Chapter 4
KIT
LUMARIA
“Kit.” Nevis corners her in the small break room, just off the main hallway of this floor of the Center. This is the first time in six hours that Kit has had a moment of peace, and she loves Nevis, but she needs a second to breathe.
“Neve, can it wait?” Kit groans, letting her head rest against the wall behind her. She’s perched on the sofa with her coffee. It’s going to be another long day, and she needs the caffeine to get her through.
“No,” Nevis says, her tone clipped. “Mr. Allred is reading as negative.”
Kit looks at Nevis, not comprehending. “There’s no way,” Kit says, shaking her head. “Two hours ago, he was so positive he was practically a proton.”
“I swear,” Nevis said. “I did the test three times. He’s negative. The coughing has stopped. His fever is gone. It’s like he was never sick at all.”
“There’s no way,” Kit says again. Nothing that she did for him should have or even could have resulted in that type of recovery. She’d continued the fluids, the cold compresses, the Fever Reducing Draught at regularly scheduled intervals, but those were all intended to mitigate, not eradicate.
“Whatever you did, it worked,” Nevis says.
Kit takes a sip of coffee, skeptical. “I just don’t see how it’s possible.”
“Go see for yourself if you don’t believe me,” Nevis says, gesturing to the doorway. “I swear to Aaris, Kit, he’s cured.” Kit doesn’t want to insult Nevis by going to check herself, but she cannot believe that Mr. Allred has made some kind of miraculous recovery.
Kit sets her coffee on the end table, the mug clattering loudly. She pushes herself up from the couch, ignoring the way her feet protest.
“Seriously?” Nevis asks, clearly annoyed that Kit doesn’t believe her.
“I just don’t see how it’s possible,” Kit says again. “I’ll be right back.” She leaves Nevis standing in the break room, scurrying down the hallway and around the corner to Mr. Allred’s room.
He’s sitting up in bed, color back in his cheeks.
“Kit,” he says, as she knocks on the doorframe, pulling on a new pair of gloves.
“Nevis says you’ve improved?” she asks, striding across the room to his bedside.
“Somehow,” he says, shrugging his shoulders. “I feel amazing. Haven’t coughed in an hour. The pain is gone. I don’t know what you did, Kit, but it worked.” He laughs, as if he can’t believe it himself.
“Let me just —” She trails off, pulling the small scanner from her pocket and holding it over him, waiting for it to capture his vitals. As Nevis told her, no fever. Normal heart rate, oxygen levels, and white blood cell count. Everything reading completely and totally average.
She ponders this as she looks across his bed toward the window to the hydrangea. It looks a bit worse for the wear now, the color leeched from its petals and its leaves drooping. One has fallen off the stem altogether and sits alone on the sill.
She doesn’t understand how this is possible, but she doesn’t have room to question a good thing.
Someone has improved, which means it’s possible.
There is a way to come back from the illness.
Death is not a guarantee. Even if she doesn’t know how, he didn’t die on her watch, and for that, she’s grateful.
“I’m going to do one more test,” Kit says, taking out a blood testing kit from the cubbies on the left side of the room. This one has proven to be more accurate than the finger-prick, and she needs to see it for herself.
She makes quick work of drawing his blood.
“Painless,” he comments, smiling down at her as she removes the needle from the crook of his arm and presses a piece of gauze down. “Always knew you’d be an excellent Luminary.”
She’s still astounded that he is conversational again, when just a few hours ago he was quite literally on his deathbed.
She smiles at him, turning back to the cubbies.
She pulls out the bottle of Testing Agent, unstopping it and dropping two droplets of the solution into Mr. Allred’s blood.
If it turns blue, he’s negative. She sucks in a breath as she shakes it and then waits.
One minute passes. Then two. Finally, on the third minute, she sees the blood-agent mixture start to change color. It veers toward purple at first, and she finds herself holding her breath until it finally, finally, finally turns blue.
Negative. She turns back around to her patient, biting her lip to hold back a smile.
“Mr. Allred,” she says. “You’re definitely negative. I…I don’t know how exactly, but this is showing no trace of the virus in your bloodstream. It’s…gone.”
Kit feels as though she’s been whacked upside the head with one of Knox’s rogue Illumiballs.
She stands awkwardly at his bedside, fiddling with her pointer finger inside of her gloved hands.
Not her most professional moment, but she’s completely flabbergasted.
“Assuming you’re still doing well tomorrow morning, you’ll be free to return home.
We’ll ask you to take the appropriate precautions, just to be sure you aren’t exposing the rest of your family, but this looks very promising. ”
Mr. Allred gives her another close-lipped smile, shutting his eyes. “Thank you, Kit.”
She nods and departs his room, heading back to the lounge to find Nevis, to apologize for her mistrust.
She arrives home that evening to Knox and her father at the kitchen table. Knox is inhaling a plate of spaghetti while her father taps away furiously at his Prism.
“Hello?” Kit says, entering the room and pulling open a cupboard, trying to catch her family’s attention. She’s not hungry, despite having worked a fourteen-hour shift. All she wants is a hot tea.
Knox looks up from his plate, wiping his mouth on a napkin. “Kit!”
She can’t help but smile at him. He is, without fail, always happy to see her.
She doesn’t know why. She’s often exhausted, and coupled with what she’s fairly certain has been a lengthy bout of depression, she’s not at all fun to be around.
Maybe she was once, before her mom died, before she and Finn broke up.
Lately, it’s all she can do to drag herself out of bed in the mornings.
“How’s it going?” she asks, filling the kettle with water from the sink and setting it to boil.
“Fine,” Knox says, shoveling yet another spoonful of spaghetti into his mouth. “Lost our Illumiball game.”
Kit is sure her jaw unhinges. “You’re still playing Illumiball in the midst of this illness?” She gestures around a bit wildly, alarmed that Knox’s school is still having team members get together to play a decidedly unnecessary game during an outbreak of an unknown disease.
“Relax,” he says, mouth full. “We’re outside, breathing the fresh air. Not worried about it.”
“I’m worried about it!” Kit very nearly shouts.
She’s been taking care of infected people all day long, has seen how bad it can get, and to have her brother telling her it’s not a big deal is about enough to make her snap.
“I had eleven more patients come in today with symptoms. Two more were asymptomatic and just happened to be in the Center for a different reason entirely. We don’t understand how it’s spreading yet.
The Ministry should be telling people to take every precaution. ”
Her dad has not looked up from his Prism, still furiously typing away. She shoots him a glare and says, “Dad,” more loudly than she intended. He looks up, as if finally recognizing Kit is in the room with them.
“Sorry, pet,” he says, running a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair, adjusting his black glasses frames. “It’s wild right now.”
“Well aware.” Kit braces her hands on the counter, looking pointedly between Knox and her father. Knox seems unfazed by the entire situation, and she begrudges him his nonchalance, his utter chillness. She gestures towards Knox and says, “Are you hearing this?”
Her father raises an eyebrow, picking up his Prism again.
“Don’t you dare,” Kit says, narrowing her eyes at the device. “Knox says they’re still playing Illumiball at school? During a pandemic? Doesn’t the Ministry have guidelines for this sort of thing?”
“We’re…still figuring it out,” her dad says, silently setting his Prism back on the table, but she doesn’t miss his glance at it.
“Figuring it out?” Kit shouts. “You work for the minister. Can’t you, I don’t know, instill some sense of urgency here? People shouldn’t be gathering anywhere if they don’t have to be. Playing sports seems like a major risk when we’ve not even identified the genetic makeup of this disease.”
Her dad leans back in his chair, crossing his arms. “They identified it today.”
“What?” Knox jumps in, fork clattering to his plate.
“What is it?” Kit asks, suddenly anxious. If they have the genetic makeup, they can start working on an antidote, or a cure.
“They’re calling it Hemorrhagic Fever,” her dad says.
“Hence why I’ve been sending communications all night.
Ministry is updating protocols now. Infectious Disease is siccing more researchers on it as we speak.
There appears to be a magical signature associated with it, one we haven’t been able to identify yet.
We’re hoping to have more answers in the morning. But…”
Kit isn’t sure if having a name for it makes it better. She supposes it’s an improvement over “mysterious illness,” but if people weren’t already fearful, the name hemorrhagic fever is going to create sheer terror. And the magical component is troubling.
“You didn’t hear that from me, by the way.” He looks at her pointedly. “In fact, you didn’t hear that at all until tomorrow at 10:00 a.m., when the minister provides his address.”
“You want me to go in to work and not reveal this information until then?” Kit is aghast, her jaw hanging open.