Fight, Flight, or Freeze: The Healer's Story
Chapter 60: Where Do Your Loyalties Lie?

Chapter 60: Where Do Your Loyalties Lie?

I let out a bark of laughter at his question. There were a lot of things I needed.

I needed the clock in my head to stop ticking for a few seconds.

I need patience to deal with everyone at work... and at home.

I need to be able to trust my mind again. I had a huge fear that I was becoming paranoid, seeing conspiracies where there was none, and I really thought I was becoming insane.

But I couldn’t tell him any of that.

"I need you to follow me and not speak until we are in my office," I said instead. Turning around, trusting that he would follow me, I walked back to the entrance of the ER department.

"This is not according to the protocols as set out by the Center for Disease Control, but fuck it," I grumbled as I separated his hazmat suit from mine. "Please put this on, and then don’t move while I make sure everything is okay."

Cheng Bo Jing nodded his head and started to get dressed.

I watched his every move as I slipped into the suit that I could now put on blindfolded. I remember the shock and fear the first time the hospital told us we had to wear it, but after a month, it became the new normal.

Dressed in the most basic of ways, I stepped in through the first doors of the ER and bent down to get the tape and tubes.

I gestured for Cheng Bo Jing to hold out his arm, and I put the first blue non-latex glove on and then taped it over the sleeve of his suit. Then I put on a second glove over top before taping that one off too. I wish I had some sort of slash-proof gloves that I could have added to the first two layers.

I had watched way too many shows back in Canada where the doctor’s glove or hazmat suit got cut, and all of a sudden, they were exposed to the deadly pathogen, too.

Shaking the thought out of my head, I wouldn’t put that idea out into the universe; I did the same thing to his other hand.

That finished, I crouched down in front of him and held out the stylish blue bootie in front of him. Taping that off, I then attached the hoses for his breathing and then taped down the helmet and anything else I could think of.

I didn’t care this much about my own suit, but this was Cheng Bo Jing. Nothing would happen to him when he was in my care.

I started to do the same thing to myself, but Cheng Bo Jing gently pushed aside my hands and copied my movements.

"Can you hear me?" I asked, wanting to make sure that the mics in the suits were working.

"I can," he replied, but I could tell by the tone of his voice that he was not impressed with me. Or maybe he didn’t like the crinkling of the plastic suit he was now in.

"We are heading straight for the lab. Keep your head down and follow me. We aren’t supposed to allow outsiders into the hospital, so make sure you aren’t caught." I had to smirk at that. If anyone could sneak into the hospital, unseen was my spymaster...

Bai Long Qiang’s spymaster.

"Understood," he grunted, and I suppressed my sigh.

"I will explain everything when I can. Just please trust me right now," I said, practically begging him.

The whole situation was taking a toll on me mentally. I felt like there was a splinter burying itself under my skin, but I couldn’t find it for the life of me. I had to know what was going on. And I knew I couldn’t be caught doing it.

"There is no need to worry. I trust you with my life," he said, smiling at me through the plastic barrier in his helmet.

I smiled back at him and walked into the ER. That was my greatest fear. That he would trust me with his life and I would let him down.

-----

Wang Tian Mu was bent over some sort of medical machine that was literally sending a bullet sized amount of blood around and around in a circle.

"How long has the hospital been like this?" asked Cheng Bo Jing. The whole thing had given him a sick feeling in his stomach. How could they not have known about this?

Hazmat suits? Dead bodies lining hallways? This was something he only saw in war zones. How could the number one hospital in City D look like this, but no one outside knew?

"Since the beginning of August," she answered as the blood slowed to a stop. Taking some sort of plunger, she took a drop of the blood and placed it in another machine.

"You should have said something," he growled. He fucking should have known.

"I couldn’t. I signed an NDA with the CDC when this ’flu’ first presented. They didn’t want to alarm the population until they could figure out what was going on," she muttered as the machine printed off a piece of paper.

It looked like there were different lines and grey bars on it, but other than that, Cheng Bo Jing had no idea what he was looking at.

"Fuck," she growled, and for the first time since he had met her, he watched Wang Tian Mu become... pissed.

She threw the piece of paper on the desk in front of her and went back to the syringe that still had some of his original blood in it.

She raised it to the light and shook it. He had no idea what she was looking at, or for, but she clearly wasn’t happy with what she was seeing.

"Fuck," she snarled as she spun around to look at him like a wild animal.

"Fuck."

"It’s okay, Kitten," soothed Cheng Bo Jing as he cautiously stepped forward. "Everything is fine. Whatever you need. I am here. Just tell me."

"Whatever I need?" she asked, cocking her head to the side as she studied him. He felt like he was going through some sort of test, but he had no idea if he would pass or fail it.

"Whatever," he assured her.

"Then tell me, Cheng Bo Jing. Where do your loyalties lie?"