“Miss Cardama, you will be staying here for tonight. I apologise for the state; as you will have heard we have a shortage of rooms. The pandemic has taken a toll,” the nurse sighed, her exhaustion was not only audible, but visible. She had dark blue toned rings around her heavy eyes, and she seemed unfocused.

“Thank you Aria, I am sure it will suit me fine.”

Lola Cardama examined the odd menagerie, through a tank-like helmet. The patients were the few who had taken the disease worse. The “mori” as the ward was now called, the dying. It was like most wards in the hospital, only a few remained for organ functioning issues and older diseases.

Lola had worked in a hospital before, at the beginning of the pandemic. They needed every doctor or nurse they could get there hands on, barely even skimmed the qualifications. Then she fell ill.

She had mild symptoms, but highly contagious, and although half of western world had caught the disease, she was put in quarantine.

Here.

The room itself wasn’t bad. It was a tad creepy, with its long and thin layout, reminiscent of the hallway in the Shining. It was both too intimidatingly large, and too tight. Her head felt heavy and her ears overwhelmed at the sound of the “mori”.

The coughing, the groaning, screeching, scratching, cries of bloody murder. It shook her.

She walked through to the end of the ward, past rows of patients, skin pink toned and flaky, separated from her by a clear barrier. There eyes had fully dilated, so much so that the iris was indistinguishable. Lola eyed the grey floor, looking down at the stains and indents it held. She didn’t care to look closer at each patient. She knew the effects, she had seen them in her son and her wife, seen them just before her father died, all over the news.

The first symptom that showed was hard to differentiate from the old cold, or the 2020s corona virus; sharp, phlegm filled coughs. By this time, it was already almost incurable. Second, the gradual pupil dilation. Difficult to notice in cocaine addicts or similar, but not impossible. Finally, the most obvious symptom, the skin changes; flaky, punk-hued, rashed, lined with scars and breakage. It was grotesque, and by the time this symptoms rears it’s head, it’s far too late.

Lola shook her head, trying to rid the memories of her families complexion from her loud mind.

As she walked, she noticed the cries of the mori began to become more distant, and she began to approach the less affected.

She entered the clear cubicle in which her name was painted. In the cubicle adjacent she could see a normal looking man, dark skin and a broad face. He looked as if he’d once been relatively strong, but weakness had felled him like a fallen forest.

In the corner of every cubicle was a system that allowed fresh air to skitter through. They also had a pill to fulfill hunger, and a good supply of water. Lola could survive here if the disease remained docile.

But she would never truly live.