Chapter 4

Chapter 4

      She asked her resident if she could go home early, since Dr. Crane had given her special treatment, she was able to leave, no questions asked. When she got to her car she started to drive back to her apartment. Her apartment was only 10 minutes away from the hospital, which at the time she thought was a lucky coincidence, now she thought it was part of the plan, whatever the plan may be.  It wasn’t until she got to the parking lot that she remembered she had a squirrel squirming around in her backpack. She would eat that when she got up to her place then she would start researching as much as she could on her disease. Claire ate her squirrel over the sink to try an avoid making a big mess to clean up, she wanted to get to researching soon, she had to go back to work in 7 hours and she wanted to learn as much as she could.

      After she finished her dinner, she started by Googling “Carnivisouritis haemoglobis” only to find a single article that was written by Dr. Alexander Crane. She couldn’t remember if she had seen this after he diagnosed her, and if she had she didn’t know his name at that time. She quickly skimmed over the article. It was a lot of medical jargon about the effects of the disease, and how to treat and diagnose it.  It was a long article, with a ton of information about those suffering from the disease. Dr. Crane wrote that there were only 10 people in the world who were known to have this disease. He didn’t mention them often and when he did it was extremely vague. Then she got to a section that was titled: “The Positive Effects Carnivisouritis Haemoglobis Can Have on the Human Race.”

      Claire knew this was what she was looking for, this had to be the reason they needed her at the hospital. She began to read the section. Her eyes widened, her mouth gaped, and dinner came up. Claire was beyond shocked; she quickly cleaned up her vomit and looked back at the monitor. What Dr. Alexander Crane had in mind for her was beyond sickening. He wanted to observe her eating habits�"hence the feeding room�"then he wanted to start experiments. Not blood drawings, or blood pressure testing, no. What he wanted to do was tear her apart, while she was conscious. He had a theory that people with her disease could regenerate. He hypothesized that if a person effected with Carnivisouritis haemoglobis could have the ability to regenerate their limbs, organs, blood cells, and anything else you could think of. He also hypothesized that if the DNA, of someone with her disease, was harvested while they were in the process of regeneration, it could provide regenerative DNA that could be given to those with missing limbs or burned flesh. None of that was what made her vomit up her dinner. It was how he planned to test it. He wanted to feed her all of the animals that were in her feeding room and after she was done he had planned to ambush her. To knock her out and then wake her up when she was strapped down to start testing her possible regenerative abilities. Dr. Crane wanted to cut off every finger, every toe, and wait to see if they would grow back. He wanted to cut off her arms, legs, breasts, to see what would grow back. After seeing if the limbs could grow back, he would open her up and cut out each one of her organs to see what would grow back. After all of that he would cut off her head to see if that would grow back. He wanted to test her limits, limits that she didn’t even know she had. Never did she think she had regenerative properties.

      Claire had a realization about the feeding room at that moment. She realized why there were larger animals. Dr. Crane wanted to know if she would regenerate if they attempted to scratch or bite her. He was testing her limits in the feeding room. She thought this feeding room was a gift. She couldn’t believe what she had just read. She sat there in disbelief for the next hour; running through everything in her head, over and over again. Everything he had done for her, giving her the mice when she hadn’t yet learned how to hunt; pushing her to hunt so she could get used to her new lifestyle. He wasn’t helping her he was grooming her, for his own experiments. He was probably hoping she would come across a larger animal and get hurt, only to go to him and see that the injury was gone. He was never there for her as she thought he was only there for himself. Claire was sick to her stomach and filled with rage. She could not believe that she hadn’t seen this article before. But she had never really researched her disease; she believed everything Dr. Crane had said. She checked the date of the article. It was one week after she discovered her disease. He started working on this after he found out about her. Either he lied in his article and she was the only person with this disease that he had met, or he didn’t tell her about the others. Either way, she was disgusted with him.

      This was the first time she had ever been disgusted with someone other than herself. She was shocked because of how nurturing he was towards her when she was just learning about her disease. Claire had always thought of him as another father figure, he pushed her to get used to her diet, he gave her food when she couldn’t get it herself. She relied on him, told him about the kids at school; he was there for her when her parents weren’t. It was appalling that he would be so kind to her and still write an article about wanting to cut her apart piece by piece to see if she would grow back. The betrayal wasn’t the only thing that had Claire’s head spinning, but the possibility that she could have regenerative abilities astounded her. She never thought that was possible, science has basically proven that there was no way. Sure, she’s seen movies about it but those were fictional movies, with fictional characters, and a fictional plot.

      Claire never thought that that could be possible, next thing she knew she was standing up and walking towards her kitchen to take out a chef’s knife. She paused for a moment with the knife in her hand, and then she lowered it onto her left wrist and slit her wrist. There was a lot of blood; she probably should have tried horizontally instead of vertically. She stared at her wrist waiting for it to do something that resembled regeneration. Staring and watching the blood drip from her forearm making a puddle onto the floor. She kept staring, she had no idea how much time went by before she started to get dizzy. She went to her sink and put a towel over the cut the try to stop the bleeding. If Dr. Crane had tried to cut off her fingers and toes she would be fingerless and toeless. She had no regenerative abilities, just as she had thought. Claire put a tight bandage around her wrist and took out a long sleeve shirt to wear for work she didn’t want anyone thinking she was suicidal. She still had 4 hours before her shift started to she decided to relax her brain and rest for a bit.

 

      When she woke up she looked at her arm expecting it to have bled through her bandages but she was surprised to see that there was no blood. Shocked, she took her bandages off and with stunned disbelief she saw no marks on her wrist. She thought she was going crazy so she checked both arms to make sure that she was really seeing what she thought she was seeing. There was no way that she had regenerative abilities. Claire kept running this through here mind as she mindlessly got ready for work. She was about to leave when she had a thought, how am I going to eat? They were obviously watching her in that feeding room. There must have been cameras somewhere in there. She didn’t want to be watched while she ate, she also didn’t want them to think that she had any abilities that would give them reason to start chopping off her toes. She decided she would play it cool, act like nothing was wrong, and keep going about her business as usual. She just wouldn’t eat any of the larger animals.

      When she got to work she saw Dr. Crane waiting for her at the receptionist. “Where did you run off too so quickly last night?” Great he’s keeping tabs on me too, thought Claire.

“Oh, I wasn’t feeling to well, I think that…rabbit upset my stomach.”

“Hmmm, I’m sorry to hear that Claire. Well we can take the rest of them out of there and replace it with something else. Do you have a preference?”

“No, I think the amount of animals in there now would make up for the rabbits. Don’t worry about it Dr. Crane! I have to go I don’t want to be late for rounds!”

Before he could answer Claire was off to the locker rooms. She didn’t dare to look back; she kept her eyes facing forward and ignored the eyes she felt on her back as she walked away. She knew there would be no way to hide in the feeding room but she was going to look for the cameras when she was in there for lunch. They must have installed them somewhere, how else would they see if she had any abilities they didn’t know about. So she went to the locker room and got her new duties for the day. She was supposed to do rounds on all of her resident’s patients. Claire knew she should show off her skills just in case this was all in her head. But, she couldn’t help herself; she left the locker room and went directly to the feeding room. As she was about to open the door she had a thought, if there are cameras in there they will wonder why I came early, and why I didn’t do my tasks beforehand. So before she opened the door she looked around her, acting like she was lost, and saw there were 2 cameras that had their electronic eyes on her. She turned around and went back to the elevator to go to where her resident’s patients were. By the time she was done it was well past lunch time so she figured now would be a good time to go back. Claire was on her way down when the elevator stopped and Dr. Crane came in. Her heart dropped to the bottom of her stomach, but she could hear it pounding, loudly, in her hears. “On your way to get lunch, Claire?” asked Dr. Crane.

“Yes. I’ve been busy with rounds all day so far! This has been my first chance to go down there today.” She was trying to sound laid back, but flustered from being busy with her second day.

“Well that’s good, that you’re busy I mean, would you mind if you and I spoke later today? Maybe you could meet me in the lobby at 7pm?”

Claire was dumbfounded. Why was he asking to speak to her, was he planning on telling her about his mid-evil plan for her?

“Yeah sure, I don’t see why not. I should be done by then.” Her light yet flustered tone had wavered when she said this, but he pretended not to notice when his floor came. “Okay I will see you then.”

Claire waited till all the other people were out of the elevator before she started to hyperventilate for a brief moment. But she had compose herself before the elevator got to her floor otherwise the electronic eyes might see and suspect something. So when the elevator doors opened she looked calm and collected but hungry. She opened the door and looked around again. She didn’t want to make her search for the cameras obvious, so she pretended to be gazing at all of the animals with longing, as she did the day before. She saw 4 or 5 cameras throughout the feeding room. There would be no way to eat without their eyes on her. She decided to keep up her façade and behave as she normally would before eating a meal. She looked at each cage trying to decide what to eat. She almost stopped at the rabbits but then she remembered she had made up a lie about them bothering her stomach. So she kept walking around. She stopped at the chickens. She had never had a chicken before, couldn’t find those in the woods in her parents backyard. But, she thought of the claws that they had so she passed those as well. Then she saw the guinea pig cage. She didn’t see the harm in trying one so she reached in and took it out. She carried it over to the table and rubbed it as she did with the rabbit before. Just as she did before, as she always did, she stared at the guinea pig, in shock that not only was this her meal, but she was being watched as she ate this defenseless guinea pig. She stared longer than usual because the thought of someone watching her was making her lose her appetite. But she didn’t want them to think something was wrong so she waited another five minutes and took her first bite.

      Something didn’t taste right, the guinea pig’s blood was bitter. It made her gag, and she spat it out. She looked at the bleeding guinea pig in her hands and saw that its blood wasn’t flowing as fast as it should be. At first she thought she was imagining it, so she took a second bite, but the same thing happened, the blood was so bitter and the flesh was unbelievably chewy, she spat the second chunk of guinea pig flesh out. She threw the guinea pig down and rinsed out her mouth, washed her hands, and examined the carcass a bit more. She noticed something odd; it had a mark on the bottom of its stomach, close to where she had taken her first bites. She tried to look closer, but before she even knew what was happening, her eyes were closing and she was falling to the floor in the feeding room.