Chapter 4 #3
Luminary Ellsworth strides down the hall, cutting into the circle.
Her face is sharp, with prominent cheekbones and a hard jawline.
Her hair is pulled into a knot, which is currently tucked underneath a cap.
The Luminaries are quick to snap to attention.
Luminary Ellsworth can be frightening, but Kit’s trained under her for two years now and knows that her brusque exterior is just that.
“Now that you all know what it’s called, can we get back to work? ”
“Do we do anything differently?” one of the newer Luminaries, a first-year, is brave enough to inquire.
“No,” Luminary Ellsworth gives a quick shake of her head.
“This doesn’t change anything. Until the researchers have more, until we get a better sense of the receptors, pathways, anything about the disease, we continue to treat the symptoms as we’ve been treating.
Make the patients comfortable. Do what you can to bring down the fever. Ensure they aren’t in pain.”
Kit tries to hold back a grimace. Basically, they’re glorified hospice nurses at the moment.
Thus far, no patients have made a full recovery aside from Mr. Allred.
Forty-seven died last week, and there are thirty more in the intensive care ward.
Kit has thirteen patients today, all infected with the Fever.
“Go,” Luminary Ellsworth gestures to the group, as if to break them up. The Luminaries scatter to their assigned pods in the quarantine ward.
Nevis hesitates, and Kit grabs her hand, squeezing it. “We’ll talk later, okay?” She hates keeping things from Nevis, hopes she can explain why she didn’t tell her as soon as she knew. “Meet me in the canteen after your shift.”
Kit can feel Luminary Ellsworth’s eyes on her, and she moves to walk to the pod at the end of the hallway lest she get reprimanded for dawdling.
“Kit.”
Too late. She stops and faces Luminary Ellsworth.
“I heard Mr. Allred made a full recovery.”
Kit nods once. “He did.”
Luminary Ellsworth crosses her arms, pursing her lips. “Any ideas how that happened?”
Kit doesn’t know, not really. One second, he was sick, and the next he wasn’t.
She can’t put her finger on anything she did that was out of the ordinary, anything outside the realm of the normal treatment plan.
But she knows that Luminary Ellsworth is looking for something that can help them with an antidote, and that anything she can tell her would help.
“I was following the normal treatment plan we came up with,” Kit says. “Administering the standard antivirals.”
“You followed everything by the book?” Ellsworth confirms.
Kit pauses, thinking. “One sec.”
She pulls up Mr. Allred’s notes on her Chronogram, the small Oraxian device wrapped around her wrist. She scrolls through as they’re projected into the air in front of her from its face, refreshing her memory on everything she did, every dose she gave him of various Pain Draughts, herbs, and the final infusion of the Brontium antiviral before he suddenly got better.
She remembers sitting at his bedside, sure he was going to die, her hand on his arm.
She looks back to Ellsworth. “Everything by the book. It must have just been luck.”
Ellsworth frowns. “There is no luck in magical medicine.”
Kit disagrees, but Ellsworth is a scientist above all else.
Follows the scientific method to a tee, is the top infectious disease specialist in Lumaria behind the Head of Infectious Disease himself, and has been given numerous awards for her research and findings.
So she understands why Ellsworth doesn’t believe in luck.
“Well,” Kit sighs, slightly exasperated. “I don’t know what to tell you. I followed protocol. And then he was just better.”
Ellsworth is silent, pondering. Then, “Come with me.”
Kit doesn’t ask where they’re going, falling into step beside her as they make their way down the hallway, shoes tapping along the white linoleum floors. Ellsworth stops outside a door, letting the reader scan her iris before granting her entry. High security, then. Potentially a VIP patient.
Ellsworth stops in the vestibule outside the patient’s room, casting a mask around her face and gesturing for Kit to do the same. “This is Ms. Engler. I want you to do exactly what you did with Mr. Allred.”
“Now?” Kit asks, casting her own mask and pulling on a clean pair of gloves.
“Yes.” Ellsworth nods. “Something happened. Something was different. I am trying to figure out what it was.”
Kit nods, feeling anxiety bubble in her chest. She works better when Luminary Ellsworth isn’t watching her like a hawk. Too much pressure when she is. But she enters the room nonetheless, Ellsworth on her heels.
“Ms. Engler,” Kit says. “I’m Luminary Hart. Luminary Ellsworth has asked me to come take a few readings.”
Ms. Engler looks up from where she’s slumped into her pillows, her face gaunt, undereyes hollowed out.
Blood trickles from her nose, the side of her mouth, even her ear.
Kit hasn’t seen a progression of the disease this far yet, and she swallows, pulling out her small scanner and casting a diagnostic over the woman.
She quickly reads it — sees Ms. Engler has a fever and that she’s lost almost half of the blood in her body.
“Hi, Luminary Hart. You can call me Wilma.” Her voice is weak, barely a rasp in her throat. This woman is undoubtedly dying.
Kit looks back to where Luminary Ellsworth stands near the round window, next to a bunch of gardenias with a card sticking out of the top.
Typically, with this level of blood loss, they would have tried a transfusion, coupled with the blood replenisher, and she scrolls through the screen next to Wilma’s bed, reviewing her treatment thus far. Indeed, they’ve done both.
She ignores the feeling of Ellsworth’s eyes on her and thinks. She could try using pink salt, though they usually only reserve that for very serious occasions, given how highly controlled it is. “Give me one moment to speak with my colleague,” Kit says, moving back towards Luminary Ellsworth.
“Would you authorize the use of pink salt?” she asks her, lowering her voice.
Ellsworth is quiet, her face unreadable. “You didn’t use pink salt with Mr. Allred.”
“No,” Kit confirms, “but he also hadn’t progressed this far.” She’s trying to keep her voice down so that Wilma doesn’t overhear her, though she can’t imagine the woman doesn’t know that she’s not faring well.
“Let me see where we are with the reserves,” Ellsworth says. “If I authorize this, we may be out before we know it. It’s a slippery slope.”
Kit knows this, knows how hard it is to acquire more once they’ve gone through their allotment for the month. Knows that is how Nexarium keeps such power in the Consortium.
Luminary Ellsworth exits, leaving Kit with Wilma. Tears brim in Wilma’s eyes. “I just want it to be over.”
Kit’s heart hurts. No matter how long she’s been a Luminary, it never gets easier seeing patients near the end.
She’s learned to compartmentalize better, but there has been so much death recently, her emotions are threatening to spiral out of control.
“I know,” she says softly. “Let me get you another cool compress. Are you in pain?”
“I’m always in pain,” Wilma replies.
“I’ll get you another Pain Draught too.” Kit busies herself at the cupboard near the side of the room, rummaging for a Pain Draught and cracking a new compress for Wilma to put on her head.
She brings them back, handing Wilma the glass vial with the Draught.
Her fingers brush Wilma’s, and she pauses as a surge of warmth passes through them.
The same sensation she had when her hand rested upon Mr. Allred’s arm. What is that?
She shakes it off, making sure that Wilma is firmly gripping the vial before letting go.
“Drink it all,” she instructs, watching Wilma’s face. She does, and Kit places the compress on her forehead. “Is it okay if I just move this —” she gestures towards the sweaty hair that is plastered across Wilma’s forehead, “so the compress can rest directly on the skin?”
Wilma nods and Kit brushes her hand across her hairline, pushing her bangs off her face. Again, when her hand makes contact with Wilma, a rush of warmth flows through her palm. Kit pulls her hand back, unsure what’s going on. “Did you feel that?”
“Yes,” Wilma says. “It felt like…like sunshine. Being poured into my body.”
Kit frowns, puzzled. She’s never heard anything like this before, and wonders if Wilma is slightly delirious from the fever. But she also felt the warmth in her palm, and if Wilma is delirious, then Kit might be as well.
“I’m sorry if it startled you. That’s never happened before.
It may just be my magic reacting to one of the virus’ pathogens,” Kit says, unsure if that is possible.
She digs through the archives of her mind for any research she’d read about this.
“Let me just place the compress here and go check on Luminary Ellsworth, okay?”
Wilma nods, and Kit swears she looks a bit more alert, that the blood from her ear has stopped pooling. She puts the compress on Wilma’s forehead and tells her she’ll be right back, going to search for Luminary Ellsworth to see what is taking so long with the pink salt.
Kit shuffles around her lab on the second floor of the Aclesius Center, moving one tray of blood samples from the refrigerated canister to her desk.
These are all from patients admitted today, and she’s trying to understand the elements of Hemorrhagic Fever, to see whether there are any unique particles, microorganisms, or magical signatures that she can identify.
As much as she enjoys caring for patients, this is the part of her work that she finds more fascinating.
Magical virology is a puzzle, and she oftentimes has to break things apart in order to put them back together.
She pulls a vial from a patient admitted two hours ago, locking it into the centrifuge to separate the red blood cells from the plasma so she can examine them more closely. As she closes the lid, she hears a knock on the door and glances over her shoulder.
Nevis pokes her head in. “This is fun for a Friday night.”
Kit smiles in spite of her exhaustion. “It’s not quite The Living Room, is it?”
Kit often goes dancing with Nevis on Friday nights at the club near the Center to shake off the week, but with the pandemic now raging, all public gathering places have been temporarily shut down.
In the minister’s address this morning, he’d explained that citizens should avoid gathering in large groups, stay at least seven feet apart from each other, and avoid practicing magic in settings outside the home.
“Can I help?” Nevis asks, inclining her head to the rest of the blood samples.
“If you wouldn’t mind.” Kit is grateful for the help, and for Nevis’ presence after the never-ending day. Preparing the samples is a menial task, one Kit usually has the technicians handle, but because of the novel nature of the disease, she feels the need to be in control.
Nevis is one of the few Luminaries she trusts.
It’s not only because she is Kit’s closest friend, who has been there with her through her mom’s death, her breakup with Finn, and Luminary school.
Nevis also specializes in magical immunology, studying how the body protects itself from microbes that cause infectious disease and tumors, and the way that magic interrelates.
She knows what she’s doing, and she’s good at it.
Nevis stands at the workstation next to Kit, pulling the samples out of the centrifuge and beginning to separate the plasma with quick flicks of her wrist. She draws the droplets out, directing them to fall neatly into a tube.
She appears focused on her task, looking fixedly at the vessels in front of her when she says, “Ms. Engler made a full recovery.”
Kit snaps her head up. “What? How do you know? Luminary Ellsworth didn’t authorize the use of pink salt.” Her words come out in a jumble, disbelieving.
“I ran into Luminary Ellsworth earlier. She said she’s negative. No more blood or fever. No rash. It’s like it never happened.”
Kit’s mind races, trying to piece together how it could be possible. How is it that two people made full recoveries? What is their immune system doing differently? “We should get a sample of her blood before she’s released.”
“Already on it,” Nevis says, grinning and pulling a tube of dark red blood from her pocket.
“I’ll investigate tomorrow, see if I can identify what kind of immune response she had.
But Kit…” Nevis frowns, tilting her head to the side as if trying to get a better look at her.
“You were in with her just prior, weren’t you? ”
Kit’s heart seizes in her chest. She was, and that was when the strange episode happened — the one where Wilma told her it felt like sunshine was being poured into her body. “I was.”
“First Mr. Allred, then Ms. Engler,” Nevis says, more to herself than to Kit. “Strange.”
“I think they just got lucky,” Kit says, unwilling to believe that she had anything to do with it beyond being a good Luminary. “Two people is hardly statistically significant.”
Nevis shrugs, rolling her lips together. “Come on, you have to admit it’s a bizarre coincidence.” She flicks her wrist again, drawing the puffy white middle layer from the tube and directing the white blood cells into a different vessel.
“That’s all it was,” Kit says, “a bizarre coincidence. I didn’t do anything differently. I followed the protocols.”
Nevis raises her eyebrows. “You’re sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure!” Kit is exasperated. “What’s with the twenty questions? You sound like Luminary Ellsworth.”
“I’m just trying to understand what might have happened,” Nevis says, setting the tube down in the small case in front of her. “And right now, you’re the common denominator.”