Jeff Sharon
Short Story #2
A small drip ran down the inside of Abbey Berlin’s cheek, and into the
back of her mouth. Choking, her breath and saliva sprayed in a fine mist that
condensed in the corners of her glacial blue lips. The painful examination
light hanged overhead and lit under her eyelids, giving a hot red tinge to her
already hellish sedative-induced dreams. Abbey had arrived at Sacred Heart
Hospital just days before her 18th birthday, and along with her age and
admission, the clip board hanging at the end of her bed noted her symptoms
with advanced pregnancy including Eclampsia”, but now her condition had
unexpectedly and drastically deteriorated. Her skin was sickly and yellow,
and her once lush black hair resembled wooden ash. Her throat had swelled
and red and raw sores filled the inside of her mouth. She had been slated for
a medical induced delivery before her rapid decline, though now neither
mother nor child were fit for the operation. Because she had been unable to
eat, today, Abbey was being fitted with a nasogastric feeding tube in hopes
As the nurse held Abbey’s head in place, the head physician began to
slide the thick plastic into the swelled tightoral cavity of his patient. His
massive hands shook as he worked the tube into the esophagus and
pushing bile through and around the plastic working itself past her throat,
and into her mouth. In an inescapable gasp for air she breathed the digestive
fluid, where it settled and burned like battery acid deep in the pit of her
lungs. Tears streamed from her still closed eyes, and pooled below, soaking
her pillow. Her limbs began to escape the sedative and she jolted
uncontrollably under the grip of the nurse. The physician pushed the tube
further, his hands shaking now not from nervousness, but from anger. He had
lost patients before, too many, but not this one, not these ones. The
physician tried harder to get the tube in place as Abbey thrashed both
unaware and uncontrollably. She choked and gagged once more, this time
“Doctor, you’re hurting her. You have to take it out!” The nurse said,
turning Abbey’s head away from the tube that the physician still clamped in
noise, and pulled the plastic out of the patient. He threw aside Abbey’s gown,
exposing her bare chest and pregnant belly. He placed the icy end of his
stethoscope first above her heart, double checking the machine’s reading.
Hearing only the gurgle of the fluid trapped inside of her lungs, he moved the
moment he placed his hands on the breastbone of his patient and pounded
two furious shotgun compressions that forced the liquid inside of Abbey’s
lungs to project from her mouth and onto the soiled scrubs of his nurse. For a
brief second he thought that this would be enough to jump start the patients
breathing; however the flat line buzz played in his ears like a secret that
everyone knew. He pressed his mouth to hers, forcing the hot air from his
lungs into her own. For four minutes, the physician went back and forth from
Abbey’s mouth to her chest, each time his compressions getting a little
weaker, his breath blowing a little less full. He stepped away from the
patient, glancing at the wrist watch he had laid on the end table before the
procedure. His nurse stood silent beside Abbey’s head, running her fingers
through the patient’s hair, unable to look up from the ghostly woman. Again
the physician placed the stethoscope on Abbey’s chest. This time he heard
nothing but his own trembling hand relayed through the instrument. Abbey’s
baby made no sound at the stethoscope, and the silence cried in the doctor’s
ear.
The doctor gazed helplessly and guiltily at his patient, and placed his
hands again on Abbey’s chest, prepared to try CPR again, before letting out a
“Doctor…”
and placing it over his hand. As he clasped it around his wrist he glanced at
the time. Through his teeth he hissed “April 24, 1998- 6:37P.M.-Abbey Berlin-
Dead,” and with a quick turn, stepped through the door leaving his nurse
The voice was that of Darlene Adorno, a stocky, middle aged woman
whose graying hair and worried eyes made her look closer to sixty than forty-
four.
“Nurse, I…” Doctor Woodridge paused and breathed deep, exhausted
from the ordeal that began to set like mortar in his mind. “Darlene, I need a
moment by myself.”
disease of the liver and kidneys, have such an effect on her eating? Or for
that matter, why had her mouth and throat swelled so much? There was
something unusual about these symptoms that burned in the Doctors mind.
even say he has caused it, or at the very least, allowed it to happen. Three
decades ago, he had been stationed as a medic on the Tan Son Nhut Air Base
in the Republic of Vietnam. Here he had cared for his injured and dying
American friends and Vietnamese allies. The airport was known to those
American serviceman’s tour and the last stop a KIA would make before being
nicknames. Some called him Saint Benedict when he was able to save a
title of Air Force Base Surgeon General. He felt that he should be able to
personal he got with his patients, he thought, the easier it would be to forget
their faces after they passed, or were thrown back into duty.
Only it wasn’t easy. By 1974 the Vietcong were pushing further south
Woodridge along with the rest of those on the base were withdrawn from
duty and evacuated, just months before the enemy pushed to take the
Detroit inner city hospital that saw as many gunshot wounds as the air base
“Damn it, Darlene, do you know any other doctors who just lost two
was prone to anger, and usually Darlene’s high pitched voice alone was
enough to make his blood burn, although today his mind was elsewhere.
Both Darlene and Benedict had originally been EMDs living life beat by
ages, however, they had chosen to escape the fanatic pace of the ER and
instead move to the fourth floor Intensive Care Unit, which in most cases,
was a patient’s first stop after the emergency room if their injuries or
condition were life threatening, or their last stop if they were life ending. Now
instead of saving lives, the two doctors were charged with keeping them.
Hippocratic Oath and glancing down at his wristwatch. He had worn the
rotary which was standard Air Force issue for the time. Despite the
“Stainless” guarantee, he noticed small rust spots where the ancient blood of
his friends had dried and eaten away the steele plating.
Doctor Woodridge walked into room 441 and through a cloud of sweet
rancid air; the unusual yet familiar stink of the sick and dying mixed with a
canned floral air freshener, with a hint of uric acid from a filled catheter bag
for flavor. Room 441 was a double suite with two of everything. In two rolling
beds isolated with two sterile plastic curtains, lay side by side two near
identical patients. Neither of the women in the beds had come to the hospital
through the ER, yet here they lay under the care of Sacred Heart’s ICU, and
“The one on the right, Bev, she came in about a week ago with viral
bronchitis,” Darlene explained, pulling back the curtain that surrounded the
patient. “It wasn’t even that bad, really. We gave her an acetaminophen for
the fever and put her on an IV for fluids. We asked her to stay for only a
night, just standardprocedure, but by the next morning her throat had nearly
swelled shut with abscesses and her lungs have needed drained twice.”
Doctor Woodridge stepped past the patient to the sink at the opposite
end of the room. As he did before seeing any patient, he rinsed his hands,
running his watch under the water as well. The doctor was not interested in
seeing this patient, though. The shock of losing his earlier patients was only
portray. Just like the war, he thought. Friends, patients, humans, dead and
discarded like bad milk. Maybe treating a bronchitis case wasn’t so bad, he
thought. Maybe he should just retire at a family practice where bronchitis
Doctor Woodridge used his fingernails to scrape a small flake of rust from his
watch and down the drain. He often found himself cleaning his timepiece in
times of stress, which was always in abundance. With a decisive snap the
“Alright, let’s take a look at you,” he said with a sigh and placed his
Bev lay with disheveled, sweat soaked hair and deep, plum colored
depressions under her eyes. As she opened her mouth Doctor Woodridge
inserted a flat wooden tongue depressor in order to view the back of her
throat.
“Now say-” he cut off before the sound came out. Breathing in and
coughing on the putrid wheezing breath of his patient, through his bio-mask
even, was enough to tell him that the infection was far more severe than
“Okay, let’s try this again,” the Doctor said, stepping beside the
patients head.
As Bev opened her mouth, the Doctor was able to hold his breath and
look inside his patient. Inside he say a pool of thick yellow mucus, behind
which a dozen large and small puss filled abscesses lined the back of her
throat.
“It’s possible, but even that wouldn’t explain this. You said she has only
“Yes, Doctor, but it only stayed routine for a moment. She declined so
sharply.”
This, along with his previous patient’s rapid decline gave Doctor
Woodridge a sinister, dreadful feeling in his very guts. He had seen this
“Darlene, get me swab, we are going to need a culture test” the Doctor
said as he shined a small light into his patient’s mouth. He noticed the
abscesses were not only located in her throat proper, but were located
mostly on her saliva gland, while smaller sores lined the inside of her cheeks.
“Your swab, Doctor.” Darlene said, handing him the oversized cotton Q-
burst, draining white fluffy puss into the mouth of his patient. He removed
the swab and handed it to Darlene, who ran it over a plastic Petri dish which
she sealed in a sterile bag. The Doctor stood moments before Bev
succumbed to a coughing fit, spraying the smelly ooze all over and causing
the other sores to open, leaving her choking and unable to breathe through
“Get her to ER!” Doctor Woodridge shouted. He did not have any of his
operating equipment and could do nothing more for the patient. Darlene
kicked the locks from under the bed and rushed the patient down the hall
while the Doctor paged to the first floor unit and told them to ready an anti-
Through all of this, the other patient in the room, who remained hidden
behind the separating curtain, remained quiet and still. Doctor Woodridge,
too aware of the stillness, the Doctor pushed aside the curtain to see a blue
and bloated figure lying with a leg awkwardly off of the bed. Already knowing
her fate, the doctor paged for the liftman to remove the body. Doctor
Woodridge examined the deceased patient, the body only hours removed
from life. He examined her board, which stated she was initially admitted for
a surgery to remove a blood clot, and had been recovering in room 441 the
day that Bev had joined her. She had had no previous infection, yet she
showed the same symptoms as Bev, only a day before. Doctor Woodridge
replaced his gloves and picked up another wooden depressor. He used this to
pry his patient’s clenched jaws and examine her throat. Like Bev and Abbey
she had suffered lesions in her mouth and a thick yellow slime covered the
remained intact and began to harden now that the patient had died. Instead,
Doctor Woodridge suspected, she had died of an acute loss of oxygen. As her
throat swelled and her breathing shallowed, she received less and less
oxygen to her brain. She had effectively drowned. Before she was removed,
the Doctor obtained another throat culture and paged Darlene in ER.
“The removed the fluid from Bev’s throat but the swelling is persistent,
even with medication.” Darlene updated the Doctor. “I’m not sure, but she
Darlene said apprehensively. “The Admissions office is stating that they have
Doctor Woodridge felt the strange heaviness in his guts that he had felt
“We will have the culture results tomorrow, until then keep the patients
sat atop the still running humidifier. Suddenly he knew the cause.
“…With IV fluids only, no water. I don’t care how much the patients
throat hurts, do not give any of them water!” With a hurried click, the Doctor
hung up the page phone and ran to unplug the humidifier. At this point,
however, the disease was here. Their only hope was containment.
“Doctor, I don’t think we are dealing with a normal virus, are we”
“I know. But I think I know what we are dealing with,” The Doctor said,
placing his watch over his wrist and glancing at its pale metal face, the
specks of rust polka dotting the band. “… and I think it’s my fault.”
“What do you mean, Doctor? How could this be your fault?” Darlene
“I’ve had this watch since the war,” he said, never taking his eyes off
the two hands which pointed at the nine and the seven. “It has seen the
time of war, the time of death. It has seen blood and bile and bullets and I
“You brought what with you? Doctor? What we’re dealing with is a
virus, not a war!” Darlene felt exasperated that the Doctor was seemingly
“I brought that too. In the blood, in the rust. It survived, it must have.”
on.”
swab will prove that.” Doctor Woodridge began to explain to Darlene. “No, I
It had been over two decades since the doctor had treated a faceless
soldier who had come back from duty with an unnamable disease. He had
complained of the same swelling and suffered the same rapid decline that
the Doctors patients faced today. Without any real knowledge of the disease
little equipment, he gave the patient some penicillin and isolated him for
observation. Before dusk, the patient lay dead in the ward, his lips and
mouth blue from an apparent lack of oxygen. Doctor Woodridge had seen so
many bodies by then, however, that he was not surprised to see his patient
in this condition. It wasn’t until he was back at home that the Doctor began
“The disease is from the War,” he continued “and now it’s come home
“My watch,” the Doctor said “It must have been carried in the rust.”
Darlene had seen the Doctor wash his watch in the hospital sinks
“Then I’m afraid our time is running out.” Doctor Woodridge said,
finally looking up from his watch with tears in his eyes and a tightening in his
throat.