#usub

Reference for the new character introduced in chapter 4 of “Upon Strung Up Bass”

The morning began, as it always did, with a rude awakening coming from the pod on the bedside table. At precisely 6 the morning, the rather unwelcome voice of the American president, Nathan Springs, emanated from the beside table of every person in American territory: “Rise and shine everyone! It’s time for another wonderful day, where you will meet and talk to lots of other people. Remember, it’s your responsibility as polite members of society to act happy all the time you’re around others. That goes for you especially medics! Keep our soldiers morals up high! Have a happy day!” The voice cut off again, and silence settled into the house.

Matheo Dubois, a half-eaten bowl of cereal in front of him, grimaced slightly. The president’s message was always so, for lack of a better word, cheerful, yet he, along with most other adults, understood the threat that hid below the surface. At the beginning of his job as a medic he had tended to a soldier who had complained, for a fleeting moment, about the war, about the government, and, god forbid, about the president himself. He had come back the next day to find his bed empty, and no explanation except for the determinedly smiling faces of the staff, who seemed more strained than usual. He sighed slightly, before throwing his food away. Such was the way of life now. The peaceful days he had only briefly known as a child were destroyed by the war, and he had adapted to it, as the complaining soldier should have. So then, why did he feel sorry for him?

The winds outside were harsh, but, like everyone else, Matheo could do nothing but fix a determined smile on his face and cope. He had gotten a minimal amount of sleep the night before, due to a surge in violence, but by now it should have calmed down, so he could go back to treating his regulars and occasionally some new patients. Just a regular day, and worth smiling about, if not quite as much as he was. Yes, he thought, today will be calm.

However, when he reached the hospital it was in turmoil. His first thought was that the president had ordered another hopeless raid, not satisfied with just the blood of the soldiers who had died the night before… He cut that train of thought off fast though, lest it interfere with his cheerful expression. As he entered the hospital though, he didn’t see the normal crush of people in the waiting room, the staff running from place to place, staunching blood flow here, giving an injection there, ushering some soldiers out once they were patched up. Instead, he noticed that the nurses were all running in and out of one room, with the doctors nowhere to be seen. They also seemed to be wearing masks, something even he, after working for the medical team here almost 10 years, hadn’t seen them do often. He stood there, still smiling but looking almost frightened, for around 5 minutes, until one of the nurses noticed him and he was handed a mask before being shoved into the room.

At first he was almost disappointed, then relieved, to see that it was just a small girl- no mare than 9- coughing and crying, while her parents and the rest of the medical team gathered around her. He wasn’t able to enjoy this rare emotion long though, for it soon hit him: if this was just a little girl coughing, why were they all wearing masks? Interested, he pushed his way to the front, where the head doctor, Dr. Fallway, was puzzling over the girl’s arm. Dubois followed his gaze, and was shocked at what he saw. The skin on her arm seemed almost to be crumbling away, as though it was made of ash, not living cells. He knelt down to examine it, his smile straining as he tried to stop himself frowning. In all his years, he’d never seen anything like it. He turned to the parents, who were standing out of the way of the doctors. “Do you have any idea what could have caused this?” He was not in the mood for introducing himself.

The girl’s mother looked at him through eyes that were shiny with unshed tears. She seemed ready to cry and scream, but she still smiled, looking almost demented when it mixed with her melancholic eyes. “The soldiers came to our house the other day. They-” She broke off to hold back tears covering her mouth, but after a few seconds she took a shaky breath and continued. “They asked to borrow her, to test something for the good of all of us. They brought her back at midnight, and her skin has been crumbling since…”

All at once, Matheo understood. They were losing in the war, so the government had decided to introduce something new into the game, for he now saw that to them this must all be a game. They must be planning to release it into the enemy’s ranks somehow, and incapacitate them so that the army could regroup and plan. However, the more likely explanation was that the disease was supposed to kill… He couldn’t tell her family this. Even the suggestion that he knew what the government was doing wouldn’t serve well. Instead, he ushered the distraught parents out, telling them to go home and rest. “We’ll do all we can. I’m sure she has contributed to the war effort though, and thus served our glorious empire, so take pride in her.” He spoke in a flat tone, that sounded fake even to him. Still, it served to give them a false sense of hope, and they thanked him profusely before leaving with promises to return in the evening. He didn’t wait to see their forms dwindle in the distance, instead turning away, staring at the poster of the president giving him a wide, almost smug, smile, as if it could answer his questions. Then he gathered his courage and experience around him to shield him from the child, and the fact that he had no clue how to save her, or indeed if he could, before stepping back over the threshold to deal with what he knew would be an exhausting day.

—————————————–

The sun was long gone, hidden by the horizon, and most of the day staff had been replaced by their counterparts who worked throughout the night, yet Matheo lingered. He had been told twice already to go home and leave the other doctors to tend to the child that had been brought into the ward almost 17 hours ago. They tried to tell him that there was nothing he could do, that she was going to die soon anyway if her flesh kept crumbling, but he still refused to leave before seeing the fate that befell her. In the hours since he had arrived, the crumbling flesh had advanced from each of her limbs, prolonging her suffering, but now it was reaching her heart. They had placed her under anesthetic a few hours ago to ease her passing, so now all he could do was watch her heartbeat on the monitor and listen to the rain lashing against the glass from outside. For now the beeps were steady, but soon they would begin to slow, and eventually she would be gone. He clutched the letter he had written for her parents in his hand, wishing that he could have done something, that one of the drugs they had given her had worked. He sighed bitterly, forgetting himself for a moment in his anger towards the government. He hoped at least that they had gotten something meaningful out of killing a child. They certainly hadn’t been able to treat it before it had completely destroyed her, but he suspected that, once it had been introduced, it would only take doctors on the other side a few days, possibly a week, to work out how to cure it. No plans could be made in that time, due to the almost glacial pace the government worked, and they would be in the same position that they were in to begin with.

At around half past ten the girl died. Matheo left straight after, to fight his way through the rain until he made it home. He wasn’t upset about her death. He had left the letter he had written to her parents with the staff for when they came in to see her in the morning, and he had no attachment to her himself. He had never even bothered to learn her name, which was normal procedure for patients that weren’t expected to survive. Learning names only complicated things, attached them to him. He had learnt over the years that when you worked in the hospitals during wars like the one going on at the moment, it wasn’t worth getting attached to people, so their deaths wouldn’t hurt as much. No, he wasn’t sad about her death, just angry. Angry that, of all people, they had chosen a child, who had barely begun her life, to test a clearly deadly disease on. Though he would never say any of that to anyone else, in his thoughts he was free to stew, and to rage about the injustice of the whole situation. Then again, the world was not fair these days. And so, he decided to also push the rage to a remote corner of his mind, to be safe. One never knew what the government would come up with next.

——————- Matheo never slept well, but it was even worse tonight, if that was even possible. He spent most of the night trying to work out how they could possibly staunch the flow of the drug. He expected that they would be getting a few more test subjects in the coming days, for if he knew anything about the government it was that they didn’t like to test their hair-brained schemes just once. No, normally when they tested new weapons around 10 victims turned up, so he assumed that this would amount to the same thing. It was likely that they wouldn’t find all of the victims, as the people chosen to be used were mainly the vulnerable ones, such as the homeless, or people from mental health clinics. The homeless, and any people who lived alone would be unable to make it to the hospital depending on where the disease begun, but he wasn’t willing to lose whoever turned up.

He guessed that the disease first appeared where it entered the skin, so they could possibly cut the affected limb off. However, if it was circulated by the blood, they wouldn’t just be able to amputate it, and instead would likely have to absorb it somehow. The problem was, they simply didn’t know enough about the disease to combat it effectively. He supposed that they would just have to use trial and error. So, while brainstorming ways to halt its progression, Matheo fell asleep.

Hey there! I very much enjoyed this. The idea is so original and your attention to detail is fantastic. I’m sorry that it took so bloody long for me to respond, but if this is still worth anything, this would get an A+ on a school project, in my opinion. 

My apologies for the unannounced hiatus. A lot has been going on lately and as much as I want to keep a weekly update going, it isn't healthy for me or good for the story if I push my creative drive despite my lack of motivation.

I will now be updating Upon Strung Up Bass every two weeks until I'm able to do otherwise. I will start updating again next week.