Fight, Flight, or Freeze: The Healer's Story
Chapter 57: Something Was Rotten In The State Of Denmark

Chapter 57: Something Was Rotten In The State Of Denmark

"It really was nothing. I was tired for two days and slept most of the time. The doctor told me that I had a fever for most of the time, but when it broke, they knew I would be okay. They even kept us for almost a week after, running more tests on us to make sure that we were completely fine."

Bai Long Qiang tried to pull me back down into his arms, but I held myself back. This was much too important to just dismiss like that.

As a doctor, I understood the amount of work that went into a vaccine. I understood how many trials and hoops a company had to go through to have their vaccine pass the stage for human trials.

And it was not done in this short of a time.

The fact that the military kept them in the barracks even after they no longer displayed any side effects was... not normal....

Not by any stretch of the imagination.

"What did they test?" I asked, relenting as he pulled me back down. I needed to smile, to comply, and hopefully, he would tell me everything.

"The normal stuff. Lung capacity tests, they monitored our hearts forever, and they even had us in a pool for a while, too. Apparently, they wanted to see how long we could hold our breath underwater," laughed Bai Long Qiang as if this was the biggest joke in the world.

Good thing I wasn’t on a heart rate monitor or else it would have been going off like crazy right now.

It would make sense that they wanted to test to see if there was any damage done to the heart and lungs if they caught a respiratory virus, but they weren’t given an antidote; they were given a vaccine.

So, clearly, they hadn’t shown any symptoms of the flu.

And the patients that I saw in the ER with it... could barely breathe lying down, let alone perform in a pool or on a treadmill.

What the fuck was going on?

"Why didn’t you tell me?" I asked softly. I had asked him why he was a week late coming back from his last mission, but he just told me that the paperwork had taken longer to complete.

I scoffed silently at that. Yeah, I bet the paperwork took longer than normal; it wasn’t even their paperwork that needed to be done.

"Did everyone get this... vaccine?" I pressed.

"Cheng Bo Jing fought it for a while, but when Dad threatened to take him off the team, he fell into line quickly," shrugged Bai Long Qiang.

Cheng Bo Jing was the smartest man I knew. He probably knew that something was going on, but why would he fold so easily?

I needed blood samples. I needed to understand this virus and vaccine. Something was rotten in the state of Denmark, and I was going to figure out what it was.

I also needed to come up with a way to counteract the vaccine if it was harmful to the guys... to Bai Long Qiang.

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"Here are the test results from the patient in Bay 47," said the nurse as she handed me a file folder. The plastic barrier of her hood started to fog up with every breath she took. I was sitting in my office, trying to get a handle on things. The office wasn’t overly big, but it was comfortable. I even had a small couch off to one side where I could nap if I needed to get some shut-eye.

Unfortunately, things had been getting more and more hectic the past few days, and I was barely keeping myself above water, let alone getting enough sleep to function.

I needed a lot more supplies than I currently had on hand, and my staff was dropping like flies. I needed to get a better handle on this virus, and I still had the ’normal’ day-to-day emergencies like broken bones, heart attacks, strokes, and anything else the world thought to throw at us.

I had a million things to do and only twelve hours in a day to do them.

"Are you okay?" I asked, taking the folder and studying her.

"Just a bit warm," she answered, dismissing my concern like it was nothing. But the hazmat suits didn’t fog up like that. That was what the air hoses were supposed to control.

"Get your hoses checked out," I said, knowing that she was probably not going to listen to me. I was the director of the ER in name only. City D took pride in the fact that they hired the youngest doctor ever in Country K. The fact that I had the grades to back it up only made things sweeter.

But that didn’t mean anyone listened to me.

She waved her hand and turned around, not concerned. Well, if she wasn’t worried, then there was no point in me being concerned.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink.

I opened the folder and studied the results.

It was the same as all the other blood work I had done on the other patients. It didn’t look any different than the usual viruses that popped up in October and November. I mean, there was the slightest mutation, but that wouldn’t be enough to explain why it was so contagious.

School hadn’t even started yet; it was still summer vacation. Kids hadn’t even had the chance to be the plague carriers they normally were. For things to be spreading this much had to mean that it was being done deliberately.

But that was not possible, right? We were at a 15% fatality rate with this virus; there was no way someone would willingly pass it around.

Right?

But what if... and this was a big ’if’... what if someone was spreading the virus around in order to be able to then spread the vaccine?

If a company was able to come out and say that they had the cure for something that was killing so many people, they could stand to make billions.

I bit my thumbnail, something I hadn’t done in years.

If this was happening so someone or some company could profit off of it, then the answer lay in the vaccine.

But how could I get my hands on that?