(Crossposted from my Substack; written as part of the Halfhaven virtual blogging camp.)
She wasn’t ready, but the man started speaking. “Hello, Ms. Tatsuo. My name is Ethan Blande from the Public Health Agency of Canada. I wanted to ask you some questions because I’m told you were the first to report symptoms.” The man was dressed in a suit and wore and N95 mask over his stubble.
Ai nodded, but didn’t speak. She was still short of breath from having gone to the washroom connected to her hospital room. At least she was still able to go by herself. Some of the other patients had come into the hospital later than her, but had already turned fully grey.
“At what time did the symptoms start? How long before you came into the hospital?”
“About… ten minutes before,” gasped Ai. “I came… right away.”
“Okay,” said Ethan, typing a note on his laptop, which rested on the adjustable overbed table. “And what were the initial symptoms?”
“I first noticed… the grey eyes. Even my irises…” The man waited for her to continue, but seemed impatient. “Then I heard… the voices. Muffled… I still can’t hear what they… what they’re saying.”
“One patient described the voices like an alien radio station. Do the voices seem to be human voices, or something else?” asked Ethan.
Ai felt anger in her chest. Why was this man asking her stupid questions? Was he as clueless as everyone on the internet? She hoped the Public Health Agency would have some answers, but apparently not, if they were chasing alien stories. “Sound human… to me,” said Ai firmly.
The man wanted to ask her more questions, but one of the nurses, a stern older woman named Violeta, ushered the man away so Ai could rest for a while. She gave Ai a puff of a bronchodilator — albuterol — using an inhaler. Ai noted the dose and the timing in a spreadsheet on her phone. She’d been tracking every drug she’d taken since becoming pregnant. That was doubly important now that she was sick.
A while after her breathing returned to normal, Shirley, a chipper health care aide, brought a tray into the room. Her pink uniform carried an assortment of pastel-coloured baubles, including a little, ineffectual pair of pink scissors. Her hair was done up with a big bow holding it together, like Minnie Mouse.
“Ding ding ding! Good afternoon, Ai! I hope you like burgers!” She set the tray down on the table. “Oh, you have some blood, let me clean you up!” she chirped, wiping blood from Ai’s mouth. Ai stared blankly at the lifeless hospital burger.
“I always feel like burgers have too much bread, y’know?,” said Shirley. “But another patient came up with a brilliant idea! If you throw away the bottom bun, you get more of the condiments and meat in each bite. I call it an ‘urger’. Because you’re missing part of the burger…” Shirley’s voice trailed off when she realized Ai was glaring at her. “Okay, just let me know if you need anything! Toodles!” Shirley skipped her way out of the room in her pink crocs. Ai would have rolled her eyes if she weren’t so exhausted. Instead, she started watching the news on the hospital room TV, picking at her burger without really eating it. She hoped the pain in her belly wasn’t coming from her womb.
Ai sipped apple juice as she watched the TV in the corner. No matter the time of day, the news was about her disease. The “Greyscale Disease” — so called because its victims looked like they were straight out of a black and white film — had infected over 800 people in Toronto and thousands elsewhere in the last six days. Experts on the news argued about the nature of the disease. It didn’t seem to be a bacterium or virus. Some said it could be a prion or parasite, but the nasally man on the screen was insisting it was an environmental contaminant.
People in more advanced stages of the disease had lost limbs, but nobody had died so far. That was the one saving grace. Nobody yet knew if Greyscale was lethal. Ai herself hadn’t lost any limbs or fingers, but the disease continued to get worse. Her entire body was grey, now. And unless she slowly sipped apple juice, there was an ever-present taste of blood in her mouth. She had even bled from her eyes. The doctors wanted to give her drugs to control the bleeding, but it wasn’t profuse, and nobody knew what the effects of such drugs could be on a mystery disease.
Shirley peeked into the room and let Ai know it was time to take her pills.
“I’m not taking them! You can tell that to Dr. Wahid!” Ai shouted after her, but the woman was already gone. “I don’t need painkillers, I need DMSA!” She had read about some patients with Greyscale online claiming to have improved their colour after taking dimercaprol, and DMSA worked similarly to filter toxins from the blood, but was safer for pregnant women.
“Hey!” Ai shouted, getting out of bed. She felt lightheaded, and pain spiked in her belly, but she was determined not to let Shirley get away. It could be hours before she saw the doctor again unless she sent Shirley to fetch her.
Other patients might be content to wait for the lazy hospital staff to do their job, but if you wanted better outcomes than other people, you had to be more cautious than other people, and in the hospital, that meant being proactive.
She stepped out of her room and tried to yell after Shirley, but instead felt liquid spill from her mouth. The ever-present voices in her head grew louder. She suddenly felt faint.
The hospital was crowded with Greyscale patients, so they were doubling up on rooms. Ai had hoped the new patient would at least be able to keep her company, but the man — an elderly man named Gill — was in pain and wouldn’t respond to anyone except to moan and occasionally shout for more pain meds. He had been hit hard by the disease. He lost an arm and a foot. They didn’t fall off, but seemed to shrivel back into his body. And though he looked underweight, he was unnaturally heavy. It had taken three health care aides to lift him from the wheelchair into his bed. Ai could feel the same heaviness in her bones. It wasn’t just weakness. The Greyscale patients were getting physically heavier somehow, in apparent defiance of physics.
When Ai looked at him, she saw her own future, which filled her with terror for herself and her baby. She knew there must be someone, somewhere who had found some kind of treatment to at least slow the disease, and so she spent her time searching news articles, journals, and even reddit looking for anything that could help.
There were many stories about the progression of the disease, which only served to scare her further. First, the voices and the grey skin. Then bleeding, shortness of breath, and heaviness. Hair starts retracting into the body. Then more bleeding. By that point, even the blood is grey. Fingers start retracting into the body. Eyes and noses, sometimes. Limbs. Still, nobody had died.
Equally useless were the conspiracy theories. People saying Greyscale was an attack from China, or some kind of alien first contact gone awry. No doubt the voices contributed to that theory. Ai’s own voices were louder now, but still indistinct, like someone talking in a shrill voice. Ai couldn’t make out any actual words.
Most promising were the many stories of treatments working, though most were quickly debunked. Still, people online recommended all manner of treatments: deferoxamine, an experimental peptide, a medicinal herb, or a prayer. Ai was skeptical of them all and feared taking random treatments without knowing how they could affect the disease, but cataloged them all in a spreadsheet. She would take anything if it would protect her baby, but random treatments could just as easily make her condition worse.
Still, every few hours she would grow desperate and demand Shirley get her the doctor. She would ask for this or that drug or supplement, and the doctor usually refused. When they did oblige, she often didn’t take the pills, having changed her mind. She was obsessed with protecting her baby, but paralyzed by fear of doing something wrong. Somehow, she couldn’t shake the idea that she’d already done something wrong. That if she’d only eaten healthier or exercised more, maybe she wouldn’t have gotten the disease in the first place.
Despite her obsession, she continued to get worse, and the pain in her belly grew.
Something hit Ai in the head. “Ma’am, wake up!” Gill croaked.
Ai looked over at him, then at the floor. He’d thrown a shoe at her. Before she could protest, he nodded excitedly toward the TV. “Look!”
There was a breaking news report. “Cure for Greyscale Found.” The newscaster announced that a small company from Texas called Chronic Systems had reversed the symptoms of one patient in Texas. The unlikely company was a physics research company, rather than a pharmaceutical one. Ai dismissed it as yet another fake cure, but apparently the CDC was taking it seriously and said they were rushing to have the treatment available to patients within the next 72 hours.
Gill looked at her with eyebrows raised. He was hard to look at, as the disease had taken one of his eyes. Rather than disappoint him with her skepticism, Ai just shrugged.
The Public Health Agency of Canada was working with the American CDC to get the treatment to every Greyscale patient. The treatment Ai now held in her hands. It was a small metal device shaped like a pill, suspended inside a specialized glass vial stamped with the name “Chronic Systems”. The pill was apparently somewhat radioactive, and had to be transported in these protective vials. She turned it in her hands, ruminating.
Gill had taken the treatment two hours ago. If she wasn’t mistaken, his colour was improving. But she couldn’t be sure. Even without the treatment, Greyscale patients sometimes had their symptoms improve temporarily, only to get worse later. It was a risk, and she wanted to wait and see if it worked for other patients before taking it herself. She had a baby to worry about. But if she waited too long, that might be just as bad.
She felt wetness between her legs and knew she’d just lost control of her bowels again. It would be mostly blood. Grey blood. She was mortified. Just in time, the obnoxious health care aide Shirley skipped into the room. “Don’t worry,” she said, “I’ll get you cleaned up!”
Ai rolled to her side and tensed as Shirley changed her diaper and cleaned the mess. The disposable wipes were cool on her colourless skin. The chemical smell wiped away the metallic smell of her bloody, grey feces.
“There you go!” The woman’s happy voice was like nails on a chalkboard. “Let me know if you need anything else, okay?”
Ai stayed on her side. “Just leave me alone.”
Ai woke in the middle of the night, feeling the urge to defecate again. This time, she managed to hold it. Hoping not to make another mess for Shirley, she got out of bed. Her heavy feet hit the ground with a thud. She grasped her walker. One of her fingers had shriveled into her hand, but she didn’t have time to dwell on it.
As quickly as she could, she shuffled to the toilet. She felt lightheaded, and her breathing was heavy. She noticed her shadow seemed to follow her with a delay, which made her uneasy. She made it in time, though her belly screamed with pain. The voices seemed louder than ever, though she still couldn’t understand what they were saying.
She was concerned with the amount of blood coming from her. Maybe she should have been taking the medications to help with bleeding. Figuring out what was safe and what wasn’t was impossible, and she couldn’t trust the doctors to do it. Not when medical errors were one of the leading causes of death.
As she stood up from the toilet, her head swam. She shuffled to the sink, where she realized she’d left the vial with the metal pill. She didn’t remember bringing it into the bathroom with her.
In the mirror was a healthy Ai, with normal skin and long black hair. Not the grey and bald woman she really was. The Ai in the mirror was smiling. Happy. The reflection of the vial in the mirror was empty. She picked up the vial to examine the metal pill inside. Her reflection did the same, though only after a short delay.
Ai started trembling with fear. Something was wrong. Was she hallucinating? The incessant voices in her head were deafening, but still, she couldn’t understand what they were saying.
She turned to call for help, but there was a stabbing pain in her stomach. A kick, she realized. From the baby.
Suddenly, she was able to place the voices. They weren’t coming from her head at all, but from her womb. Muffled through all the flesh, it was her baby, begging her. Screaming at her to take the pill.
Ai’s shaking hands dropped the vial, which shattered on the tile floor. The metal pill came to rest between glass shards. She bent down to pick it up. The effort made her gasp for breath.
She swallowed the pill. She nearly choked on it, but she got it down. She lie down on the ground to catch her panting breath, not caring about the shards of glass cutting into her calves. The pill was inside her now. Maybe it was a horrible mistake, or maybe she’d just saved her life. The uncertainty was like a long, black night.
The cure worked. Ai felt nearly back to her normal self after a few days, aside from the missing finger, which would never return. Her baby was healthy, too. Gill had already gone home earlier that day, and she would be going home in a few hours.
She knew she should be relieved. But she was not. It had all been so random. She couldn’t point to a time when she had made a mistake, or done anything right. She had behaved essentially at random, and it all worked out for no reason.
Another breaking news broadcast was starting just as Shirley hopped into the room. She was wearing scrubs featuring Tweety Bird in a repeating pattern. “Breaking news? What’s that?”
“I don’t know,” said Ai, hoping Shirley wouldn’t keep talking over the news report.
The news report showed the CEO of Chronic Systems in handcuffs. Ai’s heart sank. Was something wrong with the cure?
The newscaster spoke. “Bharat Ashwin, CEO of Chornic Systems, arrested just a few hours ago in connection with the Greyscale Disease epidemic. Experts from the CDC say his company’s illegal physics research may have been the original source of the disease which his company later cured. We go now to Ethan Blande from the Public Health Agency of Canada for comment.”
Ai looked at Shirley, whose eyes were wide, and mouth clearly agape under her mask. As usual, the woman’s reactions to everything were exaggerated and unnecessary.
Ethan Blande appeared on the screen. “We are working with the American FBI in the arrest of Mr. Ashwin. The discovery was made after one of our analysts noticed that not a single patient refused treatment in Canada. We reached out to the CDC and found the same thing was true for American patients. This is unheard of for a patient population this size. Further investigation into the company’s activities revealed that they had been studying exotic time physics, and internal documents relating to their so-called cure showed it contained something called ‘temporal antibodies’. The company’s own documents indicate they believe the disease itself to have been caused by the cure, even though the cure is taken after the disease already sets in. Without their so-called miracle cure, the disease itself would never have occurred.”
“What does that mean?” asked Shirley. “The cure fixed the disease in the present, but went back and time and made you sick in the first place?”
“That’s what he said. Can’t you listen?” snapped Ai. But Shirley was right. It didn’t make any sense.
“Thank you Mr. Blande,” said the newscaster. “Bharat Ashwin is being charged with criminal negligence, though his lawyer claims that Mr. Ashwin could not have forseen or avoided this unprecedented ‘closed causal loop’, as he calls it. Mr. Ashwin himself declined to comment. Just a few minutes ago, Michio Kaku tweeted about this unprecedented-“
Shirley turned off the TV. “That’s enough of that. Are you ready for your breakfast?” Just like that, the woman was ready to move past a revelation that shook Ai’s conception of reality.
“How can you just start talking about breakfast, just like that? Did you hear what he said?” Ai grilled. “Do you have any conception of what he just said? I was sick with a disease that went back in time! The cure for the disease is what made me sick! If I had resisted taking the cure, would I never have gotten sick in the first place? Or would I have always taken the cure, no matter how hard I tried not to? This makes no sense! Is any of it even true? How does this not bother you? Are you too vapid, too empty-headed to understand? Do you just not care?”
Shirley stood frozen for a minute, then let out a heavy sigh. “Ai, did you have any of the other health care aides wash you while I wasn’t working? They were rough, right? Like they didn’t care?”
Ai nodded. She was right. Shirley did a good job, but some of the others were like barbarians, rushing so they could get to the next patient. Leaving her not feeling fully clean.
“I take my time. I like to make sure people are clean. And happy, if possible. Sometimes I meet some really nice people here. And sometimes those people die. Then I go home and I cry. But the next day, I come back here wearing my Tweety Bird scrubs and I try to put a smile on people’s faces. Do you know why?”
Ai was feeling guilty, and spoke softly. “To make patients more comfortable?”
“Yes, but it’s not just for them, it’s for me, too. You can’t control life, but you can choose your attitude. You can choose to smile in the face of a hurricane. You can say to life, ‘bring it on!’” Shirley balled her hand into fists, and seemed to be challenging the universe itself.
Ai felt ashamed for insulting her. Maybe wasn’t as shallow as she seemed. Maybe Shirley had some things figured out that Ai herself still needed to work on. Especially if she wanted to do a good job raising her baby. Ai looked down at her belly. “I hope I’ll be a good mother.”
“You will!” Shirley assured her. “I can tell you care. That’s the most important thing. Now, how about I get you and your baby,” she patted Ai’s belly, “some breakfast?”
Ai nodded. “Okay.”
“I can’t hear you!”
“Okay!” Ai said more loudly, and smiled.