Word Count: 18,347

I need to read this stuff over for consistency. The story is so massive that I’m having a bit of trouble keeping track of my finer points, which I would like to make into larger, more significant plot points later. I just have to make sure I’m not twisting anything or forgetting anything.

Unfortunately, that was the case. I remained healthy, but Victor and Shanna became weaker and weaker as the days passed by. But the symptom never became clear. They seemed tired, and much older, but they never coughed or wheezed. They never spoke of feeling ill, only of feeling fatigued. They would complain about the temperature in the room, which was sometimes hot, many times cold, but this was hardly a symptom. Then, without warning, Victor collapsed. Victor had been monitoring several corpses around the morgue, and as though to say he’d like to join them, he fell on top of one and his eyes did not open after several hours. I took the opportunity to ensure that Victor became my patient. He was so sad looking – his eyes resembled Edward Nambet’s after my inquisitive face went away. Edward would put on the sorriest expression until I agreed to pronounce him worthy of questioning once again, as though he derived pleasure from being strange.

Victor was lucky enough to wake up, but unlike Shane was still experiencing fatigue and faintness. He seemed liable to pass out at any moment, but I knew he would not be dying any time soon. There is a look that a man has on his face right before he is about to die, similar to the look that any person might have upon their visage after they learn about the death of a friend. It was Noah’s face – the face of death. But when reflexive it is twisted and backwards. Instead of a hanging jaw, the mouth remains persistently shut. Instead of welling tears, the eyes become dry, as does the face and body. The person dying no longer wants to talk, as though they know what is coming. They do know what is coming now, and are powerless to stop the forces bringing their downfall. This is what I saw in Victor the pathologist. But he was no longer a pathologist. He was a normal man in distress. He’d thrown his title away once the bacteria had infected him.

I felt bad, because these bacteria had neither name nor nature. He would not die in vain, but he would not die of any cause, either. I saddened myself, as he was saddened for lying in the hospital bed.

That night, Victor wept with dry heaved tears.

Shanna was not the next to fall. Victor remained alone in hell for another two months, wavering between life and death. I believed that it was his experience with corpses that led him to resist becoming one for so long. He had the will to live, but was far more afraid of death than most people. He knew what came after death, and would rather struggle through life keeping alive than be dead and have his organs stuffed into plastic bags. I didn’t blame him; just the thought made me wish for perpetual life, or an exemption from my own autopsy. I knew that the body rots to feed the Earth, but why shovel in plastic along with the body?

By three months after Shane’s departure the hospital was looking quite grim. I was one of the few who were not sick. I attempted to blend into the hospital environment and make it seem as though nothing were wrong, but I must have failed miserably, even if nobody told me specifically that I was a completely unconvincing sick person. It was a struggle, indeed, to deal with a sick patient such as Victor with sick staff running around a contaminated hospital. Our hospital was never top-notch, but we were cleanly, and we knew when it was time to clean the place up. The problem was that we only knew it. The majority of workers did not have the strength to carry out the action. I had become far too preoccupied to observe the bacteria any longer, and was on a constant hunt for symptoms of this strange disease, whatever it was. I did not expect anybody to have the same results as Shane; I only expected them to pass away and then planned to ship them out of the hospital for quick burial. It was not a possibility that they might not have been dead, and I gave it no thought. That made me a murderer!

Shanna eventually gave in to the disease, and buckled over one day while passing by my eating area. Of course she couldn’t wait for my lunch, but the entire hospital wasn’t waiting for anything, it seemed. Although things were moving in slow motion – I could clearly see that some sort of sickness was taking root – there was an overwhelming sense of urgency. Victor continued to teeter between life and death, and I was becoming almost worried that he would not die. If he did not die, then I would never know what the bacteria were doing inside his body. They had caused death in Shane, but what were they causing in Victor? Tiredness? Impossible – it was a downright silly notion. Mass fatigue was nothing to be worried about.

It was then that I realized that I was the only person in the hospital showing any concern for the wellbeing of its inhabitants. Everybody else was content drinking coffee and pretending that they were just fine, but I knew something greater was happening! I knew because Shane himself had said to me:

“Doctor, these injections must be working, because I feel wonderful! I don’t think I’ll need them anymore, but I’ll leave that up to you. My stitches can come out? Also wonderful! This day is turning into a great one, and I can understand it only gets better from here. Oh, you want some more tissue samples… of course. Let me show you inside.”

Shane brought me into his home once again. We went up the only flight of stairs to the second floor, where he had Petri dishes ready. I’d given him the materials to fill up the plated with agar and told him to stick them in the refrigerator after he’d gotten three or four filled halfway with the golden liquid. First I took a sterile knife that I’d brought with me and scraped some tissue off of his face, as I had when he had still been a patient. I split these into two Petri dish tests, and then took tissue from inside his body, and spread those across two dishes as well. It would take three days to grow proper results from here, and I was hoping there wouldn’t be a trace of ghostly white on any of the plates. I bid Shane a fond farewell and told him I’d see him in three days to remove his stitches and tell him about the test results. If unsuccessful, he would have to remain on the antibiotic for another month. If conditions were severe enough it would not be worth it to have him use the Emeticillin.

For three days I waded through a jungle of human bodies. The hustle and bustle of the hospital had not died down, and still resembled a busy city street filled with cars. I was recalling what Shane had said to me before his departure, “If it were contagious, you’d probably be sick by now.” But I wasn’t sick; I wasn’t anything. But I knew that the disease was contagious, because the hospital staff only began to truly become sick after my idiot patient destroyed my old microscope. I was taking special care now to ensure that all my work done with these ghostly bacteria was in a locked room, completely alone, and with a protective suit. Finally, I was able to use the SEM again. You’d think that any decent facility would own more than one SEM, wouldn’t you?

In those three days so many events occurred. I was in constant communication with Shane, who spoke as a child, and Noah refused to communicate with me. Still stricken from the experience, as well as from my holding back of Shane in the hospital, she had unwavering contempt for my presence. But a miraculous thing occurred despite this swarm of hatred from Noah.

I sat down at the SEM, only to discover that there was already a slide within. I had turned on the machine by accident without swapping in my own samples first, a silly mistake. But before I could put my own slide within the vacuum chamber, I was able to glance at the random doctor’s work: A collection of several decimated bacteria and many living skin cells. It didn’t seem strange at first, but then I noticed that the skin cells were actually alive, and that this slide seemed strangely familiar to me. It was my old slide from the last time I had used the SEM. If nobody had ever changed the slides then who was using the equipment? It didn’t matter. I watched the cells move around within the vacuum chamber, utterly stunned that they could survive without air. But with the vacuum engaged, I watched each cell drop dead, one by own, as though they were a cascade of dominoes.

Around the now dead, but once alive, skin cells were the shells of what seemed to be here types of bacteria, obviously the three types of the ghostly white infection I had witnessed earlier. It was quite a backwards situation from the screen I’d witnessed before. For the first time I had seen the infectious bacteria dead. Up until this point I was not sure if they ever died, or if they were even alive. They appeared to be only large masses of cytoplasm and organelles, but were obviously not what they appeared to be. I waited for every cell to perish, and then took several photos of my findings, mostly of the bacteria and less of the skin cells, but there were several photos of the skin cells as well. One skin cell had burst, giving me a chance to look at its insides.

I looked outside – it was beginning to snow. I shrugged, “It’s that time of year, huh?” I said to the cool air. It had taken me until that moment to notice the air was cold because I was so absorbed in my picture taking. I also didn’t notice the tapping at my door. It was Shane.

I removed his stitches quickly and efficiently, ensuring that every wound was perfectly closed and would never open again unless he desired to rip them open by himself. It was then time to observe his tissue cultures and see if there were any bacteria left in his body. I led him into the room where I’d been working with my ancient light microscope, showed him the freezer where all of my samples were kept. Showed him the refrigerator, where the more recent cultures were stored. Opened the refrigerator for him, so that I could hunt for his cultures. I found them quickly, but wished I hadn’t.

The surfaces were entirely covered in white, as though they were trying to mimic the snow outside. I cursed them and cursed Shane, for it seemed that this disease was incurable. I broke the news to Shane, but he didn’t seem that affected. He spoke about what great shape he was in and how happy he was to be home with his wife safe and sound, and how he hadn’t felt tired since leaving the hospital… I wanted to bind him to the building at that moment, simply out of spite. But I knew there were other patients I had to deal with. I told Shane that I hadn’t yet figured out what the bacteria were doing, but that I had a strong lead.

I was lying again, of course.

The truth was that I had no idea what the bacteria were doing to those infected. With Shane, I wasn’t even sure if the bacteria were harmful. They could have been aiding his survival, or they could have been completely latent, waiting for some kind of messenger cell to activate them, or a certain condition. Perhaps the oncoming cold was making the bacteria inert within his body. I was at a loss. As a man who is always intent on fixing problems, not knowing the solution to one of the most nerve-wracking situations I’d ever faced drove me to the brink of insanity. I began to stay up all night observing Victor – who I’d begun to make cultures for as well – and observing slides I’d made out of Shane’s most recent cultures. My face was permanently inquisitive now – everyone around me must have thought I was some sort of crazy person, because I sure did. I was a mad scientist, working his nights away in a mad laboratory with mad equipment.

Victor’s heart finally gave in the night that his cultures were ready for me to examine. After making sure he was dead, and digressing over what a wonderful partner he’d been while beginning to dissect Shane Evans, I looked at those cultures. Sure enough, the snow-capped Petri dish made a fine return. There was no doubt now: The infection was contagious, and I had to do everything in my power to stop the spread. I decided that there was no way to fix this issue by sitting and researching. I had to take a stand at this point, and lock Shane Evans in his house forever. Or maybe I would find a cure, a real cure, and not the silly Emeticillin, that purged this deadly disease.

The bacteria passed under my microscope like so many snowflakes. Living snowflakes, whose ends moved and carried with them other snowflakes. A mound of snow formed as they all joined together, wrapped around each other to form a strange web. After many hours of leaving the dead Victor in his room, I went back to observe him.

The sheet I’d put over his body was off, and the man was snoring. I screamed a silent scream and jumped backwards, nearly falling against the door I’d just closed behind me. His cold body was warm again. Had he ever died? I began to think of the warehouse worker in the city all those two months ago. I’d never thought twice about it, and assumed that my mind had been tricking me into thinking he’d been dead. I was probably hallucinating, I told myself. Mr. Evans was a special case, a strange case, and Victor was absolutely unrelated. The man in the warehouse? Also unrelated! I told myself this, hoping I’d absorb my own mind’s poison, just as Shane had absorbed it when I swore to him that I’d find out what the bacteria were doing to his body.

Victor heaved up and down. It was too much – I abandoned watching him in favor of sweet sleep at home. The hospital at this hour was still bustling, but I was alone in the halls all the same. I left through the double-door entrance alone, and got into my car alone. Snow pounded down on the windshield, and eventually became sleet. I was surrounded by obnoxious clicking, but the only thing that could come to mind was the sound of Victor’s breathing. I heard it during my drive home, and when I entered my house. I had become immune to the clicking noises, and to Edward’s taunts and teases, but not to the sound of hushed breath. Victor haunted me that night, along with the man from the city warehouse. They worked together to ensure that, as tired as I had become after hours of work, I did not successfully fall asleep until there was but a single hour before the beginning of my work day.

I must have been completely disoriented the night before. It was not Victor who was in his bed that night – Victor was still dead – but one of the nurses playing a prank. I wanted to remind him that the environment was not sterile and that he was likely to become hopelessly sick, but inside I felt extremely vulnerable and gullible for believing this prank, which was not only underhanded but an embarrassment to the hospital. But that nurse wasn’t going anywhere; he would not be fired, or punished, or even mentioned to any of the higher-ups. He would stay where he was and rot there, just like the corpse he tried to imitate.

Victor’s body had actually been carried away by the mortician. After last night’s scare, however, I was reluctant to allow Victor to have an autopsy. I did not want a situation like Shane’s to occur again, so I protested the autopsy and recommend that they keep his body frozen for a few weeks. In the few weeks, many of the hospital workers were calling in stating that they could not come to work. They were too tired. Some were fluctuating between hot and cold flashes. Others had fainted, or vomited multiple times. I was beginning to get a feel of what the symptoms of the disease might be, but I would only say it to myself for fear of being horribly wrong: the first symptom was mild fatigue. I would take months for the latent fatigue to take a toll on one’s body, but as the bacteria multiplied and spread they consumed energy that one’s body would normally output to itself. Thus I could see that the bacteria were acting symbiotically with their host body. As they spread and multiplied they covered nerve endings, leading to sudden heat flashes or cold flashes, depending on the nerve and what chemical was released as a by-product.

If someone was having a hot or cold flash, it meant they were one step closer to becoming Victor. After the hot and cold flashes came faintness, and if the bacteria had spread to the stomach vomiting may ensue as a feeble attempt to rid the body of the infection. I felt by this time the bacteria would be sufficiently numerous to render a man lifeless. I was correct: Shanna, who had been feeling incredibly ill, finally collapsed two days later and was rushed in. Several other doctors and staff were hospitalized, and several people whom I’d never seen before were also rushing into the hospital with similar problems.

The disease was beginning to spread, and all I could do was sit back and watch the show. So that’s what I did.

I wasn’t sick yet – yet. I would worry constantly whether or not I’d be the one next to drop lifeless onto the floor. So many people came in and out of the hospital every day. It was hard to believe that all of these people had hurt themselves, but it was not difficult to accept that an outside force greater than man was attributing to the mass injuries.

I looked behind me. A woman was doubled over in pain. “Do you need help?” I screamed to her young face. She could talk, but let out a long groan. Instinctively I was going to call for a doctor, but I knew nobody would help me. “If you can, shout what room you’re in!”

“265 A!” she blurted out, then went back to groaning. I ran around a corridor to get a spare gurney and gently lifted the young woman onto it, then rushed her to her room, where a nurse was waiting. But the nurse hadn’t been looking for the patient, who was now clutching her stomach as though it were to burst at any moment. I begged the nurse for help, and together we let the young woman back onto her normal hospital bed.