Errant;
Gracie was stressed. Her vision blurred and her pulse quickened. The bright hospital lights blinded her. She couldn't handle the guilt and the blame. A mistake had been made today. A mistake that killed.
14 hours earlier...
I remember everything. The nasty smell of iodoform that I would be stuck with for the rest of my life. I didn't even want to be a doctor, but living costs were going through the roof, and my parents forced me to use my med school scholarship. What a mistake. I don't even like people, let alone sick ones. The nurse had asked me to grab O- blood for a blood transfusion. The patient was a little boy named Jacob. I guess children I could handle. They weren't that bad. They didn't talk as much, especially if you put on Teletubbies or Frozen or something. I walked over to the kid, who oddly had a smile on his face. I mean, I would be scared as hell if I had to get blood injected into me. I gave the blood to the nurse and let her do her "magic". I didn't actually really do anything at the hospital, except bring blood to nurses and doctors or bring urine samples to forensics. Stuff like that. I was on my way to the break room to have a cup of coffee but bumped into my brother. Oh boy. This kid was a living nightmare. What he was doing at the hospital was a mystery to me. There was a cast on his wrist and a bandage on his nose.
"Why hello, dear sister," he said.
"Ugh, what happened this time? The mobsters you hang out with got a little upset?" I ask. Sometimes, I actually do believe that he's apart of a mafia or something, but my parents are too strict to let that happen. They would literally cremate him if they found out he was doing something like that. He narrowed his eyes and walked off. The nerve this guy had. I started walking down the hall when I saw Jacob on a stretcher being rushed out of the clinic and into the emergency ward. He looked extremely pale and had a layer of sheen sweat on his forehead. He was shaking like he was having a seizure. I looked at the doctor.
"What happened?" I asked, my pulse raising.
"It's an unknown illness. Right now we're just putting him under. It'll take a couple hours to find out what happened to him. It's most likely just a seizure."
I moved out of the way to let them rush him into a room. Something in my brain clicked. What was different from today than any days? The blood. I rushed over to the room, but the nurses had blocked it off for doctors only. Fine. If they wouldn't let me tell the doctors my theory, then I would need to go down to the 'Blood Bank' so that I could check what was in that blood.
At the 'Bank', I frantically sought for Veronica, the 'clerk' who gave me the blood. There was a bald little man at the desk named Carl who said her shift was over. Great.
"Carl, I need you to bring me O- blood please," I said, with an artificial sweet hint in my voice.
"Do you have doctor's consent?" he asked, his bushy eyebrows furrowing.
"Ahhh, no. This was a... spoken consent. The doctor had no time to write it."
"Um, okay then sure."
What a fool. Spoken consent? 4 years ago, some man came and stocked up on blood. The government made a law that you had to have a written doctor consent ever since.
Carl came back with the packet of blood, so I snatched it from his hands and rushed down the hall to forensics. I saw my friend Jess on his lunch break so I went over to him.
"Can you do me a huge favour right now?" I questioned.
"Not if it's gross and demeaning." He went back to eating his sandwich.
"I need you to check this blood for anything... odd," I said with determination and a straight face. Jess looked up from his sandwich and gave me a look like I was mentally deranged.
"Okay, sure, I don't have anything better to do, and this sandwich is actually pretty nasty." He put the sandwich down with a grimace on his face.
I gave him the packet and he swabbed it for a closer observation. After looking at it for a good minute, I was getting a little impatient.
"So... what'd you find?" I quizzed.
Jess aggressively got out of his seat, walked over to me in two long strides grabbed my wrist and in a hushed tone said "Where did you find this blood, Grace?"
"Carl, the 'clerk' gave it to me."
"Where's the consent, Grace?"
"I-I didn't get any. I wanted to see if this blood was different. If it had different properties."
"This blood is not O- blood, Gracie. This is different. The proteases and iron molecules... it's like it's mutated. Gracie, you can't use this blood. Pour it down the drain and don't tell anyone what you found."
"I think I already did," I whisper.
"What? Already did what?"
"I already used the blood. On a little boy. He's in the emergency room now. The doctors said it was just a seizure, but... what if it was this blood?"
And with that we were sprinting down hallways, making lefts and rights, bumping into patients and muttering a quick apology under our breaths. But we were too late because when we got to Jacob's room, he was already being zipped up into a body bag. I looked at Doctor Parks who was scribbling some incoherent nonsense onto that white clipboard of his. He looked up at us and scowled.
"Gracie, I thought your shift was over."
"Yes sir, but I think I know how Jacob got sick,"
"Sure, and I think I have the cure for cancer. You're a pre-medical student. Go home and eat a box of pizza or something."
"Sir, I was the one who gave the nurse the blood. I took her consent and I gathered the blood for her. I realized that Jacob was not having a seizure, but a reaction to the different properties in this blood. Jess and I tested another packet with the same O- blood since the donor was so kind as to give us 5 packets of it. Sir, the donor is classified and Jacob's dead now. What do we do?"
The doctor sighed and ran a hand over his face.
"If this were under any other circumstance, you'd be suspended from your internship for using the forensic lab for unrelated work, but since you might be able to save lives, I need you to swab and test the other five packets to see if they also have these "different properties" you speak of. I will email the head of research to see what they can find out about the donor, and once you've finished swabbing all the packets, I'll need you to take them over to the research department next door."
"Yes, sir," and Jess and I were off again.
-
It had only been a couple hours since we had swabbed all five packets and checked for the odd attributes. Only one other packet had been affected, so we took the trip over to Research and Development. Lucky for me the morgue was just a floor beneath me, so I could pay my respects to Jacob. I was just standing there, bored out of my mind, while Jess was talking to one of the guys about Basketball stats. I thought that now would've been the perfect time to go the Morgue, since no one really needed me, but before I could leave, a certain iMac caught my attention. The email was opened up on the screen, but the writer must not have finished because there was no subject, address or going address. Only two measly sentences were written:
"The test has failed, sir. Shall we place another 3 packets in the Bank?"
Two sentences, yet I was losing my mind. Who wrote this? Had someone deliberately placed those packets? Did that mean that the research head was lying to Doctor Parks an hour ago when he emailed back saying that it was a "misplaced, highly classified, government project"? What a lie that was. But did I really have the authority at this hospital to accuse medical degree doctors of a crime I had no proof they committed?"
I sighed and walked out of the office and into the hallway, towards the dimly lit looking elevator. Three minutes later I had made my way towards the morgue doors. I opened it just a crack to see if anyone was inside. Standing at the threshold, part scared to walk into a room full of dead bodies, tears welled up in my eyes, threatening to roll down my cheeks. I looked forward, seeing Jacob's white body bag, a look of guilt and sorrow painted onto my face. But in a split second, I ran faster than I could blink. Why? Because his body bag was moving from the inside.
