LH Short Story: Pandemic

Lost Humanity Short Story

This story is provided for free by H.S. Kallinger as part of the Lost Humanity universe.
Timing: between end and epilogue of World of Lost Souls
Content Warnings: pandemic, medical gore, references to violence against children 
Author Note: This was written at the beginning of the real world Covid-19 pandemic, but publication was delayed due to a need for escapism. That escapism is turning into attempted erasure, so I'm releasing how this went down in Zack's world (delayed by a little over a decade because of the vampire effect on their universe)

Pandemic

“Can you imagine if this pandemic had hit before you started working here? Or worse, when we were at war?” Angela asked me.

“Yes, I can,” I muttered, looking at the rows of beds in front of me. I'd seen pictures of makeshift hospitals from history. I'd never expected to be working in one. “I also could imagine how much better this could be going if people had obeyed social distancing orders, if they'd just taken it seriously as soon as it hit South Korea from Italy. When they showed us how a real pandemic response should work.”

“We aren't doing as bad as Italy,” Angela said. “We learned from their mistakes. The president did everything she could right away.”

“It's not the government I'm talking about. It's the people,” I said, waving my hand in front of me. “I'm so grateful that we can cope with all of this, that the regular hospitals were immediately segregated from COVID-30 cases. I'm glad people can stay home from work and not worry about starving. I'm angry that they didn't. I'm furious that businesses put money over human lives and stayed open without following any of the suggested safety measures until they were mandated. I'm livid that people kept partying and enraged over that asshole doctor who let his friend return from the Italian Alps and infect an entire hospital! It's great everyone has healthcare, but we didn't need everyone to have to use it.”

“Dang, you managed to come up with a whole fuckton of ways to say how pissed off you are,” Angela joked. She turned and coughed. I stared at her. “Spit! I just choked on spit! I tested negative this morning.”

“I can't even smell healthy from sick anymore,” I said, relieved. “Everything everywhere smells sick.”

“If we didn't have vampire healthcare workers, more of us humans would be on the front lines.”

“You could go home and isolate,” I said, shooting her a compassionate look. She shook her head.

“No. I was already exposed, and I've kept re-exposing myself. I'd lose my mind at home with nothing to do.”

“Well, we need one more batch of vents printed,” I said. “Then we've got everyone covered.”

“How many are you going to infect?” Angela asked me softly.

“Six have requested it, but only three passed the screener,” I answered quietly.

“Ugh, what do you do for the other three?” she asked. I met her grey eyes, only just visible behind the lab glasses between her mask and cap.

“Let them die,” I answered, trying not to feel anything about it. “Honestly, I think two of them are going to recover. One... Leukemia sucks without this kind of shit.”

“Is that hard? Knowing you could save every person in here?” she whispered.

“Yes,” I whispered back. “But not as hard as you'd think. One of them won't quit using the d-word and swearing about Italians. I'd love to introduce him to my vampire brother from Italy.”

“Xenophobic fuck,” Angela swore, glaring out at the beds. A monitor went off, and I ran over to the patient without hesitation. He needed to be intubated, so I called over Dennis. Every VUT medic in the area was working in this hospital with me. I hadn't been home in a week. I wouldn't be home until this was over. None of us would. Those of us able to be awake in the day were up and working all day long with the human doctors. There weren't enough of us for that. It was like the reverse of typical hospital staffing. We were better staffed at night.

The countries not allowing for vampire medical practitioners had all lifted their bans. Vampire doctors, nurses, and medics the world over were working, some of them for the first time in decades. The desire to become a vampire had skyrocketed, and I'd been refusing requests every night. No one who didn't have a prior relationship with vampires was even eligible. Then they needed to pass the general screening all vampires went through. Finally, they had to prove it wasn't a panic response and that they weren't going to regret it. We couldn't just let the vampire population explode.

“It's been nice working together again,” Dennis said as we finished with the patient.

“I agree. You guys don't come see me enough. Treating all your own patients. Selfish,” I teased.

“Do you know how much better the new station is?”

“Enough that they didn't bother making it number two, but totally replaced the original,” I said.

“Like, I know we're right down the street from your house and all, but you don't take shifts anymore,” he pouted at me.

“My son was shot, and my daughter had her face beat in, man,” I reminded him as we walked way. He winced. “If I'm not working at the hospital or doing guard rounds, I'm with the kids. I could have lost them. It was so close...”

“I get it. It's just been two and a half years, so I guess I figured I'd see you back for a shift here and there by now,” he said.

“Aww, do you miss me?”

“Shut up.”

“You do! I miss you, too,” I said and threw my arm across his shoulder.

“Oh my god, get off me,” he said, laughing and pushing me away. “Social distancing!”

“That's for humans!” I whispered. I resisted another joke because we were in a room with people in critical condition, dying from a disease their immune systems had no protection for.

“This could've been you,” Dennis said, looking at a patient in his forties. I shrugged.

“Naw, I would have died from an aneurysm before this,” I said. Dennis shook his head.

“You might not have.”

“Hey.” I held up a hand and looked at a patient across the room. “Someone's waking up.”

Sure enough, the monitor went off, announcing one of our comatose patients was fighting his tube. I was standing next to her a second later, Dennis right by my side. A few other medics had moved for the patient, but they backed off when they saw us get to work extubating her. She vomited a mess of mucus, but Dennis caught it in a bowl. He didn't even look away. I remembered him as a fresh faced EMT-B, unable to handle this part of the job. He'd come such a long way. I was proud of him.

“That's right, keep coughing, clear those lungs,” I encouraged her. She retched up a horrible amount of blood, and my hopes for her recovery sank. That had come from her lungs. Fuck. She probably had a pulmonary embolism. I kept encouraging her until she fell back against the bed, exhausted. A doctor came over, and I stepped away to give him the report and show him the bowl.

“Let's get her started on heparin and get an ultrasound to see how bad it is,” he ordered. I recorded it in my charting tablet. Humans were as hands off as they could be here. Vampires were doing all the charting to avoid infection via contaminated equipment. I passed the ultrasound order off to another medic and returned to the patient, who was looking around in horror.

“How did I get here?” she asked me.

“You were transported when you tested positive for COVID-30,” I explained. Tears ran from her eyes. I pointed to the mask she was refusing to let Dennis put on her. “Hi, I'm Nurse Zack. We're going to get some medicine in you to help with the blood clot, but we also need to get you back on oxygen. If you don't want to see the room, I can also get you a virtual reality rig so you can pretend you're somewhere else.”

“Aren't those big and heavy? My neck already hurts,” she said. I pointed to a patient a few rows away.

“You see that visor over his eyes? That's the VR rig. It's a therapy model designed to be used in hospitals. We can sterilize them, and they weigh only half a pound. Technology has come a long way since the big sets. I had one of those when I was still human years and years ago.”

“You're not human?” she asked, looking up at me in surprise.

“Most of us aren't. We can't get sick with this,” I said, smiling reassuringly. She smiled back and rested against her pillow, letting Dennis put the mask back on her.

“Yes, please, for the virtual reality thing,” she said. “That sounds nice. Can I be on the beach?”

“That's our most popular destination,” I said, smiling to keep her smiling back. Whether she was going to survive or not, there was no reason for her to suffer and be afraid. The better she felt psychologically, the better her chances of survival.

“Thank you, Nurse Zack,” she said.

“You're welcome, Abigail,” I said, reading her name off her bracelet quickly. Dennis had already gone to retrieve a VR rig, so I left him to it. I found Angela at the 3D printer, pulling off fresh vents. I was so glad we had the technology for all of this. If it had happened a decade ago...

No. I wasn't going to keep thinking about that. We were going to get this under control. Fucking mutant virus. I took another survey of the room and suppressed a sigh. Everyone was as stable as they were going to get. I checked out heparin and returned to Abigail to put it in her IV. She was relaxed and smiling under her mask. She looked around as far as she comfortably could and coughed a bit. It sounded much better. Still.

I walked around in a mild daze, back into the surreal nature of minding a modern death ward. Most of the people here were elderly or had weakened immune systems. We had a twenty-four year old diabetic who didn't look well, too. I missed my family. But, at the same time, I was glad they were safe at home in our isolated neighborhood. I'd video chat with everyone on my break after I ate.

Lukas was trying to talk Eva out of changing. She was almost nineteen. Garret and Bonnie had both told her to wait a little longer, that they would have, but she knew what she wanted. She'd been hell bent on this for years, so it was no surprise. She'd passed the screener with zero issues. Her age was the only marker we were trying to convince her to wait to clear. I didn't waste any of our precious time on it. She knew my feelings. She would either listen to her other parents or she would join us in eternal life just a little too young.

I wished dhampir were immune. I was glad we had so many kids on our street, but I was worried about the kids missing their friends at school for the rest of the year, which was probably just going to happen at this point. Switching to online schooling for them was strange but doable. Toby and Julian were devastated over missing out on clubs, though. Mia kept video conferencing her therapist, and I was glad that it was an option for her.

That reminded me that it was almost social hour, when everyone who was conscious and had family with a VR device could dive in and see their families. Some of them, for the last time. I was scared for my mom and Charlie. They'd moved in together only a few months ago, and now they were in self-isolation for safety. I was worried about Sarah's parents, too. John might piss me off a lot, but I didn't want him to die... certainly not like this.

I didn't want anyone else to die like this. Which was why this was my life for the foreseeable future. I'd faced terrorists, serial killers, gifted vampires, and even the Emperor. I'd be damned if I survived all of that with my family to lose a single one of them to a mutated cold virus. Since I couldn't do anything to protect them directly, I would work to help here and protect everyone else in order to protect them.

Now, if humans would just fucking stay home...