Submitted by Wendy:
I can barely walk. Putting one foot in front of the other takes about all I have. So tired, weak, and disoriented, I perceive what is directly in front of me as if through a veil of thick mucus. The world is dim and unfocused. Wait, something is flashing red, insistently, at the far-right corner of my vision. Instinctively, I turn toward it, and I am instantly rewarded. I see some movement, and I hear a commotion and voices. I decided to aim my stumble over there, where the action is. Something is telling me I somehow made this happen. I made the red light lead me, so I follow it mindlessly through this maze of fog. I am reminded of an experiment I saw in a documentary featuring a flying beetle. It had been glued to the head of a stationary pin. Electrodes had been inserted into its simple nervous system. By activating one or another of the electrodes, the beetle would attempt to turn towards the stimulus, flapping its useless wings harder or softer depending upon the amount of current applied. The narrator speculated in the near future, insects could be remote-controlled in such a fashion, made into biomechanical drones. It is hard for me to continue this thought; it is too complicated and tiring. I can only focus on the red light; I am trying to keep it oriented toward it. It leads me to crash directly into a person’s path; I couldn’t see them until I felt them when we collided. I heard them ask, ‘Are you OK?’ My only reply was a wet cough. It sure is hard to breathe. Coughing and gagging, I have had enough of that for the rest of my life. Well, that wouldn’t take much. I don’t think I am going to live long. Oh, that’s right, how could I forget? I am sick—Sicker than I have ever been before. The reason I can’t see is either a side effect of the drugs and antibiotics, a symptom of one of the diseases, or my viral load might just be so high it is occluding my vision. Now, that would be something. It is something, something I anticipated. That’s why I see the red light. It is my smart glasses. I wrote a heads-up navigation program using GPS near-field electronic interference and AI image recognition to lead me where I need to go. It is a simple interface. I turn left or right to follow the blinking red light; it leads me toward what it recognizes as people. It has a destination I have previously chosen. It is smart enough to alter the route slightly so I am near as many people as possible without getting too far off track. I can think my way through the code fuzzily, only for a moment. I suppose it is a good thing it can think for me because I would never get to where I need to go without it. I would miss all of these wonderful, extra interpersonal interactions along the way wherein I stumble my infected self into passing innocents. Remember, I have a task to complete, though riding a train of thought for more than a few seconds at a time when my fever, the drugs, or both will not let me.
When I first went to the hospital, I was not sick. I was injured. Like a clumsy fool, I had tripped on the sidewalk and fallen forward. Fortunately, I put out both hands and arrested my fall with no major injuries, only some abrasions on my hands. I went to the emergency room when it became apparent the wounds were not going to stop bleeding on their own. I was in the waiting room for hours. Hours and hours and hours and hours. Eventually, they cleaned my wounds, removed the gravel and grit, bandaged me up, and sent me home. I thought I was done. My hands kept on hurting, so I went back to the hospital. The triage nurse made it clear she thought I was seeking pain meds. The doctor agreed with the fallacious prejudices of the nurse. She used her medical knowledge, learned while she spent years at medical school earning her degree, to take one look at me and, upon seeing only my complexion, never investigating my wounds, make her diagnosis. She told me I didn’t need pain medication (I had not requested any) and to stop wasting their time, go home, and take some aspirin.
Over the next three days, things got worse and worse. My hands swelled up twice their normal size. And I had developed a disabling fever. Eventually, I made my way back to the hospital. I waited again, for hours and hours and hours. They took some samples from the wound, prescribed some antibiotics, re-bandaged my wounds, and, an hour later, I was released. I woke up the next day sicker than I had ever been before. I had a message notification on my phone from the doctor. They wanted me to return immediately so that I could be quarantined. They said I had an antibiotic-resistant, flesh-eating bacterial infection. I know I picked it up at that filthy hospital. I would have been better off spraying some bleach on my hands and rubber-cementing the wounds closed. Before I went back to the hospital, not to quarantine, to infect others, and intentionally further infect myself, I realized just getting from point A to point b would eventually be hard. That's when I rigged up the glasses when I could still think and see and effectively coordinate my movements. It is a good thing I did, too, because this particular bunch of sicknesses I have curated is nearly immobilizing.
I suppose the actual symptoms and their severity was like rolling the dice, the way I went about it. At first, I put on some of my old scrubs, hung an empty ID lanyard around my neck, and spent all day at the hospital. I was busy rubbing underneath bandages and sucking on drainage tubes, chewing on gauze. Rubbing discharge into my eyes, inhaling from the connections on patients' breathing machines, and drinking whatever was in the various bags I found hooked up to the sick. Taking medication as I found it. I was there for ten hours before the people replacing the first-shift security guards did their second walk-through. Security at hospitals is a joke. They tried to detain me, unsuccessfully. My berserker mode with an IV stand was enough to escape.
It didn’t take long. A few hours later, I started to get my first new symptoms. I needed to get more sick. I knew I had to hustle if I was going to get the next batch of bugs before I became too ill to do anything.
Did you know the University of Washington has a Department of Infectious Diseases?
There is! The doctor I clubbed in the head as he was getting out of his Volvo works there. He is in the back seat of his car, sleeping soundly under a blanket. He didn’t want to take the (C22H28N2O). I wasn't asking his permission. If he hadn’t struggled with me so much, I wouldn’t have had to give him so high of a dose. If he doesn’t wake up, he has no one to blame but himself. I took his wallet and his keys and phone. I am wearing his Lab-Coat, and I still have his ID in the lanyard around my neck after my long day. I think it gives me an official vibe, and the irony of being labeled as a doctor specializing in infectious diseases is not lost on me. Of course, the coat is ruined, pus, shit, blood, snot, all these fluids stain, and I don’t think any amount of bleach could save this thing. It still looked good this morning, though; the guard didn’t even look at me when I waved my borrowed badge at him and used the key card to enter the lab. I used to be part of the staff at that facility back when I was still a student. I had a paid internship, and I could schedule around my classes, so all in all, it was a good fit for me at that time. It was a real opportunity to get paid and learn about the ins and outs of my chosen profession while gaining on-the-job experience.
That was before.
Now, it doesn't matter. There isn’t much to think about ‘coz soon I will be dead.
So, the bottom line is I knew right where to go to find what I wanted. I knew the conventions at play relate to how samples are labeled. Everything in the lab was color-coded. I didn’t have to read the individual labels. Which is a good thing; those medical terms, with all those syllables, would have slowed me down. I just grabbed anything yellow, orange, or red. Easy. Just in case I had to run for it at some point, I infected myself with each new bug as soon as I found it. I also put samples into the shopping bag I had brought so I could shoot them up later when I had a moment. I didn’t have any reason to worry. The whole time I was there, I only saw three people; only one wasn’t a student. I said ‘hi’ to them all, and, like before, they all ignored me. They won’t be able to ignore what’s coming, though. My temperature is well over a hundred degrees. I was sweating, coughing out droplets, shedding out of every airway and pore a steady, deadly flow of viruses you could just about taste. It was so thick in the air.
After I made it out of the infectious disease laboratory, I took a few minutes to infect all the railings and door handles at the light-rail station. Then, I took the time to use each stall of the public restrooms, both male and female. At the last female booth, for the epidemiological boost, I shot up or swallowed or rubbed in my eyes the samples I had taken from the lab. I also took half of a dose of each one of the antibiotics I had found during my shopping adventures. I had nearly forgotten this vital step. I wanted the bugs I had to be as resistant as possible to the treatments that would likely be used. For the energy I anticipated I would need to complete the day, I shot up a bunch of meth. That would also help with the congestion; after all, I was plugged up. It pays to think ahead and be thorough. I was out of sorts and had to trust my instincts.
I went to the Amazon-Go store on Pill-Hill using the sleepy doctor’s phone and credit card. The cameras watch your every move. I put them to the test. I spent some time picking up items, touching them, breathing on them, and then putting them back down. The AI must have been going crazy at the prospect of all my potential shoplifting. Well, anyway, it flagged me for sure. Ending my visit, someone came out of the back in a security guard outfit. I got the hint. I picked out a prepackaged egg salad sandwich and an energy drink and left. The wonder of technology allows us to shop without breathing in someone’s air space or exchanging grubby money with a serf, automatically charging the doctor’s account. He owed me lunch for causing me so much trouble early that morning. I hope he doesn’t mind if he is still alive.
After I left the Amazon-Go store, I ate my sandwich and drank my noxious-soda-like beverage. I then went to Swedish, Providence, and then Harborview and threw up in each one of their emergency room bathrooms, all over the sinks, hand dryers, seats, door knobs, and diaper-changing tables. I also lost some of my lunch at Harborview in the waiting room. So much sickness was in me, came out of me. I like to share. Sharing is caring. That is why I made sure to visit all the open cafeterias.
Using the outstanding Seattle Area Mass Transit System, I traveled to its farthest reaches for the rest of the day. At every suburban center, I took time to go shopping -PCC, -Whole Foods, --Safeway, --Kroger.
Did you know you can spend an hour methodically touching each piece of produce in a store, then purchase one apple, and not a single person will question you or give you a funny look?
It’s true. Next time you are ill, I suggest you try it.
I did it a dozen times that first day when I wasn’t yet so obvious; I drew stares wherever I went. That is what it was like on the second day. In one way or another, I relieved myself at, I don’t know, how many public facilities. I was feverish, after all, and much of the time went by in a blur. And then I couldn’t see the stares anymore. Now, here I am, stumbling toward anything my smart glasses classify as a person. I follow the blinking red light in my periphery as I wander downtown from disease vector to disease vector. I am slowly making my way to an airport shuttle pickup. There are a lot of international flights coming and going from Sea-Tac every day, pandemic or no pandemic; it is a busy airport. I don’t think I will be there long before I can no longer move. Then, which is super funny to me, they will call an ambulance and take me to the hospital.
The snake swallows its tail, then gets sick and pukes it all right back up.
Such a silly, sick snake.
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