SWIM Book 1 (Complete three-hundred pages)

DAY 12.2

Thursday, November 30, 2017

C

reating a sterilized environment for surgery is quite impossible, especially in a bay house with broken windows exposed to the ocean air. But Travis had a resourcefulness that was independent of the need for Internet information. He suggested we find three sterile rooms. The first was a bathroom. To make the bathroom sterile, the boys found a way to create a 500-ppm sodium hypochlorite solution in bulk to wipe the floor, walls, ceiling and shower stall. The disinfecting solution was composed of cleaning disinfectants downstairs as well as large chlorine tablets for the backyard pool, which was now completely submersed under the ocean. They dragged me over onto a couch in the living room beside the bathroom so I could watch and no longer suffer through the pouring rain. The wind was howling through the broken windows now, and Travis told George and Craig to grab curtains from the lower level bedrooms to try to mask the rain from coming in. Craig ended up finding a Japanese style privacy fold-out wall that was taller than the balcony doorways and was able to duct tape it so tight that the wind hardly made it shake.

He wiped his forehead and gave me a wink. Then a thumbs-up. "Don't worry, Zara. Everything's gonna be alright."

That type of encouragement was surprising coming from a guy like Craig Ferguson. He was normally the rebel-without-a-cause, Debbie-downer type, and maybe it was the fact that the whole town was submersed under water and that made him feel like he was starting his life again with a fresh start, but I certainly found his smile charming.

Over in the bathroom, the smell of Clorox disinfectant bleach was being used and I could hear Jack, Travis and Brett run out with kitchen gloves coughing hysterically from the potent air. "Close the door," ordered Travis Gibbs. "We'll keep the bathroom sealed and just let it marinate in the poison for a while until all the germs are dead. Now we have to find fans to create an airflow that pushes any possible germs out of where we'll operate, to the bathroom where we'll get dressed and cleaned to out into the living room. The airflow is key to keeping everything sterile once we're in there, because once we are inside, the majority of germs will be coming from our own bodies. And if we are going to be exposing Zara's abdomen to the environment, we have to one-hundred percent certain not a single organism from our flesh makes its way inside her wound."

Jesus, this was turning out to be worse of a nightmare than I had imagined. First the flood, now an operation on my body by a bunch of lunatic school goers.

The master bedroom connected to the bathroom was the room of choice for my operation. They stepped through an alternate door to go inside, closed the door, and I could hear a bucket splash the hard wood flooring, then a row of mops they grabbed from downstairs. I heard Jack tell Brett, "Pass me the bucket, I'll get the ceiling, stud man." Stud man was a new installment in the quiet camaraderie between Jack and Brett ever since we had the thanksgiving dinner, where my uncle and cousins played football with Brett, and my aunt Cecile had come out last minute and mentioned to our group that, "That young Stevens boy sure is a studly man, isn't he?" We all laughed about it when Brett returned indoors to eat a fifth course of turkey and stuffing.

An even worse aroma of bleach seeped out of the master bedroom, and I could see the boys shove a towel under the door so air would not come out. I heard them cough and walk through the bathroom, then out the bathroom into the living room, their faces pale and their eyes wandering in a dizzy state. The cleaning materials must have made them woozy.

But Travis spotted my stomach again and his eyes flared as though he thought it was getting worse. I looked down at myself, and I wasn't sure if my stomach was just painted in dark blood or if I had already suffered an infection.