Read Online Pestilence: A Medical Thriller by Victor Methos - Free Book Online Page A

her, and fought. They had once even wrestled a gang member to the ground because he was on PCP and had knocked the doctor out cold.
    B ut her first shift in the quarantine unit was unnerving. Many of the nurses had refused to even go in, but she wasn’t scared. She had dealt with the worst outbreak of flu she’d ever seen and had lived to tell the tale without a scratch.
    She was in the locker room , changing into her scrubs. She put on her Crocs and then went out onto the floor. Walking to the elevator, she didn’t really speak to anybody, which was unusual for her. But she wanted her concentration, and the best way to maintain it was to ignore others.
    She stepped off on the top floor, and Dr. Deluge was standing in front of one of the patient’s doors. As she came up next to him, she looked into Candice’s room.
    “How is she?”
    “Stable, I suppose,” he said. “Has she moved or talked?”
    “Not since about three days ago.”
    “Any vomiting or bowel movements?”
    “One bowel movement yesterday, but it was mostly blood.” She shook her head. “Poor girl. She’s my Mathew’s age.”
    Deluge rubbed his temples with his thumb and middle finger. “I’m going home . I’ve worked a twenty-hour shift. Keep me apprised of any major updates.”
    “Sure.”
    As Deluge left, Nancy walked back to the nurse’s station on the quarantined floor and relieved the lone nurse sitting there, surfing the internet. She stretched and then opened solitaire and began playing.
     
     
    Around midnight , Nancy heard something on the monitor. She paused the video she was watching on YouTube and listened. It sounded like coughing. She rose and walked over to Candice’s room to make sure she was all right. Glancing in, she nearly screamed.
    Candice was covered in a thick black blood. The fluid was spurting out of her eyes, ears, and mouth. Nancy wouldn’t say she was vomiting because the heaving reflex was absent. Her blood was just coming out of her body as if being pulled by gravity.
    Nancy called the ER. “I need a crash cart and a doctor up here in quarantine right now!”
    Unthinking, seeing only a young girl in pain, she ran in.
    She pushed past the transparent barrier and turned Candice to her side. A metal bowl near her mouth caught most of the blood, but it was still coming out of her ears. Nancy grabbed a bedsheet and pressed it to her ear canals to try to slow the bleeding.
    For a single moment, Candice stopped vomiting and sobbed. “Please help me,” she cried.
    Before Nancy could say anything, Candice convulsed violently and jerked onto her back on the bed. She vomited an explosive stream of blood that hit Nancy in the face. It was warm and smelled like foul steak.
    Nancy panicked , turning Candice to her side again, allowing her to vomit into the bowl. But so much blood was coming that it filled the bowl and spilled onto the floor.
    The door opened , and a crash team was there.
    “No,” someone shouted down the hall. One of the trauma doctors, Roger, ran over to the room and looked in. “Don’t go in ,” he said. “Gear up first.”
    “There’s no time,” Nancy said.
    She realized suddenly that the crash team was staring at her. She wondered why, until something wet dripped off her face and onto her hands. She touched her face and came away with the blackness that covered Candice. Until then, she hadn’t registered that the blood on her face was hemorrhagic blood.
    “Roger…”
    “Get into the shower, now.”
    She walked to the bathroom in the corner of the room and washed her face and hands. She started slow ly and used a little soap, and then rubbed her hands together furiously. She was using so much soap that the suds covered the sink. She scrubbed violently at her face, and after a short time the skin was raw and pink, and she was crying.
    She screamed and ran out of the room. The crash team were in the supply closet where they kept the biohazard gear, and Roger yelled out to her, but she