Chapter 39
When I arrived, I noticed two things: first, the place was packed with human patients—some kind of leak in the sewage system had infected the water supply, contaminating the population.
Second, the staff was practically nonexistent, since most of them were human too.
There were no secretaries, nurses, or cleaning crew… and the place was a mess.
While I changed, Ambrose explained the situation.
The contamination had caused a widespread outbreak of vibrio, a bacterium that, once it took hold in the stomach and intestines, caused vomiting and severe diarrhea, killing patients through dehydration in just two days.
Centuries ago, when the disease was first recorded, it wiped out nearly half the human population before we found the cure.
Now, we just had to act fast and follow protocol to keep casualties low.
Given the urgency of the disease, patients had overwhelmed the hospitals in the human and faerie districts, and now they were flooding into the central one.
At least faeries and gorgons weren’t affected thanks to their high immunity.
Otherwise, the situation could have been much worse.
Ambrose, Lorenzo, Adele, Liríope, and Selene worked without rest.
I put on my lab coat and pitched in wherever I could.
Adele and I were responsible for getting IV fluids and medications from the infirmary and bringing them to the elmedics.
We were also tasked with collecting patients’ waste and taking it to the incineration room.
During an outbreak like this, we couldn’t let the bacteria reach the sewage system—that could trigger another contamination.
Our gifts were useless against vibrio, so we’d be working alongside the faerie nurses at the hospital while the three senior elmedics led the treatment.
Throughout the day, I avoided being near Adele.
I still remembered the way she’d smiled when she told Breno about the partnership.
The day after the party, I thought I’d go for her throat at the first opportunity, but the week we’d spent apart had brought my hatred down to manageable levels.
At least she stayed out of my way. Still, in the rare moments when our eyes met, the daggers we threw were unmistakable.
“Get out of my way,” the girl said while I waited for the elevator to the pharmacy.
“In what sense? Out of the way of the elevator, or out of the running for the hospital doctor position?”
She shot me an angry look.
“And since when have you been ahead of anyone? In case you haven’t noticed, you have the face of the enemy, dear. Do you really think this nation will accept you in any position of power? It’s almost laughable that you’d have any hope.”
I rolled my eyes and tried to control my expression of disgust, failing miserably.
“And you’d be the better option?” I pointed at her and started laughing.
“And your friend? Has he finished picking up the pieces of the heart you shattered?” Adele spat venom. “At least I’m honest with people—I don’t go around leading anyone on. Now get your wild ass away from this door.”
“If you’re bothered, the stairs are right there.” I pointed to the door beside her.
The infirmary was in the basement, which was why we’d been using the elevator all day to transport medications back and forth. Adele looked at the red door, then turned her gaze back to me.
“Let me help you out, sweetheart, because it’s obvious you don’t know your place. You’re the shit stuck to Interion’s shoe, and I’m the one this nation thanks the gods for having within these walls. Who do you think should take the stairs? The shit or the gods’ blessing?”
I took a deep breath, and it wasn’t a good idea, because the bucket we were carrying was full of sheets soaked with bodily fluids.
“I’d like to know when the gods’ blessing plans to stop being so childish.”
No matter how hard I tried to tune her out, she always managed to get under my skin. Carrying shit and vomit was terrible, but listening to Adele insult me made the work unbearable. The elevator finally arrived. I stepped inside, bringing the bucket with me.
“When you go back to the wilderness where you belong, along with those filthy creatures like you,” Adele said as she stepped onto the elevator.
She struggled to carry both buckets, and I noticed she was limping as she brought them inside.
I pressed a button, and the doors closed.
As we descended, I caught the smell of blood inside the small space.
I glanced sideways at the girl and noticed she looked terrible today.
Dark circles ringed her eyes, and her skin was so pale it had turned greenish.
I kept my face neutral and decided not to say anything; whatever shit the Yonserian was doing with her life wasn’t my business.
The elevator doors opened, and we headed toward the contaminated materials storage room.
The hallway was long. On the right side were the morgue, the pharmacy, the contaminated organic matter storage, and the incinerator.
On the other side, there were six recovery beds for patients in vegetative states.
In one of those rooms, the mysterious patient was still asleep.
My phone buzzed, and I set the bucket down in the middle of the hallway.
It was a message from Ambrose urgently asking for more IV fluids and antibiotics.
I sighed, exhausted. It was 5 p.m., and I must have walked about 12 miles around here. Adele seemed too weak to carry more buckets, her arms struggling to dump the excrement down the chute. That got me thinking of a way to make better use of our time.
“What if you stay upstairs and send the buckets down in the elevator, and I stay down here to dump them and send up the medicine?”
She turned toward me, wrinkling her nose at the disgusting smell wafting up from below. Her eyes filled with contempt every time she looked at me. She opened her mouth to say something nasty, then closed it again and seemed to think it over before saying:
“Save my number in your phone. I’ll text you the requests.”
I saved the number and sent her a snake emoji. The girl shot me a mocking look and sent me a poop emoji back.
“Ambrose asked for four more bags of saline and azithromycin,” I said as she turned away without bothering to respond.
Her steps were stiff and unsteady, as if she were trying not to move too much.
Even her usual hip sway was absent as the Yonserian walked to the end of the corridor and entered the medication room to get what was needed.
I went back to dumping the contents down the chute that led to the incinerator room.
It was better to work this way—at least I’d only tire out my arms, and she’d only tire out her legs.
When she came back down the corridor and passed me, I smelled blood again.
I pretended not to notice. It could be remnants of her period, actually, and that would also explain the sunken eyes and pallor.
I still didn’t know what to make of the conflicting information about her absences.
At the academy, they told me one thing; at the hospital, they said another.
But I had to remind myself that this wasn’t my problem.
The last time I tried to get close, I ended up in the principal’s office.
Minutes later, Adele texted that they needed more antibiotics, so I went to the medication room to sort them out.
The room was controlled by high-tech systems, and any medication taken had to be logged and registered under the patient’s name.
But today there was no one to enter the information into the system, so Adele and I just grabbed what we needed and wrote the details down in a notebook on the counter.
I spent the rest of the afternoon pulling buckets out of the elevator and leaving medicine in a basket.
I didn’t like coming down to this level.
The atmosphere felt heavy down here, as if too much negative energy was weighing it down.
In human religion, they believed the soul wandered among the living after death, and the nurses were always making up ghost stories.
I’d never believed in superstitions, but today, while I worked, something about the air around me felt off.
It was as if the energy was shifting and pressing down on my body, giving me a headache.
I tried not to think about the stories so I wouldn’t get more unsettled, and at this pace, between buckets, medicine, and a vague discomfort, the afternoon passed quickly and night finally fell over the world.
It was 7 p.m. when the buckets stopped coming.
Adele texted that this would be the last request for saline, since a team from the Fae district would be taking over the night shift.
I dragged myself down the corridor with the last bucket.
The smell didn’t even bother me anymore—my nose had gone numb from the constant stench.
I dumped the contents and headed to the medication room.
The white light from the archemic globes strained my eyes, and my eyelids felt like they weighed a ton.
I grabbed the last saline bag from the cabinet, logged it in the notebook, wrote the time next to the patient’s name, and signed before leaving the room.
But when I stepped into the corridor, that slight sense of unease spiked to unbearable levels, and I felt something watching me.
I looked around, but there was no one. Strange, I thought.
Then the air grew colder, making my skin prickle in a way that felt deeply wrong.
In the empty silence of the corridor, I heard something metal hit the floor and roll before coming to a stop.
It sounded distant, as if it came from the last room at the far end.
“Is someone there?” I called out, frightened, clutching the saline bag like it was a weapon.