The curator was sweating, but it wasn’t just from the heat. It wasn’t such a warm day and the air conditioning was on. It was something on the inside and he felt like he was going down with flu. And it had started soon after that visit from Gabrielle Gusack.
It must be swine flu. Damn!
He decided to check the symptoms online. Fever, sweating, headache, aching muscles, limb and joint pain, tiredness. On the other hand there was no diarrhoea, no sore throat, no runny nose and no sneezing. And there was something else. He was itching all over his torso, like he had measles or even chickenpox. But he had had both of those as a child.
He opened his shirt and looked at his torso only to be confronted by a frightening sight. His body was covered in red marks – not streaks but more like the elongated letter S or several such letters strung together. He touched one and his mind shrieked with pain, like he was burning. But now he realized that with this fever, his whole body felt like it was burning. The touch only made it worse.
A wave of fear swept over him. His mind panicked as he wondered what it could be. He had come into contact with people from a foreign country where hygiene standards are not so high and now he was going down with something that produced these S-shaped marks and a fiery pain on his flesh.
He felt his legs going weak.
Is that just fear or the disease itself?
Whatever it was, he knew that he had to act quickly. He leaned over to grab the phone and called 999.
‘Emergency services, which service do you require?’
‘Ambulance,’ he rasped as he felt the heat rise up in his stomach. He wanted to say more, but he felt his vision go blurry and could no longer support himself.
The last thing he remembered before passing out was his body slumping to the floor.