The Patient

“Doctor Phillips, good to see you again.” 

Doctor Casey Phillips was the head of the infectious disease department at Wathingford University. Considered one of the foremost experts on the subject, she had been fêted in medical publications across the world and invited to speak before at least thirteen different heads of state.

“Thank you Sydney. How is our patient?” 

Sydney Kanumba was one of Doctor Phillip’s undergraduate students. His life long ambition was to become a medical doctor, to follow in his mother’s footsteps. Through hard work he aced Doctor Phillips’ Molecular Biology class and was invited to join her at the United States Center for Tropical Diseases in Tampa. It was a dream internship, and today he might have the chance to be part of a team that identifies a new strain of disease.

“He keeps getting worse. His symptoms have gradually been becoming more acute, and lately they have been accompanied by increased paranoia and even some violent tendencies. The last time a nurse was able to get his vitals, they were off the chart.”

Sydney handed over a printout showing the patient's temperature, heart rate, and blood pressure readings over the last twenty-four hours. Casey took a look at the paper, murmuring to herself and then handed it back to Sydney.

She carefully took off her reading glasses and peered through the one way glass. The window looked into a large padded room, about two hundred square feet in size. A man sat in a corner of the room, his white shirt was ripped to shreds and hanging down, like drapes, from his shoulders. It was hard to estimate his height, due to the way he was crouched in the corner, but he was at least six-feet tall — though he couldn’t have weighed more than one hundred sixty pounds sopping wet. The patient moaned softly to himself, rocking back and forth on his heels, and ran his hands through his unruly mop of black hair.

“Have we been able to identify him yet?” Casey asked.

“No, when we ask him his name he just responds that it is safer that we don’t know. We also tried to get a match for his prints in the federal crime database. They do show up in the database, but are classified.”

“Classified?” Casey's eyes widened in surprise. “How is that even possible?”

“No idea. We are working with the FBI to see if we can get more information. Our liaison officer at the agency said she will see what she can find out, but that we shouldn’t hold our breath.” Sydney shrugged his shoulders apologetically.

“Three days and we have nothing!” Casey slammed her open hand on the glass in frustration.

A howl of pain, tinged with an almost animalistic fury, erupted from the patient. He arched his back and writhed around on the floor as if being electrocuted. The two onlookers stepped back in fright and Sydney’s hand opened and dropped the diagnostic readings on the floor.

“Don’t . . . don’t do that,” the patient whispered softly. His voice was amplified by the microphones placed throughout the cell.

“Sir, do you know where you are?” Casey asked, putting her mouth near the microphone that was affixed to the wall.

“No, idea,” the patient said, his voice gaining strength as he spoke. “You’re the ones who drugged me and brought me to this place. You tell me where I am.”

“You are in the United States Center for Tropical Diseases. You were found by border patrol agents trying to cross into the United States illegally. I apologize for your treatment, the border patrol agents may have been a little . . . overzealous. However, you had a temperature of over one hundred ten degrees. They were concerned that you may pose a public health hazard.” Casey spoke quietly and deliberately into the microphone, as if trying to calm an animal. Reflexively, she had also raised her hands, palms open, in a calming gesture, despite not being visible behind the one way glass.

The patient laughed for a few seconds, theatrically throwing his head back, before speaking again. “Oh, you are right there. I am a public health hazard, just not in the way you think. You have to let me out of here.” 

“We would love to do that sir. We just need your cooperation in conducting a few more exams. Your results so far have been . . . abnormal. We need to run some further tests to ensure whatever you have is not contagious.” 

Sydney knew that Doctor Phillips was lying — there was no way that they were going to release this guy anytime soon. He clearly had a disease of some sort, and potentially was an undocumented immigrant to boot.

The patient slowly pulled himself up, turning towards the glass. His face was dirty, mottled with dust and sweat. Sydney stared, transfixed, as the patient slowly shuffled towards the glass panel and deliberately tapped three times with his index finger. 

“You know, I am a doctor too. I am guessing you are a doctor. That is if this is actually the Center for Tropical Diseases. Let me guess what you are thinking.” He stepped back and then started to mimic paging through a case file. “Patient has abnormally low blood pressure combined with extremely elevated temperature and heart rate. Behavior has been erratic and suggests possible cognitive impairment. Suggest conducting positron emission tomography scan to see if there is any neurological impairment.”

Sydney looked down at the printout of the email from Doctor Phillips to the head of radiology, asking for a PET scan to be prepped. 

“Problem is, you can’t put a tracer agent in me and you sure as hell can’t put me in a scanner for a couple of hours.” 

“Why is that?” Casey looked shaken, she had probably been in academia for so long that she had forgotten what it was like to deal with patients. If this case hadn’t been so interesting, Sydney guessed that the good doctor wouldn’t have even bothered to read the case file, much less come all the way down to the center. 

“Because I don’t know what I will do.” The patient’s voice dropped. The words came out like a threat but his intonation made it sound like a plea.

“Are you threatening me?” Casey’s back stiffened and her eyes narrowed. 

“Not threatening, just warning. It. Will. Not. End. Well.”

“Fine, we will respect your wishes. But, I have no other choice than to recommend we leave you in here until your symptoms subside.” Casey left the words hanging in the air. 

The patient ran his hand through his hair and spun around, as if sparring with an invisible foe. “Wait . . . Wait . . . can we just talk about this? Like I said, I am a doctor as well. I have done some work for the . . . government, some classified work. Which is why I can’t tell you my name. But perhaps we can discuss this eye to eye and come to some amicable conclusion.” 

Casey turned off the microphone and sat down in one of the hard plastic chairs that were arranged in a line in the observation room. She began fidgeting, wringing her hands, clearly uncertain what to do. Finally, she stopped and looked directly at Sydney.

“Sydney, I think I should hear the patient out. I am going to go in there, I want you to stay here and push this button” — she pointed to a large red panic button on the wall — “if he does anything aggressive at all.” 

“Okay doctor, are you sure?” Sydney had been watching the patient for the last eight hours and had severe reservations about his sanity.

Casey scoffed. “Of course I am sure. We are in one of the most secure facilities in the state.”

Casey pulled herself up and walked back to the glass, turning the microphone back on. “Okay, I am going to come in so we can talk face to face. I need you to put your hands against the wall on the opposite side of the room from the door.”

The patient nodded and then walked over to the far wall, placing his hands, shoulder height, on the padded wall. His white shirt and violet cut off shorts dangled off of his scrawny frame.

Casey walked out of the observation room door and into the hallway. After a few seconds there was a solid metallic thunk, signaling the deadbolt of the cell door being unlocked. Casey pushed open the door, straining with the effort of moving the solid steel door. 

Without warning, the patient turned and lept towards the door, driving Casey into the wall before she could react. Despite his diminutive frame, the patient must have been exceptionally strong. Casey flew like a rag doll, bouncing into the padded wall and then collapsing, unconscious, onto the floor.

Sydney froze for a moment, shocked by what he had just seen, and then slammed his hand on the red panic button. A klaxon rang throughout the facility followed by the cell’s room number. Not wanting to wait for security, Sydney ran into the hallway, hoping to catch the patient before he could hurt anyone else.

He was curled in the fetal position on the hallway floor, shaking. Suddenly, the patient screamed, arching his back in pain. 

“Get away, get out of here!” The patient made a shooing motion with his right arm.

Sydney didn’t say a word, too terrified to do anything. The patient’s back was changing color, a bright green hue slowly spreading from the waist of the bright purple cutoffs up to his shoulder blades and across his back. Cracking sounds, like hundreds of bones breaking, emanated from the patient’s body and rang out through the hallway as large bulges and protuberances began popping out of his writhing body.

The cracking intensified as the patient suddenly flipped face up and arched his back, screaming. His body was transforming rapidly, muscles erupting from his long frame as if being hammered out from inside. His skin had become uniformly green, almost the color of a lime. The scream had continued and gradually transformed into a beastial roar that filled the hallway of the center.

Sydney saw that several security guards had arrived but were dumbstruck and frozen in place, not even raising their pistols. Shaking his head, as if to clear it, the patient was now standing, his breathing coming out heavy and labored, like a horse that had been running for hours. His body was now unrecognizable, rippling with muscles, he was at least three feet taller than he had been before. 

“Run!” Sydney yelled at the frozen security guards. 

The patient pivoted to look at him — the intelligence that had been in his eyes had been replaced with an inhuman rage. Sydney wordlessly said a final goodbye to his friends and family, knowing that they could not hear his final words, but saying them anyway. 

The patient turned, facing the wall, and paused almost as if studying the workplaces notices affixed onto the bulletin board. Without warning, he smashed his ham sized fist into the wall, opening a gaping hole. He then struck with his other fist to widen the hole even more and walked through the opening he had made leaving a trail of destruction and debris in the hallway.

Sydney’s legs collapsed and he dropped to the ground. He lay amidst the dust and rubble created by the patient for what felt like an eternity. Suddenly, he was brought back to reality by the whimsical chime of his cell phone, it was the FBI liaison officer.

“Yeah?” Sydney didn’t have the energy to be polite, even to the FBI.

“Hello, Mr. Kanumba. I am calling regarding your John Doe.”

“Ugh . . . yeah.”

“Well, we haven’t been able to get permission to id him yet. But some of my contacts in DOD wanted me to give you a very important warning. Don’t make him angry.” 

Sydney gave a small laugh and hung up.