Chapter 8: If you are the healer
Doctor Caparri was the dermatologist he'd first heard when Vlad couldn't move and Vlad couldn't speak and he'd started getting aware of his surroundings instead of just being aware of himself and nothing else.
She was a bit older than Vlad, a few years – of course she was, she had a doctor degree – and when she came in twice a week to look at his skin the rashes the pimples the thrice-damned luminescence she spoke to him kindly enough, but without too much pity.
It almost felt good to have someone who didn't hide thoughts like "I don't think the patient is ever going to get better" – almost, because Vlad wasn't convinced himself, but that was his problem and the nurses' and Doctor Jimenez's, not Doctor Caparri's.
She held her note board with her right hand and forearm as she looked once more at his abused skin, humming contently.
"Your... acne, let's call it that, seems to get better. Almost no rashes left, which is a good thing, and the pimples have greatly deflated. Of course, there is still the issue of whatever is causing it to glow, but it doesn't cause more than a light inflammation, right now. Possibly it's the very cause for the acne itself... I wish the test results didn't take that long to come back, then I'd be able to do something about it..."
Vlad grimaced, but didn't comment.
He had a fairly good idea of what the glowing pink – why pink, that part he didn't know, it ought to be a flash of green but it wasn't – substance under his skin was, but he'd mumbled about ectoplasm once and his other doctor, Laurence Jimenez, had looked at him weirdly.
To be fair to the older doctor, the man had patiently listened to Vlad's story, and while he'd frowned a few times, he had asked his patient if he knew anything about the chemical compound behind what they called "ectoplasm". It wasn't like Vlad hadn't been blasted in the face with... something, whatever that something may really be.
Vlad had told him what he knew, but all in all...
Ectoplasm didn't follow that many rules of physics, and a large part of its composition was just... Not usual. In any way. Maddie had barely started looking further into it before the accident, because they'd only needed to know how it would interact with machinery, it wasn't like they'd planned to work on a biological aspect – yet, or even at all.
It hadn't mattered that much that they hadn't known what a strong presence of ectoplasm in someone's blood of death snaking its way through a live body of agony echoing through someone's bones could cause.
it wasn't like they'd planned to blast him in the face and leave him to suffer for it as they went on with their lives
it wasn't like they'd expected Jack to be so
The point was, it was difficult to determine how exactly the infection invasion corruption decomposition was affecting Vlad's body, because they didn't know anything about the interactions between ectoplasm and live matter. A short, external exposition was nothing – at worst, for some people, a light allergic reaction that would go away in under an hour – but intense blasting in the face in his nose eyes ears everywhere down his throat and lungs and up his brain and through his blood into his stopping heart radiation exposure – not exactly the right words but close enough – was another matter.
Oh, they knew the consequences – you just had to look at his fevers, his hands, his face – but they didn't know how those consequences happened.
They didn't really know what to do about it, either.
Doctor Caparri shook her head and moved onto another kind of skin problem skin dead and black and dark red and shriveled as she looked over his necrosis-riddled fingers.
There wasn't much she could do there, but still.
Obvious skin issue.
On top of everything else.
"I'm a bit curious, you know. It's not every day that necrosis... fluctuates."
It never happened, at all.
Except for Vlad, of course.
because Vlad was alive but his body thought him dead because ectoplasm ran through his veins and arteries and when he bled there was an oddish tint to his blood lightly glowing with pink undertones because sometimes he felt like a ghost even though he wasn't
Currently his left hand was almost entirely eaten away, leaving only dead flesh clinging to his bones, but his right hand was mostly free of the disease, somehow. Only his ring finger was halfway desiccated.
If he stared too long at the proof of his death the damaged flesh, he could make out the veins leading to the problematic bits. A faint pink glimmer, like his blood was too light-colored and glowed through the skin. Then, where the necrosis started, where the skin turned dark red and ashy black – the veins were a darker blue than he'd ever seen on his grandmother's hands, like something grossly exaggerated and yet, somehow, real.
It was true on his left hand, and it was true on his right hand – but the latter one only had one finger acting weirdly, right now.
It'd gotten to a point where Vlad had caught himself thinking that was a good thing – because it wasn't more, because it was better than the left hand, because...
The doctor shook her head and wrote some more notes on what he assumed would be added to a thick, baffling patient file.
"I hope you keep making progress with the acne, Mister Master."
"...It'd be great. Goodbye, Doctor. See you next week?"
She waved at him and left – and Vlad found himself sucking in a breath, all too aware that she hadn't commented on the rest because it wasn't her job, her job was skin and other dermatological problems, not...
She hadn't commented, either, because they hadn't found any true solution.
what solution could there be anyway
death wasn't curable just because he'd caught it in a non-orthodox way
The acne was hardly Vlad's worse problem. It hurt a bit and it was ugly and he hated it, but it was there and mostly he didn't have the time or the energy to care about the glowing pimples of all things.
His fingers kept dying at odd intervals.
He'd flatlined seven times over the last three weeks.
Yesterday, he'd vomited blood – it had been glowing slightly, with lighter tendrils simmering between the darker blobs of red.
the pimples were there but what truly terrified him was what kept creeping up afterwards what would come after the necrosis and the heart attacks and the blood what was next
what more could come