Krisis (After the Cure Book 3) (6 page)

Ruth shook her head. “I can’t help him. I don’t even know if I could have helped him in the old days, because I can’t tell if it’s viral or bacterial. Even if it’s bacterial, the antibiotics he needs take time to grow. At least a week if we didn’t want to kill him with a corrupt batch, if we had the right materials.”

“I’ll start it tonight. What do we need?”

“He’s not going to make it a week, Juliana. He’s at the crisis point right now or has already passed it. He’ll either get worse and die in the next several hours, or his fever will break once his body is successfully fighting off the infection on its own. All I can do is try to make him comfortable and keep him hydrated and breathing. I have almost everything I need, except the IV stuff. I need you to go to my house. My husband, Bill, will know what you need. Wait until morning. I’m not sure that the man will last that long, and it would make the trip pointless.” Ruth paused with a hand on the door. “I need you to tell Bill why I’m not coming home in the morning. He won’t believe you, but try. I need you to make him promise to wait for me.”

“Wait for you to do what?”

“He’ll know. Don’t leave that house until he promises to wait for me, you understand?”

Juliana nodded.

“Come back when it’s light and knock on the door. I’ll tell you how to get there. But don’t open the door to that room again until I say so. Do you have any alcohol?”

“You mean like disinfectant?”

“Yes. If you have some, put a small bottle outside the door with some rags that can be burned. I’ll disinfect myself when I come out.”

Juliana shook her head and blew out a small sigh. “Forgive me,” she said, “this just all seems so— I don’t know, old-fashioned, like something out of an 1800s book where the kid dies of scarlet fever or something.”

“Modern medicine is over, Juliana. This place is evidence of how terribly it’s failed. At least I know what to do for pneumonia.” She quietly opened the door and shut herself inside with the dying man. She pulled a mask from her bag and fitted it over her face, but she knew her chances of avoiding infection weren’t great. She rolled the man onto his back and pressed an ambu bag from her kit over his face. His eyes fluttered and his upper lip curled back in a snarl, but he didn’t wake up enough to become agitated. Ruth knelt beside him and began squeezing air into his lungs in short bursts. It would relieve his body’s struggle for oxygen, and it was the most she could do.

If he fights it off, he’ll just wake up to more misery and pain,
she thought. She stopped squeezing and watched the mist from his warm exhale cloud up the mouthpiece. She could end it for him. He was sleeping deeply, even in the depth of illness. He was probably more at ease than he had been since the succumbing to the Plague. He need never wake up to the shrieking and the hunger and the fury that he had known for the past year. He would die either way. Whether it was in a few months when Juliana’s garden failed and she couldn’t feed them or couldn’t find wood to heat the place, or now from the pneumonia. No one ever need know it was her. He took a long shuddery breath. She pulled the ambu bag from his face. It was a sallow, exhausted face. The circles under his eyes made his skin look shrunken to the bones in the lantern light. It already looked dead and his chest rose and fell so slowly that she began to wonder if she even needed to do anything but sit by. But the wheezing came louder, became a soft scream of air through the thin space left in his lungs. Every time he inhaled, she felt the raw burn in her own throat and tasted the metallic, coppery slickness of blood. She couldn’t listen to it any longer. She pulled a towel from her kit and folded it up.

She placed it over his mouth and nose, feeling the withering, humid heat of his breath soak through. “Sorry, whoever you are. I wish I’d gotten here sooner. I wish I’d done this for my own son. I’d want someone to do this for me.” She pressed down. The towel dragged inward, away from her hand and he coughed. It was wet and sharp against the cloth. His eyes snapped open and he thrashed. He whipped his head to the side and Ruth wasn’t ready, the towel slipped across his face and he took a stuttering breath.

“NO!” he cried. His head snapped back to look at her and Ruth scooted backwards in surprise. A low roar began in his throat but it was interrupted by a splashy cough. The man struggled to sit up, pausing every few seconds as his chest seized in a hacking cramp. Ruth stood up and backed toward the door. The man finally raised himself onto his knees. He looked up at her and held out his hands. “Help,” he croaked.

“You can talk?” asked Ruth, “You weren’t infected? Why is Julianna keeping you here? Are you a prisoner?”

The man stared at her, through her. “Help,” he said again.

Ruth fumbled with a container of water. She crouched in front of the man and held the bottle up to his lips. He gulped and then choked. Ruth waited until his coughing subsided and then helped him lie down. “I’m going to help you breathe,” she said, holding up the ambu bag, “Just relax and let the pump do the work for you, okay?”

But the man’s eyes had already fluttered closed.

Chapter 4

Ruth pressed the mask into his face and began squeezing again. Every inch of her felt shaky and weak. What had she almost done? And what was Juliana doing, keeping a sane person in this cell? Maybe she didn’t know. Maybe he
looked
infected. Ruth leaned closer to his face. Whatever scars he might have were not on his head. He was certainly drawn, but everyone Ruth had met in the past several months was starting to look thin. She shook his shoulder. His eyes popped open and focused on hers again.

“What’s your name?” Ruth asked. The man made a sound like clearing his throat. Ruth thought he couldn’t talk through the thick phlegm of the pneumonia. She leaned closer to hear better, turning her face so her cheek just brushed the rubber bulb of the ambu bag and her ear was closer to his mouth.

Suddenly there was a painful pull at the back of her head and she tried to sit up. But the man had a grip on her hair. She let the ambu bag go and it tumbled down between them as she reached back to pull his hand away. He snarled and roared, sitting straight up and pulling her almost underneath him by her hair. The restraints stopped his other hand and a fit of coughing overwhelmed him. Saliva and snot dripped onto Ruth’s facemask as he hovered over her and she shut her eyes as she struggled to slide away from him. Ruth rolled free, a clump of hair ripping from her head and staying in his hand. She backed up against the door and pulled her kit over toward her with one foot while the man recovered his breath. She inched her way out of the door and closed it. Ripping the mask from her face, she doused the rags Juliana had left for her with the alcohol next to it. It smelled almost like turpentine and it burned against Ruth’s skin, but she didn’t care. She swiped her face and hands and then slid down to sit in front of the door.

Behind her, she could still hear the man roaring and hacking, like some great blockage had been suddenly released. She could see now, why Juliana had thought he was infected with the Plague. Ruth wasn’t entirely sure that he wasn’t. But she’d never seen an Infected talk before, never had one ask for help. If that man could do it, why couldn’t Charlie?

She picked herself up and went over to the window. The sky was bleaching to a dull gray over the city. It would be morning soon, Juliana would be back soon. Ruth couldn’t risk exposing her, but she had to get a message to Bill and she had to find out who the man in the room was. Her head throbbed where the hair had been ripped out and her heart was still racing. She didn’t want to return to the cramped cell, but she knew he’d need her help to breathe before long. The man’s cries had subsided into a dull pattern of moans and rattling coughs. She listened at the door until the moans died off into a wheezing gurgle. Then she carefully slid into the room. The man was lying on his back, unconscious, his breath carving a pothole in his chest while he struggled, even in his sleep. The ambu bag was hurled against a far wall but was unbroken. Ruth carefully stepped over him to retrieve it. The towel she had tried to use was a tattered ribbon near his mouth. It gleamed like a dirty bone. She kicked it away and knelt by the man, careful not to let her guard down this time. She pulled a clean mask onto her own face and then pressed the plastic mouthpiece of the ambubag against his. He didn’t wake up, and she felt sweat slide down her neck as she began pumping the bulb again.

Ruth watched the gray light well up in the cell’s tiny barred window. Her mind played a litany every time she pumped.
One breath for him, one less breath for Charlie.
She knew she was close to panic. Bill wouldn’t do it without her. He couldn’t. Especially when Juliana delivered her message. Maybe he’d come see the man, and realize she just needed some time to figure out what made him different. He’d see there could be a cure for Charlie. But as the morning took on a sparkling radiance as the sun splashed onto the snow, Ruth only felt more dread.

At last, Juliana knocked softly at the door. Ruth leaned into it and called through. “I’m passing through the directions and a list of what I need. You have to tell Bill to wait, no matter what. Just wait for me. Understand?”

“I’ll tell him, I promise,” came the muffled reply.

“And tell him this man talked to me last night.”

There was a long silence. “What?”

“This man, he talked to me, I need you to tell Bill— for our son.”

“Ruth that’s impossible. The Infected don’t speak. At least, not in words. I think you are too tired. Maybe we should switch so you can rest.” The doorknob began to turn.

“No! No Juliana, you can’t come in here. I wasn’t hallucinating. Please, just tell Bill. Make him promise to wait.” Ruth slid the wrinkled bit of paper from her prescription pad through the crack. It disappeared as Juliana pulled it the rest of the way.

“Okay,” said Juliana, hesitation making her speak slowly, “I’ll be back as soon as I can. In time for breakfast anyway. Don’t worry if the others get— loud. I’ll be back soon and they are safe in their rooms.”

She knew it would take about an hour to walk there, but it didn’t make the time crawl by any faster. Her arms ached from pumping and the man’s breath didn’t sound much better. What had been just an attempt, a nod toward duty, was now dire need. Only a few hours earlier, she had tried to help him die. Now her son and husband’s life was hinging on his survival. Though her arms felt as if they were on fire, she kept pumping air into his lungs and praying that they wouldn’t collapse. Adrenaline could only sustain her so long, and she felt her body go slack and her breath slow in the warm sunlight poking through the thick window. She struggled to stay awake, splashing herself with the bottle of water and slapping her cheeks for the few seconds between pumps. At last, even the fear that he’d wake and rip her to pieces if she slept wasn’t working any longer.

She wasn’t sure if she’d dozed only for a few seconds or for hours, but she woke to a rap on the door. The man was still asleep and still gurgling and choking. Ruth quickly pumped more air into his mouth.

“Ruth, are you there?” asked Juliana. She sounded different. Wrong somehow. Ruth was too groggy to ask why.

“I’m still here.”

“I’m leaving the supplies outside the door. I have to make the morning meal. I’ll be back in a little while.”

It took Ruth a second to realize she meant the IV supplies. “Did you make Bill promise to wait?” she called, but Juliana had already walked away. Ruth shrugged. Of course she had. Juliana had given her word that she wouldn’t leave until he promised. And he wouldn’t do it without her. She’d told him herself that she’d be back today. Charlie was safe. He had to be. She opened the door and pulled a large shopping bag full of supplies into the room. She frowned. There were IV bags and tubing packets just flung in haphazardly. At least the catheters were in their usual hard case. Bill wasn’t normally this messy. It must have been a very bad day with Charlie. Or his wound was really bothering him. She hurried to get the IV set up, transferring some of her anxious energy into action, though it wouldn’t help her get home any faster.

There was a clunk outside the door a little while later as Juliana set breakfast bowls beside the door. She hurried away again without speaking. Ruth watched her patient. The color was returning to his face as the IV fluids slowly dripped into him. She let the ambu bag go for a few minutes. His breath was crackling with phlegm, but he was sleeping easily now. Ruth decided to clean herself up and eat. She opened the door and wiped herself down with the alcohol and rags again. She ate the oatmeal that had cooled into a thick sludgy lump outside the door. With her stomach full, the sun shining through the broad hallway windows, and her own breath constricted from the face mask she kept on, Ruth dozed off. Not even the shrieks of the Infected as they cried for more food woke her. Juliana shook her awake as the sun was staining the glass in the window to a golden red. Ruth sat up startled.

“Is he okay now?” Juliana asked.

“I think so, let me check on his progress.” Ruth got up and slid into the room. The man stared at her as she entered. The IV bag was almost empty. Ruth switched it out, glancing at her patient, but waiting for him to speak. He didn’t.

“Are you— can you talk?” Ruth asked, without getting closer. The man wrinkled his brow and looked at her intensely, but nothing happened. “I need to check your breathing. Do you understand?” Ruth held up the stethoscope so he could see. She was shocked when he nodded. She slowly knelt near him. He didn’t move as she touched the stethoscope to his chest and then walked behind him to check his back. She could tell the fluid in his lungs was subsiding. His body was fighting off the pneumonia. Was it also fighting off the December Plague? Ruth felt a jolt of excitement. There wasn’t any more to do for him, he’d fight it off himself now. She’d tell Juliana and then go home. Go home and tell Bill.