In my fifth year as an attending physician in the Emergency Department at City General, my life was destroyed by four college kids fresh off a graduation trip to Africa. It was a sweltering summer night, and the ER lobby was boiling with noise. The guy leading the group rolled up his sleeve, pointed to a cluster of purplish-red blood blisters on his forearm, and winked at me. Beside him, his three friends held up their phones, stifling their laughter as they narrated to their live stream. “Doc, I just got off the plane. This is pure, unadulterated African Ebola. Aren’t you going to rush me into the trauma bay?” “Chat, watch this. The doctor is definitely going to hide under the desk in a second.” “A graduation trip has to be thrilling! This is way more explosive than a standard travel vlog.” According to CDC protocols and strict infectious disease guidelines, faced with patients possessing a travel history to Africa, self-reporting a highly lethal infectious virus, and exhibiting unexplained rashes, I was supposed to immediately smash the red emergency button on the wall. I was supposed to lock down the entire ER, notify Infection Control, and alert the State Department of Health. But in my previous life, their academic advisor, Professor Harrison, had rushed in sweating bullets and grabbed onto my white coat. He pleaded that the kids had just graduated and were scheduled to attend the Statewide Alumni Honors Banquet. He claimed Africa was huge, that they had only visited perfectly safe tourist resorts, and that this was just a normal bug bite. They were just young, reckless kids making a stupid joke. He told me that if I triggered a Level 1 lockdown, the four of them would be forcibly quarantined. Not only would they miss their banquet, but they could also face criminal charges for inciting public panic, ruining their futures forever. Looking at those lively, energetic students who showed zero signs of severe illness, my heart softened. I pulled my hand back from the alarm and told them to go wait in the regular fever clinic line for a blood draw. Half an hour later. The boy who had been sitting in the IV lounge playing games on his phone suddenly went into violent convulsions. Dark, clotted blood erupted from his nose and mouth like a fountain, splashing all over the surrounding patients. In less than three minutes, blood was even seeping from the corners of his eyes. His three friends screamed in terror and fled in every direction. “That ER doctor told us to come out here!” “She looked at it and said he was fine! It must be the dirty air in this hospital that infected him! He was perfectly fine when we got here!” “We’re just college students, what do we know about medicine?!” The entire ER building at City General was forced into an emergency lockdown. Over a hundred innocent patients and medical staff became direct contacts. As the initial attending physician, I was suspended and had my medical license revoked. My photo and home address trended on Twitter, subjecting me to a relentless, vicious cyberbullying campaign. In the end, lying in an isolation ward, I watched massive patches of subcutaneous hemorrhaging spread beneath my own skin. I died in excruciating agony, suffocating as my internal organs liquefied. When I opened my eyes again, the harsh glare of the triage desk monitor stung my eyes. The boy, Liam Carter, was shoving his arm with the purplish-red blisters in my face, a smug, arrogant grin plastered on his lips. “Doc, this is Ebola. Better hurry up and save my life.” I didn’t say a word. I just stared at him. Then, I raised my hand and slammed my fist hard against the glass-covered red emergency button on the wall. BZZZZZT! A piercing, deafening alarm instantly shredded the chaotic noise of the ER lobby. “Initiate Level 1 Infectious Disease Lockdown protocol immediately.” “Drop all isolation shutters, shut down the central HVAC, and notify Infection Control, Hospital Security, and the CDC.” 1. The moment the alarm blared, Nurse Jessica dropped her pen onto her clipboard. She froze for less than two seconds before her years of ER training kicked in. She snatched up her walkie-talkie, her voice taut like a bowstring. “Lock down the main ER doors! Halt all personnel movement in and out. Switch the fever clinic corridors to negative pressure mode!” Red warning lights spun wildly at the ends of the corridors. Heavy metal security shutters descended with a harsh, grating mechanical screech, slamming into the floor and compartmentalizing the massive ER into sealed blocks. The crowd of people waiting to register and see doctors fell into a brief panic. The cries of infants mixed with the frantic questions of family members. But the highly trained security guards were already swiftly rolling out the yellow-and-black quarantine tape. The laughter of the four college students cut off abruptly, like ducks being strangled by the neck. The girl holding her phone up to live stream, Chloe Bennett, lost her smile. Her camera angle shook. “No way, Doctor, we were just filming a prank for TikTok. Why are you making such a huge scene?” I yanked open my drawer, pulled out a disposable hazmat gown and an N95 mask, speaking rapidly but with crystal-clear enunciation. “The hospital emergency room does not provide venues for your escape room games or internet pranks. Ebola is lethal.” Liam pulled his arm back slightly and scoffed. “I got bitten by a bug at our Airbnb. It’s just a bump. Stop overreacting, is this really necessary?” “Whether it’s a bug bite or not, the CDC will tell you after we run your bloodwork, PCR tests, and pathogen sequencing.” “Then why the hell are you locking the doors? We have to go back to campus tonight for our graduation party! We already booked the VIP room!” I pinched the metal wire of my N95 mask tight over the bridge of my nose, refusing to look at him. Because I knew that explaining procedures to arrogant, entitled people would only result in an endless, pointless argument. Behind Chloe, the other girl in the group, Emma Foster, tugged at her sleeve and whispered, “Chloe, maybe we should end the live stream? I feel like this is blowing up.” Before Chloe could move, the tall guy who had been quiet until now, Noah Sullivan, got defensive. “Why should we turn it off? We didn’t lie. We really did just get back from Africa.” “Chat, look closely! This ER doctor at City General is locking down the entire hospital over a mosquito bite. Isn’t this an abuse of power?” I pointed a finger up at the CCTV camera in the corner of the ceiling, then looked dead at Chloe’s phone. “According to public health laws and hospital privacy regulations, cease filming immediately.” Security Captain Mike was already standing outside the quarantine tape with two fully geared security guards. Mike’s face was grim as he barked, “You four, comply with hospital regulations and put your phones away.” Chloe shrank back half a step behind Noah, her face turning ugly. “Why is your hospital forcing us to surrender our phones? Do you have something to hide?” I tied the straps of my hazmat gown into a dead knot behind my waist. “We aren’t hiding anything. We are preserving the scene. You just live-streamed from the core zone of the emergency room, claiming to carry a highly lethal infectious virus. This is classified as a threat to public safety.” “Until the CDC and the police confirm the area is safe, your communication devices must be screened to prevent unnecessary public panic.” All the color drained from her face instantly. Her lips moved, but no sound came out. The Chief of Emergency Medicine, Dr. Robert Davis, came sprinting out from the back. He had just finished a brutal round of CPR, his forehead slick with sweat. Seeing the lowered metal shutters and the flashing red lights, his brow twisted into a fierce knot. “Dr. Evans, what is going on?” I stepped up, reporting from a safe two-meter distance. “Four young patients, self-reporting recent travel history to Africa. One presents with unexplained purplish-red blood blisters on the right forearm, accompanied by a low-grade fever.” “The patients verbally claimed to be infected with the Ebola virus. I have initiated a Level 1 lockdown.” Dr. Davis took one look at Liam’s arm, and his expression instantly went dark. “Contact history? Where exactly in Africa did they go?” “Waiting on the CDC for epidemiological tracing.” Dr. Davis nodded decisively and turned to bark orders at the charge nurse. “Spin up the negative pressure isolation wards. Put these four in solitary confinement. All medical personnel in this zone, switch to Level 2 PPE. Seal every single item they have come into contact with.” The moment the words left his mouth, Emma finally broke down and burst into loud, wailing sobs. The sound was jarring in the echoing, isolated space. Chloe’s eyes went red too. She reached out, trying to grab the plastic sneeze guard on the triage desk. “Doctor… we really just wanted to film a graduation video to get some clout. We worked so hard to graduate. Please, please just let us go.” She spoke in a deliberately hushed, pitiful voice. She pleaded that she had just signed with a top influencer agency, and tonight’s live stream analytics were crucial for her career. She claimed they were just sheltered students who didn’t know hospital rules, and that if this left a mark on her criminal record, her parents would kill her. I looked at her through my protective goggles. “The moment you walked through those ER doors and said those words to your camera…” “…you should have known that in the adult world, ‘just a prank’ is not a get-out-of-jail-free card.” 2. State University’s academic advisor, Professor Mark Harrison, arrived in record time. He had rushed out so fast his shirt was buttoned wrong. Clutching a black leather briefcase, he stood outside the glass doors of the ER, sweating profusely as the security guards blocked his path. “I am a faculty advisor from the State University Business School! Those four students are mine! If there’s an issue, you negotiate with me!” He pounded frantically on the glass, his voice muffled through the heavy, soundproof doors. Dr. Davis signaled the guards to open the door just a crack, allowing him to stand behind the yellow line in the buffer zone. Professor Harrison took one look at the students being led into four separate negative pressure isolation rooms by staff in full hazmat gear, and then at the doctors standing in combat-ready formation. His face turned paper-white. “Dr. Davis… Dr. Evans… Isn’t… isn’t this blowing things a little out of proportion?” He pulled out a tissue, wiped the sweat from his face, and lowered his voice, attempting to use an administrative “let’s handle this internally” tone. “They just got their diplomas. They went to Africa to see the animal migration and got a little too excited. It’s just a normal bug bite. I’ve already lectured them.” “Just release them to me. I promise I’ll take them back to campus and discipline them strictly. If you actually escalate this to the CDC, do you know how many departments will get dragged into this?” “It’ll mess up your hospital’s bed turnover rates too, won’t it?” In my previous life, he had stood behind this exact yellow line, using the exact same earnest tone, even squeezing out two fake tears. He had pulled on my sleeve, begging me, saying he had just been approved for tenure, and that if his students caused a disaster like this, he would be heavily penalized. But later, when everything went to hell and reporters shoved microphones in his face, he washed his hands of it completely. He had said: “The hospital is a professional medical institution. Whether quarantine was necessary was entirely the doctor’s call.” “As laymen, we completely followed Dr. Evans’ arrangements at the time. How were we supposed to know she would be so reckless?” Through my face shield, my gaze locked coldly onto Harrison’s face. “Professor Harrison, are you aware that for the sake of internet clout, they live-streamed in an emergency room, falsely claiming to be carrying a highly lethal infectious virus?” Harrison’s eyes darted away shiftily. “I know they like making TikToks. Young people these days, they all want to be influencers. But I honestly had no idea they would joke about something like this.” Inside the isolation room, Liam heard the voices through the intercom system and immediately started slamming his hands against the glass window. “Professor! Why are you wasting your breath on them?! They’re just trying to scare us! My temperature is only 99 degrees, that barely even counts as a fever!” “Call campus security right now and get us out of here!” Chloe was wiping her tears in the adjacent room. She wept beautifully—no screaming, no throwing tantrums, just staring out with an incredibly helpless, victimized look. “Professor Harrison, I have a massive brand deal meeting tonight. If I don’t show up, I can’t afford the breach of contract fees. I really had no idea this doctor had such a horrible temper.” Hearing “breach of contract fees” and “campus security,” Harrison’s frown deepened. He turned to me and Dr. Davis, adopting the authoritative tone of a university administrator. “Dr. Davis, Dr. Evans. These kids’ vitals look perfectly stable. Aren’t you being far too rigid? Rules are written on paper, but we have to be flexible.” “These are twenty-something college students; they have fragile mental health. Locking them in airtight rooms like this—what if they develop depression or claustrophobia? Who is going to take responsibility for that?” I looked at him, suddenly feeling a surge of nausea. In my past life, he asked who would take responsibility for the students’ mental health. He asked who would take responsibility for the hospital’s PR. The only thing he didn’t ask was: Who is going to take responsibility for the lives of the hundreds of innocent patients they infected? The phone at the triage desk rang directly from the hospital’s executive suite. Dr. Davis put it on speaker. It was VP Wright, his voice laced with exhaustion and severity. “Robert, Sarah, what is going on down there? The Mayor’s office just called my desk. They’re saying the ER is illegally detaining college students, and parents are threatening to jump off the building on the phone.” Liam’s father’s furious roaring blasted through the speakerphone across the triage desk. “My son rarely even catches a cold! Is your hospital so desperate for money that you’ve gone insane?!” “Using a mosquito bite as an excuse to lock people up and force them to do expensive tests?! Let me tell you, I know people on the state medical board! If you don’t release my son to me untouched right now, I will have your entire department fired!” Chloe’s mother was weeping dramatically in the background. “My daughter is an honors graduate! She’s about to be a famous influencer!” “You locked her up in a filthy fever clinic! If she catches some other disease, can you afford to pay for her face?!” Hearing these voices, Chloe cried even louder in her isolation room. Noah even started kicking the metal door of his negative pressure room. “Let us out! I need to use the bathroom!” Nurse Jessica used the PA system to speak to him. “There is a private bathroom inside your room.” “I am not using that disgusting toilet! This is a violation of my human rights!” Noah screamed hysterically. I walked up to the glass of Noah’s room and stared at him with eyes like ice. “Noah. When you were live-streaming earlier, didn’t you say this was Ebola, the most thrilling virus in the world?” “The CDC is already on their way. Why are you suddenly in such a rush to leave?” He froze, his foot hanging in mid-air. In the next room, Chloe suddenly snapped her head toward me, glaring viciously through the glass. “Why are you so evil? We just said it casually, we didn’t realize the consequences! Why do you have to ruin our lives over this?!” I nodded. “Yes.” “Because my job is to make sure the consequences of your ‘casual’ words stay locked behind this glass door.” Her lips trembled. Tears clung to her eyelashes, and suddenly, she couldn’t say a single word. 3. The air in the ER lobby felt as thick as concrete. When the CDC’s epidemiological field team finally arrived, it was 9:30 PM. The team lead, Dr. Richard Vance, was a twenty-year veteran of outbreak control. Donning a heavy, white Level A hazmat suit, he carried two massive silver sampling kits. He completely ignored Professor Harrison, who was pacing frantically outside the buffer zone, and strode directly into the hot zone. Blood draws. Nasopharyngeal swabs. Scraping exudate from the blisters. Every action was meticulously performed inside the negative pressure rooms. The samples were sealed in biohazard canisters and immediately dispatched via specialized courier to the state’s BSL-3 laboratory. Standing at the nurses’ station, I turned my attention to the security monitors. I pulled up the footage from half an hour ago, right when they walked into the ER doors. In the video, they casually tossed four massive hiking backpacks onto the waiting area chairs. The gear looked highly professional, caked with mud, with heavy trekking boots and windbreakers strapped to the sides. Dr. Vance emerged from the isolation rooms holding his clipboard, his brow furrowed deeply. He walked over to me. “Dr. Evans, their stories line up perfectly. They all swear they stuck to the standard tourist routes recommended by their agency. No rainforests, no contact with wild animals.” I pointed at one of the backpacks on the screen. “Dr. Vance, please take a look at this.” I zoomed in. Tucked into the side mesh pocket of Noah’s olive-green tactical backpack was something wrapped in a woven sack. From the exposed corner, you could vaguely make out a bone covered in dried blood and grayish-brown fur. Dr. Vance leaned closer to the monitor. His eyes instantly sharpened into daggers. “What is that?” “I don’t know the exact species,” I said, my voice eerily calm. “But I do know that you can’t buy wildlife remains covered in fresh blood at standard influencer tourist traps.” “And the blood blisters on Liam’s arm—they have a distinct necrotic ring around the edges. That is absolutely not a normal bug bite.” Dr. Vance inhaled sharply and slammed his finger onto his two-way radio. “Team One, execute maximum-level decontamination and sampling of the patients’ personal luggage immediately! Focus on the olive-green backpack!” Inside his room, Noah saw the commotion outside. When the hazmat-suited workers started tearing into his bag, he began slapping the glass like a madman. “What are you doing?! Who gave you permission to touch my stuff?! Those are my personal belongings!” Chloe panicked too. Through the intercom, she yelled, “Noah, what the hell is in your bag?!” No one answered them. Wearing double-layered nitrile gloves, Dr. Vance personally used forceps to extract the bone and drop it into an evidence bag. Outside the buffer zone, Professor Harrison witnessed the entire scene. The placating, administrative smile he had been desperately trying to maintain completely shattered. “Wh-what is going on? Noah! What is that thing?!” he screamed toward the glass. Noah’s face turned bright red. He stammered for a long time. “Th-that… we bought it at an indigenous village… an amulet. They said it was a monkey bone, that it wards off evil spirits… I just thought it was cool. I wanted to bring it back as a souvenir.” “Are you insane?!” Dr. Vance snapped his head toward the glass. Even through his face shield, his fury was palpable. “Smuggling unquarantined wildlife remains across international borders?! Do you have a death wish, or did you just think it was too peaceful back home?!” The atmosphere outside the monitoring room plummeted to absolute zero. These college kids, who had just been screaming about lawsuits and human rights, finally felt the crushing weight of genuine terror. But it wasn’t enough. Fear doesn’t kill viruses. And it wouldn’t make them truly understand the magnitude of the catastrophic stupidity they had committed. The digital clock on the wall clicked to 10:05 PM. Exactly one hour since they had entered the hospital. In my previous life, it was exactly at this moment. I stared dead at the CCTV feed for Isolation Room 1, where Liam was held.
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