Chosen by Christine Pope (free children's ebooks pdf txt) 📕
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What must her temperature be? I had no way of knowing, but I wondered how anyone could stay alive and conscious — even the fragile consciousness she was clinging to right now — while suffering such a high fever.
“Taylor, here’s the water.” She didn’t seem capable of taking the bottle herself, so I held it to her lips. For a second she didn’t move, only let the opening rest against her mouth, and then some lizard-brain function must have kicked in, because she latched onto it and drank greedily while I tilted the rest of the bottle’s contents into her mouth. Within a few seconds, all the water was gone.
“That’s all,” I told her, but she didn’t seem to understand, even lifting one hand to grab at the bottle when I began to pull it away. “Just rest, Taylor. Please. The ambulance will be here soon.”
That, of course, was a lie. I had no idea what “longer-than-normal response times” might mean, since I’d never called an ambulance for anyone in my life. My father might know, but even if I could get a hold of him, which I doubted, he’d probably read me the riot act for not getting out of there the second Taylor started to display symptoms. Or maybe not. He was pretty big on the whole “serve and protect” mentality.
Right now, though, I had a feeling I was on my own.
I pulled my cell phone out of my jeans pocket where I’d stowed it and looked at the time. Fifteen minutes since I’d called 911. It felt roughly ten times that. A quarter-hour response time wasn’t great, but it also didn’t feel too outside what might be considered normal. I might be waiting much, much longer than this. Biting my lip, I went to my contacts list and pushed the button for campus security, since I figured they might be faster than the paramedics, but the line was busy. I ended the call and tried again. Still nothing. Damn it.
As if finally registering that there was no more water, Taylor slumped back in her seat, head tilting to one side. Her body was twitching feebly. Some kind of convulsion? Again, my lack of experience with any kind of serious illness stymied me. Maybe it would be better for her to lie down, but the linoleum floor had to be far less comfortable than the chair. Since it had been a warm day, nearly eighty degrees, she didn’t have a sweater or jacket that I could lay her on, and I hadn’t brought one with me, either.
Never before in my life had I felt so useless, standing there and watching as the sweat rolled off her and she continued to jerk helplessly, like her body was being controlled by some unseen puppeteer. I went to the browser on my phone, thinking that maybe I could click over to WebMD or something and see if there was anything else I could do to help her, but no matter how many times I backed out of the browser app and tried to refresh it, I couldn’t get the damn thing to connect. It wasn’t the first time my phone had acted up like this, but in general I had good connectivity here at school. I had a feeling the phone wasn’t the real problem.
But no, I didn’t want to think about that. I didn’t want to think about what might be going on outside the door to my classroom, what might be happening to my parents or my brother.
No, I thought fiercely. They’re fine. They have to be.
Just when I was about to give up and dial 911 again, the door burst inward, and two men carrying a stretcher entered the classroom. Thank God you’re here died on my lips, because they weren’t wearing the usual dark jackets and pants of EMTs, but full head-to-toe yellow biohazard suits, the kind of gear I’d seen on TV on doctors and nurses treating people with Ebola.
They went straight to Taylor, extricated her from her desk, and laid her down on the stretcher. Once they were done with that and she was strapped in, one of them turned toward me.
“Name?”
I guessed they were asking about Taylor, not me. “Taylor Ortiz,” I told him. “That’s her purse right there on the floor. It should have her I.D. in it.”
The EMT grabbed her purse by the strap and lifted it from the floor, then extracted her wallet from within. He opened it, glanced at her driver’s license, and then nodded and dropped the wallet back in her purse. “You?”
“Me?” I blinked at him, then responded, “Jessica Monroe. I’m the T.A.”
“How are you feeling?”
Scared. “Fine. That is, I don’t feel like I’m running a fever or anything.” Did that even matter? I hadn’t heard what the incubation period was for the Heat, but I assumed it didn’t have instantaneous onset. No disease did…or did it?
“Go straight home,” the EMT said. “No contact with anyone else. If you start to exhibit symptoms, don’t call your doctor. Go straight to the hospital.”
“But….” The word trailed off as I attempted to gather my thoughts. Something about this didn’t feel right. No, wait, scratch that — nothing about it felt right. I’d been exposed to someone who obviously had the Heat. Shouldn’t they be quarantining me or something?
The EMT’s hooded head tilted to one side as he waited for me to spit it out.
I said, “If she’s sick, haven’t I been infected, too? Don’t I, I don’t know, have to be isolated or something?”
“We don’t have the facilities for that. Best thing to do is go home and stay away from other people. If you do get sick, get to the hospital. That’s all I can tell you.”
Then he nodded at his compatriot, and they both crouched down and lifted the stretcher, hauling Taylor out of the room. It was only after the door had shut behind them that I realized they’d left her purse behind, as if who she was didn’t matter.
My phone went off then, and I looked down at the text that had just appeared on my home screen. Due to health emergency, all classes are suspended indefinitely. We ask that all students go to their residences immediately and remain there until further notice.
So the university’s student alert system had finally kicked in.
Too bad that it was already too late.
The campus was mostly deserted when I emerged from the classroom at a little before noon and locked the door behind me. In a way that was good, as at least I didn’t have to play dodge ’em with anyone who looked infected. But there was still a long line of cars waiting to get out of the parking lot, and I sat there, worry mounting as the minutes ticked past.
What did it feel like when the Heat came over you? A sudden spike in temperature? Or was it a slow, gradual burn, until you, like a lobster in a pot, ended up boiling in your own juices?
I didn’t know. And all this had happened so quickly that there hadn’t been much detail on the news, either. Or maybe they’d repressed what they did know, lest they throw everyone into a panic.
At last I was able to pull out on Central, then headed west. Did I dare take the freeway to get home? All around me, the streets were choked, full of people obviously trying to get to their own homes, so I had a feeling the freeway was a very bad idea. Instead, I ended up zigzagging my way out of the downtown area, finally making it over to 12th so I could head north. A few more zigzags, and then I was back in a residential section, although still a few miles from home. There was less traffic here, although I noticed more cars on the streets than there normally would have been in the middle of the day when everyone should have been at work.
A sigh of relief escaped my lips as I pulled up in front of the house and I saw my mother’s Escape parked in the driveway. No sign of Dad’s Grand Cherokee, or the police cruiser he sometimes brought home. But at least my mother was here.
I scrambled out of the car, then hurried down the driveway to let myself in the
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