They had no idea what was wrong with her, though they had a strong feeling that is was some sort of infection attacking her central nervous system. The heart monitor frantically beeped with her heart rate. The topical heat sensors placed on her forehead recorded her body temperature as still rising at a hundred and fifteen degrees. The truth was that that she should’ve already died or at least passed out, but she was still alive, screaming in sheer agony and convulsing in the wrist and ankle restraints.
Despite her fever and flailing, she did not sweat, she was actually drying out. Her lips had thinned ashen white with deep red cracks carved into them; her eyes were fully dilated, the irises had been drawn into tight blue rims surrounding her gaping black pupils. Each faded eyebrow was forced upwards and her once pearly bright teeth had been stained by bleeding gums.
Patches of thin hair barely wisped from her head; long blonde strands had been falling out since the morning before. When she was admitted with a mild fever, her cheeks were a little rosy, but her rampaging temperature since then had burnt her skin scarlet, all except her knuckles, which were stark white.
Through wet sobs and dry gasps her parents plead over and over again. “Why aren’t you doing anything? Why won’t you help her? Save her. Save her!” but they were trying, doing the best they could. The nurses brought in towels wrapped around ice, hoping to cool her off. The doctors had given her antibiotics, sedatives, paralyzers, painkillers, but nothing did anything to ease her suffering. They knew nothing about this mystery illness and were prepared to tell the parents the worst.
“No, not that. Anything but that.” Objected the parents to the possibility of ultimately ending the girl’s suffering. “Are there anymore options? Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure?”
The girl’s fever spiked past one-hundred thirty degrees, she should’ve been dead. One-hundred and thirty five degrees, her screams persisted and increased in volume. One-hundred and forty, the doctors were sure that some sort of record was broken. One-hundred and forty-five, the screams became dry and grainy, redness exploded into the white of her left eye. One-hundred and fifty degrees, she was still conscious, the screams stopped, long before the nurses had stopped bringing in the towels of ice.
At a hundred and sixty degrees her skin began to crawl, moving in rippling red waves. Pale blotches broke the uniform hot scarlet of her skin; they began to bulge. White boils grew all over her body as her skin literally began to bubble. The pale boils turned pink and then cherry red as they swelled into large tomato-like cysts. The heart monitor flat-lined and immediately, like a million tiny volcanoes, the boils erupted, spraying the entire room and everything in it with a pressured crimson mist.
The sterile white walls, the checkered floor and the ceiling tiles were flecked with droplets of hot blood. The parents’ already wet eyes stung with the heat of the daughter’s fluids, the doctors and nurses coughed and vomited as the cloud choked their throats and burned their nostrils.
After a few moments, the mist mostly cleared away, the parents stood over the completely unrecognizable corpse. Its bone and tissue blackened, a rose-colored mist rising from it.
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