Page 15 of Outbreak Protocol

CHAPTER NINE

ERIK

The break room movie ends abruptly when alarms start blaring throughout the hospital. Felix's pager buzzes insistently, followed immediately by mine. Emma looks up from her colouring book, eyes wide with concern.

"Felix? What's happening?"

"Stay here with the nurses, sweetheart. Erik and I need to check on something."

We rush toward the emergency department, and the chaos hits us before we clear the corridor. Patients on gurneys line the hallways, some conscious and moaning, others unconscious with family members hovering anxiously. The distinctive smell of blood and antiseptic grows stronger with each step.

"Jesus," Felix breathes, surveying the scene. "This is three times what we had yesterday."

NATO personnel in hazmat suits move between patients, taking temperatures and marking charts with coloured tags. Red tags, yellow tags, black tags. Triage protocols I recognize from disaster response training, but seeing them implemented in a major European hospital sends ice through my veins.

"Dr. Müller!" A nurse calls from trauma bay three. "We need you now!"

Felix sprints toward the voice, and I follow, my epidemiologist training warring with an inexplicable need to stay close to him. Inside the trauma bay, a middle-aged woman lies on the gurney, her skin pale and clammy, small spots of blood visible at the corners of her eyes.

"What's her status?" Felix asks, already pulling on gloves.

"Maria Santos, age 47, presented with severe headache and fever two hours ago. Blood pressure dropped suddenly, heart rate climbing, and now she's bleeding from multiple sites."

As if on cue, blood begins trickling from the patient's nose. Felix checks her pupils with a penlight, his movements precise despite the urgency.

"Pupils are reactive but sluggish. When did the bleeding start?"

"Five minutes ago. It's getting worse."

The cardiac monitor shows an irregular rhythm, and suddenly the woman's body convulses. Blood appears at her ears, her mouth, and I watch Felix's expression shift from professional concern to controlled alarm.

"She's going into cardiac arrest," he says, positioning his hands on her chest. "Get me epinephrine and prepare for intubation."

The monitor flatlines with that distinctive, terrible sound I've only heard in movies. Felix begins chest compressions, counting under his breath, his whole body putting force behind each push. Sweat beads on his forehead despite the cool air.

"Come on, Maria. Stay with us."

Without thinking, I step closer to the bedside. "What can I do?"

"Erik, you don't need to—"

"Tell me what to do. "

Felix glances at me, then at the monitor still showing that flat line. "When I say, give her two breaths through the bag mask. Watch her chest rise, then stop."

He continues compressions while the nurse prepares medications. Blood seeps from the woman's mouth, staining Felix's gloves, and I realize we're fighting something that's thoroughly destroying her body from the inside.

"Now, Erik. Two breaths."

I place the mask over her face and squeeze the bag, watching her chest rise and fall. The intimacy of breathing life into someone else's lungs hits me unexpectedly—this immediate, visceral connection between her survival and our actions.

"Again."

We fall into rhythm—Felix's compressions, my ventilations, the nurse pushing medications through the IV line.

Maria's body jerks with each chest compression, blood flowing more freely now, and I understand why Felix left pathology.

Death in the lab is abstract, clinical. Death here is urgent and personal and devastating.

"Come on," Felix mutters, sweat dripping onto his scrubs. "Come on, Maria."

Twenty minutes pass. Thirty. The monitor remains flat despite our efforts, despite the medications, despite Felix's refusal to give up. More blood pools beneath her head, and her skin takes on a waxy pallor that even I recognize as irreversible.

"Felix," the nurse says gently. "It's been forty minutes."

He doesn't stop compressions. "Just a few more minutes."

"Felix." I place my hand on his shoulder. "She's gone."

His hands still on her chest, and the room falls silent except for the flatline tone. Felix stares at Maria's face, blood streaking from her nose and mouth, and something breaks in his expression.

"Time of death, 16:47," he says quietly.

The nurse covers Maria with a sheet while Felix strips off his bloodied gloves.

His scrubs are soaked with sweat and spattered with blood, his hair disheveled from the exertion.

Around us, the emergency department continues its controlled chaos—more patients arriving, more families crying, more staff rushing between beds.

"Dr. Müller!" Another voice calls. "Trauma two needs you!"

Felix doesn't respond. He stands motionless beside Maria's covered form, staring at his hands.

"Felix," I say softly. "They need you."

"I can't." His voice comes out hoarse. "I can't do this again. Not right now."

I glance around the trauma bay, then make a decision that surprises me. "Yes, you can. But first, you need some time."

I guide Felix away from the bed, past the nurses preparing Maria's body, through the chaos of the emergency department. NATO personnel try to stop us, but I flash my ECDC credentials and explain we need to decontaminate.

On the third floor, I find an empty physician's lounge with an attached shower. Felix sits heavily on the bench, head in his hands.

"I've lost patients before," he says. "It's part of the job. But this... watching her body just give up, bleeding from everywhere at once..."

"You did everything possible."

"Did I? Because it felt like nothing. Like trying to stop a tsunami with a paper towel."

I sit beside him, close enough that our shoulders touch. "You gave her forty minutes of your complete attention and skill. You refused to give up when anyone else would have called it. That matters, even if the outcome didn't change."

Felix looks at me, and I see exhaustion and grief and something else—gratitude that I stayed, that I helped, that I'm here now when he needs someone to understand what we just witnessed.

"Your scrubs are covered in blood," I observe.

"Yours too. "

I look down and realize he's right. My shirt and jacket are stained from our attempts to save Maria, evidence of my first real involvement in emergency medicine rather than epidemiological analysis.

"Shower," I murmur, my voice rough. "Together."

The physician’s shower is clinical—chrome fixtures, harsh lighting—but the heat will soothe the ache in our muscles, wash away the traces of failure.

Felix hesitates, then nods, his hands trembling faintly as he peels off his scrubs.

I do the same, fabric sticking where blood has dried, our movements unhurried, almost reverent.

The water hits us, scalding at first, then perfect. Steam curls between us as crimson swirls down the drain. Felix scrubs methodically, surgeon’s hands moving with precision, but his breath catches when he scrapes a nail too hard over his wrist.

I step closer. "Let me."

My fingers trace his spine first—just a whisper of contact—before sliding into his hair.

He shudders as I work the shampoo through, massaging the tension from his scalp, thumbs pressing slow circles behind his ears.

The blood rinses away, but I don’t stop.

My touch lingers at the nape of his neck, where his pulse jumps under damp skin.

He turns suddenly, water sluicing down his chest, and his hands find my hips, pulling me against him. Heat sears where we touch—his stomach flush with mine, thighs brushing—and his thumbs stroke my ribs, questioning.

"You’re shaking," he whispers.

I wasn’t. Not until now.

His palm cradles my jaw, calloused fingers gentle as they tilt my face up.

The kiss starts slow—just the brush of lips, testing—but when I part mine with a sigh, he groans, deepening it.

His tongue traces my lower lip, tasting me, and I grip his shoulders to steady myself.

The water is everywhere, his body slick against me, and I can’t tell where the shower ends and he begins .

We break apart gasping. Felix rests his brow against mine, his breath warm on my mouth.

"It's not just today," he says, the words a raw confession. "It's not just the... horror."

"I know." I touch his cheek, my thumb tracing the exhausted line of his jaw. "For me either." I kiss him again, softer this time, a promise instead of a release. "I know."

The shower drains the terror, the grief. What’s left is this: his heartbeat under my palms, the whisper of his lips on my temple, the unspoken promise that whatever comes next, we face it together .

"I don't usually..." he starts.

"Neither do I."

"But this feels..."

"Right," I finish. "It feels right."

He nods, and we stand there for another moment, water cascading around us, finding comfort in each other's presence. Outside, alarms continue blaring, patients continue arriving, the outbreak continues spreading. But in this small space, we've created something that feels like safety.

"We should get back," Felix says eventually.

"Yes."

But neither of us moves immediately. We wash each other's backs, checking for any missed blood, the gestures practical but tender. Felix has a small scar below his left shoulder blade that I trace with my finger, and he shivers despite the warm water.

"Rock climbing accident when I was twenty-two," he explains.

"You'll have to tell me that story sometime."

"When this is over."

The promise of a future conversation, of time together beyond crisis management, settles something in my chest. We're not just colleagues anymore, not just professionals thrown together by circumstance.

We're partners in every sense, and what's developing between us feels as important as any epidemiological breakthrough.

We dress in clean scrubs from the lounge supply, and Felix runs his fingers through his damp hair, transforming it from disheveled to purposefully tousled. He looks younger somehow, less burdened.

"Ready?" I ask.

"Ready."

As we head back toward the emergency department, I realize something fundamental has shifted.

The statistical models and transmission patterns remain critically important, but they're no longer the only thing driving my decisions.

Felix's wellbeing, Emma's stability, our growing partnership—these personal concerns now factor into every calculation.

The thought should terrify me, should feel like professional compromise. Instead, it feels like the most natural evolution of everything I've learned about medicine, about human connection, about what actually matters when the world starts falling apart.

Whatever awaits us in the emergency department, whatever new horrors this outbreak presents, Felix and I will face it together. That certainty anchors me more than any epidemiological training ever could.

And maybe that's exactly what both of us need to remain effective during the most challenging crisis of our careers.