Page 44 of What Remains

Her heart slammed in her chest.

"Mark?" she whispered.

She pushed open the bedroom door and the smell hit her first even through the mask—metallic, sour. Mark lay on the floor, curled in on himself, blood spatter across the hardwood beneath him.

His head snapped up at the sound of her voice. Bloodshot eyes, pupils blown wide and unfocused, found her face. He reached a trembling hand toward her⁠—

He then doubled over and hacked up a mouthful of dark red.

"Oh God... Mark." Josie rushed to him, her training warring with her terror. She knelt beside him and pressed a palm to his forehead.

He burned beneath her hand. Not merely feverish—scalding, heat radiating through the skin like something inside him had caught fire.

"J-Josie..." he rasped, but another wave of coughing stole the word and replaced it with more blood.

"Don't talk," she ordered, her voice steady even as her vision blurred with panic. "I've got you."

She dragged him to the bed, muscles screaming under his heavy, unresponsive frame, refusing to let go of him even to catch her breath. Once she got him onto the mattress, her hands moved on autopilot—pulse rapid and thready, breathing shallow, skin ashen around the mouth with fingertips already tinged blue.

She'd seen sepsis, meningitis, and Ebola during her trauma rotations.

This resembled none of them.

This looked worse.

"Mark, listen to me." She brushed his hair back, a gesture repeated a thousand times over fifteen years of marriage, her gloves slick with sweat and blood. "I need to get your fever down. I need Tylenol, fluids, something to⁠—"

She had Tylenol. She had a few bags of IV fluids in the basement emergency kit, leftovers from a sick dog years ago. But nothing—absolutely nothing—to treat whatever ravaged him now.

She thought of the hospital: the chaos.

Going there meant suicide.

She stood frozen for one horrible moment, thoughts racing, chest aching, tears fighting their way to the surface. She could handle battlefield emergencies, mass casualties, gunshot wounds, crash victims torn open on her table.

But this?

This was her husband. She could still feel the warmth of his hand in hers, hear his off-key singing in the kitchen—the man who'd promised her forty more years, now dying on their bed from something she couldn't diagnose and couldn't fix.

Her breath hitched.

"Please," she whispered, gripping his hand through her glove, willing her warmth into him. "Don't leave me. Don't leave Layla."

His eyes fluttered, unfocused, already drifting somewhere she couldn't follow.

No hospital. No meds. No help.

Just time.

And not much of it.

By the next morning, Mark was gone.

Josie knew before she opened her eyes. She knew by the silence. No ragged breathing. No delirious muttering. No tearing cough ripping his lungs apart.

Just stillness.

Her stomach dropped. She forced her eyes open and found him lying exactly where she'd left him, but changed—horribly changed. His eyes remained open, glassy and unfocused, staring through the ceiling towards a world he no longer belonged to.