Amy Hadley 1. "Number Nine"

Chapter 8

Our weeks as interns in the hospital are always the same old ritual, but I, almost, never get bored of it. It's always the same: We arrive early in the morning, I spit my pills in a wall-mounted trash can out of sight under the knowing smile of Leo, who too has stopped taking them. We never talked about what happened at the Infection Center again, and we never are assigned there again.

   Every day, we join our respective groups at the hospital, but I stop doing it after a week to start the visits on my own way. Leo spends his time going back and forth to greet and accompany the ambulances. He always takes the first service, at the first hour. He greets the patients and even exchange a few words with the paramedic - who is the only person authorized to enter and leave the Global, the only "door" for communication with the outside world. I don't know why my friend keeps this ritual every morning. I guess this is once again the proof of his big heart; he wants to make sure that the patients arrive at their destination and leave without problem.

   Otherwise, I maintain my policy of using the names instead of the numbers, so that each patient knows my name and that I know theirs. Every morning I go into their rooms, check their bandages after operations, ask them routine questions, do some medical exams. I note everything on an electronic file on my tablet, with the serial number of each patient next to whom I have scribbled their names, and the observations of each day.

   Of course, not everyone is just nice, asking for help, for a little care and attention. In fact, most of the patients distrust me - like the rest of the Global. Having spent the last few years locked up in my little room in the boarding school, I have never had the opportunity to realize how much people are afraid of us, the virus resistant ones. And even worse, how much they despise us.

   I particularly remember one of my patients, here for a laryngothoracic reconstruction following an explosion of chemicals that destroyed half of his throat and his upper chest. The man wanders open-chested through a gaping wound, and he had to wait five years - it's still five years less than what my brother is waiting - before he can be admitted here and have a surgery. During all this time, he lived connected to a machine, half of which consists of a tube which interferes in his throat to allow him to breathe and speak, modeling the different cartilages of the larynx and recreating the variable space of the glottis and vocal cords. He cannot eat, he is constantly connected to an infusion which provides him directly with the minerals and trace elements he needs. The infusion is connected to a box which automatically measures the different constants of each of the mineral salts, and adapts the secretion of its product as necessary. His stomach, atrophied since time, is likely to undergo a distension operation and a long readjustment to food and digestion. At the level of his chest, only bandages soaked in antibiotics, and components of the Virus cover his wound, preventing infections and the extent of the damage. Stopping the spread of the lesion before repairing it, is a principle of medicine that I do not think can be perverted. One does not have to be very clever to realize the suffering that this man probably had to endure during these five years waiting for his admission here.

   He is young, maybe 20 years old, just like my brother. At the very moment I enter the room - followed as always by Broom Troop who, as soon as she can, sticks to me like an old gum under my shoes. It looks like she is scared of leaving me alone with the patient. - He sets eyes on me and no longer takes them off.

-       Hello. How are you feeling today?

The procedure requires that I formulate this question without looking at the patient and by consulting his file among my electronic files, to avoid that the patient thinks his opinion has any importance.

   But as the man does not answer me, I twist my neck to look at my superior. She gives me a slight chin sign, allowing me to look at him.

   The expression on his face confuses me because it is unlike anything I've seen in other patients here. Beyond the pain that pearls through almost every pore of his white standard skin, he expresses a mixture of fear, disgust and regret. His chest barely rises, probably far too painful to perform a larger amplitude movement, and I wonder how he still manages to breathe.