Page 9 of Surviving Her

“Symptoms of what?” Bobby asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

Eliza swallowed hard. “Like fever, disorientation…aggression.”

“Sounds like what people are saying has been happening with the infected,” Bobby said, voice trembling. “But nobody really knows for sure. And nobody wants to fucking talk about it.”

Eliza glanced up just in time to see the other nurse, an older woman whose name she didn’t know, dart out of the operating room. She noticed her hands shaking as she fumbled with the door, her tear-streaked cheeks tense with distress.

Eliza caught Bobby’s eye. “Look what you did. Get back to work, Bobby. We’re on our own now.”

As they turned their attention back to the boy, the room itself seemed to hold its breath. Eliza’s hands shook slightly as she continued her work, determined to push through despite never having felt so vulnerable and afraid.

As she worked, Eliza’s thoughts wandered. It was as if her mind was attempting to make a brief escape from the urgency of the moment. She thought about how, just a week ago, the biggest worry in her life had been juggling her almost impossible workload with yet another fleeting relationship. She and Steve had called it quits after only a couple months of dating. Her romantic life—could she even call it that?—was a string of one-night stands and brief flings, each ending in basically the same way: a good old ghosting.

She’d always told herself that her career was the reason behind her disastrous love life. But she also blamed Tinder and its ridiculous algorithms for sending her dud after dud. The long hours and the emotional toll of the job were too much for most people (for mostmen) to handle. But deep down, she knew there was probably more to it than that. She knew, and her brother had reminded her of it time and time again; she was emotionally reserved and guarded. That made it hard for anyone to get close. Several partners had told her as much. “You’re just…I don’t know how to put it. You’re closed off, Eliza,” one of them had said a few months before walking out of her life, never to be heard from again.

And now, as she stood over this young teen who might not even make it to his first date, she wondered if she’d maybe gotten it all wrong. Had she spent her adult life pushing away every chance for a real connection? Had she prioritized saving strangers while allowing herself to be utterly alone? Because that’s how she felt: utterly alone. The world seemed to be falling apart, and she didn’t have a single soul to turn to.

“Dr. Carter! Watch out!” Bobby’s panicked voice interrupted her, yanking her back to the present.

Eliza’s gaze snapped to the monitors. The patient’s heart rate was plummeting, the rhythmic beeping speeding into a frantic, disjointed alarm. “Damn it,” she muttered, her hands moving faster now, working against the clock. “Get the crash cart ready!”

“On it!” shouted Bobby, rushing to get the necessary equipment.

She pressed the paddles to the patient’s chest, her mind a blur of focused intent. “Clear!”

The boy’s body jerked as the electric current surged through him, but the flat line persisted.

“Again!” she barked.

Another shock, another jerk, but still, the line stayed flat.

“Come on, kid. Don’t do this to me,” she whispered, more to herself than the patient, who she knew couldn’t hear her. She refused to lose him. They tried and tried to bring him back.

But even as she worked on his body, a voice in the back of her mind whispered that it was already too late. This wasn’t just a virus; this was something much worse. She just didn’t know what. What she did think was that no amount of medical expertise would be able to stop what was coming.

“Time of death, 18:47,” Bobby said quietly, his voice laced with exhaustion.

Eliza stood frozen for a moment, the reality sinking in: she’d failed. She closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths, trying to push the creeping sense of dread to the back of her mind. But it was no use.

What the hell is going on here?

“I guess we did everything we could, right? I’ve never seen someone that young die of heart failure like that. Have you?” Bobby asked. But his words fell flat.

Eliza stripped off her gloves and tossed them into the bin with more force than was necessary. “We need to get him to the morgue,” she said, her voice low and hollow. “There’ll be more. We need to make room for the next one.”

Bobby didn’t argue. Together, they started to wheel the lifeless body out of the room. The ER was beyond chaos—screams, cries, the occasional thud of something heavy hitting the floor.

I can’t cope with all this. What’s become of my hospital? This is out of control!

“Dr. Carter, it looks like Sheila…” Bobby began, but Eliza cut him off.

“No, Bobby. Not now. I need to think.”

“Dr. Carter! Come over here—now!” Sheila screamed from across the hallway.

Eliza’s mind had barely processed the request before she let go of the gurney and ran toward Sheila, her medical coat flapping behind her like a banner of hope. Bobby, pale and panting heavily, followed close on her heels. The pounding in her chest seemed to sync with the frantic beats of her footsteps.

As they reached Sheila, she pulled them through a doorway and toward the side entrance.

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