It was called Voidus. It was the newest parasite to strike the world. No one knew where it had come from, but it was spreading like wild fire in Japan and surrounding nations. Though the infection had initially been easily contained, it soon began to resist treatment and spread like mad throughout the Eastern Asian area. Danielle Breziek was running her first World Health Organization project here in Japan. She had always had a passion for helping the sick, first working in a children's hospital in London, before joining the U.N back in 2008. Now two years later, she had already become a senior medical advisor to the U.N Security Council and it was her who suggested they send aid to a failing Japanese nation. She was beginning to regret it though as she saw the line ups of infected, most of them looking completely fine, but for some nausea and coughing. Due to the paranoia ensued by the plague, thousands of the people at each camp were most likely fine, or had a small cold, but they couldn't turn any away.
Danielle's patients, for the most part seemed normal, lining up to get the vaccination thanking her and leaving. Her last patient for the day would prove to be a catalyst in ending Danielle's stunning career forever. The woman carried a small child with her, wrapped in a ragged blanket. You could tell that she was poor, most likely one of the few who lived on the street. The corners of her mouth were coated in red saliva, a sure sign of infection. Danielle knew that she shouldn't be scared, she had been vaccinated before she came to the country, but she worried all the same as the woman, no older than 19 brought the small child to her, "私の娘、彼女は熱を有する [My daughter, she has a fever," the woman almost threw the child into Danielle's arms, "彼女を、彼女ある私が持っているすべてが直しなさい [Please heal her, she is all I have.]"
Danielle took the small child in her arms and noticed that immediately something was amiss; the child was stiff in her arms and instead of being warm, as the mother had described her, she was cold as ice. Shaking slightly Danielle brought her stethoscope to the girl's chest and listened for a heartbeat. There was none. The mother immediately noticed the looked in Danielle's eyes and began to shriek and babble in quick, broken Japanese. Danielle was able to get the words "Murderer" and "Baby" before the mother lost all comprehensibility and jumped at Danielle, much to the surprise of the U.N guard standing near her. The men in blue helmets pulled the screaming woman off of the startled and scared doctor. The woman then began to hack and cough and pun over so her stomach was pressed onto the ground, where she continued to cough, seemingly oblivious to the people around her. She was given a wide berth as the cough changed from a dry one to a wet hacking sound and a thin spray of blood spewed from her mouth onto the pavement. Soon she was still just like the baby that she had given Danielle to try and heal. Danielle couldn't help but tear up when she saw the woman's corpse, her baby, laying on her chest, carried away to be burned with the rest of the corpses.
Danielle wasn't the same for the rest of her shift in Japan. She woke up in a cold sweat, shaking, her dreams of the woman and her child preventing her from getting proper sleep. Soon the other supervisors took notice and sent word to the World Health Organization. They concluded she was under severe depression and stress and told her to return to London as soon as possible. She was to undergo therapy when she returned and would be welcomed back to work after she was deemed fit to resume. Danielle was devastated, her work with medical diseases was her life and she didn't know what she would do without it. She boarded the plane home and began the long trip home.
She awoke from a nap on her plane ride with a small coughing fit. Excusing herself from her window seat to the angry scowls of an older couple she ran to the bathroom stall where the coughing intensified greatly until she felt like she was about to cough up one of her lungs. Finally the cough subsided and she removed her hands from her mouth, where she saw the thin spray of blood across them. Wiping them clean on a paper towel in a panic and leaving the bathroom stall she sat back down in her seat. She felt a small cough erupting again so she asked the nearest flight attendant for a glass of water. She took a small sip and felt the fit relax as she sat back in her seat again and began to sleep, her mind at rest. That couldn't be said about the elderly couple beside her. They saw the red rim that wasn't lipstick along the cup she had just drunk. They chose to ignore it and just pretended they hadn't seen anything.
The flight ended without incident and Danielle began her life of therapy. His name was Micah Smith, a well-known expert in depression and anxiety issues in people after their post-war returns. He was fascinated by Danielle's quick decline and he immediately took her case on. She spoke of the incident with the woman quite frequently and Micah noted that she grew paler and shallower with each day she saw him. He made a note and put her under suicide watch with someone to check on her each day. Danielle wanted to get better and every day she went to see Micah seemed like a step in the right direction. Despite the sharing that she got to experience with her therapist, she could not feel herself getting better. The voices still screamed at her in the night, the weakness of depression and the chills of repressed memories caused her daily pains every night. It was as if the entire world was against her. Soon she was on medication for depression, a necessary evil, as Micah had called it.
It was the first week into therapy that more began to go wrong in Danielle's life and she sank into an even deeper depression. She could barely get out of bed anymore, only rising to partake in eating and regular bathroom breaks to throw up what she had just eaten. Her frame grew frailer and her hair began to fall out, a side effect of the malnutrition, Micah said and she believed him. For a while at least; soon though the screaming girl and the stiff baby that punctured her sleep at night began to lead her to believe she was more than just depressed. She was insane; the baby had been alive and she had killed it and in relation killed the mother out of grief. This is when Micah grew concerned. She was beginning to become delusional. He would get her into tests as soon as possible. He booked an appointment for her to meet with another specialist; he cited bias as the reason. Danielle was devastated once again, why had he abandoned her to this new doctor. He thought she was insane as well and he couldn't be with her anymore. That had to be it. Danielle decided that she would confront him about it in their next session.
That night Danielle woke up, in a cold sweat as usual. She had grown used to this in the two weeks she had been home. She took two of the Prozac that Micah had prescribed for her depression. She always had trouble keeping them down and today was no different. After the glass of water she stumbled to the bathroom where she began to vomit violently, spewing not food, but blood into the toilet. She realized that she was in trouble and began to move towards the phone, feeling her body growing weaker. Her head was spinning and he had trouble remembering what she was trying to do. Soon she was hit with another coughing fit and she sank to the floor coughing into the floor unable to move. She reached for the phone and dialled a number. She was just about to hit the "Talk" button and dial out, but she felt the world fading around her and she closed her eyes, falling into her last sleep and the phone tone beeped once and deleted the number she was trying to reach.
Micah checked his phone, she hadn?t called in for three days now, and at this point that was major concerns. He had waited for one reason only; to make sure that he had cleared up any problems that might have been seen as unprofessional between he and Danielle. Now it was time to call the police and have them see if she was ok. He doubted she was, he knew she was depressed and he tried to fix it. Laughter wasn?t the best medicine but what he did was, at least for himself. Did what he did to his female cliental make him a bad person? Perhaps but no one would believe a mental patient?s word against the word of one of the top authorities on mental health. It was the perfect life he was living. Sex for healing, both for him and his clients and if one killed herself over it; well they were always mentally unstable.
It was 4:15pm the third day after Danielle?s death that she was discovered in her home. She was immediately labelled under ?suspicious death? and rushed into the mortuary for examination. She was found to have trace amounts of antidepressants and other various medications for mental instability. This was strange as she was only on record as seeing a psychologist and they could not prescribe medications. Micah Smith was brought under review. The examination took weeks, he was prodded by police, and detectives monitored his sessions without his consent. He could not figure out what everyone was so paranoid about, he had only given a patient drugs, this was something that could be swept under the table normally. He hoped that the controversy would blow over soon; it was killing his sex life.
Soon enough it was over and he could return to his work. The investigation had him very stressed and he had been sick a lot recently. He hated what that investigation had done to him. His cliental had moved to other specialists and he was left with the deranged, the ones he couldn?t exploit because of their insanity and it was killing him, he needed to get his fix.
He walked home after a long day of convincing someone that cats were not to be feared and was looking forward to his night time routine with his laptop and a little lubrication. This was the only way he was keeping himself sane while having this stomach flu and working extra hours to make up for his lost cliental. The answer his prayers stood in front of him though, his angel in fishnet stockings and a low top. He smiled cruelly and walked up to the woman. He made his presence known with a fist full of hundreds and soon they were in the nearest alley. She had screamed so loud and he loved it. It was more expensive then the Internet, but so much more satisfying. He didn?t even need to know who she was, nor pretend to care.
He woke up the next day, even weaker than the day before and his cough was a dry hacking sound instead of the normal wet cough. He called his receptionist and told her to cancel his appointments for the day, he couldn?t move, it was too much to take. He spent the rest of the evening watching the news, looking for anything interesting. Soon he found it as a cop was found in his home dead, much in the same way as Danielle was. This perplexed him, even disturbed him once he found out that he recognized the poor bastard. It was one of the cops that had interrogated him. That was all the details the reporters had on the story and it stank of someone covering up, or maybe cleaning house. Someone was trying to make sure that he was silenced and they were killing anyone that had to do with him. He huddled deeper into the blankets. Well they weren?t going to get him, not if he had anything to say about it.
........for now 
