The door creaked open, and the sight in front of me made my entire body go cold.
There was no secret lover. There were no hidden burner phones or evidence of a double life. Instead, the pristine white tiles of our master bathroom looked like a makeshift, chaotic triage room.
Emily was standing in the center of the room, her face completely drained of color, her eyes wide with a mixture of terror and profound exhaustion. She was holding a pair of heavy-duty medical shears in one hand. On the counter lay a roll of sterile gauze, several open packs of medical-grade bioclusive dressings, and a biohazard disposal bag she must have smuggled home from the hospital.
But it was her arms that made my breath catch in my throat.
She had rolled her sleeves up past her elbows. Strips of thick, specialized foam bandages were wrapped tightly around her forearms. On her left arm, the bandage had been partially peeled back, revealing her skin.
It didn’t look like human skin anymore.
__It was covered in deep, weeping, perfectly circular lesions that glowed with a faint, sickeningly iridescent purple hue under the harsh bathroom fluorescent lights. (s) They looked like chemical burns, but they were pulsing. I could actually see the skin around the margins of the sores twitching, as if something alive was nesting just beneath the epidermal layer.
“Jason,” she whispered, her voice trembling violently as she dropped the shears onto the counter. “You shouldn’t be here. You need to get out of this room right now.”
“Emily… what is that?” My voice sounded incredibly distant, like I was underwater. I stepped forward, instinctively reaching out to touch her, but she violently recoiled, slamming her back against the tiled wall.
“Don’t touch me!” she screamed, a raw, panicked sound that pierced right through me. “Do not come near me, Jason! If you touch this, if you breathe it in too closely when it’s open… I don’t know what it will do to you.”
“What do you mean, breathe it in? What is happening to you?” The panic was fully setting in now, clawing at my throat. “Is this from the hospital? Did you contract something from a patient?”
