CHAPTER 2

White. The only thing I saw was white. The room was cold and clean smelt like alcohol swabs. It was lonely, I stayed in a white room with no windows and only one

door through which a nurse would occasionally come to replace my drip and feed me the anti-apocalypse tablets. At the end of the day I wanted one thing and that

was to get stronger for my brother.

From time to time, I would look at the white walls as a canvas on which I paint a window. Through this window I saw my brother and his comrades, alive and well. It

was this naiveté that kept me sane. The treatment I went through was nothing like my brother had described it to be. The marks of the disease were slowly fading;

however, I had other symptoms. Some days I would wake from slumber feeling as though my ribs were tearing through the skin on my chest and my spine had a

growth on my back. Then I would go into seizures and my heart will grow too weak to pump blood so the blood flows back into my veins to my lungs causing my

lungs to fill up with blood. Pulmonary Edema is what they called it. They called it a side effect of my recovery, but ever since the first attack the medicine doses had

doubled the marks faded quicker and the attacks and the pain came more often.

A Transformation. That was what it felt like. As though something was growing inside of me, something I did not reject. In fact it ached and tore through my walls of

sanity but at the end I would always find myself feeling stronger. I knew this wasn't an anti-apocalypse treatment, nevertheless I didn't make a fuss because I wanted

something to make me stronger so that I can help my family. I was not an idiot, I knew that the treatment was some sort of trial. The other patients would slowly

disappear and if I ask about them the staff would say that they got discharged; however, that sounds too convenient of an answer. As a result, I played the role of an

innocent girl who wouldn't ask questions. My curiosity was taking over and so was my desire to be of use to my brother; if it was for family I'd do anything.

At nightfall I disconnect my drip by forcefully pulling the bloodstained needle out of my wrist then reached out to switch off the ECG and pressure monitors so that

when I remove the stickers on my body attached to the machine they won't alarm the hospital staff. I tightened my robe and slowly pulled the sliding door open. A

dark hallway was in front of me, as soon as I left the room felt as though I entered a different world. I walked daintily my footsteps were the only thing I could hear.

After my eyes got used to the dark I saw a dim blinking light that signaled a staircase and tiptoed softly towards it. Right now as I stood in front of the staircase, my

fear was about to overtake my curiosity, but then the light of the staircase gave light as I stared at my tiny hands. These tiny hands incapable of being useful. This

tiny body only being a burden to the one I love most dearly. I couldn't bear to live with being a burden because if I keep being a burden he will leave me.

After all that thought, I swung the door open. I went down to stairs to find an old elevator with a steel gate-like sliding door then a second a brown wooden sliding

door. I set foot into this elevator and as soon as I did it moved because it had one destination. Ticking and rattling of the elevators doors made me silently ponder

what be on the other side of this door. Soon the elevator reached its destination and I pulled the two doors to see the other side if this hospital. It was what I knew to

be true about this hospital, only larger, more surreal, and more perilous than I previously imagined. A truly spine-chilling yet formidable sight for the bare eyes.