In this picture she had drawn a car, the family car, and surrounding the vehicle were a horde of Canavars. Simon was drawn at the far right of the picture, away from the horde. At the top of the picture were three figures: Diana, Tyler and Imelda.
Simon’s heart went numb looking at the picture, and gently placed the A4 piece of paper on top of the side table. He opened up the second piece of paper and cried as soon as he saw Imelda’s handwriting.
Daddy.
Don’t cry for me, daddy. I know you will be sad, but please keep going for me. I’m going to see mummy and Tyler and I’ll tell them what you did to keep me safe. You are my hero and I’ll always love you.
Stay strong and keep living, no matter what it takes.
Imelda
It was such a brave and mature note from a girl so young that knew she was dying, and he read it once more before putting it on top of the drawing.
Simon jumped when he heard knocking on his door.
He gulped and asked, “Who is it?”
The door opened and Helen, Dicko and Yoler stepped inside.
“What’s the matter?” he asked the three of them.
“Just making sure you haven’t topped yourself,” Yoler joked, but Simon could tell there was some seriousness in her comment.
Dicko flashed Yoler a hard look.
“What’s up with you, Dicky Boy?” Yoler shrugged her shoulders. “You look like someone has shat on your new rug.”
“A little tact would be nice,” he said, shaking his head in disapproval.
“It’s okay.” Simon raised his hand up at Dicko.
“What’s that?” Helen nodded over to the pieces of paper on the side table. Simon smiled and picked them up and passed them to Helen. Helen gasped when she opened up the drawing, and cried when she read the short letter. She passed the papers to the other two and went over to Simon and sat by his side.
“You’ll get through this,” Helen said to the distraught man. “We’ll help you. Everybody’s afraid of dying until you lose a child. Then you’re afraid of living.”
“I can’t think straight.” Simon took in a deep breath and continued, “I can’t believe I’m never going to see her again. I can’t believe I’ll never see those lovely big blue eyes, blonde hair, her chunky cheeks and those gappy teeth. I’ll never see my baby again.”
“It’s gonna be hard, Simes,” Yoler said, handing back the pieces of paper. “But like Helen said … we’ll help you through this. Like what Imelda said on the note: stay strong. She was your flesh and blood and it might seem like there’s no option left—”
“She wasn’t my flesh and blood,” Simon said with his head lowered and his hands clasping.
“What do you mean?” Dicko said.
“My son was mine, biologically, but not Imelda.”
“What are you talking about?” Helen spoke with a perplexed look. “You’re not making sense.”
Simon’s head dropped an inch and the man began to chew his bottom lip, wondering if he should tell these folk about a period in his life that had always saddened him.
He said, “After Tyler was born, Diana and I began to argue. We just weren’t getting along at all.” Simon looked up at the confused faces, gulped, and then continued further, “Anyway, Diana had a fling with a consultant at work. She confessed a couple of months later and told me she was pregnant. It was his. I knew straight away that it was his.”
Helen asked, “How did you know?”
“Because Diana and I hadn’t had sex in months.”
“Oh,” Helen said in astonishment, “I had no idea.”
“Why would you? Anyway, we decided to stick together and I raised Imelda like one of my own. I loved her like one of my own.”
“You never told her the truth?” Yoler asked him.
Simon shook his head. “No. Even the consultant that Diana had an affair with never knew. I think after a few months he moved to a different hospital anyway.”
“Raising her as your own chid was a very noble, yet very difficult decision to make,” Dicko said with a succession of nods.
“I suppose I would have been a hypocrite if I left her for the affair.”
“What do you mean?” Helen questioned the heartbroken man.
Simon shook his head and sighed, “I was hardly a saint myself.”
“You strayed?” Yoler asked.
“When Diana was pregnant with Tyler.” Simon nodded and shamefully lowered his head, unable to look his new friends in the eye. “And a couple of others before that. She never knew.”
“That was a different world. A different life.” Yoler walked over to him and kissed him on the head. “I’m going downstairs, Simes. Get some rest, and stop beating yourself up about past misdemeanours that don’t matter now.”
Yoler left with Dicko, leaving Helen alone with Simon.
“I’ll be downstairs as well,” she said. “If you need me...”
“Thanks, Helen.”
“Do you need anything before I go?”
“No.” Simon shook his head.
He lay down on the bed and turned on his side. He heard the door shut and Helen’s steps heading to the ground floor. He curled up and closed his eyes. He knew he wasn’t going to get any sleep tonight, but he closed his eyes anyway.
He released a melancholic breath out and his thoughts took him to a time when the family went to a caravan holiday in Wales. It had rained the whole time, and the holiday had been made worse when Imelda, who was only a toddler at the time, fell off the guest room’s bed and had banged her head, causing a one-inch mark on the right side of her forehead, just below her hairline.
It was then he knew that he loved her just as much as Tyler. He freaked out when she fell and was riddled with panic as they drove to the nearest hospital. It turned out to be a minor cut and mild concussion.
His eyes filled and when they opened, water fell out. Then he remembered the words on Imelda’s note.
His little girl had only been dead hours, but he told himself that he needed to see some light despite the darkness.
He closed his eyes once more and took in deep breaths. He felt exhausted, but even a full bottle of bourbon wouldn’t have been able to put Simon Washington to sleep. He then began to think about the poem that his son would say to Imelda to frighten her.
Tyler was always reprimanded for teasing his sister, but he had said it so many times, and had been caught so many times, that even Simon knew his son’s poem off by heart.
The Canavars are coming, so you better hide and pray. If you don’t believe me then you’re going to die today. They’ll eat your flesh, they’ll eat your brains, and they’ll eat your heart and more. The Canavars are everywhere; you better lock your door.
Simon kept his eyes closed, but his psyche was plagued with Imelda’s goodbye letter, especially the last line. It was easier said than done, but he was going to try if that was what she wanted.
Maybe that last line had saved his life, because minutes before reading it he was thinking about ending his existence. The words from the last line of the letter swirled around in his head like cigar smoke, and Simon released a sad sigh.
Stay strong and keep living, no matter what.
THE END
Read on for a free sample of Plague War: Outbreak
Chapter One
Harry rested his chin on one hand while reading a set of medical notes. The text slipped out of focus before eyes blurred by fatigue. He rubbed at them before checking the time and yawning. 12:30am. He felt like shit. It was his last of seven night-shifts at Randwick Emergency Department, and he was struggling to stay awake. Insomnia had stolen daytime sleep, leaving a soul-destroying exhaustion that blunted his mind and sapped all enjoyment from life.
He stood from the stool and stretched, his lower back cracking. Harry desired wakefulness like a junky lusted for a hit. He pulled out a battered satchel from beneath the bench. Two large cans of energy drink, brimming with unhealthy levels of caffeine and
guarana, lay within. He cracked the lid of one, sculling half of the lukewarm contents on the spot. A few drops spilled free onto his chest, soaking into the word “Doctor”, sewn into the threadbare scrubs top.
Only another eight or so hours to go, then he’d be leaving for his next contract ‒ a job in Milton on the state’s south coast. Harry hadn’t completed the exams to qualify as an Emergency Specialist, stalling any chance of career progression. Instead, he’d worked agency contracts between stints abroad with Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). With MSF, Harry had provided aid in the aftermath of natural disasters, and treated injured civilians during the Afghan war. Most recently, he’d spent three months in Liberia during the Ebola epidemic, working in clinics and occasionally with a “rapid response team”, tracking new cases to remote villages. The time there had stretched him physically and mentally. Delivering care in 40-degree temperatures, knowing that any mistake could mean exposure to a virus with an eighty percent mortality rate, was exhausting. He had returned to Australia completely drained, so much so, that he was glad of the enforced twenty-one-day quarantine at home alone.
He’d struggled to adapt back to Sydney, feeling claustrophobic in the city. When the hospital had retrenched his job, he’d been glad for the push, seeing an opportunity for escape to a place where he could breathe more freely. The town of Milton fit the bill perfectly. The village straddled a ridge surrounded by farmland, and had a small Emergency Department that serviced the local population. His application for the role had been approved four weeks ago, and Harry had found himself a rental on the town’s northern approach, a house set two hundred meters from the road, and surrounded by green paddocks. On the highway at the front of the property was the landlord’s business, a heavy machinery hire service. The previous week, he’d picked up the keys to the property and carted most of his stuff down. All he had to do now, was move in.
With can in hand, he headed to the staff base. It was dim, with most lights in the department turned off to keep a semblance of night. Only essential staff were present, and while Harry took another swig of Red Bull, the ambulance phone started to ring. He cradled the receiver against his shoulder as he grabbed a scrap of paper and pen.
‘Randwick Emergency, you have something for us?’
Harry scribbled down the information provided by the dispatch operator, then read it back for confirmation prior to hanging up. Kate, the nurse working in the resuscitation bays with him, was looking over his shoulder at the pad.
‘What’s coming in?’ she asked.
‘A retrieval from the airport, sounds like septic shock.’
‘No worries, are you going to run the show on this one?’
Harry looked over his shoulder to see what other doctors were around. The roster had been short of late. For senior doctors, there was only himself and another Registrar.
‘Yeah, might as well be me.’ Harry pushed himself from the chair and followed Kate into the resus area.
By the time the paramedics arrived five minutes later, the resuscitation bay was ready to go. Harry waited at the bedhead while the paramedics hurried towards them. The patient lying on the trolley looked awful. Her breathing was rapid, and skin pale. While one paramedic relayed the clinical history to Harry and Kate, the other ambo slid the patient across on the sheet. Kate cut up the centre of the t-shirt with trauma scissors, then applied an oxygen mask, blood pressure cuff and monitoring equipment for heart rate and oxygen levels.
‘This is Beth Hazelwood, a 28-year-old woman with sepsis from the airport,’ said the paramedic. ‘A call was made by the flight crew requesting an ambulance on arrival. During the flight from Cairns, Beth became unwell, notifying the airhostess of her condition when the plane was thirty minutes out of Sydney. During the remaining descent, she rapidly deteriorated. There’s a bite mark on her left forearm that appears grossly infected. Before she became confused, a bat was mentioned – not sure if that’s what caused the wound.
‘Since picking her up, she’s continued to crash pretty quickly. As you can see,’ he said, passing across a chart with vital signs on it. ‘Her pulse is racing and her blood pressure’s bloody low. Her conscious level’s also dropped; she’s not responding to much now. Any questions?’
Harry shook his head, ‘No. Thanks, mate. Make this the last one for the night though, yeah?’
The paramedic gave a half smile as he backed the trolley to the ambulance bay. ‘You can always hope, I guess.’
Harry started to run through a rapid clinical assessment. The patient’s airway was clear for the moment, with reasonable air entry to both lungs. Her heart was beating irregularly, between 130-150 beats per minute, and her blood pressure was so low he couldn’t feel a pulse at her wrist.
Harry shoved a cannula into an arm vein, then twisted on a syringe to obtain a blood sample for pathology. The blood he drained was almost black. Oxygen depleted. Kate attached a line for the intravenous saline and started pumping it in by hand. The latest blood pressure result flashed up on the monitor; 65/35mmHg. Both Kate and Harry grimaced at the poor reading; things weren’t looking good.
Two small puncture wounds, possibly from the incisors of an animal were present on the inner aspect of the patient’s left arm. As Harry touched the edges of the wound, rank brown pus oozed to the surface. The surrounding skin was a swollen, virulent shade of red. Trails of crimson tracked up the inside of her arm to the armpit.
Beads of sweat sat upon the patient’s exposed skin, running in tiny rivulets to the bed sheets below. Abruptly, it was silent. Harry looked up from the arm wound ‒ the patient had stopped breathing. He placed two fingers below the line of her jaw for a pulse. Nothing. Harry felt a spike in his own heart rate, as adrenaline surged in response to the situation. He turned and pressed the emergency button while yelling out to Kate.
He commenced chest compressions. On the third one, he felt a rib snap under hand. Blood misted from her mouth, falling back in a maze of fine, crimson droplets across the patient’s face. Kate appeared at the head of the bed, placing an oxygen mask over the patient’s mouth and defibrillator pads to her chest. At the thirtieth compression, Harry paused while Kate delivered two breaths. Another doctor and two more nurses arrived to help. Harry stood back from the compressions, allowing one of the nurses to take over CPR, and filled the team in on the situation as they worked. After two minutes, he called for a pause in compressions to view the cardiac rhythm; a wavering flat line extended across the defibrillator screen – asystole. A non-shockable cardiac rhythm.
‘Restart compressions. Suz, give her some adrenaline, please.’
Harry’s voice was calm. The team worked quietly, intensely focused on the job at hand. After thirty minutes, it was apparent they weren’t making progress. Harry finally recommended to the team that they stop.
‘Time of death 0130 AM.’
The other doctor and nurses removed their gloves, and drifted back to their own patient loads. It always sucked to have an unsuccessful resuscitation, significantly more so when the patient was young like this lady. Shortly, it was just Kate and Harry again. Harry grasped the body, one hand on a shoulder, the other on her hips, and rolled it towards him so that Kate could push a body bag underneath. A stream of blood-stained drool slid from the corpse’s mouth, soaking into his scrubs while the eyes stared sightlessly ahead. The unnaturally pale skin was still damp, leaving an oily residue on the fingers. Harry paid it scant attention. He was running the events of the arrest through his head, mentally re-checking each step to see if he had made the right calls, while ignoring the blood and saliva oozing through the cotton of his top.
In the next bay, the patient began clawing at his oxygen mask. Harry lowered the body and pulled a sheet up to its neck. Kate and he then moved across to review the patient in distress.
The old man was dry retching. Harry unstrapped the mask and held a vomit bag under his mouth while he heaved up his guts. Kate administered a medication to stop the nausea. Within a few minutes, the
patient indicated he was feeling better.
From the corner of Harry’s eye, a movement drew his gaze. The arm of his dead patient had fallen from beneath the sheet, to hang down the side of the bed. The fingers flexed into the beginning of a fist, before falling lax once more. ‘Surely not...’ He rubbed his eyes with a free hand and turned away.
‘What the fuck’s with that?’ blurted Kate. ‘The foot just moved, Harry. I’m not joking…’ she said, indicating the dead patient. ‘I’ve heard of it, I mean muscles contracting post death, but I’ve never seen it – have you? Bloody creepy.’ She started walking over to get a closer look. ‘We didn’t call it too early, did we?’
Kate made her way to the patient’s shoulder and pulled back the sheet, exposing the chest. She leant forward, placing her cheek over the mouth of the corpse to feel for airflow, while looking out across the chest for movement of breathing.
The head of the corpse jerked upward, bringing an open mouth to the side of Kate’s neck. The teeth clenched shut, ripping a mouthful of flesh and carotid artery away. Kate screamed, jerking away from the body. She clamped a hand to her neck, her eyes bulging with agony. An arterial jet of blood spurted between her fingers, crossing three metres between her and Harry. The corpse pushed itself to sitting. The dead woman’s eyes were locked upon Kate, unblinking. Blood drenched its chest, bits of tissue hung from an open mouth that emitted an incoherent rasp. It reached towards her and tumbled from the trolley onto the floor. Harry grabbed Kate by an arm, pulling her out of reach of the hellish creature, and pushed her towards the free resus bed, his other hand clamped over the wound.
Staff rushed into the resus bay, drawn by the screams. One of the nurses hit an alarm to bring hospital security. Three nurses confronted the dead patient; when it didn’t respond, they moved in as a team to restrain it. The corpse flung one nurse aside, while pulling another towards its mouth, biting through exposed muscle of a forearm. Three security guards ran in, gloves on. With two people on each limb, they wrenched the struggling body back onto the emergency trolley. The mouth of the creature snapped rhythmically, teeth exposed, lips snarled back at any body part within reach. Security manacled each limb to the bed frame, keeping the ankles and wrists pinned to the mattress. It wrenched viciously at the ties, threatening to tip the heavy trolley.
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