My plan to bring Ileene’s ghost peace had worked splendidly. So splendidly, in fact, I wanted to take it all back.
I’d broken her. I broke her the way a rancher broke a horse, except Ileene showed no signs of bouncing back. I didn’t get so much as a peep out of her throughout the rest of the day, and when I checked up on her in the “ghost room”, all I found was murk and mist, and woe and regret. Sure, Ileene’s ghost was no longer a threat to anyone’s safety. The demonification process playing out within her had been stopped. I’d saved myself and anyone else from being harmed by her, yet, in doing so, I’d done the opposite of what Andalon and I would have wanted.
I’d damned Ileene Plotsky to an eternity of misery.
So, obviously, my only logical recourse after Ileene’s disappearance was to go straight to Heggy and beg her to assign me a change of pace. I needed a break from working with the NFP-20 patients. I couldn’t take the constant defeat. Each and every death was the song of the earth mocking me and my efforts, condemning me for having had the audacity to hope and dream.
The Green Death wasn’t a plague, it was an execution. The waves of humanity passing through WeElMed’s halls were diarrhea on the face of creation, stuffed in through one end, splattered out the other. It was so bad that the military had to intervene, with soldiers working in conjunction with whatever remained of the city’s sanitation workers to operate dump trucks. The dump trucks had replaced the endless cycle of ambulances coming and going from the hospital’s many loading zones, not that there was any need for ambulances anymore. People were flocking to the hospital by the thousands, taking whatever route they could, and the dump trucks were taking their corpses away by the thousands, transporting them to the burn pits the military and coast guard were overseeing a couple miles out of town. Massive clouds of smoke and soot wafted up from the burn pits, fouling a wide swath of the daytime sky that tinted the daylight orange-red whenever the Sun passed behind it.
And if that wasn’t enough, not only were we dying from the plague, we were also dying because we were shooting each other.
All the city’s pent-up frustrations were breaking through the surface simultaneously. We had riots by the dozen. Riots at the banks, riots at supermarkets, riots at government buildings. There were even riots on the cruise liners moored in Elpeck harbor. People were becoming horribly violent, often attacking each other like they were nothing more than wild animals. There were rumors the Green Death was causing it, and counter-rumors that, no, it was the military shooting people that was causing it. Not even our sister hospitals were spared from the violence.
Though WeElMed was the city’s largest, most formidable hospital, we were actually part of a network of four complexes, one for each of the cardinal directions. Word was there’d been some kind of riots at East Elpeck Medical Center and North Elpeck Medical center, with the military being forced to intervene to put them down. We were still waiting to hear back from them for confirmation that they were still functioning.
Part of me wondered if these “riots” might have been the opening skirmishes of the battles of the Last Days, only to stop thinking about that idea altogether when I realized there was a good chance that was exactly what was happening.
Fudge. Fudge it all.
All of that and more came up in my conversation with Heggy—the one where I was begging her for a change of pace.
“Well then,” Heggy said, “if you’re not gonna be workin’ with patients, what are you gonna be doin?”
Fortunately, I knew just the thing to suggest.
Dr. Marteneiss replied with a ringing endorsement, and in that special way that only she could.
“Dr. Howle,” she said, “you really are the golden-heartedest son-of-a-bitch I’ve ever met. If it helps you sleep better, go right ahead.”
“What if Director Hobwell complains?” I asked.
“Then I’ll personally bite his head off,” she answered—and, I had to admit, that made me feel just the teensiest bit better.
The idea had come to me while I’d been exploring Ileene’s memories, courtesy of one of my doppelgenneths. The me that came up with the idea had been inspired by the sight of our colleagues being zipped up in body bags after succumbing to the very plague they’d been trying to beat.
The body bags were made on-site by the matter printers down in the basement. The synthetic fibers that nearly everyone wore these days—synthetic cotton, synthetic down, etc.—were digested by the printers and re-extruded as simple, minimalistic off-beige body bags.
So, yeah, our medical supplies were dwindling, but at least we wouldn’t run out of body bags.
What a world.
By any humane measure, the deaths we were seeing were every bit as traumatic as Aicken Wognivitch’s heinous mass shooting at Dressfeldt Court, and when traumatic events came WeElMed’s way, it was my duty to provide counseling and support for those affected—only this time, my patients were my colleagues. I set up a remote therapy clinic in an empty diagnostic room; triage had been moved to outside the hospital earlier in the day.
They came in one at a time, entering the four corners of my console screen via videophone call from wherever they happened to be. Sometimes it was a restroom. Other times, it was diagnostic rooms, or even in the middle of a hallway.
“I just feel like I’m drowning,” Alejandro said. He shook his head and coughed.
Aged in his mid-thirties, Nurse Practitioner Alejandro Chitlan wore orange scrubs that made him stick out like a traffic signal, even in the densest, most death-packed hallways. Sweat curdled into grease where his dark hair’s bangs matted against his forehead; grainy stubble speckled his cheeks behind his mask.
He was calling me from a toilet stall. He’d been telling me about how he’d given up trying to treat patients, and instead chose to spend his time helping them make videophone calls to say goodbye to their loved ones. He kept them breathing, or worked the console for them, helping them make the calls.
And he was far from the only one of WeElMed’s employees who was doing this.
“I’ve been asking myself ‘what the fuck am I even doing here?’, and, swing the Sword, I don’t know how to answer it anymore. Even helping them say goodbye doesn’t feel like it means anything anymore. It’s… it’s not enough.”
The worst part was when someone answered the calls to inform the patients that their loved ones were already dead.
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
Nurse Chitlan’s eyes twitched as he glanced rapidly around his stall. He was second-guessing and double-taking his words before he’d even said them.
“You might not believe this,” I said, from my perch atop a stool, “but… I know exactly what you mean. We’re hardwired to think of everything in proportions that we can handle. It’s why we like personifying our problems. It’s much easier to make satisfying progress if you can kick the cause of your problems between its legs. That’s why it’s so difficult to deal with the enormity of reality.” I spread my arms. “We’re not used to thinking at that scale. So, we end up feeling powerless, because we can’t see how our tiny contributions could ever make a difference.”
Tears trickled down Alejandro’s face. Instinctively, he reached to wipe them from his cheeks, only for his hands to brush up against his mask. His burly arms tensed beneath his lurid orange scrubs. His shoulders locked up, and squeezed tight as he brought his hand to join the other, clasped onto his console.
It was hard to watch a grown man like him cry—though, not as hard as it was to watch the bodies pile high in the back of a dump truck.
“You need to let yourself answer those questions, Alejandro,” I said. “And you need to open up to the thought that the good you do is valuable just for what it is. I know it might feel like they’ve been slipping through your fingers, but, the fact is, the good you do can never be erased. It’s etched into the air.
I closed my eyes, knowing that a concerted gaze would add to the nurse’s shame, and he had already suffered plenty.
“Still, it’s good that you’re letting these feelings out. That’s important. That’s healthy. Keeping them bottled up inside is just setting a time bomb.”
“I know,” he said.
“You trying to suppress your frustrations is why you assaulted a patient’s spouse,” I said, “and that’s why you’re here, talking to me.”
“I know,” he said, forcefully—aggrieved. “But…” But then his voice trailed off.
“Yes?”
After a pause, he shuddered with emotion, and nodded. “Can I just spill the beans?” he asked.
I nodded. “Always.”
“I’m sad, Doc,” he said. His gloves squeaked as he squeezed his console in his grip. “And I’m fuckin’ angry.” He flung his arm out to the side, waving it fervidly. “They come in, gasping for breath, and there’s nothing we can do. I mean, there’s plenty we can try—ECMO, tracheostomy, pump ‘em full of morphine—assuming we still have any left—but…” His arms drooped at his side. “What’s it good for?” The nurse shook his head. “If the fungus hasn’t already eaten their minds, they’re hooked on fear and lies, screaming at me because they think I’m causing the plague. And if they’re not doing that, they’re screaming at me for not doing enough, or for not doing what they tell me to do. And everyone else is just broken. I’m not even a nurse anymore; I’m just the guy who dumps bodies into the mass grave, waiting until it’s my turn to go in.”
Assuming this horror ever ended, and there was anyone left to care, the commemorative plaque on the Green Death monument ought to have DO NOT POLITICIZE PUBLIC HEALTH EMERGENCIES written on it in large print, and perhaps also, Don’t listen to the John Henrichies of the world.
Grift, ego, privilege, and contempt were deadly weapons when fashioned into human form.
Alejandro glanced to the side. “It’s like… I went to nursing school, lady. You didn’t. All that dusting your husband’s face with powdered rhino horn will do is drive the poor animals to extinction.” He locked eyes with me. “I try to tell them, but they don’t listen, and I hate them for that, but… I think I hate myself even more, for not being able to make a difference.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “Have you seen what this thing does to people?”
“I’m not just your average neuropsychiatrist, you know,” I said, with a nod. “I’m also one of the three co-heads of the Crisis Management Team for Ward E.”
His eyes widened. “Damn…”
I sighed. “It’s like an old wind-up toy sputtering to a stop.”
He nodded. “Only it never stops sputtering. Pitch black necrosis shreds them down to their bones. It’s a race to see which gives out first: their minds or their lungs. And… the moaning, the weeping.” He looked down for a moment. “How can I treat patients when all they want is for me to kill them, just to make the pain stop? Word is someone in Ward H snapped, and started doing just that.”
Quite right. Somehow, Hobwell had gotten wind of my suggestion to Heggy, and, in his last act before collapsing in a coughing fit and getting dragged off to the ICU, he’d decided to make it official and put my vocational skill set to work providing counseling for the employees who were beginning to crack under the pressure of the unremitting patient surge. The person from Ward H that Alejandro spoke of was a kind young nurse by the name of Marcia. My session with Marcia had been scheduled right before the present one with Alejandro. Ellen had taken to injecting patients’ IV lines with cyanide to quickly and painlessly release them from this mortal coil, after they’d begged her to do so.
How could I not give them release?, she’d said. Word gets around fast, Dr. Howle. They know they’re going to die in horrible pain, without any of their memories to comfort them. Near the end, they’re like children. They turn into these frightened little kids trapped in adult bodies with no knowledge of anything. Everything scares them. Everything hurts, and they don’t know why, but there’s no point in telling them, because their short-term memory’s flown the coop, and in five seconds, it’ll be like you hadn’t said anything at all. You’d have to be a monster to stand by and let that happen to a person, and I’m not going to be a monster!
Marcia’s session ended early when her heart went tachycardic as her own NFP-20 infection stepped into high gear. The last I saw of her was her unconscious body getting loaded onto a gurney as her fellow nurses rushed her to the emergency room.
“I hate this!” Alejandro yelled. “I hate this more than I’ve hated anything in my whole life!” In his agitation, he didn’t seem to notice how quickly and steadily his cough was getting worse and worse. “Why does it even matter anymore? The world’s fucking ending!”
Not another one…
I sniffled, trying not to cry.
“You seen the latest numbers?” he asked me.
“No, I haven’t,” I said. “I try not to dwell on—”
“—It’s about to pass two billion deaths. Two billion in less than a week. We’ll be extinct by the end of the month.”
“You’re a hero, Alejandro,” I said, looking him in the eyes. “And I’m not just saying that. In a better world, you’d be fêted… you’d get what you deserve. I wish we lived in that world, or, at the very least, that I knew how to get us there.” I inhaled sharply—force of habit. “But… I don’t, and hardly a moment goes by when I’m not aware of it, and miserable because of it.”
“But… “ My lips quivered, “you and your efforts are noble. They still shine. They shine so brightly, and no matter how dark, twisted, and cruel the world will become, your efforts will shine, and they’ll keep on shining. It’s indelible. Even once we’re all gone and long forgotten, our ripples will remain, and the world will be forever changed because of it.” I hazarded a smile. “You, Nurse Chitlan, have chosen to help others, and you keep making that choice every second that you stay here, and that…” I shuddered, trying not to cry, “really… that’s the most difficult part of all.”
“You say that,” he said, his voice breaking much like mine, “but—”
“—No,” I shook my head. “No buts. Kindness isn’t for the faint of heart. There aren’t any roads to kindness. You have to stumble through the dark on your hands and knees to find your way, and that never changes, no matter how many times you do it. The right choices aren’t easy to make, and the easy choices usually aren’t right. But you try anyway. You’re a trailblazer. You light up the Night. So, shine, and keep on shining. It’s our only hope of scattering the darkness.”
Both of us were actively fighting not to cry, and neither of us won.
“Thanks, Doc,” Alejandro said, red-eyed after the long silence. “Well…” he smiled bitterly, “back to the front.”
“Stay safe,” I said, as he stood up and ended the call.
Noticing a message alert in the corner of my screen, I tapped it, and was immediately flooded. In the other corner of the screen, a separate alert flashed and pinged, indicating I was to be transferred to another videophone call in twenty seconds. Another patient, in need of therapy—likely a doctor, or a nurse, or maybe an EMT.
I wanted to help them all, but there were so many, and only so much time in the day. It was crazy: within the confines of my body, I had the power to be in multiple places at once, but that didn’t make a lick of a difference when it came to helping other people. And, to make matters worse, I was starting to feel my guilt tugging at me and weighing me down. As mad and self-destructive as it was, I couldn’t keep sitting on a stool alone in a room while people were dying, and while my friends and colleagues were fighting to try and stop it.
I tapped the stark white X on the black background of the alert of the incoming videophone call coming my way, canceling it. I made sure to text a mass apology to everyone that had made an appointment with me. I had a long list of responsibilities to attend to. And the name at the top of that list—literally, right there, at the head of the message stream?
Elbock, Merritt.