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The Immune. Doc Lucky Meisenheimer
Читать онлайн.Название The Immune
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780615507934
Автор произведения Doc Lucky Meisenheimer
Жанр Научная фантастика
Издательство Ingram
CHAPTER 7
THE MORGUE
John’s mind was swirling as he tried to digest all that happened. He scribbled notes on a paper attached to a white plastic clipboard. As he walked back to the triage area, the local news interrupted programming with a special report. Hospital monitors displayed news teams tracking airwar attacks near the hospital. As he looked at the screen, he realized several reports were emanating from Cassandra’s neighborhood. His pulse quickened as he remembered her comment of spending the day packing at her apartment.
He pulled his cell phone. An unplayed voice message from Cassandra popped on the screen.
“Play message,” he commanded the phone.
Cassandra’s screaming voice came over the speaker, “Get back. I’ve got a knife; get back. They’re breaking down the door. Help, John, help!” Then the message cut off.
John hollered at the head triage nurse, “Cassandra is being attacked by an airwar.” He tossed the clipboard on the nurses station. It slid off, hitting the floor, shattering in several pieces. “I gotta go.” He bolted toward the parking lot exit.
On John’s arrival at Cassandra’s, everything was in chaos. Police, ambulances, injured, dead, and grieving surrounded the apartment complex. A policeman told John three airwars attacked the area. Several residents managed to outrun or otherwise escape. Those who had stings were sitting or lying on the curb of the street, attended to by emergency personnel. Bodies of victims who hadn’t survived were lying side by side farther down the road. Gray blankets borrowed from nearby ambulances covered the distorted and swollen faces of the deceased.
John scanned the injured for Cassandra, but she wasn’t there. He then jogged over to the dead victims. A police officer started to stop him, but he deferred to John’s white coat and his ID badge from the hospital. John could feel the palpitations of his heart as he lifted each blanket from the faces of the ten dead, but Cassandra’s wasn’t among them.
He sprinted up to her apartment. The threshold was splintered as the door was busted from its hinges. There were obvious signs of a struggle in the living room. Several partially packed cardboard boxes were overturned; their contents strewn over the floor. A kitchen carving knife lay on the floor next to wet streaks of blood. He called her name and checked the entire apartment, including the closets and cabinets. She wasn’t there.
John noticed a thin man with stringy long hair and a shaggy beard staggering by the open front door. The man was drenched in sweat. John recognized the man as a resident of one of the apartments near Cassandra’s.
“Hey,” shouted John, “have you seen the woman living in this apartment? Her name is Cassandra.”
The fellow seemed to be in shock.
“I hid . . . all you could do was hide,” he babbled, “I heard her scream . . . nothing I could do . . . I was hiding. They would have got me too . . . Must have been a hundred of them.” He waved his arms wildly in the air. “They carried off so many . . . I heard her scream . . . yes . . . yes . . . nothing I could do . . . I was hiding.”
John grabbed the man by his shoulders and shook him. “Did you see Cassandra?”
The man wiped his forehead on his sleeve and seemed to calm down.
“No,” said the man, “I only heard her screaming.” He surveyed the mess in the apartment and shuddered, “One of them got her, I’m sure. Airwars carried off twenty or thirty people besides those dropped left for dead.”
Then he began to rant about Mad Mike’s Liberty Fighters.
“It’s their fault. None of this would be happening if we were just to leave them alone. I’m in the Love the Airwars League, for God’s sake. I mean them no harm. The government was here. They shot at terrorists and captured at least one. That’s why airwars were here! The government needs to protect us from those terrorists. The airwars are gentle animals just wanting to be left alone to live in peace.” He stopped his tirade and began sobbing. John, with a dark black hole sucking on his heart, headed back to the hospital.
John waited by the posting wall and kept checking his cell phone. He called in every favor he had with staff and administration trying to locate Cassandra, but her status was unknown. John walked to the temporary morgue, which in reality was a converted gymnasium near the hospital. It had no listing for her.
John tried to talk his way into the morgue, but even as a doctor, the stocky, gray-haired guard denied him access. No deceased relative, no entry, was the policy. The guard at the door was empathetic, but firm.
“Doc, I understand you wanting to search,” said the guard, “but there’re hundreds of bodies, and even more missing people. We can’t handle everyone looking for a loved one prowling around. I assure you every body has a confirmed identity before they’re accepted at this morgue. If your friend isn’t on the list, then she isn’t here.”
From the chaos John observed looking through the gym’s glass doors, he had little confidence in the precision of the morgue records. John understood the policy, though. Yet, he didn’t relish the idea of looking through hundreds of dead bodies. He also maintained hope Cassandra was alive. If she showed up injured at the hospital, he wanted to be there, so he returned to the posting wall. The hourly postings passed one by one, then on the fifth posting, Cassandra’s name appeared. Deceased; ID confirmed. Darkness closed in.
John awoke to the grim face of Dr. Lee, a new ER doctor just out of residency. His employment at the hospital began a mere six months previously. John was one of the medical personnel who had done his staff appointment interviews. Dr. Lee spoke with some reverence to the more senior staff member he was tending.
“Dr. Long, you went vasovagal on us.”
Great, I fainted, thought John, then he remembered the posting and became nauseous.
“Someone bring me an emesis basin STAT!” shouted Dr. Lee. It was too late. John vomited over the side of the gurney. Dr. Lee called out with less intensity, “We need custodial services.”
“Sorry,” John groaned. His head flopped back on the gurney.
“Nothing a mop can’t fix, Dr. Long,” said Dr. Lee and put his hand on John’s shoulder, “I’m sorry. The entire staff extends their deepest sympathies. Whenever you feel you’re up to it, you can leave. We just pulled you straight back, no testing, no paperwork involved.”
John nodded understanding. Paperwork had become 95% of medicine these days. ASC just added another level of paperwork with the airwar toxicity swab. Every patient who came through the hospital received an oral swab; if positive, quarantine officers took them to offsite holding stations. It was the most stupid ASC edict. A five-page form was required on every positive. In John’s experience, the extremely rare positives for the toxicity test always appeared the healthiest. If they wanted truly toxic people, they should check the morgue.
Several screams from down the hallway interrupted John’s thoughts. A small mob rushed in through the triage door and knocked a man off his gurney. The man writhed on the floor as the newcomers shrieked for help.
“Dammit!” said Dr. Lee, “Dr. Long, I’ve got to run. New batch of victims.” He paused, then added, “Oh, by the way, Goldman in administration said take all the time off you need, but the S.O.B. also asked if you could keep it to one day, since we’re in crisis mode.” Dr. Lee darted down the corridor.
John, with his head in a dark fog, stumbled back the two blocks to the morgue. The same stocky guard was there. John showed him a copy of the posting. The guard glanced at John’s name tag on his white lab coat.
“Says here the deceased’s