The Healing of Ward 3

Her skin simmered hot with the fever. Rosy cheeks on a pale face slicked with sweat. My hand trembled as it lay on her forehead, quickening my breath as the heat penetrated my palm and moved quickly through my arm. I wanted to cry out from the sharpness of it, but I could hear Mamaw’s scolding words echo in my mind:

“You must bear the pain. To heal means to take from the inflicted. The serpent must always stay coiled within.”

Her warning became my mantra. As the woman’s body cooled and the last of the shivers left me, I had earned a smiling nod for a job well done.

“Soon you won’t need me to attend to your visits,” Mamaw stared listlessly at the sun that broke through the trees. The walk across the village had lasted through daylight, and the fatigue of the session wore heavily on me.

My mind traced back to the woman who had been my subject for some time. Afflicted with a fever that refused to leave and a sickness that stole her life with each passing day, Mamaw insisted she was the perfect patient for me to practice my healing gift on.

“Wouldn’t it be better for her suffering to end than to keep prolonging her illness?” I had foolishly asked one night. Mamaw had grown furious, insisting that our job was to heal, reminding me that the Serpent was evil and must be contained. He would do anything to trick our minds into allowing him to be free.

It was the last she would speak of it.

***

A loud rapping at the door woke me. Mamaw had already donned shoes, a candle’s flame flickering brightly as the door was answered.

“A plague upon the village!” a voice bellowed. Sounds of wild frenzy danced on the night air behind him. Joining them at the door, I peered into the darkness. Flames ran rampant as men carrying torches ran house to house. Wails echoed. Babies cried.

Mamaw’s eyes widened before she took off into the crisp night air. I followed as quickly as I could, my lungs burning from the chill of the season’s change as I ran towards her. Towards the hysteria.

“It’s a fever!” some screamed as they held loved ones close. Each wore a reddened face and waxen skin.

Mamaw had already begun going door to door. A gentle hand was laid on every afflicted she could find. I reached out a trembling hand to a woman with a child, trying desperately to keep the panic inside as the child screamed in agony.

A tiny hiss filled my ears, causing me to withdraw my hand in a flash. The mother looked at me helplessly. I knew I had to try again, but my mind buzzed from the frenzy. The dark cure had become known, and I refused to allow the Serpent to break free. Defeated, I left them there; the child screaming and the mother sobbing.

When I finally reached Mamaw, she was almost across the village. “We have to check on our patient,” she huffed. She hadn’t even looked to see who was coming behind her. I followed in silence, my heart a drum as frantic as the chaos erupting within the village.

The house was in shambles. It was our first view of what was to come. The door had been left ajar when we entered. Mamaw had been calling out, trying to locate the woman and her husband. A deathly silence permeated the air, unsettling against the backdrop of the havoc we had just escaped.

First came the sqelching. A thick, slurping suckle that subtly broke the silence. A gnashing, oozing followed, filling the air with a nauseating sweet sickness and raw meat aroma. We knew the events unfolding before we stepped foot into the bedroom.

The woman had grown feral. Her body was situated at unnatural angles, joints beginning to break free of the elastic prison grown tightly thin. Her clothing and hair were disheveled, and the flames of Mamaw’s candle reflected the silky substance that clung to the sores on her face.

Mamaw handed me her candle, ignoring the brutalized caraccas that lay on the floor at the woman’s knees. I urged my mind to focus on the dancing of the flame, begging the swirl of bile that slowly crept up my throat to stay within my body.

Mamaw didn’t say a word as she touched what could no longer be called a woman. Screams filled the air as the squeals and pops of skin and bone began to burn. The pungent odor of rot and death permeated the air as it shifted into the furling of thick black smoke. It was over in a matter of minutes.

“Mercy”, Mamaw whispered gently as she trudged past me. Her eyes never left the floor.

***

An infirmary had been set up for those afflicted by the unknown plague. Mamaw and I began our work, joined by the few other healers in the village. Tirelessly, we rotated between afflicted men, women, and children bearing the weight of an unknown fever.

Bones began to break. Skin began to thin, wrapping itself dangerously tight against the emaciated forms it was attached to. Sores erupted where the skin was weakest. Children cried. Women wailed. Men pleaded for death.

Our healing wasn’t working. Exhausted to our cores, we worked nonstop. Barely time to recoup our own strength before moving to the next to lay hands, bear the pain, and continue. A fellow healer slept between those she was working on, a hand on each head as she caught a few minutes of rest.

Those nearing their end were transferred to Ward 3. “A step before monsters,” the townspeople whispered as the story of Mamaw’s mercy had spread. The other healers didn’t waste their efforts on Ward 3.

Too exhausted. Too few results. Too little, too late.

I entered the ward cautiously with Mamaw close behind me. Death’s scent lingered beyond the canvas dividers. It seeped into the wool blankets, became a rot within the wooden cots, and even turned the earth black under its stench.

“Please, “ a gravelly voice choked out as a skeletal hand reached for me. The man was gaunt, his eyes sunken deeply into their sockets. His bones had begun contorting, a popping that could be heard above the groans in the room.

“Mercy,” he barely managed to whisper, his shallow sockets pleading with the tears he could no longer shed. He gagged on his words, the loss of mucus making each syllable a dagger in his throat.

My eyes flitted between the man and Mamaw as the bundle of fear rose in my chest. The soft hiss caresses my inner ear again.

Mamaw nodded and left the room. How would I use the dark cure properly if she hadn’t taught me? Panic seized me as I felt my lungs struggle to grasp for air. Before me, the man continued to contort. Snaps and squeals bounced around my head. Rubbery flesh tore apart, revealing the slickened white below. He howled as the snaps gave way to wet slurps that left a pattering against the cold earth.

The hiss within grew louder, and in my mind’s eye, I envisioned the Serpent, coiled deep in my core. His jet-black scales were radiant beneath the glass lid I kept him under. I watched as he slithered within his coil, moving himself into a position to strike.

Envisioning the lid raising high, I watched as the Serpent reached up from my core. Twirling his way down my arm, I could feel the burning cold pulsation of his power. Lying my hand upon the man allowed the Serpent to strike, icy heat pouring from my hand as the man screamed and burned. My nostrils filled with rot so dense that my body was forced to wretch.

It was done.

The Serpent had slithered back to my core to wait. Mercy, I reminded myself, just as Mamaw had said. It was precisely what he had asked for.

A trickle of electric heat flooded through me. Again, my arm trembled, but this time not from fear. An odd pleasure had erupted through me as the Serpent ran his dark cure through me. It was a sensation I had never experienced when healing.

Mamaw had returned to the ward. She found me weary, still fruitlessly laying hands on the afflicted.

“These people are dying.” I wasn’t even sure I said the words out loud. My eyes drooped wearily.

“We must not give in to the Serpent,” she said, laying my head on her shoulder, brushing the matted tangles off my face. “To use him is to lose your soul.”

I had heard the stories before. Healers too lost due to feeding the dark cure. The throngs of power mixed with pleasure that only the darkness could give. I had touched that power. Let it enter a place within me that I wasn’t even sure the healing light could remove. Even after being contained, it still rubbed like satin against my skin.

A tango of dark and light took hold of my thoughts. “What about mercy?”

“I should’ve never let you do that”. Disappointment filled her eyes. She straightened her smock before leaving the room.

Alone with the dying and no further guidance from Mamaw, fatigue began taking ownership.

A step before monsters. This Serpent hissed in my ear.

Heaviness grew in my chest. That’s what these people were to become. A room filled with skeletons. Popping, snapping, gurgling.

Could they even still be called a person?

Mercy. The word rumbled through my head, fueled by the fires of exhaustion. My eyes stung from the strain of fighting to keep them open. Torch flames bounced off the walls, their light bringing tears to my eyes. My muscles groaned as I forced a step. Then another. I had to leave the ward. If I lost myself to the Serpent, I would be just as much of a monster as the afflicted.

Inside the Serpent slithered. His soft hiss was growing steadily into a murmur. Mercy.

With each step, I could feel him growing. A steady pressure formed behind my eyes as he echoed his singular chant.

Mercy.

“No!” I shouted to the night. Wrapping my arms tight against my chest, I begged my mind to still. The memory of the man welled in my eyes. My throat tightened, restricting air enough to make my words raspy. “I can’t be that.”

“Would you rather they all be monsters instead?” The Serpent’s words faded into the images of the woman and her husband.

The nauseating smell of the sweet liquid spilling across her floor.

The squelching suckles as she drained the man she once loved.

Blood and bone and carnage that awaited each person in this room.

Mercy.

Thoughts grew so loud I could no longer untangle their origin. Caring for so many left the sensation of lead flowing through my veins. I scanned the room for the bodies that were nothing more than cocoons of their following form.

Ward 3. The forgotten ward. The one where people go to die. I shook my head at the thought, the voices inside urging a correction—the one where they go to become monsters.

Tears flowed heavily, staining my cheeks.

Row by row, I went, touching each figure as I passed. Screams ignited. Flames set the room ablaze. Sizzles, pops, lurches, and squeals erupted, a cacophony of sickening, dismal sounds that faded rapidly into ash.

Mamaw and the other healers rushed to the room; their faces waned in pallor at the sight before them. The remnants of the room lay in ruin. Shreds of fabric clung to charred wooden beams. Blackened frames surrounded piles of ash, darker than coal. I was busy admiring the streaks of black scales that adorned my skin.

“What have you done?” Mamaw’s voice shook in terror.

I was still vibrating from the euphoria. “Mercy”.