Preview Chapter

This is a preview chapter from my book, Faith After Death. It takes place one-third of the way into the book. Warning for language.

Overview - Rafael is an Emergency Room doctor that has been witness to the decimation of the human race. Earlier in the book, he became witness to the first death from the flu and watched as the victim's body, like all the subsequent victims, disintegrated into a fine powder. The reader is now aware that this scourge is world-wide, but for Raf, he is still coming to grips to the disappearing world around him.

Definition of a term - Neural - this term is defined earlier in the book.  A neural is a device that is inserted in the ear that allows communication via the person's cell phone using their thoughts.

Rafael

Friday, October 2, 2065

Branson, Missouri

Rafael Pasquariello opened his eyes. He was somewhere between asleep and awake. A dream about his parents was fresh in his mind and he tried to reconcile the diminishing memories of the dream with the mop that was leaning on the wall across the small room. The scents of his mother’s flowers were so real but were being replaced with the smell of ammonia and soap. He allowed himself a moment of sadness that the dream of his parents was waning. He knew they were gone, but his hope was that the dream of them would come back to him each night and keep them alive.

He slowly rolled onto his side and looked around at the storage closet that had been his bedroom for the past week. His waking lethargy left him when he remembered what was outside the closet door. The only thing waiting for him was an empty Emergency Room.

Raf sat up in the bed and lifted the sheet away from himself. It was saturated with sweat. His face and hair were dripping and his scrubs were soaked through. When he had fallen into bed some hours earlier he felt hot and was starting to experience chills. He thought it was his time and that the hours with sick and dying patients had finally caught up with him. Right now though, he felt healthy. Whatever temperature he had, had broken, and the soreness he was experiencing over the past day was gone.

He grabbed the backpack with his personals and walked out of the closet, still expecting to be inundated with noise and activity. He was met instead with near silence. Each of the E.R. room's lights was on, so he was able to look down the long empty hallway. The only sounds were the air conditioning that was still blowing, and an occasional beep from equipment. The clock on the wall said three fifteen A.M. Raf had slept for ten hours. His habitual reaction as a doctor was to feel guilty for sleeping so long but when there is no one to care for, there is no need to wake up.

After making his way to the E.R. nurse’s station, Raf pulled a chair in front of one of the monitors. He opened up a browser and navigated to the Google News page. It had not been updated in the past three days, the headline still with the same title: Armageddon Has Arrived! He looked at his empty email inbox and thought to himself that he would never have to check for mail again.

He sat back and sighed. With no messages, and after getting no answers when going through his entire contact list the day before, the reality had set in. Everyone he knew was probably gone, and he was alone.

Raf picked up the receiver on the stations phone and it still had a connection. He flipped on the hospital wide intercom. He slowly said, “This is Dr. Pasquariello in the E.R. Department. If anyone is able to hear me, pick up any phone and dial three-three-seven. The phone system is still operational. Dial three-three-seven and I will answer. If you are unable to get to a phone, find a red button on the wall and push it. I will come to you.”

Raf waited for a minute, but no one called, and there were no emergency notices sounded. He made the announcement again with the same result. He then dialed nine-one-one, but the call ended up in with a recording telling him the Branson Police Department and Emergency Services were no longer operational. The message said to call the hospital directly.

He decided to give hope one more chance and reached into his backpack. He grabbed his neural, and placed it into his ear. Raf then called his parent’s home, expecting to get some sort of message that the call could not go through. The call connected though, and with each ring his heart rate elevated. Raf still had the hope that his dad would answer with his usual corny line, “It’s your dime, start talking!” What he heard was, once again, the answering machine message from his mom: “Hello Raf, we’re not here right now sweetheart. Leave a message and we’ll call you back. Love you!”

He had held out hope that his own resistance to the flu somehow might mean his parents were also able to avoid it. The last message he had from them was three days ago saying that they were going to see Dr. Martin. Raf had been so wrapped up in the E.R., that he missed their call. With no word from them since, he could only assume his worst fears were correct as to why they needed to see the family physician.

He reached into one of the desk drawers and found an empty data disk. Putting it into the desktop machine that was in front of him, Raf proceeded to download all the data he could find on the hospital and research servers pertaining to the flu. He then walked over to the locker and took out three digital tablets, a solar charger, and some batteries. He wasn’t sure how much longer he would be able to resist the flu, but he would do what he could to understand what was doing this. At least he may be able to satisfy his own curiosity.

As he loaded everything into his backpack, something caught his attention. It was a subtle noise. It happened over and over. Thump… Thump… Thump…

It was coming from down the hallway by the side entrance to the E.R. where the ambulance bays were. His interest in the noise was not as strong as his sense of security. After a number of panicked patients had become violent, tight security was the norm over the last few days. He walked over to an administrator’s desk and took the steel baton out of the drawer.

Raf headed down the hallway, passing empty bed after empty bed. When he passed bed seven he saw that the curtains were still closed. The day before, he had wheeled his last patient into bed seven.

Miriam Gildershtein, a ninety year old woman, had been barely conscious when he first saw her. He had no idea how she had made it to the hospital. She seemed to appear out of nowhere in the waiting room. Given what he had learned from the hundreds of other patients he had seen over the week, she was minutes from what was being called ‘the flashpoint’. It was the moment the blood’s corrosive properties brought on by the flu broke down the circulatory system and started to attack the body. He could smell the faint, sweet odor on her breath that started when the blood began to solidify and turn acidic.

He retrieved a lethal dose of Morphine and Potassium Chloride from the cart in the hallway. After it was clear that there was nothing for physicians to do for patients, a Presidential executive order provided doctors the option to decide on euthanasia for patients like Miriam. To avoid the tremendous pain the patient was subjected to, it was imperative to administer the drugs before the flashpoint.

His nurse, Nina, was with him when they moved Miriam into bed seven. When they had her hooked up to the monitor, Raf called Nina into the hallway. She was the only other remaining staff in the E.R., maybe in the entire hospital. For the better part of a week, her smile and purple scrubs with the big smiling Teddy Bear on the back had provided him with needed motivation, and at times led to a smile.

“Nina, it’s time for you to go,” Raf said to her. “There’s nothing else here, and you need to see about your family”.

The tears immediately started welling up in Nina’s eyes. She had resisted Raf each time he told her to leave. “Dr. Raf, I can’t. You need help. I can’t leave you here alone.” She was now sobbing. “Besides, I don’t know what I’ll find when I get home.“

Raf looked down on her and said, “Nina, your parents cannot travel, they need you there.” He reached over to a counter and grabbed a few syringes. “I’m sorry about this, but you have to be there for them. Do you understand?” He was being more forceful than he wanted, but based on what she had told him about a conversation she had with her parents earlier in the day, they would not survive much longer.

She put her head onto his chest and wrapped her arms around him. Her voice was muffled as she hugged him harder. “I know, I can do it.” With one more squeeze, she let go of him, and took the syringes. She came back to him and kissed his cheek. “Thank you Dr. Raf. You’ve done so much for me, for everyone here. I wanted you to at least hear one, ‘thank you’.”

He smiled and kissed the top of her head. “Go. God be with you,” he said holding back any emotions.

As Nina walked away Raf took one more glance at the Teddy Bear and said a quiet prayer for her.

When she turned the corner and was out of his sight, he walked back to Mrs. Gildershtein who was now unconscious. Her blood pressure was dropping and her pulse was under twenty. Raf had to look twice at her heart rhythm which was nearly flat-lined. He knew she was in no position to feel any pain, but continued any way.

Raf knew that she might be able to hear him so he talked to her. “Miriam honey, I will make sure you don’t feel this at all. God bless.”

He started the IV and by the time he had it in, her pulse and blood pressure dropped to zero causing an alarm on the cardiac cart to go off. Raf hung the bag of saline on the IV hook, then turned and grabbed the syringe with the lethal dose of drugs off of the counter behind him. He then reached over and turned off the alarm on the cart.

When he turned around, Raf jumped backwards. The woman’s hands were inches from his face reaching to him. Her eyes were wide open and her mouth silently screamed. Raf looked over at the monitor at Miriam’s vitals. They were each zero and her heart rhythm was flat-lined.

Raf put the syringe down and grabbed her shoulders, gently pushing her back down onto the bed. She offered no resistance, but reached up and grabbed his hands. She was whispering something that he could not hear, so he moved closer. When he stood over her, she grabbed his head pulling his ear inches from her mouth.

Her words were steady and perfectly clear. “Rafael, go with your protector. Stay near. You will be kept safe. We need you to save the man. We need you to be careful so you can save him. You're the only one that can. Have faith that when the time comes, you can save him.”

Raf pulled away from her with a start. He took a step back and nearly fell over as his foot hit the leg of the table next to him. He wanted to ask her what she was talking about but as he looked into her eyes he saw the flashpoint starting. Her pupils started to dilate, and her irises melded with the whites of her eyes in a whirl of brightening red streaks. Raf quickly inserted the needle into the IV, but before pushing the drugs into her, took one last look and tried to get an answer.

“Who are you talking about?” he asked.

Her face was now ashen, her eyes bright red and rolled back. When her neck started to tighten he knew it was starting. Raf pushed the plunger on the syringe and sent the drugs into her body. She immediately relaxed and her body became limp. In another few seconds, Raf knew for certain that she was gone. He stepped out and pulled the curtains shut on bed seven, too tired to move her body to the makeshift morgue at the end of the hall.

Now, some twelve hours later, as he walked past the curtains to find out what the noise was, he wondered about her words; “You have to save him”.

He slowly walked down the long hallway, into the dark E.R. receiving area. There were four large garage doors where ambulances would back in to drop patients. The doors were each closed, so Raf walked over to the sliding doors next to the bays. The noise was coming from the outside landing, but he could not get the inside doors to open. He stepped again on the pressure plate but still nothing. He walked up to the glass and could make out that the automated outside door was indeed the source of the noise. As it tried to close it was hitting something on the ground.

Raf gave a thought to breaking the glass with his baton, but instead walked back to the receiving room and opened the first bay door. He walked outside onto the driveway and shivered as the cold air hit his sweat soaked shirt. It was too dark to see, so he walked back to the bay entrance and turned on the switches located on the wall inside.

With the entire area now lit up, he stopped and looked out at the parking lot. There were cars parked and stalled everywhere, most not within any lines but at odd angles. Many appeared to have been left in the lot in a hurry, the drivers rushing into the hospital. Rafael had already dealt with the fact that those people had rushed to him for help, but the only thing he could offer was a less painful death.

He turned the corner, walked up to see, finally, what was making the noise and immediately stopped. The door was trying to close but was being stopped by sneakers laying on the track. Lying inside the doors was a pile of clothes with the powdery remains of a human body. Rafael felt the tears start and he fell to one knee. He picked up the purple clothing, seeing the smiling Teddy Bear looking back at him. He fell backwards and sat against the brick wall.

“You selfish son of a b***h,” he said out loud. He looked again at the Teddy Bear and shouted for no one to hear. “You mother f*****g selfish son of a b***h! You slept! What were you thinking?” He banged his head back against the wall. “F**k. F**k!” He let the anger at himself build, fueled by the picture of her face as she kissed him goodbye. “Nina, you didn’t deserve this,” he cried.

Raf sat alone holding Nina’s scrubs, crying, cursing God and himself while the sun came up over Branson. He knew that his sorrow was misplaced, but could not get over the fact that while he slept, Nina died with the physical pain from the flashpoint, and the mental pain of knowing she would not reach him. His emotions started to ebb, and with the sun now fully over the horizon, he gave one last apology to Nina and stood up. It was time to move on, time to figure out how to live his last days. He was certain that he had only a short time until he felt the onset of the flu. He was also certain that he would not die here at the hospital.

He headed to the doctor’s lounge and took a long shower. Then, after going to the cafeteria and filling a bag with food, Raf walked back to the E.R. and grabbed the drug case full of syringes with the death cocktail. One for himself, the others for anyone he came across in need of the last service he could provide as a doctor. He also visited the hospital pharmacy and grabbed all of the deadly cocktail ingredients he could find as well as the opiate boxes. He walked to the front entrance of Skaggs Regional Medical Center, and left the hospital for the last time on a journey to see where he was going to die.

Author's Note

This chapter takes place one-third of the way into the book. It is the first writing I have posted so any feedback is appreciated. If it is of interest, I will post the first chapter.