**As always, thank you for your patience. In addition to everything else, I lost my Grandpa to Alzheimer’s shortly after finally receiving a diagnosis, and the decline was very rapid and very much completely out of nowhere. I took some more actual time away from writing instead of trying to force it to give me an escape like I usually do, and I think not forcing it, even only a little, has helped to some degree.
I got stuck on the end of this chapter for an eternity and rewrote it about a dozen times, so I hope you enjoy ❤
NOT EDITED
The ER was like an entirely different world from the one Riley had been in only hours before. There weren’t nearly enough chairs for all of the patients crammed into the waiting room. He could hear someone — a doctor, maybe a nurse, but definitely not Sian — barking orders somewhere. Something about isolation. Another voice calling for a crash cart. Another for Type O blood.
“Stay with Molly. I need to…” Riley cleared his throat. “I want to find Doctor Hopkins.”
“Okay,” Tara whispered, eyes scanning the waiting room.
Riley leaned back enough to peek out at the ambulance. Jamal still sat outside the ambulance’s closed door, his gun held in one hand between his knees. For now, their angry once-dead police officer was still contained and closely guarded. Riley squeezed Tara’s shoulder and hurried back to Sian’s office. Empty, but sorting through the mess of quick notes and memos on his desk indicated he was probably in the OR.
Riley ducked past the nurse’s station with ease — it was like its own disorganized ghost town — and stopped in front of the large whiteboard in the hall. Sian Hopkins. Operating Room Three. He made his way back toward the operating rooms, squeezing past abandoned laundry carts and half-closed med cabinets. A nurse ran past him, a bloody towel held over her forearm. Riley’s heart pounded in his chest as he shoved open the door to OR Three.
Sian was pinned in the corner, one hand wrapped tightly around the forearm he held to his chest. With his foot, he kicked back a woman in a hospital gown. She screamed, ran at him again. Sian called for help, kicking her back once more.
Riley ran through the door between the scrub room and OR. “Hey!” He smacked a hand against the window several times. The woman’s head whipped around in her direction. Her eyes were blood red, only a small black pupil in the middle. Her face was pale, blood around her eyes and mouth, running down her chin and neck.
She ran at Riley. He jumped to the side. Hands on her back once she was close, he shoved her to the ground. Across the room, he grabbed Sian’s arm and pulled him toward the OR door. As the woman ran back at him, he yanked the door open and into her face, knocking her down again. He pushed Sian through the doorway and pulled it shut.
Sian stumbled back into the wall, sliding down to the floor with a sob. Once Riley was certain the door would hold, he sat down beside the doctor, who collapsed against Riley’s chest, one hand still wrapped tightly around his forearm.
Riley wrapped his shaking arms around Sian, eyes on the woman in the OR. She stood at the window now, staring. She cocked her head to the side, pressed a bloody hand to the glass. He watched the soft rise and fall of her chest. She was breathing, just like the dead-not-dead cop from the intersection
“What do you got on your arm, there?” Riley asked, eyes still focused on their very pale friend.
“O-one of the nurses tried to stab her while I was pulling her back and g-got my arm instead.”
“Let me see?”
Sian pulled away with a sniffle. He lifted his hand enough for Riley to see the jagged cut on his arm, blood pooling in his palm. “Just that, I promise,” he whispered.
“I believe you. I just needed to see how bad it was.” Riley pushed Sian’s hand back over the wound. “We need to get you stitched up, okay?”
“I don’t know what the hell’s going on, Riley.”
“Hey.” Riley wrapped a hand around Sian’s chin, forcing the doctor to meet his eyes. “Right now, that doesn’t matter. Getting that stitched up so you don’t die on me is what matters. Okay?”
“I can’t, Riley,” Sian whispered. “I-I can’t. Sh-she killed two of my nurses, bit another. I—”
“Don’t think about that. Think about you. Think about your arm. You need it taken care of.”
“Whatever this is, I’m not made for it, Ri. I’m not.”
“You said you wanted me, right? You want me?”
Sian’s brow furrowed, but he nodded.
“You gotta survive today if you want me, Si. You gotta. For me, okay? We’re gonna get you back to your office. I’m gonna stitch up your arm, and you’re gonna call the CDC. Okay? For me.”
Sian sniffled again. With a protestant little whimper, he nodded. “Okay.”
“Okay,” Riley whispered. “Okay.” He kissed Sian, long and hard, the way he should have earlier that day instead of letting the pager interrupt them. He leaned his forehead against the doctor’s, eyes closed. “Can you stand?” Sian only nodded. Riley pulled back and pressed a kiss to the top of his head before pushing himself to his feet. He helped Sian up and slowly opened the door to the hall.
Quiet. Or, as quiet as it could be. As Riley stepped out of the room, Sian grabbed his wrist with his non-bloody hand. Together, they made their way back down the hall, past the nurse’s station, and into Sian’s office. Sian dropped into his chair like a sack of potatoes, injured arm still held closely to his chest.
Riley closed the door and twisted the lock into place. He grabbed the small radio pinned to his shirt near his shoulder. “Pitman, you got your ears on?”
“Always do,” Jamal said a moment later. “What’s it like in there?”
“Don’t think it’ll be long before this place goes… feral. Like the intersection.”
“I assumed as much.”
“What’s the lobby look like?”
“About the same as when you went in. Tara and the injured gal headed back with a couple nurses not long ago.”
Riley tilted his head back for a moment, thinking. “Just… keep an eye on things, let me know if something changes out there. I have a doctor to stitch up.”
“Well, if he dies during that stitch-up job of yours, run,” Jamal said.
Riley turned away from Sian, as if that would impact his ability to hear Jamal’s less-than-helpful advice. “He can hear you, you know.”
“Well,” Jamal said again, “in that case, if Riley dies during that stitch-up job, run.”
Riley rolled his eyes and dropped his hand back to his side before turning to Sian. He had slouched down in the chair, a faraway look in his eyes. Riley knew that look all too well. He walked across the room and squatted down before him, hands moving to his face. Sian blinked, eyes focusing on Riley’s. “Waiting room still looks okay. I mean, in terms of it not being… like the operating room. So we’re gonna stitch you up and call the CDC, and then we’ll figure out what to do from there.”
“I already did,” Sian mumbled. “The CDC, I mean. I did that… I don’t know. It’s here somewhere,” he said, glancing over at his desk. “When the first instance of… this happened, I called. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“So they’ll be out soon?”
Sian lifted his shoulders.
“Okay,” Riley whispered. “That’s all right. Stitches. Do you just want some lidocaine?”
“Sure.”
“I’m gonna need your code for the med cart.”
“Umm… birthday,” Sian said after a moment. “Year, month, day.”
“Okay.” Riley pressed a kiss to Sian’s forehead as he rose to his feet. “I’ll be right back.” He left the room, closing the door behind him. He made his way back to the abandoned cart he’d seen on his way to the OR. “Jamal?”
“Listening.”
“I pulled Doctor Hopkins out of the OR. He was being attacked by a patient. Dead-not-dead, you know?”
“Is he all right?”
“Yeah. Stitches are for a scalpel wound on his forearm. Patient successfully killed two nurses and bit one of the others. I think the one she bit was who I saw running down the hall. Bite on her forearm. She had a towel she was holding her arm with. You see anything like that out there?”
“No,” Jamal said after a moment. “It’s crowded in the waiting room, yes, but it’s calm. People are antsy and annoyed, but it’s calm. Calmer than the intersection.”
“Yeah,” Riley whispered to himself rather than into the radio. He squatted down in front of the med cart and entered Sian’s code. “Still no sign of Tara?”
“No.”
“What about our dead-not-dead friend in the ambulance?”
“Still angry, but he’s not beating down the doors, so the restraints must still be holding him down.”
“Good.” Riley grabbed the vial of lidocaine and a syringe. He stood up and grabbed a suture kit from the jostled shelf near the wall. “Pitman?”
“Yeah?”
“What the fuck are we gonna do?”
“We’ll figure it out.”
“I don’t know how to figure it out. I-I don’t know if there is anything to figure out.”
“That’s what I’m here for,” Jamal said, his voice soft. Calm. “One task at a time, Monroe. Stitch up your doctor. I’ll hold down the waiting room and the ambulance.”
“Yeah, okay. Okay. Thank you,” Riley whispered.
“Mm. You’re welcome.”
Riley closed the medicine cabinet doors, lifting his head to the intercom as it crackled to life. “Code Black. Initiate lockdown protocol.”
Security threat. Riley’s eyes slowly shifting to the doors just before the nurse’s station. The doors that would be automated to close in a lockdown. “Shit.” Riley scrambled to his feet and sprinted down the hall, hugging the meds and suture kid to his chest with one arm, the other fighting to keep his balance on slippery tile floors.
He skidded through the doors just before they slammed shut, a single belt loop stuck between them. Riley reached back and tore the loop the rest of the way, freeing himself from the doors’ death grip. He leaned back against the wall, giving his shaky legs a bit of support for the rest of his body. He pressed the button on his radio. “Pitman?”
“Bit more chaotic in there. I was about to radio you,” Jamal said.
“They initiated a lockdown.”
“Get your doctor stitched up. I’ll see what I can figure out on my end in the meantime.”
“Thank you.”
“Mmhmm.”
Riley forced himself away from the wall and headed back to Sian’s office. The doctor was still slouched down in his desk chair, his faraway gaze staring through the wall. Riley closed and locked the door. With minimal verbal input from Sian, Riley cleaned away some of the blood and administered the lidocaine around the wound. Donning a pair of gloves, he prepared to stitch up the wound.
“Lockdown?” Sian asked, eyes still on the wall.
“Yeah. Code black.”
“Mm.”
Riley cleared his throat. “So… the woman in the OR.”
“Mm?”
“How did she…? What happened there?”
“She flatlined on the table before we even got her fully sedated. We started compressions, pushed epi, and we got a pulse. Slow, but steady and definitely there. Then she was up and…” Riley started a suture, allowing Sian to hold the silence as long as he needed. “She threw herself at one of my nurses, the one she bit. The one who ran out of the OR. She tackled another, and I was able to pull her off the nurse. I remember seeing the scalpel coming at us, and I yelled for her not to do it, and I moved my… my arm up over the patient’s chest to protect her heart from the blade. She wasn’t thinking. The nurse, I mean. She yanked the scalpel out, and the pain made me loosen my grip, and the patient jerked forward, and she just…”
“Dead-not-dead,” Riley said after a moment. “That’s what happened with the man we brought in. A cop. Dead when I arrived on the scene, suddenly no longer dead before I was able to get the living victim on her feet and into the ambulance.” He cleared his throat. “You said you called the CDC after the first instance of this. When was that?”
“This morning, shortly after you left. The page I got? That was for… for the first one.”
“The first one had already, uh, come back?”
Sian shook his head. “Had already arrived at the hospital, pre-death. He’d been bit by one of his sheep. Then he flatlined while we were debriding the wound, and then…” He stared at the wall for a moment before blinking himself back to now. “I thought it must have been some sort of zoonotic disease. I had no other explanation. I still don’t, not really. Something that temporarily overloads the heart, and the… the reboot of the system triggers the extreme aggression. Some variation of rabies or something. That was my first thought, rabies. But I don’t… I don’t know. It’s not like all of these people have been in contact with the sheep on the first farmer’s land. You know?”
The rumble of something outside interrupted Riley before he could get any further than opening his mouth.”
“Helicopters,” Jamal said over the radio. “Military.”
“Could you…?”
Sian nodded, reaching out to press the button on Riley’s radio for him.
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Riley asked as he finished the final suture on Sian’s arm.
“Depends on who you ask, I suppose,” Jamal said.
“I’m asking you.”
“You don’t want to do that.”
“So… bad then.”
“Well, you said it. Not me.”
Riley blew out a harsh breath. “How many?”
“I count three.”
“Heading toward the hospital?”
“Flying over it,” Jamal said.
“Tell me if anything changes.”
“I will.”
Riley looked down as his phone buzzed in his pocket. He finished up with Sian’s arm and stood up to toss the lidocaine needle in the sharps container on the wall. When he turned back, Sian was already wrapping his arm with the bandage roll in his good hand. Riley tossed his gloves in the bin and pulled his phone from his pocket.
Eli: Get out. It is not a lockdown, it’s a death strike. Leave. Now.
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