“What? No!” Cassie tightened her grip on Samuel’s hand, frightened about being left alone in the dark. “Don’t leave me.”
“Come on Cassie,” Samuel reasoned with her. “I need to try. I’ll be back here before you know it.”
Without giving the young woman a chance to respond and argue, Samuel slipped his hand from her grasp and stepped away. Samuel didn’t know the first thing about generators and electronics, fully aware that he would be facing this generator with about as much skill as a kindergartener trying to drive an SUV. But he had to try. More and more people were going to die every minute that the hospital didn’t have power and he refused to just stand by someone’s bedside and let that happen.
Samuel yanked open the door to the basement and started down.
“Hey! Where are you going?”
Looking upward, Samuel saw the woman who was calling after him. He had barely made it half way down the flight of stairs.
“There’s a backup generator downstairs,” he started to explain. “I’m going to try –”
“Don’t bother,” the woman replied. “It doesn’t work. I need help up here. Come with me.”
Samuel paused and looked at the woman – she was dressed in sensible pants, flat shoes and a dark colored blouse. There was an identification badge hanging out of her pocket that looked to belong to the hospital in some way, though he couldn’t make out the details.
“Come on,” she urged him as he stood still one flight below her. “Do you have any medical training?” Samuel shook his head. “Doesn’t matter,” she replied quickly, “you can still help. Come on. Hurry.”
He hurried after the woman, who was already on the move. He shouldn’t need to be reminded about how precious time was. He already knew lives were on the line and if he could help in any way then he needed to be there. The sound of screaming increased as the woman pushed through double doors at the top of the stairs, walking out onto a ward that was more well-lit than the one downstairs, large windows along both sides revealing beds of distressed patients, several of them writhing around in agony.
“What’s going on?”
“People are dying,” the woman called back over her shoulder. “I need you to help me hold them down so I can administer sedatives.”
Samuel stood in the middle of the ward and looked from one bed to another, counting the number of people who were spasming out of control under their sheets. Nearly half. The woman disappeared behind a counter at the back of the room, her hands pawing through cupboards until she found the equipment she needed. For the number of patients on the ward, there didn’t seem to be nearly enough medical professionals by Samuel’s count. Two men in white coats rushed between beds and a couple other nurses assisted them where they could, but other than that everyone wore plain clothes and a number of them stood stock-still beside beds watching in terror, or desperately trying to calm the patients in any way they could.
As he looked more closely at the patients, he saw to his horror that a number of them were fastened down to the beds by fabric cuffs. He had only ever seen them used on television shows to restrain injured criminals, a shiver running down Samuel’s spine as he questioned exactly where he was and what was going on.
“Over here!” The woman shouted over to him, “I need help!”
Rushing over to her side, Samuel slid to a halt in front of a bed with a seizing woman. Her limbs flailed around outside of her control, her mouth hung open, her tongue limp and to one side. Her eyes were wide open and stared upwards, making eye contact with Samuel as he looked at her and gasped. It was like she wasn’t really there though – her eyes seeing him, but the woman’s mind switched off as her body lost control.
“Hold her steady,” the woman on the other side of the bed spoke, Samuel finally close enough to read her identification badge now and learning that she was in fact a neurological physician: Doctor Lucie Miller. “I need to find a vein.”
“What’s wrong with her?” Samuel asked as he hovered over the woman, his arms outstretched but uncertain where to grab hold of her. It didn’t seem right just pinning her down to the bed, even though the doctor had advised it.
“She’s having a seizure,” Doctor Miller explained, filling a syringe. “This is a specialty epilepsy hospital; everyone here has a rare form of epilepsy that has mutated in the last year or two into something we’ve never seen before. It’s ten times more advanced than the disease used to be. The seizures used to only cause the body to malfunction, but now they’re affecting the internal organs too, specifically the lungs. That’s why some of them – the worst cases – are hooked up to respirators. If we don’t stop her soon, she’s not going to be able to breathe for herself properly. Hold her legs and arms. Try and keep her as still as possible. The injection should keep her lungs going long enough until the power comes back on.”
Samuel did exactly as he was told, following the instructions and using one hand to hold down the woman’s arm nearest to him, the other and the bulk of his body weight to keep her legs from kicking out. He processed what Doctor Miller had told him about the hospital and shot a quick glance around the ward once more; those that weren’t seizing all lay incredibly still and after what he had just learned about the epilepsy affecting people’s lungs, Samuel could only hope
