Central Ward

“The one virtue of this disease is that it is not known to spread by air. Nor will merely touching a blight patient put you at risk. A vast majority of cases stem from consuming infected food and water. But the blight can be spread from person to person via exchange of bodily fluids, which explains its rampant spread among deviants.” Dr. Saltris, professor of epidemiology at the University of Kogaku Medical School, led the small student group through a hallway deep in the basement of Central Hospital in Mallikus City. No sign marked the purpose of this corridor of grey concrete, which would lead them to the Central Blight Ward, a place that even some medical students believed was a myth. Kurri signed up for the chance to see it for himself.

Dr. Saltris reached the end of the hallway and grasped the door handle with one of her old, pale white hands. “What you see beyond here may be very disturbing, but remember, these are patients, some of them can still see or at least hear you. It is your duty as medical professionals to contain your emotions and see the problem before you as a scientific one.”

She opened the door. The overwhelming stench of decay billowed out. The students followed her into a room of pale flickering light tubes on grey concrete walls. It was smaller than he expected. Rows and rows of beds were packed into this room, narrow walkways between. Some of the patients writhed in their beds, but most were lying still. The room was eerily quiet. Under all the soil and concrete, only the labored breathing of a hundred people could be heard. If he had known these people before, he would not have recognized a one of them. He couldn’t guess at age or gender.

Their skin was overtaken with spiderwebs of black veins, what remained of their hair had turned black, and their fingernails were black as if they were painted. The whites and irises of their eyes had become pure black. Even at a glance he could tell many had large cancerous growths, most prominently around major arteries. Shriveled up skin clung to the bones and veins of their withered limbs.

Some had their bodies twisted into the strangest shapes as their muscles contracted and tightened permanently, like a corpse that still breathed. Others were wracked with spasms every few seconds, in one limb or their entire body. One patient started coughing repeatedly, their whole body convulsing with it. A viscous black fluid came up, adding more black stains to their white gown, like many of the patients had.

Dr. Saltris turned to address her students. “These are the patients who have lived far beyond the point that the human body usually fails against the blight. For reasons not understood, they continue to resist it. That is why they are important case studies. One of these people may hold the secret to save many others from such a fate as theirs.”

Across the room, another door opened. A person in a white robe entered, but they looked like no doctor Kurri had met. Some kind of mechanism of black leather and rubber tubes covered their face. Thick dark goggles obscured their eyes. With a black pointed hood covering the rest of their head, nothing human could be recognized about this person.

They weaved through the corridors of death to reach a particular patient, just a few beds down from Kurri and the others. They checked the paper on the clipboard in their hand. In their other hand was a small vial and a syringe. They drew the liquid and injected it into the blackened skin of the patient’s arm. The patient let out a piercing scream and clutched the site of the injection with their other hand as they squirmed on their bed in agony.

“We also take this opportunity to test potential treatments and measure how they affect the growth of the blight,” Saltris said. “They do not always work out as we hope, unfortunately. Medical ethics permits us to attempt such risky and experimental treatments only when the patient’s outcome could not possibly be improved by any known treatment.”

The white robed person made some notes on their clipboard and headed back for the back room. Their patient was convulsing so hard that they fell from their bed. They landed on their wrist and Kurri heard the bones crack. He saw their hand twisted to an unnatural angle as it thrashed. They were vomiting a black sludge onto the floor. Their solid black eyes stared up and made contact with Kurri’s, and he was frozen. The person who did this didn’t turn back, they shut the door behind them.

“A blight ward is one such place where medical ethics are suspended for the greater good,” Seltris said. “This is a lesson every prospective doctor must learn.”