cure or at least a viable treatment and life would
go on as it had before, those very first victims just ghostly
memories.
There was a train delay and it took him
almost ninety minutes to get home to his studio apartment on Staten
Island. When he walked in, it was dark. There was no girlfriend to
meet him. The emptiness of the small space swallowed him up whole
and the crushing weight of reality burst through the trauma of the
day, infecting his soul as surely as a bite would have infected his
blood. He just barely managed to make it to the toilet before
throwing up his guts. He spent most of the rest of the night
huddled next to the tub weeping.
***
IN his final moments, Todd Mayfield
could only think of Sven. They hadn't been particularly close but
they had been peers, colleagues. And Todd had run out on him, left
him to be chewed up by those things. Ironically, his guilt
was his strength. The more he suffered with the illness, the more
he believed that he deserved every shred of pain that came to
him.
I'm sorry, Sven, he thought over and
over until delirium claimed his mind leaving him with just the
echoing …sorry…sorry…sorry… . When the infection finally took
his body as well, he didn't have even that.
***
ABBY Benjamin and her husband and son
and her parents huddled together in an exam room for two hours
waiting for someone to come and give them the results of their
tests. Sammy was somewhat feverish, though the ibuprofen kept it in
a safe range. He drank a little but ate nothing, which had been his
behavior throughout the course of the day. They tried to talk, the
four adults, tried to lift Sammy's spirits as well as their own.
But there was this oppressive pall over the environment and they
could not escape its influence. It was better to face the terrible
possibilities head on.
It wasn't Dr. Luco who brought them their
results. It was a haggard technician. Luco had checked them,
though, checked them twice. The technician carried with her a small
bottle filled with a pinkish liquid in it. It was an antibiotic for
Sammy's strep throat.
They were all clean.
Collapsing in tears, the lot of them, they
remained for several minutes. The tech left them to themselves. She
had a lot more work to do.
As they finally collected themselves, Abby
grabbed up Sammy in a great big hug. Thank God. Strep throat,
thank God. But as grateful as she was, she understood what that
diagnosis had meant before the discovery of antibiotics. There had
been a time when a person's own body's ability to fight off an
infection unaided determined the outcome. There was a time when a
mother cried over her son's strep throat the way Abby would have
cried if the diagnosis there had been different.
***
DENISE Luco watched Todd Mayfield
suffer. And suffer he did. Every interminable moment of his illness
caused him more and more distress and even though Luco hung bag
after bag of IV solution, she did nothing.
Really.
Nothing.
The bags were filled with saline, just
something to keep him hydrated and to keep everyone else thinking
that she was trying to help him. She wasn't. And she wasn't sure
she would ever be able to look at herself in the mirror again.
Throughout her ten year career, Luco has seen
few patients. As a fourth year med student doing her rotations in a
hospital, she'd learned very quickly that dealing with patients was
not in her future. She'd turned to research then, enjoying the
slides of bacteria, and the interaction of numbers on a data sheet.
Whenever she had seen a patient, it was under the careful
observation of a superior or at least a peer. Someone else was the
attending physician and she was just observing symptoms. Here,
though, she was the attending physician. The zombie bacterium was
her baby. She'd blundered into its path and adopted it.
When Detective Stemmy had come in a week
before, bitten and teeming with bacteria, she'd
go on as it had before, those very first victims just ghostly
memories.
There was a train delay and it took him
almost ninety minutes to get home to his studio apartment on Staten
Island. When he walked in, it was dark. There was no girlfriend to
meet him. The emptiness of the small space swallowed him up whole
and the crushing weight of reality burst through the trauma of the
day, infecting his soul as surely as a bite would have infected his
blood. He just barely managed to make it to the toilet before
throwing up his guts. He spent most of the rest of the night
huddled next to the tub weeping.
***
IN his final moments, Todd Mayfield
could only think of Sven. They hadn't been particularly close but
they had been peers, colleagues. And Todd had run out on him, left
him to be chewed up by those things. Ironically, his guilt
was his strength. The more he suffered with the illness, the more
he believed that he deserved every shred of pain that came to
him.
I'm sorry, Sven, he thought over and
over until delirium claimed his mind leaving him with just the
echoing …sorry…sorry…sorry… . When the infection finally took
his body as well, he didn't have even that.
***
ABBY Benjamin and her husband and son
and her parents huddled together in an exam room for two hours
waiting for someone to come and give them the results of their
tests. Sammy was somewhat feverish, though the ibuprofen kept it in
a safe range. He drank a little but ate nothing, which had been his
behavior throughout the course of the day. They tried to talk, the
four adults, tried to lift Sammy's spirits as well as their own.
But there was this oppressive pall over the environment and they
could not escape its influence. It was better to face the terrible
possibilities head on.
It wasn't Dr. Luco who brought them their
results. It was a haggard technician. Luco had checked them,
though, checked them twice. The technician carried with her a small
bottle filled with a pinkish liquid in it. It was an antibiotic for
Sammy's strep throat.
They were all clean.
Collapsing in tears, the lot of them, they
remained for several minutes. The tech left them to themselves. She
had a lot more work to do.
As they finally collected themselves, Abby
grabbed up Sammy in a great big hug. Thank God. Strep throat,
thank God. But as grateful as she was, she understood what that
diagnosis had meant before the discovery of antibiotics. There had
been a time when a person's own body's ability to fight off an
infection unaided determined the outcome. There was a time when a
mother cried over her son's strep throat the way Abby would have
cried if the diagnosis there had been different.
***
DENISE Luco watched Todd Mayfield
suffer. And suffer he did. Every interminable moment of his illness
caused him more and more distress and even though Luco hung bag
after bag of IV solution, she did nothing.
Really.
Nothing.
The bags were filled with saline, just
something to keep him hydrated and to keep everyone else thinking
that she was trying to help him. She wasn't. And she wasn't sure
she would ever be able to look at herself in the mirror again.
Throughout her ten year career, Luco has seen
few patients. As a fourth year med student doing her rotations in a
hospital, she'd learned very quickly that dealing with patients was
not in her future. She'd turned to research then, enjoying the
slides of bacteria, and the interaction of numbers on a data sheet.
Whenever she had seen a patient, it was under the careful
observation of a superior or at least a peer. Someone else was the
attending physician and she was just observing symptoms. Here,
though, she was the attending physician. The zombie bacterium was
her baby. She'd blundered into its path and adopted it.
When Detective Stemmy had come in a week
before, bitten and teeming with bacteria, she'd
Similar Books
