneously. The Angel’s smooth, featureless copper face was both a surface and a corner. A handful of pinprick holes studded His face like grains of blazing sand. The Sword multiplied into a quiver of curling, silver blades. His body was like a mechanical god, covered in armor—light-studded lunes—enclosed by robes that billowed like umber flame.

“Why aren’t you here?” I muttered, barely above a whisper, nearly spitting the words out through my clenched teeth. I wept openly, bringing my hand to my mouth, only for my fingers to scrape my visor’s smooth plastic curve.

There was more to the world than what reason could deduce. Recent events had convinced me of this. But it could have just as easily been the Angel, instead. But, no, for whatever reason—and there could be no reason—the Angel seemed content to let the Green Death ravage the earth. Did He even know it condemned its victims to Hell? He had to know.

The Godhead knew all.

But He Loved Us. I knew He loved us. So…

Why?

Why wasn’t the Godhead back on earth like it had been in the mythic past? Why did the Age of Miracles have to come to an end? Why were we on our own, grasping at straws? Why would the Godhead let us break sacred creation—or tolerate craftsmanship shoddy enough that mere mortals like us could knock it out of whack? With Andalon’s help, I had done more for Merritt than the Angel had.

“Why?” I moaned. “Why aren’t you here?” I stared at the painting.

Of course, this was blasphemy, but at this point, blasphemy was just the cherry atop my ice-cream sundae of sins.

Was there really any point in persisting? If it wasn’t over already, it would be, soon enough. I’d be found out. My friends and colleagues would learn I was infected and that I’d hidden it from them. Shame and guilt would strip me of whatever scraps of honor I still had. And, perhaps worst of all, I’d be forced to stand off to the side and watch everyone suffer—Merritt, Kurt, Letty, the Plotskies, Cassius—everyone—and not be able to do a whit about it.

I shuddered.

I muttered under my breath, too softly to be heard. “I suppose the better question to ask is: how can I do good, when I’m a walking biohazard?”

“I’m an idiot,” I said, louder—more clearly—“I’m a prideful, bow-tied idiot!”

Sniffling, I let my head hang low once more. Antiseptic scent—vanilla for the first floor—curdled inside my dead nose, along with the wetness trapped behind my face mask.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

A doorknob turned.

“Dr. Howle?”

I looked up to see Ani had stepped out into the hall. I caught a whiff of an accusing glare from Dr. Derric through a sliver of the opened door before Ani quietly shut it behind her.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Part of me would have preferred you asked ‘what’s right’,” I said, “but then, I realize I wouldn’t have much of an answer for you.”

I pressed my fingertips down onto my hairnet and rubbed the top of my forehead in small circles. “Darn headache,” I grumbled, sniffling once more.

“Headache?” Ani’s eyes widened. “Are you experiencing any of the symptoms of—”

“—No, it’s just stress,” I replied, shaking my head. I smirked bitterly. “And vasoconstriction in the meninges.”

Because, as everyone knows, all you need to do to solve a problem is know what causes it!

“Oh God…” I muttered, splaying my arms out at my sides.

Ani crossed the hallway and sat down on the other side of my bench. “Is that why you walked out on us?” She gestured toward the door to the conference room. “Or do I get to hear the actual reason?”

Sword slice me!

I wanted to tell her.

I wanted to tell Ani that Merritt’s prognosis was also my own—that I was a Type Two case. I wanted to tell her that I had lied to Heggy and the rest of them about being uninfected. I wanted to tell her that I was shivering all the way down to my ever-growing tail thinking that there were no doubt death-spreading spores tucked away inside my chest just like in Merritt’s chest, and that everyone around me was at risk of contamination. I wanted to tell her that a strange spirit-being in the form of a girl with blue hair was slowly transforming me and so many others into wyrms so that we might help her fight the fungus by becoming vessels for the souls of the dead that the fungus wanted to condemn to eternal torture in the frozen depths of Hell itself.

I wanted…

I sighed.

I wanted too much, and the vast majority of what I wanted, I didn’t stand a chance of ever getting.

“I’m feeling an order of magnitude more guilty than I usually do,” I said, after what felt like forever. “Cassius, Merritt, Kurt, the sequestered patients… my family…” I trembled with bitterness, “all these people… I want to help them and do right by them, but… I don’t think I am. I certainly don’t feel like I am. Or maybe I can’t, and all of this is just performative futility.”

I exhaled. “I want a reason to smile,” I said, my voice cracking. “I want everyone to have a reason to smile.”

I looked Ani in the eyes, through those deliciously gauche, stupidly wide glasses of hers. Her features were soft and welcoming, even after all the horrors. She was a flower of youth. A flower of kindness. Her faith was unshaken.

“You should go and check up on the patients in Room 268,” she said, “the transformees? That’s what we’re calling them, right?” She smiled awkwardly. “Go remind yourself of the good you can do and all who benefit from it.”

I nodded in agreement, at least at first, but then a dark cloud rolled over my horizons.

“Maybe, in trying to help—in trying to save them—I’m only making things worse.”

Ani frowned at that—and out of concern for me, of all people.

Me!

Ani reached out and grabbed me by the hand—but gently, oh so gently.

“Don’t say that, Genneth,” she said, “you’re doing the best you can. We all are,” she smirked, “even Jonan. When people work together, the sky’s the limit… even if we can’t quite reach it.”

I shook my head. “But that’s just it: I’m not doing my best.”

My words spoke themselves. “Just by being here, I’m putting all of you in danger. And if no good can come of it—if there’s no point to it, isn’t it wrong for me to continue?”

Ani raised her eyebrows playfully and looked me in the eyes.

“Do I have to repeat myself?” She leaned toward me. “Don’t say that. You’re making a difference by being here, Genneth, I know you are. The exploratory surgery wasn’t a bad idea. There’s still a chance that Dr. Arbond and the others will find something that justifies the—” stammering, she looked away, sniffling, trying to hide her tears, “the mess we’ve made along the way.”

I stood up from my seat.

I knew she was trying to make me feel better, but that was the last thing I wanted here. For what I’d done? For what I was still doing? I deserved to feel bad!

“No, Ani, you don’t understand.” Yet again, I shook my head. “You don’t. You—you can’t.”

She looked up at me.

“When I came to my internship, drunk as a bottle, and gave you Hell,” she said, “I said the same thing. I said you couldn’t understand what it was like, growing up as the daughter of an immigrant, or an interracial marriage, or a culture outside the norm. I was worried about you, too. I had the temerity to shovel my problems off someone struggling with their own faith—with their own eternity.” She smiled, her rich, brown eyes twinkling. “But you wouldn’t let any of that stop you.” She latched on to my hand with both of her own. “I’ll never forget what you said to me that day, Dr. Howle: there are only two reasons why a person can’t understand: either no one ever cared enough to truly tell them, or they themselves never cared enough to truly listen. I’m willing to listen, if… you’re willing to tell me.”

It was the perfect thing to say. Perfectly right, yet perfectly wrong.

“I wish I could live up to your memory of me, Ani,” I said, “but I don’t think I can.”

I walked off.

“Genneth!”

“I’m going back to work,” I said, without turning to face her.

I was too afraid to try.