“Today was an awful day,” I said. “Mrs. Elbock. My patients. Everything.”

Dr. Rathpalla’s finger shot up. “That’s right.” He pointed at me. “You’re on a Crisis Management Team with Dr. Horosha, aren’t you?”

I nodded.

A voice spoke nearby: “The floor is a goddamn mess, isn’t it?”

I looked off to the side to see Larry staring at the two of us.

“And in more ways than one,” the janitor added.

I looked back at Ibrahim. “I don’t know how these surgeons do it,” I said. “How do they keep themselves from falling apart?”

“It’s one of life’s great mysteries.” He tilted his head. “Well, it was. Then,” he gestured at himself, “this happened.”

I nodded. “I’ve barely been holding it together, myself” I said. “Actually,” I shook my head, “no, I’ve completely failed to hold it together. I’m a disaster with numb feet and a limp.” I snorted in frustration. “Not too long ago, earlier this evening, I was trying to calm myself down by watching the news—”

“—That sounds unwise,” Ibrahim said.

“Well, I didn’t even get that far, because when I tried to turn on the news, I couldn’t because,” I inhaled sharply, “…because my changes had spread to my hand and were interfering with my chip, and so,” my voice dwindled, “I…” I gulped, “I used my claw and… well… I cut it out,” I said, ending in a whimper.

Dr. Rathpalla stared at me like I was the weird one.

Tira swung her neck around, having been eavesdropping from a distance. My words must have caught her gossip-loving ears, because she literally inserted her face into the conversation, lurching her head toward us.

“Holy moly, Genneth,” she said, “why would you do that to yourself?”

Several feet away, from their place near the base of her neck, Tira’s hands made the Bond-sign.

“I needed my chip,” I whined.

“What,” Ibrahim stared at me bemusedly, “are you finally planning on using the massive inheritance your father-in-law left for Pel?” He chuckled. “Fat good that’ll do in the fungal afterscape.” He stopped chuckling when he realized I wasn’t laughing.

“I need my chip because I can’t keep doing my job without it,” I said. I shuddered, my tail softly scraping against the wall behind me. “So far, I’ve managed to keep my condition under wraps, though for a while there, I was scared to pieces I’d be found out.” I clenched my fists as best I could with my changing fingers. “I kept thinking that my luck had finally run out, that my time had finally come, and then I nearly lost my chip.” I sighed. “Thankfully,” I tapped my coat pocket, “I still have the darn thing, but I need to get it reattached somehow, and I don’t know where to turn.”

Adjusting his stance and grip, Dr. Rathpalla gave me a wary stare, and, in the process, showed it was possible to hold crutches in a way that made you look judgmental. “Genneth, when you say keeping your condition ‘under wraps’… please don’t tell me that means what I think it means.”

I stared at him, not saying anything.

He rolled his eyes and sighed.

“I’m not going to like your answer, am I?” he asked.

“O.M.A.,” Tira said, “this is so tense! I can’t take it!” Unable to cover her eyes with her hands, she settled for lowering her face to the floor.

“I’ve known about my… condition… for days now,” I explained. “But I haven’t told my colleagues. In fact, I even told Dr. Marteneiss that I wasn’t—“

—And then, seemingly everyone’s eyes were on me.

Ibrahim snapped at me. “You’ve been lying to your colleagues about your condition?!” His eyebrows spiked so much that his left one fell right off his face.

If there was anyone in Ward 13 who hadn’t heard my confession, they had now.

“Haven’t you all been doing the same?” I asked, skittishly—smiling as innocently as I could. That smile backfired on me.

Big time.

Tira’s lengthy neck swayed from side to side as she shook her head. “As far as management is concerned, we’re all AWOL,” she explained.

Others paying attention nodded, as did Dr. Rathpalla. “Once they began sequestering transformees, I dropped everything I had. My plan was to head for the hills, but,” he craned his neck and upper torso, scanning the room until he caught sight of Dr. Horosha, “thankfully, Suisei found me first.” He turned back to me. “And I’m glad he did.”

I gulped. At that moment, I’d have given a leg to have had Gerbilino’s Burrow ability from Super Gerbil World. I wanted to disappear into a hole in the ground, seal it up, and plaster my hands over my face until the awful, awful feeling in my chest went away and it finally felt safe to breathe again.

“Why were you planning on fleeing?” I asked.

Dr. Rathpalla narrowed his eyes. “I consider myself a reasonable person, Genneth. As a reasonable person, I recognize the end of the world when I see it. People turning into serpents? That’s the end of the world, alright.”

“It’s wyrms, actually,” I said, meekly correcting him. “With a Y.”

Yes, it was petty, but what else could I do? He had me by the jewels.

“Whatever you call it,” Ibrahim said, shaking his height and bulk, “this isn’t the real world anymore. It’s fantasy. It’s a different world, real in its own way. But its way is not our way. Or… maybe our world was always a fantasy, and we didn’t notice it until it already spiraling down the tubes.” He shook his head. “It won’t be long before our world becomes a graveyard, with monsters like us as its grave-keepers.”

This? This hurt. “How can you say that, Ibrahim?” My voice rose. “What about our oaths as doctors? To heal until the last!”

“This is ‘the last’, Genneth. You know me; I’ve always been opposed to false hope. I don’t want to waste what little time this life has left for us.” He lunged at me, like a viper striking. “Look at what your false hope has led to. How can you go around the hospital hiding your condition, in full knowledge of what the Green Death can do? And—speaking of surgeons—look at what happened to Dr. Arbond! How can you be comfortable knowing that you,” he thrust a crutch at me, “you are spreading death wherever you go? I mean,” he shook his head, “I’ve seen Greg breathing out spores. And not just him! No.” Ibrahim lifted his crutches and then stomped them down on the vinyl floor. “There’s no doubt in my mind,” he said, “it’s in everyone’s best interest that transformees like us keep our distance from, well… everyone. I don’t think I could live with myself if I knew I’d help spread the Green Death and all its horrors.” Ibrahim looked positively disgusted with me. “Have you even seen the videos?” he asked. “The monsters? My brother works at the Elpeck Zoo. It’s crawling with nightmares. The military is barely keeping in under control.”

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But, by that point, I wasn’t listening. Instead, I was fixating on Dr. Rathpalla’s earlier words. Words that hung in the air like the Green Death’s spores.

How can you be comfortable, knowing that you—you—are spreading death wherever you go?

Dr. Rathpalla couldn’t have known it, but those words hit me right where I couldn’t bear to be touched.

It happens even to the best of us. From time to time, the birds alight, and everything just goes… wrong. That’s the thing about feelings. As you keep them in your memory, they’ll walk by your side. Our feelings never forget us. The aches are always there, always at risk of being torn wide open. You could ignore them, you could try to distract yourself, hoping you might forget them—even if only for a moment—but, no matter what you did, your feelings would remember you.

How can you be comfortable, knowing that you—you—are spreading death wherever you go?

Spreading death wherever you go.

While Ibrahim, Tira, and Larry were arguing over whether or not the fungus was making monsters out of plants and animals, my feelings remembered me.

Death wherever you go.

My lips quivered. My eyes welled up with tears. I ran my fingers through my hair, not caring that they were claws. There was a minor pain as they opened in my scalp because of how hard I pressed, though not a drop of blood. It must have looked pretty bad, because it was enough to get the others to stare at me; even Dr. Rathpalla; even Tira.

“How can I be so comfortable, Ibrahim?” I scoffed. “You say that like it’s so easy,” I said, “like I can just turn it off. Morality isn’t a multiple choice exam, Dr. Rathpalla, though—by the Angel—I wish it was. I really do.” I sucked in breath and shuddered long . “But it isn’t. Not when you have to live with death on your shoulders. And, let me just say, thank you for being presumptuous. Thank you for assuming I can only act in bad faith, and that I wouldn’t be tormenting myself every gosh-darn moment out of fear that I might infect someone.” To emphasize my point, I turned my PPE gown pocket inside out. Half a dozen bottles of hand sanitizer spilled onto the floor. “I’ve been carrying these with me everywhere I go. I’ve been using them religiously. I’ve been avoiding doing my breathing exercises in public for fear of infecting others. I can’t even be with my family anymore. They know what’s happened to me, and they rejected me. They’re scared of me, Ibrahim. They think I’m a monster now. And maybe I am. This is all I have left!” I pointed at the ground. “Only the doctor remains. And if he’s gone, then… I really am dead. Dead and gone.”

Ibrahim knew he’d pushed me too far. His tone softened. “Genneth, it’s…” he shook his head. His voice cracked. “It’s not your fault that NFP-20 kills people.”

It’s not your fault.

It’s not your fault.

It’s not your fault.

Not. Your. Fault.

Those words were like knives plunging into my stomach. I hated them. I hated them and their empty truth. I never wanted to hear them. I never wanted to think about them. In my mind, I knew it to be right, but in my heart, I screamed, because I knew it to be a lie. How could I call those words “truth” if everything that made me me told me that they were lies? And if it was true, why didn’t it feel true? Why didn’t I feel its truth?

Why didn’t it make the pain go away?

That’s why I had to help people. I had to make amends. It was the only way I could keep the pain away. The only way I could convince myself that putting a bullet through my brain wouldn’t make the world a better place.

“Ibrahim,” I said, wiping the tears from my eyes. “It is my fault. It’s my fault that Rale is dead.” I glared at him, and then he looked back and I quipped, “Don’t look at me like that,” and then felt shame for having snapped at a friend.

I sighed.

I felt limp. My tail drooped onto the cold vinyl floor.

“I lost my second child. That’s not a secret; it never was. Rale…” I smiled through the tears. “He was born with Wernstrom’s Syndrome.” My voice caught in my throat.

Whenever I fell into talking or even thinking about Rale’s fate, I couldn’t help but see it through to the end. I couldn’t possibly stop somewhere in the middle. It would have hurt too much.

“He was so frail,” I said. “He couldn’t even run down the hallway without getting winded. Physical exertion tainted his skin blue. He had clubbed fingers. His fingernails grew in curved. We would have had him homeschooled if he hadn’t been so adamant about going to school like all the other kids.” I lowered my gaze in self-loathing. “But I wanted better for him. I wanted more for him. That’s all I ever wanted for him, and it was a fine want to have, but I just couldn’t keep it locked up in my chest. I took my needs and expectations and projected them onto him, and I shouldn’t have, and I was too stupid to know any better. So, when Dr. Arbond—see how it all ties together?—when Cassius told me there was a surgical procedure that could give Rale a chance at a normal, healthy life…” I shuddered. “It was me and my big mouth. Pel jumped with joy at the news. Her faith was enough for me. I was eager. Too eager. I didn’t bother to be cautious or circumspect. But… I should have.”

I bundled my hand into a fist and slammed it against my thigh. “I should have done something. I should have said something. I shouldn’t have let us lose sight of the surgery’s risks. I should have listened to my son when he said things were good enough the way they were, even if my instincts told me he was lying to make me feel better! But I didn’t.” My voice cracked again. “There was a complication during the surgery, and Rale died on the operating table, and my negligence is to blame. I should have done more. So don’t you dare say it’s not my fault. It was like Dana’s death all over again. It was like Mom’s…”

I wiped more tears on my sleeve.

“I have to do something!” I inhaled sharply and gyrated my hands on my wrists. “Everything’s going to heck and I’m turning into this thing… I wish I could go off to the sidelines and sit down and rest. I’d love to rest. I wish I could.” I chuckled cruelly. “Angel knows, I’ve tried, but when I try, all I see is guilt. Guilt as far as the eye can see. I see everything I could have done, and I drown.” I shuddered. “Mental illness runs in my family, Dr. Rathpalla, you know that?” I gestured at myself, and then him. “You and I both know that repeated exposure to traumatic stress makes for the perfect breeding ground for mental illness. Addiction, neurosis, psychosis, suicidal ideation. Schizophrenia—especially in individuals with a genetic predisposition.”

“Genneth…” Ibrahim sighed—kindly, achingly.

Because I couldn’t see what my face looked like, I couldn’t tell which of us felt more guilty and self-pitying.

“Already,” I said, “just by sitting here, I’m feeling like I’m drowning, like I’m drifting away from who I am, and even further away from who I’d like to be. I’m damned if I do, and damned if I don’t.” I sighed.

“So, thank you, Dr. Rathpalla,” I smiled darkly, “Thank you for saying out loud the horrible, unspeakable contradiction that I’ve been dancing around for the past few days. Thank you for reminding me that I can lie to myself and pretend it’s not there and squint my eyes to force myself to dream that things can stay the way that they were before. Thank you for reminding me that I’m a threat to others, even when I’m trying to help.” I chuckled piteously. “I guess you could call it my specialty.”

I averted my gaze.

“Dr. Rathpalla didn’t mean to attack you,” Tira said, gently.

Nodding, I waved my hand dismissively, claw and all. “I know, I know.” I glanced at Ibrahim. “I’m sorry for yelling, it’s just—”

“—Things are hard,” he said.

I nodded. “You can say that again.”

And there we go. I had a good cry, I lashed out at people who were just trying to help, and all so that I could vent a couple ounces of my bottomless tanks of grief. Soon, I’d stuff the feeling down where the sun don’t shine and then carry on like before, until the cycle brought me around again and the pressure built up all over again, until I could no longer hold it back.

Speaking of things I could no longer hold back…

“I think I need a little time to myself.” I rose from my seat.