Prologue
Unwell. That was what they tended to call me if anyone asked. “She’s a bit under the weather.” “She’s feeling a bit unwell.” They acted like it was just a cough. A cold. Just the sniffles. It wasn’t. The words in my head were different. Disordered. Debilitated. Diseased. No matter how hard they tried to hide it and no matter how thick the sugarcoat was, they all meant the same thing. It all ends up coming to that awful conclusion. I was sick. I was dying. Despite the brave face I forced on, I was dying.
The disease had sprung up a year or so before. They called it Vobiot, but we called it gross. Two scientists at some research facility in the middle of nowhere had it passed to them by some monkeys, or something like that. I called bull, but that’s what they told us. Whatever did happen, it was bad. It spread like wildfire, wiping out entire cities in the Midwest.
The perfect little all-powerful government figures of course decided to mandate hospitalisation upon contraction. It wasn’t like that did anything. There was no cure. Wherever you went, you’d die. There was nothing. Nothing but the vaccine.
The dominating powers of the country pretty much ended up worshipping the whatever the piss-colored liquid they forced into us was. No one got out of it. It was a legal duty and obligation to have the syringe shoved into your skin. But like all vaccines, it wasn’t exactly a guaranteed solution.
The symptoms were easy. First you’d get the cough. Now, that would be worrisome if you could tell. But when Vobiot hit it’s peak, it was the middle of spring. Allergy season. You couldn’t exactly pick up on a cough. Sometimes you’d cough blood, but not always the case.
Next, you would get the fever. Sometimes, you would only get this far and the fever would kill you. At least, that’s what they told us. Some rumors said that 109℉ was the low end. I didn’t really know what was true.
After your fever started in real nice and hot you’d reach my personal favorite part: the vomiting up blood. I guess something caused your lungs to fill up with the stuff; I never really paid attention in biology, and then you’d cough and cough the blood, until you were spewing it.
If you lived past the fever this was, of course, when you died. We saw pictures once. Basically, it was the most unglorified way to go. It was disgusting, the blood dribbling down your chin, the pain causing a tear-streaked face, and pale, bloated, awful skin.
Now, of course, I would never be like the people in all of those pictures. Those things just didn’t happen to people like me. To teenage girls. To daughters of happily married parents. To small-town folk. To friends who hang out at the mall. To girlfriends of Varsity quarterbacks. To Speech and Debate captains. To girls like me. Things like that didn’t happen to girls like me.
I didn’t have time with my boyfriend anymore. I didn’t have time at the mall. I didn’t have time to live because I was dying. But this must be a lot to take in, so maybe I should explain. My story... from the beginning.
