Marked

Hector scrambled for a towel and pressed it to her mouth, effectively catching the next gush of blood. His eyes darted over her with a mixture of panic and helplessness that Rachel had never seen in him before.

“Hector, no, you need to get away. Please."

“Here, have some water. Have some water, Rachel.” He handed her a small, pink cup and his hands shook so badly that water splashed out and landed on the sheets, making the red stains spread until the fabric looked more red than white.

She pushed against his chest, but it was like pushing against a wall- she felt so weak and hadn’t quite noticed it until now.

“Get away.” She groaned, but he refused to listen. Though she was sitting down, the world seemed to tip at an angle, and she slipped sideways. Before her head could smack against the side rail, Hector righted her and hastily stood, wiping the blood from his hands.

He went to the door and slammed his stained fists against the glass and yelled for a doctor.

“Hey! We need a doctor in here. Hey!”

A few moments later, Dr. Everest arrived, taking in the room with a trained eye. As he came closer, Rachel could see--even through his mask-- that his once older but handsome face seemed to have more lines than before, and deep shadows clawed at his eyes.

A quiet calm had settled over Rachel while a cold unlike any began to seep through every cell of her body. Dr. Everest and a nurse adjusted the head of her bed so that she was laying down flat and turned her onto her side.

She coughed again and blood spewed onto their rubber shoes. Hector stood on the sidelines, hands on his hips, his chest rising and falling rapidly.

Rachel was struck by how young he looked in that moment.

“Get her another IV bag and something for the fever.” Dr. Everest said to the nurse. On her way out, she eyed Hector with worry.

“You can’t be in here, anymore.” She said to him.

“I—”

“There’s no negotiating this anymore, Hector. You’re going into a separate isolation room.”

“Don’t do this, Doc—she’s sick and someone needs to stay with her. Here, there, it doesn’t really make a difference, just look at me.” He gestured to his blood-covered clothes. “I might be sick already, so it doesn’t really make a difference if I stay or go.”

No, Rachel thought, her heart hammering in her check. Please don't be sick, not because of me.

“Make him go,” Rachel croaked. “Please. Save him.” He was too stubborn to see that staying there might get him killed. What if he was wrong? What if he wasn’t immune and his grandfather had died of something else entirely? She couldn’t have his death on her hands- couldn’t forgive herself even if she only lived a few more hours.

Dr. Everest studied her face for a few moments. Whatever he saw there convinced him to shout out into the hall while he held a pink basin out to Rachel in order to collect her another gush of blood. “Guards!”

“Rachel, don’t do this.”

“You have to go,” She whispered but her voice was lost in the sudden commotion caused by the guards. They wore suits now too but there was no mistaking their aura of authority. It took three of them to overpower Hector and drag him towards the door.

Somehow, he managed to escape their hold and he rushed to her side, dropping down to one knee while he cupped her face with one hand.

“Rachel, hermosa*, this isn’t something you want to do alone. Please let me stay.”

She struggled to turn her face away, his face spinning in her peripheral vision. As much as she wanted him to be the one holding her in her last moments, she couldn’t allow herself to be so selfish.

She couldn't let him watch another person he'd come to care for die a horrible death right before his eyes.

“Go. I don’t want you here.” She said, hoping that she sounded convincing. She felt another cough coming on, tried to push it down as much as humanly possible.

“You don’t mean that,” He whispered. “Let me help you through this.”

“I know you want to fix everything... “she rasped. “But you can’t fix this so go.”

The guards grabbed a hold of him once again. His protests were drowned out by the sound of her wracking coughs, his hand leaving a lingering sensation on hers as it was pried away.

She sighed as the doors finally hissed shut after them.

Though she felt terrible, and like sobbing, she held on to the small comfort of knowing she had done everything she could to shield him from this. He’d seen his parents and brother die right in front of him, and he'd already suffered more than any human ever should.

She couldn't give him anything else. But she'd give him this.

“Don’t let anyone come back here.” She gripped Dr. Everest’s suit-covered arm and squeezed as hard as her weak muscles would allow. “Please, Dr. Everest, I don’t want anyone seeing me like this.”

“You have my word, Rachel.” He sank down on the chair next to the bed as her coughs subsided. She threw aside her blood-soaked blankets even though she was freezing cold and leaned her head back onto the pillows, gulping down big breaths of air in the hopes that it would steady her heartbeat.

Not too long after, the doors swooshed open and the nurse from before returned with a new IV bag and some needles. She changed out the bag and injected her inner arm with a burning liquid, all while remaining utterly silent.

When she was gone, Rachel wondered if it was pity she had seen in her eyes.

Doctor Everest placed a cool washcloth onto her forehead. “I’m so sorry this is happening to you.” He murmured. His suit crinkled as he sat back down and gripped his head between his gloved hands.

“Don’t be. Life happens. Sometimes life is good to us— “She coughed a little– “And sometimes it isn’t.”

“No, you don’t understand, I feel responsible for this. I was just so tired. I thought, what harm could there be if I let Abby inspect the rest of the refugees in the morning? If I would have stayed, I could have caught this sooner, seen that some of them were sick and quarantined them immediately. This is all my fault.”

“Please, stop.” Her breathing sounded labored, and she felt chills running throughout her body. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Losing a few people does not take away from the fact that you’ve probably saved hundreds.”

Dr. Everest lifted his head from his hands and looked at her, really seemed to see her for the first time. “Look at you—when I should be comforting you, you are comforting me instead. You really don’t deserve this.”

“No one did.” Rachel replied. Her chest was rising and falling more evenly now but she still felt unbearably cold, like everything inside her had frozen solid. “The Chinese army didn’t deserve this; the rest of the world didn’t deserve this, and the compound survivors didn’t either. It’s just crazy the things people will do when they’re scared.”

“It was more than just fear. Humanity suffers from a disease far worse than E-91, Rachel.” His brown eyes, like melted chocolate, looked at her with an unreadable expression. “We suffer from something known as self-preservation.”

“That’s so terribly true.” Rachel shut her eyes and focused on her breathing. She would not let the panic take over, not now, not even in the end. Her calm would be her last dying comfort.

“Dr. Everest, can I just sleep for a while? I’m so tired.”

“Yes, Rachel.” He gave her hand a light squeeze. “Sleep while I try to figure out a way to save you.”

Once he was gone, Rachel let out a long breath. The lights overhead became dizzying fast but now that she was alone, she didn’t want darkness to be the last thing she ever saw. She thought of Hector and how she’d had him thrown out of the room and wanted to cry again. She’d thought of a million things she wanted to say to the people she cared about but when the time had come, fear for their well-being had been stronger than her need to say goodbye.

She hoped he wouldn’t hate her for it.

A pitiful feeling began creeping up inside her- a feeling of terror and panic. How she longed to have her mother near right about now. Although Ruth had never been one to sugar coat things, in that moment, Rachel figured it was only fitting for the woman who had brought her into the world to be the one to see her out of it too.

She wondered, as she did most nights, if either Ruth or Jed had survived. Could she really be the last of her family alive? And not for long, at that.

Jed, with his need for freedom and a life of comforts, what would he have thought of the bunker? Had he found happiness, wherever that might be? Or had he met a grizzly end? Rachel would never know, and this saddened her.

As for her mother, what had been of her? So many questions plagued Rachel and having no answers for any of them seemed like a terrible way to go. No closure.

Tears left wet, sticky tracks from her eyes to her ears. She wiped them away only to see her hand come back coated in bloody water. She closed her eyes and cried harder, unable to stop herself until she was a mess of blood and tears.

So much for staying calm.

When the crying finally subsided, she drifted into dreams plagued with the faces of her loved ones, intermingled with the horror of the poachers and all the grizzly deaths she had seen in her life.

Elena and the way her baby had cut out of her body. Jose, shot dead in front of her. So much blood, so much blood everywhere.

A fit of coughs awoke her, coming back with a vengeance. Her entire frame shook and it felt as though her lungs themselves would come spluttering out.

Blood matted her hair and soaked the sheets. It was everywhere and the world no longer resembled anything other than a blob of red. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew she must be hallucinating, particularly when she thought she felt Ruth stroking her forehead and tell her to toughen up.

“Don’t be weak, Rachel. This isn’t any way to go. I know I taught you better than that.”

At one point, she thought she heard a nurse say she couldn’t find a vein for a blood transfusion, but she couldn’t be sure. Nothing really made sense anymore.

She saw Jed a little while later. He was standing, as he always did, at the edge of a cave that let in cool mountain air, gazing at the twinkling lights of the city beyond.

“Dad’s there somewhere.” He said without turning around.

His unruly hair stuck to his forehead in blond curls and his skinny frame stood stock still. “Sometimes I wish he had taken me with him. Mom might have thought she was doing what was best for us, but do you really believe we are better off here?”

“The fever is not subsiding.” A nurse whispered.

“With E-91, it seldom ever does.” Dr. Everest replied.

“It’s been twenty-four hours, Doctor. Don’t you think we should let her friends come in to say goodbye? We can get them suits...”

“But I promised her...”

How beautiful it was not to feel. Her body felt light, like floating on a cloud and the pain in her joints and the pain in her muscles slowly subsided. It must be the drugs. But she didn’t mind. She figured dying while drugged would be like going to sleep and couldn’t think of a more merciful death than that.

***

*hermosa=beautiful