Greg Krojac - The Schrödinger Enigma

She looked at the door. It was neither heavy nor particularly solid, as it was the difference in air pressure between the two environments that provided protection. Somehow she needed to open, or break the lock. It was an electronic lock, activated by thumbprint, but she had to try something. Her rumbling stomach reminded her that death by starvation would be torturous. She tried pushing against the door. Then she tried taking a run up and barging the door, but all that resulted in was a sore shoulder. She looked around the room for anything heavy enough to make an impact. The medical equipment was state-of-the-art and too lightweight to be of any real use, so the only things that might be heavy enough to do some damage were a bedside cabinet and the bed. Sitara squatted down behind the cabinet and released the locking wheels, before pushing it with all her might into the door. There was a loud noise at the impact, but the door didn’t budge. It was certainly stronger than it looked. She tried twice more, but all she succeeded in doing was damaging the door varnish.

She stared at the door and then at the bed. Perhaps the bed could do what the cabinet couldn’t. Again she released the locking wheels, before manoeuvring the bed towards the door. She sighed deeply as she realized that that wasn’t going to work either. If she pushed the bed at the door, it would just come [11] too wordy. I would rewrite this. to rest in front of the door, prevented from travelling any further by the wall. And there simply wasn’t enough space to force the corner of the bed to strike the door with any force. She was trapped.

Sitara climbed onto the bed again and started to sob. Had she survived the pandemic only to die of starvation, imprisoned in a protective tomb? It wasn’t her official time to pray, but she felt the need to do so.

The formally pristine white porcelain bowl was now a disgusting shade of lumpy brown, orange, and green. Suzy was on her knees, her head leaning as far as possible into the toilet bowl, trying desperately not to vomit again but failing miserably, as wave after wave of nausea overcame her body and a fresh payload of her recent meals surged from her mouth, landing with a resounding splash amongst her stomach’s previously evacuated contents.

She was suddenly aware of a strange sensation, a dampening of the seat of her denim jeans. She couldn’t speak, as her mouth was far too occupied with the unpleasant choice between continuing to throw up and trying to hold the vomit in. It was no contest really. The build-up in her cheeks and mouth gave her no option but to part her lips and let the offensive liquid shoot out. She gingerly moved her right arm behind her and laid the back of her hand against the centre of her bottom. She withdrew her hand quickly and looked at the wet stains that had appeared on her knuckles. She looked into the toilet bowl again. That wasn’t good. She was bringing up blood now.

She wished she wasn’t alone. She would have been embarrassed, of course. Nobody wants anyone to watch them throwing up and now, apparently, shitting themselves. Not under normal circumstances anyway. But these weren’t normal circumstances

She didn’t want to die.

But she knew that she was going to die.

Her donning buddy, Ian, had already died a few hours earlier, having shown the same symptoms. It had started with a viciously intense headache accompanied by severe pain behind his eyes, and in his joints and muscles. Ian had tried to insist that it was just a mild case of the flu, but both nurses knew different. They had seen enough people succumb and die to know that a course of Gripalax pills wasn’t going to sort this out.

As soon as the red wheals had erupted on his face, arms, and legs, Ian had known it was all over. He’d begged his colleague to smother him with a pillow or something, to put him out of his misery, but Suzy just couldn’t bring herself to do it. She had watched him as he had spent two hours in the bathroom throwing up, just as she was now doing. She had squirmed at his embarrassment as his bowels had sporadically vacated themselves without warning, and had watched him finally struggle for breath as his lungs began to cease taking in air. She watched him die a cruel and agonising death.

She looked at the deep red marks on her own arms, wishing that she had put on a long-sleeved blouse that morning. It wouldn’t have made the marks disappear but at least she wouldn’t have been able to see it. She’d been on her way to her locker to fetch her favourite blouse when she had been forced to make an emergency diversion to the bathroom. That was an hour and a half ago and she hadn’t left the bathroom since. But she decided that if she was going to die, she was damned if it was going to be in the bathroom.

She hauled herself to her feet and leaned against the bathroom wall. The door was open as she had felt in no condition to worry about closing it behind her when she had started vomiting. She was the only one in the recreation room anyway. The only living person, anyway. Her colleague was slumped in an armchair, but he was stone cold dead. Suzy would have liked to have been able to lay him on the bed that stood in the corner, somewhere for the staff to take a nap at break-times. She would have liked to have allowed him some dignity in death but her searing headache had started about an hour before he died and she just didn’t have the energy.

Suddenly she remembered that there was somebody else who needed her attention more urgently. Sitara was alone and would probably be panicking by now. If Suzy didn’t let her out of the isolation room, Sitara would die – not from the virus, but a long, lingering death due to starvation. Suzy couldn’t let that happen to her.

The journey from the bathroom to the isolation unit was a real effort. Suzy wanted to fall down and curl up in a ball. She wanted her mom [12] If this is the NIH, she is probably American and would use “mom” and dad. She wanted someone, anyone to make this pain stop. She didn’t want to die alone.

She managed to drag her aching, puking, shitting body through the corridors towards the isolation unit, stopping for a breather only when faced with an electronic lock to negotiate. There were three locked doors en route and each time she took a deep breath and pressed her thumb against the optic reader, sighing with relief when she heard the welcome click of the lock disengaging and the door opening. Each time she almost fell through the door and watched as it closed behind her.

The pain was almost unbearable now. It was becoming harder and harder to breath and she could hear herself starting to wheeze. She couldn’t give up though, she didn’t have that luxury.

Doing her best to ignore the pain that she was feeling in her elbows, she pressed her thumb against the reader and the door to the ante-room opened. She somehow dragged her aching body inside and heard the door close behind her. She saw the protective gear hanging in its place, but looked away. There was no point in donning the equipment now – there was nothing to protect her from. She staggered over to the equipment table and picked something up, securing it tightly in her left hand, before pressing her right thumb against the fingerprint reader.

Again, she let out a sigh of relief, but not as great a sigh of relief as Sitara when she saw the door opening. Then it was a gasp of horror as Suzy fell through the doorway, this time allowing herself to collapse on the floor, preventing the door from closing again. When she saw the condition that Suzy was in, Sitara rushed over to help her but she was beyond help, gasping for air, forcing herself to speak.

“Important. You must get away.”

Sitara didn’t know what to say, as Suzy opened her left hand to reveal a razor sharp scalpel. She looked up at Sitara.