Silent Hill fic: Outbreak - Chapter 12: Rebecca

[mistressofmuses]

In chapter 12: Nurse Rebecca Shelredge begins to grow sick after being attacked by a patient.

Monday, September 19, 2016

Rebecca didn’t feel well.

It was only a matter of time, she told herself, as she stared at her reflection. The unforgiving light from the overhead fluorescents did her no favors under the best of circumstances, but was she looking paler? Did she feel warm because she was nervous, or because she was running a fever? Either way, the red spots standing out on the skin of her lower arm didn’t lie.

Biting her lip, she undid the tape holding a bandage in place around her upper arm. She carefully unwound the gauze despite the urge to just bind it back up without looking. She’d never been squeamish, which had served her well for her career in nursing, but someone else’s wounds were easier to deal with than her own.

Finally the last layer of the bandage came free, and she had to clench her jaw to keep from gagging at the sight.

The actual puncture, where the patient had stabbed her with the needle, was black, the fluid seeping from it a sick mixture of red and yellow. If that wasn’t enough to signify infection, the skin immediately around it was swollen and red, with little lines of red threading outward. And it hurt, like the needle had broken off in her flesh and was still stabbing her, even though she knew that wasn’t true.

If she’d seen this kind of wound on a patient, she never would have believed them that it had happened less than 24 hours earlier, much less that it had received immediate medical care. This was the sort of infection she’d seen on shut-ins with no sense of personal hygiene when they dragged themselves to the ER weeks after stabbing themselves with a nail.

Of course, the needle she’d been stabbed with hadn’t been clean. It had absolutely been infectious. She’d used it for a blood draw, and hadn’t taken it directly to the sharps container. Normally she’d at least have capped it, but she’d dropped the stupid plastic cap, and couldn’t reach it where it rolled across the floor. So she set it on the tray by the bed while she taped a cotton ball over the draw site on the patient’s inner elbow. It took just seconds. She turned to set the roll of tape down, and the previously docile patient had grabbed the needle and stabbed her.

“A moment of negligence, a lifetime of consequence” had been drilled into her as a student, though it had generally meant they’d have to live with themselves if they did something like mix up a medication. Her “lifetime of consequence” may have just gotten an awful lot shorter.

She cleaned out the wound with the best wound-care solution they had, and re-bandaged it. Then she went to report her illness.

---

Two hours later, she was standing in the conference room, recounting the event from the previous day, trying not to feel like she was on trial. The two visiting doctors, the ones from out of state, were watching her like hawks, and so was Head Nurse Alma. And Dr. Marick. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so intimidated by the people in one room.

She’d done an incident report right after it happened, but of course that had been overshadowed by what happened to poor Lillian…

“So… I realize that it was partially my own foolishness, but I know we need to report any symptoms. I know I’m at risk with this, with a tainted needle and all. I know with the quarantine I can’t go, so I’d like to keep working if I may. I can tend some of the sicker patients, since there’s not much worry that I’ll be infected now.” She laughed a little nervously, scratching at her ankle with the opposite foot.

She wished she could re-bandage her arm again, but it seemed like it would be rude to do so in the middle of them all talking, in case they still wanted to look at it.

“Of course you will continue working,” Head Nurse Alma started, but was cut off by Dr. Woodhouse, the CDC doctor.

“That’s absolutely fine, but I do think that we should certainly run tests on Miss…”

Before she could give her name again, Dr. Marick leaned back in his chair, giving an exaggerated roll of his eyes. “We know where she got it from. She was stabbed with a bloody needle. Testing her is going to be no different than testing any other patient here, and we’ve tested them all!”

“With a patient more well-informed regarding medical procedure and how to medically describe symptoms, we can gain better information regarding-”

“Regarding what?” Dr. Marick snapped. “If all you’re going to do here is run the same damn tests we did weeks ago then you can just catch a flight right back to Atlanta.”

“Have you tested for anthrax?” the other one, Dr. Escalarre asked. “It can be spread to injection sites due to contamination, and result in lesions at the injection site, like that outbreak among intravenous drug users when their heroin had been cut with tainted bone meal…”

“It isn’t fucking anthrax!” Dr. Marick banged his fist down on the table for emphasis.

Rebecca shrank back into the corner, as if she could somehow disappear.

He stood, leaning forward in a way that made his average height seem much taller. “Even if this had been an injection site on nurse Shelredge and not a wound site, it has nothing to do with anthrax.”

“The various types of anthrax infection could account for almost all of the symptoms present in your patients,” Dr. Woodhouse said, as if speaking to a child. “The skin lesions are typical of cutaneous infections, inhalation can produce a host of respiratory illnesses, even the vomiting and bleeding could be caused by an intestinal anthrax infection…”

“And we have cultured samples from said patients and none have contained anthrax.” Dr. Marick’s jaw was clenched so tightly Rebecca thought his teeth might crack. “Not to mention that it wouldn’t be transmitted between people the way we’ve seen-”

“Haven’t there been historical reports of other illness outbreaks in this town’s history?” Dr. Escalarre said, as if Dr. Marick hadn’t spoken. “Anthrax spores can survive for upwards of 70 years in the soil. If something disturbed them, it could explain a delayed recurrence.”

Rebecca thought Dr. Marick might actually throw something, but Head Nurse Alma broke in.

Her calm, sure voice cut through the room with the ease of someone with practice speaking to groups. Everyone turned toward her. “If the visiting doctors would like to perform their own tests, then we should let them,” she said. “They’re welcome to visit sites around the town to sample soil, and use any of the samples we’ve collected from our patients, including the ones we’ll be taking from Miss Shelredge.”

Rebecca caught the look Alma exchanged with Dr. Marick and understood the purpose for the concession. And that it had worked, as the visiting doctors both thanked her and stood to leave.

Dr. Escalarre gave a slightly belated, “If we’re done here?” before she stepped out, and Dr. Woodhouse didn’t even offer that much.

After they left, Rebecca at least felt like she could breathe again.

Head Nurse Alma stepped over to get a closer look at the wound, and Rebecca was glad she hadn’t rewrapped it.

“You don’t go in halfway, do you girl?” Alma asked, lifting Rebecca’s arm by the wrist with a gloved hand. “You say the spots were there when you woke up?”

“Yes ma’am. But not before I went to sleep. I stayed here overnight, sleeping on a cot in the break room. Just didn’t have the energy to go through decon and get home before falling asleep.” She giggled nervously again.

“Good thing you didn’t leave. Well, we’ll get samples, same as we have from the rest of them,” Alma said, voice still level. “It’s good of you to offer to continue work. I would have urged you to do so anyway, but I’m encouraged you stepped up to do so on your own.”

Rebecca swallowed heavily. “Thank you, ma’am.” She wished she weren’t so nervous around the woman; most people seemed to like her. Rebecca thought maybe she’d heard the woman was really involved in her church? Yet she had always been intimidating, if not outright frightening to Rebecca.

“Sometimes God asks difficult things of us, Rebecca,” Alma said. “If we are chosen for difficult paths, we still must tread them.”

Rebecca paused and then nodded, thinking she’d been right about Alma being a church-going woman.

---

The testing was thorough, but not especially invasive. Rebecca was glad she didn’t have anything to hide—no skimming from the med room or the like—since they absolutely would have found out about it.

They set up a nice curtained area for Rebecca to use while she was confined to the hospital. It was in the break room where she’d slept the night before, but they gave her a little rolling cabinet to keep her things in, and put up a curtain so that she could sleep with a little more privacy. She’d been expecting to have to share a patient room, so that was better than she’d been hoping for.

The day had been exhausting enough that she probably could have fallen asleep anywhere. Being sick always absolutely ruined her endurance, so even when she wanted to keep herself busy—not thinking about how much worse she was getting, not thinking about the spots showing up on her other arm, not thinking about that nosebleed that had taken five minutes to stop, not thinking about the muffled feeling in her head, not thinking not thinking not thinking—she was in danger of being more hindrance than help if she didn’t get some rest.

She was afraid of spending the next hour staring at the back of her eyelids, struggling to push away the thoughts lurking at the edges of her mind, but she fell asleep almost before she even had time to worry.

---

The lake water was cold. She wasn’t sure at first why she was even standing in lake water: the quarantine meant she wasn’t even allowed out of the hospital. But there she was, standing just at the edge of the shore, the water soaking through her flat slip-on shoes and thick socks. Her scrubs provided no protection against the chill. She always forgot her coat…

There was something behind her in the fog. The fog was so thick she could barely see anything; certainly not anything across the lake, where the town must be, and nothing of the island behind her. But she heard something moving.

“Hello?” she called, and her voice had a strange quality to it, like the air was too thin for it to carry, or like it was coming through a tinny speaker.

She waded out of the water, wincing a bit at the heavy, soggy feel of her waterlogged socks and shoes. There’d been no answer to her call, but she still heard something moving through the scrubby brush higher on what passed for a beach on this island.

Stepping toward the sound, she didn’t see anything move, but she did spot a figure in the fog farther ahead, though it just seemed to be standing there.

Approaching the figure, she let out a sharp gasp when she recognized the face. It was Elise Arnell, who she’d gone to school with years ago. But Elise had died just a few days before, of this same disease. Now Elise was just standing there, staring over the lake, even though Rebecca couldn’t see anything in that direction.

“Elise?” she asked, voice cracking as she fought back a sob. The two of them had never been close friends, but they’d both lived in Silent Hill their whole lives, been in the same grade, seen each other around for as long as she could remember.

Hearing Elise had died had been one of those deep aches that had been hard to define. Not consuming grief, like losing someone close, but a sense that something constant in the world had been changed.

“Elise,” she said again. “Are you okay? I thought you’d died; your name was on the list. What are you doing here?”

Elise still looked sick: her face was pale, her eyes sunken, parts of her skin scabby over sores that had broken and bled. She said nothing, just kept staring out over the water.

With a glance around, Rebecca saw another figure in the fog. “Elise, stay here,” she said, and went to check on the other person.

This time she kept herself from gasping, even as she recognized Mr. Glover, who managed the grocery store she always went to. He’d died late the previous week, the first of the names on the death tally that she’d known personally. Like Elise, he still looked ill, but was standing motionless, simply staring out at the water. “Mr. Glover, it’s Rebecca. I thought you’d died… We should get out of here, okay?”

Also like Elise, he didn’t acknowledge her in any way.

She looked around, not sure what to do, and caught sight of more figures in the fog, farther back and to the side. Some were standing, others sitting, but all were facing toward the water. Many of them were children.

She had to cover her mouth to keep from crying out. The sight was eerie enough, just ten or fifteen figures all staring silently out across the lake, motionless. But for all of them to be sick…

Rebecca rushed toward the other figures, desperate to get some kind of reaction, but none seemed even capable of seeing her, or at least not responding to her. She recognized more faces as she frantically went from figure to figure through the thick, clinging fog. Megan Semmler, the first to die in the hospital. Poor little William Kraft, only five years old, the youngest victim. Gerald Daniels, the police officer who had died the same day as Elise. Some she didn’t recognize at all, but others she did: more faces of patients she’d seen at Alchemilla. It occurred to her, the knowledge creeping up her spine and around her throat to paralyze her, that all of them, even the ones she didn’t recognize, would be on the death tally.

Like that one crawling realization had unlocked something else, she was overwhelmed with a sense of terror, and the violent need to escape. She broke free of her momentary paralysis and ran, no longer caring about the figures surrounding her in the fog. It was too late for them, but she had to escape. Her shoes were still soaked, slowing her down, so she kicked them off, not caring that she ran over the sharp rocks and sticks washed up on the beach.

Now the figures crowded all the way down to the lake itself, some standing even waist deep in the frigid water, more than twice the number she’d seen in the fog. Some of them were pale, blending into the fog so completely she nearly ran into them. These figures weren’t familiar, some dressed in strangely outdated clothing, but all equally silent.

The feeling of pursuit was suddenly inescapable, like if she stopped for even an instant something would catch her, hurt her… she didn’t know what, but the awareness buzzed at the forefront of her senses, and she ran. She hit the water again, and kept running until it was too deep and she had to swim.

She kicked away from the bottom, hoping she was heading in the right direction, but almost not caring as long as she was heading away. Something grabbed her leg.

She floundered for a moment, kicking at whatever had tangled around her foot—surely just a rope, a plastic bag, a clump of grass. Not a hand. Whatever it was wrapped around her other ankle too, and then she was slipping down, the frigid lake water closing over her head.

Looking down through the gloom she couldn’t see anything except a vague sense of something pale below her. Her lungs were already beginning to ache with just the knowledge that she couldn’t take a breath, but she reached down to try and disentangle herself, and her fingers brushed something that felt smooth and swollen, like… waterlogged flesh.

Her little remaining air escaped in a rush as Rebecca screamed. She clawed at the water, even knowing it was hopeless, in unconscious reflex to get back to the surface. She couldn’t resist any longer, and her lungs forced her to inhale, the lake water rushing in…

Rebecca coughed, falling off of the small hospital cot. She struggled to her hands and knees, her coughs so violent she couldn’t get her breath back. But the liquid forcing its way out of her lungs was too warm to be lake water.

The light from beyond the thin curtain let in enough light to see the pool of blood forming on the floor between her hands. It dripped in two thick streams, one from her nose, and one from her lips as she continued to cough.

Finally she was able to catch her breath, falling to the side of the pool of blood, disoriented and exhausted, waiting for someone to find her.

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