CHAPTER 1: Patient Zero
Location: Hono Hospital, Saitama prefecture, Tokyo city
Third person POV:
The spring morning hit the air after the winter season passed by with the cold breeze. Nothing like the smell of a new spring arriving beats the cold winter before it. Everything is going great in Tokyo; the city is bustling with work and activity as residents embrace the blooming cherry blossoms. Things beg to differ inside of Hono hospital. Everything went as it goes inside the white walls in the hospital. Patients, doctors, nurses, visitors roaming about, and kids playing around with toys in the waiting room. The building gave the atmosphere of hospitality.
Suddenly, an elderly man and his nephew came running in, the elderly man panicked, calling for help towards the nurse at the reception. "Help! Please! My nephew started coughing up and I don't know what's wrong! This is not a normal fever!", the elderly man says to the nurse inside the reception, clutching his nephew with a worried expression.
“Sir, calm down, explain what's going on”, The receptionist told him, trying to calm the elderly man down and giving a comforting smile, her hands stopping from her typing on the computer to stand up to assess the situation, checking the young man, her expression slowly growing grim at the abnormalities of the young man’s symptoms.
The other nurses that passed by saw the young man beside the elder, sweating profusely along with a flushed face, the nurses not currently busy stopping by the young man as well, they also took note of the abnormalities with panic in their eyes.
“Sir, we need to send him to the ER” The receptionist states after seeing the state that the nephew was in.
She quickly ordered out for the other nurses surrounding them to bring a stretcher and for the rest of the nurses to assist her in putting the boy on the stretcher, as they all quickly rushed the young man to the ER while the elderly man followed, growing even more worried with how the nurses are reacting.
The symptoms are similar to pneumonia, but their gut instincts screamed at them that something is definitely wrong and abnormal about this young man’s symptoms, but they also noted something was wrong with his right hand, having something akin to a bite mark on his arm.
Once they arrived at the ER, Dr. Sanada Sr.(Kazuki Sanada’s father) arrived soon after, before he proceeded to ask the nurses the status of the patient.
“Status, nurse?” Dr. Sanada asked with urgency in his tone, his eyes switching towards the young boy then back to the nurse.
“The patient is experiencing signs of pneumonia, doctor. He's experienced dry coughing, high fever but he states that he's only been feeling this a couple days ago along with a strange bitemark on his left arm.”, The nurse replied, listing down the symptoms to the doctor from her clipboard.
“Abnormally caused pneumonia, that's unusual, usually pneumonia develops between 1-3 days. Has he experienced anything before he got sick”, Dr. Sanada Sr. asked the nurse, lifting his eyes from his earlier muttering.
“Well, the patient did admit to having been on a work trip outside of the country”, The nurse confessed, her eyes darted from the doctor to the patient’s arm.
Dr. Sanada nodded before turning his attention to the patient who was currently lying down as the nurses on his left treated his injured arm, sanitizing the wound before patching it up with gauze.
“Sir, when have you experienced anything unusual in your body?” Dr. Sanada asked the young man, sitting down on the chair provided with a firm expression.
The nephew stirred awake, opening one of his eyes to face the doctor.
“I only started feeling sick three days after I arrived back home. While overseas, I stayed at a rural hotel in the country and decided to go outside for some fresh air which afterwards, I ended up getting attack by some sort of.. monster” He answered as he recalled the events that happened.
This sent warning signals down Dr. Sanada's nerves from just hearing what happened. His gut tells him that this was far worse than what he just thought was just abnormal pneumonia. After consulting the patient and giving him a check up. Dr Sanada went outside to the waiting room where the old man was staying anxiously.
“Doctor, how's my nephew? Is there something wrong with him?”, the elderly man asked as he got up from his seat.
“Your nephew exhibits signs of pneumonia but he's unfortunately experiencing them at an alarming rate that's abnormal from regular pneumonia cases, unfortunately going to have to put him in long-term care till I can figure out a diagnosis”, Dr. Sanada said. The elderly man noticed that the doctor was uncertain but decided to trust the doctor. “Thank you doctor, I’ll leave you too it”, But the look in the doctor's eyes had implied that it was more than just long term care. The next day followed with a check-up; Dr. Sanada Sr. checked on the patient’s vital and tracking down signs of infection, documenting down anything he could find out about the virus. This procedure happened within the following week with repetitive check-ups and working together with nurses and other medical staff to identify the virus. Unfortunately, before Dr. Sanada could do more research on the virus, ‘Patient Zero’ started convulsing uncontrollably as a radiologist conducted an MRI scan.
“What’s going on?” the radiologist says as his eyebrows furrowed.
“Someone hold him down from the inside!” Another nurse ordered as two nurses rushed to hold the patient down by the side.
‘Patient Zero’ continued to twitch and started attacking the staff, biting one of the nurses hands while being held down.
“Gah! He bit me!”, The bitten nurse exclaimed, clutching her hand and letting go of the patient.
But in turn, the patient jumped up and attacked the other nurse, biding down on his neck as blood pooled. The female nursed scream as she darted out the door, clutching her wounded hand.
In the hallways, patients and medical staff were outside in the waiting room. While they waited, they heard the commotion inside the MRI suite and their attention perked up towards the door.
Three questions summarized what they thought; “What’s going on?” “Why is it taking so long?” “Is there something going wrong with the scan”
Someone, a patient decided to come close to the door only to be met with the panicked nurse bleeding from her hand as ‘Patient Zero’ followed behind in pursuit.
Several more casualties had happened after that, including five staff members and two patients, which made a total of nine casualties and the virus spread from one patient to more.
The hospital authorities were called after that incident, but ‘Patient Zero’ was nowhere to be found… ---------------------------------------------------------
Hey everyone! This is my HNI infection au and I'll be posting more chapters this summer if I can. Anyways, it's going to include more but this is just the first chapter, and it'll include more character lore and HNI ocs too. :P
