LJ Idol Week 29: Trials
-- And what do you call this? Atonement?
…
-- Fuck it. To my health, then.
(He drank the culture like a shot)
#
The First Trial: A Sore Throat.
He writes down every detail, the exact sensations, how many hours it took to manifest (seven, which is faster than generally observed -he marks this down with a scowl). The pain is mild. It feels as if something round and heavy is lodged just below his tonsils. It makes him swallow reflexively, but that’s all. It’s not hard to distract himself, keeping his careful record.
As he has always done.
#
The Second Trial: Time.
He’s watching the clock. It’s closing in on the 72nd hour after infection -three full days. The sore throat has only worsened, joined by a persistent cough and chill. It still just feels like a bad cold, or a mild flu; he reflects on that with slight wonder.
He’s watching the window for survivability close.
His body hums with the effort of staying still.
Before, he never saw the patients with sore throats. He knew the virus was sometimes caught that early, but when they were, they weren’t sent to him. He had no aptitude for medicine in the sense of healing.
What he had were powers of observation.
The clock struck the hour, and he observed it, wrote it down.
#
The Third Trial: Lesions.
When he first saw her, a black pit had eaten across her throat.
Her lungs rattled.
He’d looked at her burning eyes without emotion, and asked the nurse: how long?
Less than a week, the nurse answered. Given the number and size of the lesions, they estimated she’d been infected five days prior.
Can she talk?
Only a little bit, the nurse said. Aphasia, she clarified, to say nothing of the damage done to the throat.
The girl in the bed rattled at them. The sound was repulsive. He turned away from her so she wouldn’t see his disgust, gesturing for the nurse to follow. They walked together past rows and rows of beds, all filled, every one of them dying.
87 hours after infection, he goes to sleep, and wakes with a small black lesion above his collar-bone. He measures it, photographs it. It won’t be long now.
#
The Fourth Trial: Time, Again.
They lied to them. The dying people in the rows and rows of beds. If any one of them suspected it, if they could smell guilt on them, or if they were sensible enough to doubt the simplicity of their ‘cure,’ he never knew. The aphasia protected his staff from accusations. Words were mush in their cracked mouths.
The nurses carried plastic trays, like cafeteria-trays, of paper cups filled white pills and water. Some patients took them like they were the flesh and blood of Christ. Others had to be fed.
She was one of them.
He stood by while the nurse, the same nurse, coaxed the pills into her and held the water to her lips. When the cup was taken away, the girl managed to utter the first clear word she’d said in days:
“P-ain?”
“We can’t give you painkillers,” he said. “It interferes with the treatment.”
She nodded, tiredly (a doctor can say just about anything to a patient, he thought to himself then. It’s one of the few situations where people believe in their own ignorance), and her lips moved again, but no sound came out.
The pills were a placebo. Sugar. Elsewhere in the hospital, a different group was getting the real treatment. This was a control.
The girl died 9 hours later. He noted the time, the date, her physical condition at the end. She was the first. The rest died in waves over the next few days.
He remembers all this lying on the floor, staring at his ceiling with burning eyes.
P-ain, yes.
#
The Fifth Trial: Treatment.
The treatment he has devised now is not a pill at all. It’s a series of injections, administered every few hours.
There’s nothing left to do but start. He can no longer record what is happening to him (words are mush, and his mouth is cracked, and even trying to write takes more effort than he has to give). At the 127th hour, he takes out his supplies with shaking hands. He feels like an old man, like he barely remembers how to do this.
But he does remember.
He takes the needle, finds a vein, and drives it home.
#
He waits.
(the girl, and maybe a handful of the others, were different from the rest. They were caught early, and could have been cured, but weren’t. They were directed to him. For observation. He didn’t question it. The order didn’t come from him. But there must have been some reason).
And waits.
#
The Final Trial
It doesn’t occur to him that the injections might actually work until he’s measuring that first lesion (at 167 hours, it’s mostly out of boredom, he has nothing else to do), and realizes that it’s gotten smaller.
He measures all of them. They’re all smaller. All, he now realizes, beginning to heal.
He tries his voice:
“Fuck,” Then again, startled: “Fuck.”
It doesn’t occur to him that he’d been planning to die until he feels the horror pool in his stomach.
#
As luck would have it, he doesn’t die.
He lives.
#
--Smile for the cameras, Doctor. This is what you’ll be remembered for.
…
-- Fuck it. To my health, then.
(He drank the culture like a shot)
#
The First Trial: A Sore Throat.
He writes down every detail, the exact sensations, how many hours it took to manifest (seven, which is faster than generally observed -he marks this down with a scowl). The pain is mild. It feels as if something round and heavy is lodged just below his tonsils. It makes him swallow reflexively, but that’s all. It’s not hard to distract himself, keeping his careful record.
As he has always done.
#
The Second Trial: Time.
He’s watching the clock. It’s closing in on the 72nd hour after infection -three full days. The sore throat has only worsened, joined by a persistent cough and chill. It still just feels like a bad cold, or a mild flu; he reflects on that with slight wonder.
He’s watching the window for survivability close.
His body hums with the effort of staying still.
Before, he never saw the patients with sore throats. He knew the virus was sometimes caught that early, but when they were, they weren’t sent to him. He had no aptitude for medicine in the sense of healing.
What he had were powers of observation.
The clock struck the hour, and he observed it, wrote it down.
#
The Third Trial: Lesions.
When he first saw her, a black pit had eaten across her throat.
Her lungs rattled.
He’d looked at her burning eyes without emotion, and asked the nurse: how long?
Less than a week, the nurse answered. Given the number and size of the lesions, they estimated she’d been infected five days prior.
Can she talk?
Only a little bit, the nurse said. Aphasia, she clarified, to say nothing of the damage done to the throat.
The girl in the bed rattled at them. The sound was repulsive. He turned away from her so she wouldn’t see his disgust, gesturing for the nurse to follow. They walked together past rows and rows of beds, all filled, every one of them dying.
87 hours after infection, he goes to sleep, and wakes with a small black lesion above his collar-bone. He measures it, photographs it. It won’t be long now.
#
The Fourth Trial: Time, Again.
They lied to them. The dying people in the rows and rows of beds. If any one of them suspected it, if they could smell guilt on them, or if they were sensible enough to doubt the simplicity of their ‘cure,’ he never knew. The aphasia protected his staff from accusations. Words were mush in their cracked mouths.
The nurses carried plastic trays, like cafeteria-trays, of paper cups filled white pills and water. Some patients took them like they were the flesh and blood of Christ. Others had to be fed.
She was one of them.
He stood by while the nurse, the same nurse, coaxed the pills into her and held the water to her lips. When the cup was taken away, the girl managed to utter the first clear word she’d said in days:
“P-ain?”
“We can’t give you painkillers,” he said. “It interferes with the treatment.”
She nodded, tiredly (a doctor can say just about anything to a patient, he thought to himself then. It’s one of the few situations where people believe in their own ignorance), and her lips moved again, but no sound came out.
The pills were a placebo. Sugar. Elsewhere in the hospital, a different group was getting the real treatment. This was a control.
The girl died 9 hours later. He noted the time, the date, her physical condition at the end. She was the first. The rest died in waves over the next few days.
He remembers all this lying on the floor, staring at his ceiling with burning eyes.
P-ain, yes.
#
The Fifth Trial: Treatment.
The treatment he has devised now is not a pill at all. It’s a series of injections, administered every few hours.
There’s nothing left to do but start. He can no longer record what is happening to him (words are mush, and his mouth is cracked, and even trying to write takes more effort than he has to give). At the 127th hour, he takes out his supplies with shaking hands. He feels like an old man, like he barely remembers how to do this.
But he does remember.
He takes the needle, finds a vein, and drives it home.
#
He waits.
(the girl, and maybe a handful of the others, were different from the rest. They were caught early, and could have been cured, but weren’t. They were directed to him. For observation. He didn’t question it. The order didn’t come from him. But there must have been some reason).
And waits.
#
The Final Trial
It doesn’t occur to him that the injections might actually work until he’s measuring that first lesion (at 167 hours, it’s mostly out of boredom, he has nothing else to do), and realizes that it’s gotten smaller.
He measures all of them. They’re all smaller. All, he now realizes, beginning to heal.
He tries his voice:
“Fuck,” Then again, startled: “Fuck.”
It doesn’t occur to him that he’d been planning to die until he feels the horror pool in his stomach.
#
As luck would have it, he doesn’t die.
He lives.
#
--Smile for the cameras, Doctor. This is what you’ll be remembered for.