Charles Orangetree: Diary of the Last Seed

Stacy’s hands were shaking and her face was covered with tears, but she managed to set a small cupcake on the table without dropping it. It was her son’s favorite flavor, chocolate. She raised her hand to cover a portion of the cupcake, looked around making sure that no one was nearby, and pulled a lighter out of her pajamas. She slowly lit up the lighter, brought it closer to the cupcake, and lit a single candle in the middle of the cupcake. She leaned close to her son’s ear and whispered, “Happy Birthday, Son.” Stacy grabbed her son’s hand and raised it closer to her chest, finding an empty space for her to sit next to him. She held his hand and leaned forward planting a kiss on his forehead. At least her boy was still alive.

“Mrs.Blackburn?” a man’s voice asked as he entered the room. He was a tall, white gentlemen with black and gray hair; he looked at her through a pair of thick glasses. Stacy turned her attention to the man, but before he could say a word, a nurse approached both of them.

“Excuse me,” she said, referring to Mrs. Blackburn, and discreetly whispered some words to the doctor.

“What is it?” Mrs. Blackburn asked. He didn’t say a word; he simply approached her and put his hand on her shoulder.

Stacy remained seated and held her son’s hand. She knew there was no point to keep asking the same questions over and over. Her son’s condition had not improved in two months, no matter how much the doctor’s would tell her. Deep inside she knew that her son would not get better. She tried to pretend that everything would be fine, that her son would recover and wake up from his comma, but all she had was hope.

She could not stand seeing her son buried in IV’s, monitors, and oxygen hoses. Stacy’s heart broke a little every time she visited him. She still remembered the morning when she went to wake him up so he would not be late for school, but he never woke up. The night prior, before he went to sleep, he had told her how he was not feeling good; he thought he might be getting sick. She didn’t pay too much attention since this wasn’t the first time he’d feigned an illness to get out of school. And he was due to have an exam the next morning. Everything seemed normal to her, nothing out of the ordinary, but all that changed the next day when she tried to wake him and he didn’t respond.

She tried everything to no avail and then she called 911. The paramedics arrived at her home and reached her son’s room. They strapped him to the stretcher and put him into the ambulance. Stacy was so worried, that she forgot to leave a note for her husband. It was Friday morning and she knew her husband was in the middle of lake fishing. He had decided to take Friday off and go fishing with some friends. His cell phone normally didn’t get any signal in the middle of the lake, so he would leave the phone either in the car or at the cabin. She still called him and left a message on his voice-mail. She jumped inside the ambulance and spent all night at the hospital.

Stacy’s husband didn’t show up to the hospital until the next day. He tried to apologized to Stacy about his delay, but there was nothing he could have done. After he finished fishing late Friday night, Stacy’s husband and his friends headed down to the cabin and spent all night drinking. He completely forgot to check his cell phone. If he would have arrived a few hours earlier, he would have had an ear full from Stacy. But she was not angry anymore. Stacy knew she needed to focus her attention on her son. All she could do was hold his hand in hopes that sooner or later he would wake up. Feeling a pressure on her right shoulder, she snapped out of her daydreaming. She looked up and saw the doctor next to her, looking over her son.

“We will figure it out Mrs. Blackburn, he will wake up,” the doctor said.

“I’ve been waiting for him to wake up, or for you guys to figure out what is wrong with him, for about two months now. The world is going to shit out there, and I have to deal with my sick son and a bunch of incompetent doctors and nurses that cannot diagnose him. It’s not fair for me or my family. I am tired of all the excuses you have given me. I have not seen my husband for over two weeks now, and I can’t even give him an update on our son’s condition, because there is none.” She shook her head side to side with tears running down her face. She was exhausted.

The doctor bent down and looked into her eyes. “You need to rest, go home. Spend time with the rest of your family. If there is any change on your son’s condition, I will personally contact you. As a matter of fact, here.” He handed her a small business card with his personal information.

“If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me any time. I normally don’t do this for patients, but I will make an exception for you Mrs. Blackburn. You need to promise me that you are going home to your family.” He kept his hand on her shoulder for comfort.

Stacy didn’t know what to do or say. She got up from where she was seated, nodded to the doctor, and looked at her son.

“I will be back next week.” She lifted her son’s hand to her face, moved the IV out of the way, and kissed it.

“I love you. I love you with all my heart and soul from the moon and back.” Stacy lowered her son’s hand back to the side of the bed. She blew him another kiss and slowly walked toward the door. “Please take good care of my son,” Stacy told the doctor. She left her son’s room in search for the exit door. Walking through the hospital, deep inside her thoughts, Stacy failed to notice all the chaos and sick people that had overpopulated the emergency room. All Stacy wanted was to get away from the hospital for a couple of days and go see the rest of the family. Stacy left the hospital, got into her car, and drove home. That was the last time she would ever see her son.

“So the disease is airborne?” Dr. Meacham asked. He was standing in a small observation room, looking through a glass window at who he thought was patient zero for a new type of epidemic. Dr. Meacham rested his forehead against the glass wall. He could see his reflection on the glass and noticed the guilt on his face. And who wouldn’t feel guilty when seeing one of his co-workers in that type of predicament? He raised his head and stared into the other side of the glass wall where there was an even smaller room painted all in white. A sealed bio-hazard door was on the left side of the room, and his co-worker strapped to a metal frame bed was on the right. Dr. Whitney was a brilliant, up and coming virologist, now, by a mistake or just pure lousy luck, she lay motionless. Her face was still covered with trails of dried blood running from her nose, ears, and eyes. An open gash from her forehead disappeared under her red hairline. Other wounds were slowly appearing over her entire body.

“If I were a man of God and not a scientist, I’d swear she looks exactly like the exorcist,” Dr. Moore said. Who would debate him? After all, her wounds and behavior could be confused with a possession, or a person suffering from stigmata. The other doctors tried to treat her wounds, but they hadn’t had any luck, it seemed as if the blood was not coagulating. Dr. Meacham knew that the young doctor didn’t have too much longer before she bled to dead. It had been three hours since she started acting weird, and the other doctors had to strap her down to the metal bed.

Dr. Meacham remembered her asking him if she could work during the weekend, since she had family coming in this week. For just a moment, he thought that whatever was happening to her was his fault. He had no idea that this was just the beginning, and that she was not the last person that he would see dying under his authority. Dr. Meacham didn’t pay any attention to Dr. Moore, who was next to him asking him a question.