A Shroud of Blooms

Upon entering the emergency department, the first thing that hit me was the smell. Hospitals are known for strange smells, ranging from the alkaline smell of cleaning agents to the unsavory smell of vomit and urine. This odor, however, was distinctly foul and emanated from the countless rotting corpses that littered what remained of a large hospital in Atlanta. I pushed my mask tighter against my face (a mask I had smudged with toothpaste) in an effort to keep the stench at bay. Sometimes the minty aroma helped, but today it couldn’t prevent me from gagging. My plan was to find the hospital pharmacy and trauma bay to stock up on medical supplies. This was hospital number five within the past week, and I was slowly getting better at predicting where I would find the inpatient pharmacy relative to the emergency department.

It had been three weeks since a fungus had decimated the population of Georgia, not long after it had ravaged its first victims in Florida. As the temperature of the planet gradually increased, various species became more vulnerable to new pathogens. The frogs served as an alarm species, dying at astronomical rates by way of chytridiomycosis, caused by the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis. The collective human response to the death of the frogs and the changing weather patterns was mixed. Some countries pledged to cut down carbon emissions to curb the effects of greenhouse gases on global warming while others continued their daily affairs in a state of denial. However, few people considered the possibility that humans, just like the frogs, might fall prey to new pathogens as global warming progressed.

The first case of the deadly fungal infection started with a middle-aged homeless man in Miami. According to the news, the man had spiked a fever in the early morning, arrived by ambulance to the E.D. around 10am, and was dead in a matter of hours. Once the medical team learned he had previously undergone a liver transplant, his death was thought to be caused by an infection secondary to his immunocompromised state. Two days later, an EMT, nurse, and physician from the patient’s healthcare team had similar symptoms and quickly succumbed to a mysterious illness. Fast forward a mere two-and-a-half weeks and the entire state of Florida had lost half its population to a disease caused by a novel and highly prolific fungus. The fungal blooms grew from their victims’ internal organs, ultimately enshrining the victim in a myriad of iridescent spores which one might think beautiful if it weren’t so grotesque.

I survived, along with the remaining third of the Florida population, despite having been exposed to many of those who had died from the fungal infection. After a month, scientists determined that survivors lacked a particular cell-surface protein the fungus required for penetrating mucus membranes, invariably making those individuals immune to the fungal infection. By that time, countless more people had died, and the fungus continued to wage war against the U.S. population as record high temperatures scorched the continent.

Before the plague of spores began, I had worked as a physical therapist in Tampa. I was one of the lucky ones whose genetic makeup provided protection from the disease, but survivor’s guilt rooted itself deep in my psyche and haunted my every waking moment. I watched in a state of abject horror and helplessness as most of my friends and colleagues died in a matter of days and the population of Florida dwindled to a fraction of its original size. The day before she died, my goddaughter Alessia looked me squarely in the eyes with an intensity that rivaled that of the greatest warriors. Without blinking, she said to me in a quiet but firm voice, “Whether you appreciate it or not, this is a gift you have been given and you must not waste it with bitterness or shame.” She pushed aside her thick, curly hair and removed a heart-shaped locket from around her neck, handing it to me with a trembling outstretched hand. It was her grandmother’s necklace, a fiery woman who had served as a freedom fighter in Nicaragua and had to watch her friends die around her before coming to the United States to start anew with the hope of providing a better life for her daughter. Tears welled in my eyes as Alessia clasped the locket around my neck and softly whispered, “Remember your roots, Madrina. Fight every day for the life you have been given.”

As I approached the pharmacy window, I stopped to wipe the sweat from my forehead. My least favorite part was smashing through the glass, but it was the most effective way to gain access to the med room. Those who hadn’t succumbed to the death bloom still had illnesses to weather and injuries to treat. As my boots crunched across the shards of broken glass, I reached up to feel the cool locket between my fingers and tried to push away my last memory of Alessia’s face after the blooms had eroded through her orbits and replaced her piercing gaze with a mass of indigo-colored spores. After quickly reading through the medication labels, I breathed a sigh of relief that there was enough antibiotics and pain medications to keep our village alive. It may have been a challenging life, but it was mine to live. I gathered the medical supplies we would need and began to walk along the hospital corridor with the gentle glow of the fungal shrouds softly illuminating my way back to the outside world.