“I’m going to have to peel it manually, Maya,” Sarah warned me gently. She placed one hand gently on my knee to steady my shaking leg. “This is going to hurt. I need you to squeeze the side of the table and take deep, deep breaths.”
I nodded frantically, terrified but desperate for relief. I gripped the cold metal rails of the examination table until my knuckles turned completely white.
Sarah placed her gloved hands on the black tape.
Just her light touch sent a fresh wave of blinding, nauseating pain radiating all the way up to my hip.
She found the frayed end of the electrical tape near my ankle and began to pull.
The sound of the heavy adhesive ripping away from the gauze echoed loudly in the tense room.
Riiiip.
I squeezed my eyes shut, panting heavily, tears streaming down my temples and into my ears.
Riiiip.
The thick tape finally gave way. The structural integrity of the massive bandage was broken. The pressure released slightly, but the relief was instantly overshadowed by what happened next.
The smell hit the room like a physical shockwave.
It wasn’t herbal tea. It wasn’t a traditional poultice.
It was the sickening, sweet stench of rotting tissue mixed with a harsh, chemical odor that burned the back of my throat. It smelled remarkably like industrial battery acid.
I heard Sarah gag slightly, swallowing hard to fight her own reflex.
“God,” Sarah whispered. Her voice was suddenly laced with a heavy, sinking dread.
She began to carefully unwind the heavy layers of white medical gauze.
One layer. Two layers.
The gauze beneath the tape was completely saturated in dark, thick, gelatinous blood that stuck to her blue gloves.
“Keep your eyes closed, Maya,” Sarah instructed me. Her voice suddenly sounded very tight. Very strained.
Three layers. Four layers.
I could feel the freezing air of the clinic room finally hitting the hot, swollen skin of my bare calf.
The final, heaviest layer of bloody gauze fell away. It hit the linoleum floor with a wet, heavy slap.
I kept my eyes squeezed shut. I couldn’t look. I was too terrified of what that rusted metal had done to me.
I waited for Sarah to speak. I waited for her to grab the antiseptic wash from the counter. I waited for her to tell me how deep the cut was and that a few real stitches would fix it.
But Sarah didn’t speak.
Instead, there was a sharp, horrifying sound of a sudden inhalation.
Sarah gasped.
It wasn’t a clinical sigh. It wasn’t a professional reaction to a bad infection. It was a raw, primal sound of absolute, paralyzing terror.
I forced my eyes open, my heart hammering against my ribs, and looked down at the nurse.
Sarah had stumbled completely backward, knocking into the rolling cart.
Her face had drained of all human color. She was as pale as a ghost, her dark eyes wide and fixed in horror on whatever was exposed on my leg.
She was shaking. The experienced, tough-as-nails triage nurse was physically trembling.
“Sarah?” I whispered, the air catching in my throat. “What is it?”
Sarah didn’t answer me.
She didn’t reach for her medical scissors. She didn’t reach for the phone on the wall to call an emergency doctor.
Sarah lunged to the side, dropping her hands entirely under the computer counter.
She slammed her fist upward, hitting something hidden beneath the desk.
Instantly, the harsh fluorescent lights of the examination room flickered and died, plunging us into shadow.
A split second later, they were replaced by a dark, pulsing, crimson red glow from a bulb near the ceiling. The heavy wooden door locked with a loud, electronic thud.
A silent alarm protocol. Total, immediate lockdown.
“Where is your husband, Maya?” Sarah whispered. Her voice was completely hollow, her terrified eyes finally snapping up from my leg to meet mine.
— CHAPTER 2 —
The pulsing crimson light from the ceiling washed over the small examination room, casting everything in deep, terrifying shadows.
It blinked in a slow, rhythmic cycle. Every time the red glare hit the white tile walls, it illuminated the absolute horror frozen on Nurse Sarah’s face.
The heavy wooden door had locked with a solid, metallic thud that still echoed in my ears. The harsh fluorescent lights were gone. The only sound left in the stifling room was the erratic, struggling heartbeat of my baby on the fetal monitor, and the rapid, shallow gasps of my own breathing.
Sarah’s question hung in the heavy, chemical-soaked air.
Where is your husband, Maya?
I stared at her, my mind completely short-circuiting. The pain radiating from my left calf was so absolute, so blinding, that I could barely form words. My tongue felt thick and useless.
“He’s in London,” I finally choked out, my voice cracking into a pathetic, terrified whisper. “He left on a business trip. Why? Sarah, what is it?”
Sarah didn’t look at me. Her dark, wide eyes remained entirely fixed on my exposed leg.
Her hands, still wrapped in blue latex gloves stained with my thick, dark blood, were gripping the edge of the metal cart so hard the plastic was bending. She was physically trembling, taking shallow breaths through her mouth to avoid the sickening, sweet stench of battery acid filling the small space.
“Sarah, please,” I begged, my fingers digging into the crinkling paper beneath me. “Tell me what’s wrong with my leg.”
“Don’t look at it, Maya,” Sarah ordered softly. Her voice was incredibly tight, trembling with a mixture of professional restraint and raw human fear.
But I couldn’t stop myself. The terror in her eyes was too infectious.
I forced myself to sit up slightly, fighting through the massive, heavy contraction tightening across my pregnant belly. I leaned forward and looked past my knees, staring down at my left calf.
The air left my lungs in a sharp, silent gasp.
It wasn’t a cut. It wasn’t a scrape from a rusted piece of metal in the basement.
The skin on the side of my calf was completely black and gray, melted away in a deep, unnatural crater. The edges of the wound weren’t jagged like a tear; they were perfectly smooth, eaten away by something incredibly caustic.
But that wasn’t the most horrifying part.
