The blood wouldn't stop pouring out of the IV injection. "It looks like it has lost its ability to clot!" I yelled.
"All right, I'll go grab some antifibrinolytic drugs! Bandage the area around the insertion tightly!" Kyra ran off while I began to wrap up the wound. He was still sweating profusely and the sparkles seemed to be increasing in quantity. The man was fully unconscious at this point and his breathing was becoming strained and quickened. When Kyra arrived with the medicine, I felt that he as on the verge of death.
"I'm going to inject this! Be ready with more bandages!" I walked up behind Kyra, ready to stop the blood. Once she injected the drug, I quickly wrapped around the injection point.
"Kyra, he's barely breathing. Should we intubate?"
"I've only done it a few times, but I think I can make it work."
Luckily, we were in one of the ICU rooms that was pre-equipped with a ventilator and an electrocardiogram machine. We were able to quickly maneuver machine into place. "This should take no more than thirty seconds. If the procedure takes any longer than that, we'll have a high chance of damaging his trachea. I don't have time to go get the sedatives. He's already unconscious anyway. Let's do this quick." I used a laryngoscope to hold his tongue back and give Kyra a mirror image of the upper portion of his trachea. I then applied pressure to his thyroid. After about twenty seconds, the patient was fully intubated and the ventilator was operational. After attaching the ECG, Kyra and I could finally take a moment to rest.
"So, the sparkles in the blood. If this disease was caused by bacteria, then his condition would be considered sepsis," I said. "Should we preemptively administer antibiotics?"
Kyra shook her head. "We have no idea what this is, or if antibiotics will make it work. I've never seen anything like this. You're probably better than me at this since you're an infectious disease doctor. Have you ever seen a pathogenic bacteria that is visible to the naked eye?"
"No, you're right, this is something entirely new." I turned and looked to the vitals monitor. "His heart rate elevated to one-hundred-seventy beats per minute, but it's stable at least."
"I don't know if we can save him, but lets at least figure out what this does to the human body," Kyra said in a dark tone. "Take a blood sample and we'll put it under the microscope so we can figure out what the hell this is."
After taking a sample and once again tightly bandaging his arm, I put it under the microscope. Once the zoom was great enough to reveal the cellular level, I could see everything. There were barely any whole blood cells. In the sample, remnants of cell membranes were scattered about, and every so often a large reflective object would come into view. The sparkles were many times the size of the cells. "What the hell is destroying the cells then?" I wondered aloud. Kyra walked in as I was switching through zoom levels.
"His heart rate went down to one-hundred-twenty bpm. I felt comfortable leaving him. He's surprisingly stable. His fever went down to one-hundred four as well. Did you find anything interesting?" I backed away from the microscope and motioned to her.
"Take a look." Kyra stared into the lens silently for a minute or two. Then she turned back to me.
"Yup, I have no clue." We sat there for a few minutes wondering what else we could do. "I want to get out of this," said Kyra.
"I can't take much more of it either. Did you set up an isolation unit for him?"
"Yeah, he's breathing completely separate air from us now. Let's go wash off." We walked back to the bio-suit room and sprayed each other with disinfectant. After taking off our suits, we put on masks and gloves and sprayed disinfectant in all of the places we had been and where the man had been. We could monitor his vitals through a large window into his room. We could also make observations of his physical changes.
"Let's take shifts. I don't want to leave him without supervision. I don't think he has much time left anyway." I reluctantly agreed since I could already barely sleep in the hospital.
"Should we do a CAT scan to see if we can gain some insight into what's happening to his body?" I asked.
"That's a good idea, but I want to get him off of the ventilator first. We'll just have to wait this out." Kyra turned away from me and we both looked through the window at the man. (I wonder how many people suffered a similar fate...)
"We don't even know his name..." said Kyra