Dead, but Not for Long (28 page)

“The problem is that the nursing staff doesn’t
realize how important we doctors are at the moment.” Harold coughed into a tissue and tried to sit up.

“I’ve had to wait an average of ten minutes for
service after I ring my bell. Ten minutes! I got this damn flu bug or food
poisoning. Yes, that’s exactly what it is. Those gangsters Jack brought in
probably cooked something up to kill us. They want the hospital to themselves.
My blood pressure is dropping like a rock, I’m damn near hypothermic and I’ve
got blood in my urine.” He stopped talking long enough to vomit into a bed pan.
“And that. I’ve been doing that constantly.”

“Well, Harold, I think they’ve got their hands full
at the moment, with half the staff having been eaten and all,” Doune said, then
he began to lie - something he did well, when it worked to his benefit. “Just
last week I heard there were three cases of a deadly strain of E. coli that
killed the victims within a couple of hours. The hospital hushed it up of
course since it most likely originated in the cafeteria, but I’d like to make
sure this isn’t what you have. If it is, we’ll need to start antibiotics at once.”

“Well, thank you,” Harold said, thinking someone had
finally realized his importance. “That’s why I never ate at that damn cafeteria until now.”

Harold got a sour expression on his face and quickly dry-heaved into the bed pan.

While Harold was busy vomiting, Doune spoke quietly
to Keith before turning his attention back to his patient. Keith brought a set
of Velcro straps into the room but kept them out of sight for the moment.

When Winston looked back up, he had a small trickle of blood running down the corner of his mouth.

“Maybe you can explain to these wannabe nurses here
that with the ‘zombie’ thing and now an E. coli outbreak, we’re going to need
all the healthy doctors we can get. Their first priority should be
our
health. If we’re sick, who’s going to take care of the patients?”

Marla stuck her head in the door after hearing the conversation from down the hallway.

“Don’t be dissin’ us nurses,” she said with her
index finger pointed in Harold’s direction.

“And she’s about as sharp as a tennis ball!” he said
as the woman continued down the hall.

“Well, you know how that goes,” Doune said, “it’s
hard to get good help these days. They just don’t understand how it is for us,
Harold, going to school all those years to become a doctor. We deserve special
consideration for that, in my opinion.”

Doune stepped away from the man with a sigh. “It looks like E. coli to me, Harold. I’m going to get you started on an IV right
away since you look a little dehydrated. We’ll start something for the nausea, too.”

Telling Keith to hook up an IV, Doune excused himself to go look for Jack.

Keith took his time making the preparations since he had no intention of actually following through. The doctor’s blood might as
well be poison now and Keith had no desire to infect himself.

~*~

Doune found Jack near the elevator.

“We may have a problem,” he stated.

Jack thought the statement was strange. The city was in flames, most of the population had turned into zombies, and the doctor said,
“We may have a problem.” But it was Dr. Doune who was speaking. His tone of
voice probably wouldn’t change if he were on fire.

“What can I help you with? Jack asked.

“We believe that Dr. Winston is infected,” Doune
said, giving him a summary of what he knew. “It probably happened when he tried
to remove the infant from its mother. Regardless, we need to get him restrained
to check him for bites and I think he’ll fight us, so we may need an extra set of hands to do it.”

Jack thought about it for a second.

“We could bring in the bikers, but I think that would get him even more agitated. I’m sure the three of us could handle him.”

Jack walked with the doctor back toward the room. “Actually,
I think I’m going to enjoy this,” he smiled.

“I think I’ll enjoy it more when I’m dissecting his brain,” Doune admitted.

When they reached the room again, he asked, “Harold, how are you feeling?”

“Did you tell him?” Winston asked while pointing a
finger at Jack. He redirected his complaints at Jack before the doctor could
answer. “Your biker-gang deputies poisoned me. They had no business in that
cafeteria. Where are their health cards? They could make everybody who eats in
this hospital sick. If we survive this, I’m going to report every . . .” Jack
stuck a towel in the man’s mouth and held his arms down. Harold’s eyes registered shock.

“Oh, now that was just downright pretty,” Keith
grinned, grabbing one strap while Nick took the other. It only took a matter of
moments before they had the doctor’s wrists strapped to the rails of the bed.

“Now the question is whether we want to take the
towel out or not,” Doune said. He looked at the unhappy patient and said, “Harold,
if you get too mouthy with us, we will replace the towel, though I’ll remove it
for now, so you don’t choke on your own vomit.”

He pulled the towel free, careful to tug only at the
end, keeping his fingers away from the man’s teeth.

“Have all of you gone insane?” Harold screamed. “You
can’t hold another physician against his will. This is kidnapping!”

“No,” Jack calmly replied, “this is restraint. When
you admitted yourself as a patient, your rights as a physician ended and you
are now under Dr. Doune’s care. He thinks you have been infected with this
virus and that you may become a danger to those around you. It would be in your
best interest now to cooperate. Maybe he can even cure this virus before you
turn into one of those things outside and I have to put a bullet through your
head. Understand?”

“You’d enjoy that, wouldn’t you?” Harold replied.

Jack tried to keep from smiling.

“Look at this,” Keith said, pointing to a tiny red
mark on one of the doctor’s fingers.

“That’s nothing,” Winston said, trying to pull his
hand away. There was a similar mark on the other side.

“Looks like a very small tooth mark,” Keith said.

“Did you get bitten, Harold?” Doune asked, already knowing the answer.

A small trickle of blood ran out of the corner of
his mouth once more and Nick Doune made a mental note of it all.

“No, of course not. That’s just a hangnail.
Look at my hands. I bite my nails. Just loosen these straps, I’ll cooperate
with . . .” Harold stopped in mid-sentence and stared off into space. Suddenly, he started to convulse.

When Keith stepped forward, Doune placed a hand on his
shoulder and said, “Don’t bother.”

Keith shot the surgeon a look. He might not like Dr.
Winston, but it was his duty as an RN to do what he could to help.

Sighing, Doune said, “There is nothing that you can
do for him and if you try, you might end up just like him.”

Keith glanced at Jack and stepped away. His training
had been drilled into him for years, but everything had changed. From now on,
the old rules would only apply to uninfected patients and it was going to take some time to get used to it.

Doune watched Harold as the convulsions slowed then
stopped. “It’s interesting how some patients seem to simply slip into comas
before they change while others pass through different stages, including convulsions.”

Keith disliked Dr. Winston intensely but it still
bothered him to think that the man was doomed to death. Dr. Doune’s attitude
seemed extremely cold-hearted.

Doune glanced at Keith as though reading his
thoughts. His eyes went back to Dr. Winston as he noted the changes in the man.
In general, they all had some similar symptoms – the dark circles around their
eyes and the pasty skin. Most had fevers and sometimes chills, but other than
that, there seemed to be a lot of differences from person to person. Dr. Doune
continued to watch his new patient with his usual clinical detachment.

“I suggest we move him into the quarantine room,”
Jack stated calmly, leaning over to unlock the wheels on the bed. “Well doctor,
looks like you have your first victim.”

“Victim,” Doune said thoughtfully. “An interesting
choice of wording, Jack.”

Keith quickly moved the IV rack and a chair out of the way so they could get the bed out.

“It’s too bad we don’t have riot gear for the guards
to wear when they’re dealing with the infected,” he said as they wheeled the
bed out of the room. “The doc here wasn’t too hard to handle, but what if we
get someone my size who’s been infected and doesn’t want to be strapped down?”

“That is an issue that should be addressed,” Doune said. “Assuming
we could find riot gear or something similar.”

Keith said, “Most of Snake’s guys are wearing
leather and it’ll be hard to bite through. I’m thinking that thick leather
gloves for all of us could come in handy.”

“Leather gloves would be a plus,” Jack agreed. “You
got any Hannibal Lector masks? Maybe a hockey mask would do. Of course, we
could always duct tape their mouths shut.”

“I like it,” Keith said. “In fact, it might be
better than these Velcro straps, for that matter. I have the feeling someone
could rip right out of them if they tried hard enough.”

“I have some old four-point restraints downstairs,”
Doune said. “We’ll use those on Harold when we get him to quarantine.”

“And where did you get those?” Jack asked. “I
thought we destroyed them all when we were told to quit using them.”

The corners of Doune’s lips turned up into a smile,
though it didn’t reach his eyes.

“It’s probably best if I keep that little secret to myself,” he stated.

Winston’s convulsions finally stopped and he lay
quietly, staring into nothing. When he quit moving, Keith grew more serious.

“That was fast,” he said quickly wheeling the bed into
the elevator. He kept one eye on Harold’s still form the whole time.

Doune followed but he was jotting notes as he walked
along, not wanting to leave out a single detail of what had just happened.

“Are you moving him to another floor?” Marla asked, looking
up from the desk.

Jack laughed at Marla’s comment. He tried to think
up a sarcastic answer, but the elevator door closed. Halfway between the third
and second floors, the power went out, stopping the elevator mid-floor. They
were in total darkness.

“Uh oh.” Jack’s comment seemed to understate their
plight.

“Oh, great,” Keith said at the same time. The idea
of being trapped in a small dark space with an infected body was about as bad
as it could get. He moved away from the bed and leaned against the wall, trying
to breathe slowly.

The small room was silent except for the sound of
the three men breathing until a low moan filled the air.

~*^*~

There was a quiet scuffling of feet as the men moved as far from the gurney as possible.

“Seriously? The lights had to go out now?” Keith said. “What are the odds?”

“Pretty good, considering it’s been happening about five times every hour lately,” Jack replied.

“How tightly did we do his restraints?” Keith asked. “I think I got the one on my side tight.”

The sound of human voices seemed to agitate Harold, who began to struggle in the bed.

“Shhhhh,” Doune said, hoping that if they were silent, Winston would forget about them.

Keith closed his eyes, trying to slow his breathing. He hated confined spaces and this was so much worse. Had they done
the restraints tightly? They’d been in a hurry when they had strapped the
doctor down. He had fastened one strap and he thought that Doune had done the
other one, but he couldn’t remember. He didn’t want to reach out and
accidentally find Dr. Winston’s teeth.
Winston’s head would be close to the back wall, so Keith slid down the side
wall the other way a couple feet, guessing he was now about where the doctor’s
restrained arm should be. It would be better to wait, but each moment that
ticked by seemed to last forever. If the arm wasn’t restrained, Winston might
be able to raise himself far enough to grab one of them. Keith could almost see
the dead arm reaching for him through the dark.

“What was that?” Doune asked, thinking he’d heard
the sound of Velcro pulling apart. His imagination was creating a vision very
similar to that of Keith’s, now that the RN had brought up the question. Harold
hadn’t been able to get loose in the room, so there was no reason to believe he
could do it now, but the doubts lingered. And was it possible that the virus
could be transmitted through methods other than biting? If Winston clawed one
of them and drew blood, would they become infected? Doune had no idea what sort
of infectious material Harold might have on his nails but they didn’t dare
allow him to claw one of them. He carefully reached over and checked the wrist
closest to him, flinching when the dead man’s fingers began to move. The moans
from the late doctor became more insistent, causing some shifting of bodies in the elevator.

The strap seemed to be tight, but Doune wanted to
check the other arm, too. He reached across to do so and his arm was suddenly
grabbed, the grip much tighter than what Doune would have expected. He yelled
and so did Keith. Jack’s voice could be heard as well, asking what had
happened. The gurney was shoved back and forth as Doune struggled to pull
himself free from Winston’s grasp. Doune fought panic as he envisioned the
undead Harold leaning closer now, his mouth opening to bite.

The lights flickered then came back on, illuminating
the scene. Keith groaned and rolled his eyes, releasing Doune’s wrist. Doune
let out a breath he’d been holding and stepped back to run a hand through his
hair. They both looked down at Winston who was still tightly restrained.

“What just happened?” Jack asked, looking back and
forth between the other two men.