I would have called it the moment of truth, but that really didn’t fit.

In the course of human events, some patients came into the hospital with a clear awareness of what was ailing them. Others, however, arrived unconscious, broken, bloodied, or worse, and were of little help in elucidating their needs. Diagnostic centers helped bridge the gap. I was familiar enough with diagnostic centers to recognize when I saw one. Take an automobile hydrogen cell refueling station—the semi-open floor plan, with neatly spaced terminals, equipment, and tables—and cross it with a tune-up and body shop—only for literal, instead of our mechanical joyrides—that was a diagnostic center. Though every Ward had at least one, they were concentrated in the Wards that abutted entrances and other major patient inlets. The diagnostic centers were generally built into a corner or wall, and with only one way in and out. Each diagnostic center was split into several stalls, with each stall possessing its own set of machines and supplies. A simple scan of one’s hand-chip on a nearby console caused privacy curtains to descend from the ceiling. Traditionally these were made of plastic, dangling from slits, but those which had been refurbished got holographic curtains, instead. Holograms were all the rage these days.

For physicians assigned to trauma duty, on an ordinary day, almost every new case began with rolling a patient into an open stall in a nearby diagnostic center and poking and prodding them until it became clear what was wrong and where they needed to go. Many were the times that Dr. Arbond, Dr. Marteneiss, or other blood-and-guts doctors that I knew had trumpeted the importance of the brief, minimally invasive examinations and moderate medical procedures administered at a diagnostic center. These little details could often be the one thing that separated life from death.

One of Cassius’ old yarns wound its way through my thoughts as I made my way over to the diagnostic center at E17. The story went like this: an undergraduate at Elpeck Polytechnic had been rushed to the hospital after having collapsed, unconscious, following a lengthy regatta out by Codman’s Wharf. During the young man’s passage through a diagnostic center, Dr. Arbond had the prudence to cut through the rower’s robust wetsuit, notice a rash, flip him prone, notice the rash was worse on the back end, and then discreetly resect a sliver of his left buttock.

“Like peeling packaging offa cheese” was how he put it.

It turned out the lad had suffered a minor laceration back there the day before, and, in the kind of blunder that only confidence could arrange, the young man’s insistence on participating in the regatta had given that minor laceration the opportunity, encouragement, and bacteria needed for it to explode into a case of necrotizing fasciitis, which was doctor talk for flesh-eating bacteria that will kill you because they ate your flesh. Had Cassius not reacted as quickly as he had, the young man would have died, instead of just losing the leg.

What you do with what you know makes all the difference.

The diagnostic center at E17 was unusually quiet. The area had been drained of patients and physicians, and, by the looks of the staff standing guard by the doors to the adjacent hallways, the goal was to keep it that way. I spent a moment gawking at the stark emptiness before mustering enough courage to announce my arrival.

“I’m—I’m here.”

A privacy curtain rattled soundlessly from within the diagnostic center. Dr. Marteneiss stepped out from behind a glittering, blue-green holographic curtain like it was a portal to another world.

“C’mon in,” she said, burly arm beckoning.

She stepped back in, and I followed. The holographic curtains had been arranged to cover an area large enough for everyone on the team to stand—that being Heggy, Dr. Horosha, Jonan, Ani, and myself—and with plenty of room to spare. A sixth figure joined us. I’d seen the man yesterday going about his duties, but had yet to formally introduce myself.

“This is Dr. Tenneson,” Ani said.

Dr. Grimsby Tenneson looked very much like his name: kind, but tired. The picture on his ID badge contrasted immensely with the face in front of me. The ID badge on his PPE showed a man in his late fifties with ragged, ruddy brown hair that was very much thinning on top, and who had a wiry, bird’s nest of a beard encircling his neck and jaw, with a mustache roosting in the middle. The man behind the visor and F-99 face-mask, on the other hand, was clean shaven, with a wan complexion that sagged in spirit if not in form, except on the sides of his nose, where it sagged quite a bit.

He smiled wearily at me, and went so far as to reach out with his green gloved, lime-scented hands before stopping himself. A pandemic was no place for a handshake, no matter how friendly it might have been.

Dr. Tenneson leaned back and cracked his neck. “As I was saying,” he said, “after Cassius explained the situation to me, I figured that the optimal method for his ‘test’ would be to make a small incision in the upper forearm, following administration of a local anesthetic.” He locked eyes with me and shook his head. “Speaking of which,” he bowed deeply, “I’m sorry for what all of you had to endure in the operating theater. That was an awful situation.”

I swallowed hard. “Thank you, but…” I shook my head, “there’s nothing you can do.”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Well,” Dr. Tenneson smiled weakly, “perhaps I can be of more use here.”

“With all the ulcerations and subcutaneous growths and lesions we have been observing in patients,” Dr. Horosha said, “I imagine there will be little difficulty in convincing them of the need to perform a minor subcutaneous examination to determine symptom severity. I admit, it is less than an honest explanation, but I cannot see another way to assay a large number of patients without causing panic.”

“Wait,” Ani splayed out her palms, “wait wait wait wait.” She leaned forward. “You’re telling me you’re going to be lying to people about why you’re cutting them open?”

Dr. Marteneiss closed her eyes and sighed. Heggy’s sighs were the sound hope made as it died of dehydration in the desert of pragmatism. “Save your breath, honey,” she said. “It gets worse.”

Ani frowned. “Worse?”

Jonan perked up. “Does this mean I get to talk about my contribution now?”

Heggy rolled her eyes.

“Sure, Dr. Derric,” she said, sardonically. “Go ahead.”

“Gladly.” He smirked. “I had the brilliant idea that we use different colored resin to seal the wound. If the wound doesn’t close on its own after a minute or so, we’ll seal it up with red resin. But if the wound does begin to close, we’ll use blue resin. That’ll reduce triage to a matter of finding the people with blue resin on their arms and sequestering them before their Type Two infection starts turning them into monsters. It’ll make the whole process cleaner, simpler, and far more efficient.”

Angel preserve us…

Dr. Derric took a step back. “So, who’s second?”

I stammered “Wh-what?”

Dr. Horosha tilted his head at Jonan. “Dr. Derric volunteered to go first.” He turned to me. “Dr. Marteneiss and I agreed it would be best if we tested ourselves here and now. Do you have any objections, Dr. Howle?”

I gulped.

And that was when I started panicking. From where they perched atop my zombie kidneys—assuming I still had kidneys—the decaying masses of lifeless goop otherwise known as my adrenal glands started pumping flight-or-flight hormones into my body.

Oh God…

I had to fight the urge to tug my bow-tie. If Heggy caught me doing that, the jig would be up.

I cleared my throat and shook my head. “N-No. No objections.”

The examination table clicked and hummed as it adopted its chair configuration, right as Jonan sat down on it. He rolled up his sleeve, revealing a strong, supple forearm.

Meanwhile, I staggered back to sit on a stool, only to flinch when a rude jolt shocked up my spine.

I’d sat on my tail.

Scuttling back, I moved my left leg around to the side, leaving me seated almost side-saddle. All the while, I kept my eyes locked onto the procedure happening right in front of me.

My mouth was drier than bone. Sweet leftovers congealed in crusty gunk at the back of my throat.

To administer the local anesthetic, Dr. Tenneson was using a Stinger. This was a slender blue wand made from two crooked tracks of pale plastic that snapped in place onto either side of a long phial of anesthetic. Opposite the needle, the end of the phial tapered out into a long, thin tube which merged into the Stinger’s docking station mounted on the nearby wall. With a tap of a button, pressurized air hissed through the lengthy tube, deftly pushing the Stinger’s minuscule needle into Jonan’s skin.

“What happened to my Mom, Dr. Howle? Why did they take her away?”

I turned to the voice, only to stop myself, freezing in horror.

Kreston?

The boy was back. His ghost appeared right next to me, once more clad in a hospital gown one size too large for him. Like before, he wasn’t human, only this time, it had nothing to do with masks. Kreston’s skin was waxy and translucent. The fungus coated his body with its darkness—its lightning and spiderwebs. He had no eyes. Fruiting bodies grew out from Kreston’s eye-sockets like bulbous antlers. His teeth had lengthened into fangs, and jutted out from his mouth at wrong angles. Other growths had pushed their way out from a crack that started in his skull. The jagged wound ran down his face, spreading out in an ulcerated triangle starting above his mouth and then continuing down his neck, as if he’d gulped down a vat of acid.

“Is something wrong, Dr. Howle?” Dr. Tenneson asked me.

I took a deep breath to calm myself, but then stopped—nearly coughing—when I remembered that my deep breaths would probably spread deadly spores.

“I… uh…” I lowered my gaze, trying to avoid the sight of Kreston’s face. I clicked my tongue. “It’s just… needles, you know?”

Oh God, what have I done?

Dr. Tenneson nodded shakily. “I’m somewhat squeamish myself.”

“Dr. Howle?” Kreston’s voice was distorted, the sounds stretched apart.

Kreston’s rotting hands phased through me as he reached to touch.

I tried to will his ghost to fade away, or at the very least to turn back to normal, but nothing happened.

I locked eyes with Dr. Tenneson. “H-How long do we have to wait?”

“For the anesthetic to take effect?” he said, “Less than a minute. Praeline works quite rapidly.”

Dr. Tenneson snapped the needle out of the Stinger as he spoke, carefully depositing the used needle into the orange plastic biohazard bin mounted in the wall. He pulled a fresh needle from the dispenser in the Stinger’s docking station. It clicked as it snapped into place. Dr. Tenneson picked up the scalpel from the tray; the scalpel’s razor edge twinkled in the light. With his other hand, he grabbed a brown aerosol can and then sprayed an ochre fluid over a segment of Jonan’s forearm—disinfectant—before slowly drawing the scalpel’s tip over a small stretch of Jonan’s arm.

“You poisoned me with your sins,” Kreston said. “You failed. And now look at me. Look at what you’ve done!”

I bit my lip as I tried not to scream. My tail squirmed in my pants-leg. Panicking, I tried to hide the movement beneath my PPE gown by leaning forward.

I still had barely any control over the thing, though I suppose it didn’t help that I wasn’t practicing.

I’m sorry! I’m sorry!

“Sorry isn’t good enough!” Kreston roared. His forearm phased through my chest as he clawed at me.

I pushed with all my thoughts.

Begone!

To my amazement, it worked! Kreston vanished, though not all at once. It was as if he was being daubed over by a reality-eraser, spot by spot.

“Fudge,” I said, barely audible.

Kreston wasn’t gone! He was still there, just hidden from view, concealed by an invisible shroud. If I squinted, I could make out a vague distortion in the air where his ghost would have been. But not only that…

“There,” Dr. Tenneson said. “Now, we wait.”

I could feel him.

Oh God, I could feel him! I could feel his misery. His anguish. I felt his rage as he struggled against the shroud.

It was like I was asphyxiating him!