Above the noise of all other rumblings in the halls of Mt. Service hospital, the voice of Ariana Tanne could be heard shouting clearly.

‘Help!’ she bellowed, ‘please! Somebody help!’

She was carrying on her shoulder her limping, wounded husband Richard. Only ten minutes earlier, Richard had suffered an accident while working on the roof of their home. He had slipped on one of the tiles and fallen, and his body had tumbled right onto the spot where the remains of a hollowed oak stuck out from the ground. The tree had been earlier split and ripped down by lightning, leaving only the trunk and broken pieces of wood sticking out from the top like spikes. Richard had fallen right onto one of the sharp splinters of wood, and it had torn a gaping wound into his side. The other patients and their families looked in horror as the gored man left a thick trail of blood behind him as they walked down the hallway.

It didn’t take long for a nurse to recognise Richard’s dire condition. She first notified a doctor, Dr. Manuel, and then ran to assure the couple that a doctor was on his way. He would see them shortly, she said, and in the meantime procured some cloth to attempt to slow the bleeding of the wound.

Heeding the call of the most urgent signal, Dr. Manuel sprinted through the upper floors of the hospital, ripping through the stairs and crowds of people to make it to the couple. When he arrived, he saw the terrible condition of the patient, and he knew right away that nothing conventional could possibly help him.

‘Take him here,’ he said, grabbing a gurney and pulling it right in front of the couple. A group of nurses assisted the patient in climbing onto the gurney.

‘Will he be alright?’ Ariana asked the doctor, watching the staff wheel her husband down the hall.

‘We’ll see what we can do,’ responded Dr. Manuel, rushing after the nurses that were taking Richard away.

Regardless of the hopeful words the doctor had given Ariana as he left, he had known immediately that there would be very little, if anything, they could do, and not many options included keeping the patient alive for very much longer. 

After five agonising minutes of waiting, Dr. Manuel appeared through the door of the operating room. 

‘How is he?’ asked the desperate wife. There was nothing she could do to stop herself from crying. Tears were pouring down her cheeks.

The doctor attempted to soothe her. He grabbed her hand with comforting softness, adopted a gentle tone in his voice; but ultimately, he knew what he had to tell her.

‘I’m afraid that there is very little we can do for your husband. His chances of survival are very slim, near to none,’ he said.

Ariana was about to collapse into hysterical tears, when the doctor stopped her.

‘However,’ he continued, ‘there is one experimental treatment which might be able to save him. He is bleeding very heavily. Without the treatment, there is very little hope of him living for any more than a couple more minutes. If you would like us to try the treatment, I will need your consent now.’

‘Yes, please!’ she cried, ‘anything! Anything to save him!’

With a nod, the doctor promptly spun around and bolted back into the operating room. Ariana believed she could see a subtle smile appear on the doctor’s lips when he proposed the experimental treatment, but with her eyes hazy with many tears, she couldn’t be sure.

Some time passed, Ariana had no way of telling how much, but every second that elapsed in those white halls felt like an eternity. Eventually, the doctor emerged once more from the operating room. He had an optimistic smile on his lips.

‘Please, come in,’ he invited. 

Ariana stood up from her chair and followed the doctor into the operating room. Once inside, she saw her husband on the operating bed. There were puddles of blood all around him, but she was relieved to see her beloved was still alive.

‘We have given your husband a parasite,’ said Dr. Manuel. After seeing Ariana’s alarm, he raised his hand in an assuaging gesture. ‘That’s only a scientific term. The creature, called a bactus, has been found to have great healing properties. If all goes well, it will heal your husband’s wounds, and even bring him to utmost, pristine health.’

Ariana felt sudden joy at the possibility of her husband making a full recovery. She wiped away her tears to look at him more clearly. Looking at his face from the edge of the room, she saw that he was conscious, and even calm.

‘Rich?’ she called him.

‘Ari?’ he answered, turning his head to look at her. He smiled when he saw her. ‘Ari, I feel great. I don’t know what the hell they did, but look at this.’

Richard began to turn his torso over to show Ariana the spot where the wound was. She started to panic at her husband moving so much in such a condition, but Dr. Manuel gave her another assuaging hand gesture. When her eyes returned to Richard, she flinched at the expectation of the gory wound. When she peeked at him through her eyelids, however, she was immediately both comforted and confused. 

In the place where the fatal wound had been, there was now what appeared to be a pale, gelatinous mass that covered every part of the exposed flesh, and blended cleanly into the surrounding skin. Through it Ariana could see where the gash had been, but now it was no longer bleeding. Furthermore, her husband was smiling; he was no longer in pain.

‘This is amazing!’ cried Ariana in joy. ‘Thank you so much doctor! Rich!’

But just as Ariana started walking up to her husband to embrace him, her eyes moved down to the gelatinous blob in his torso, and she froze in place. Richard, seeing his wife’s alarm, followed her eyes down his chest. His expression turned to panic when he saw that the jelly was spreading out of the wound and around the surrounding skin, consuming him as it slowly propagated from its original point. 

‘Doctor?’ asked Richard in panicked concern.

‘Doctor, what’s happening?’ echoed Ariana. 

She began to turn to look at Dr. Manuel, but she was stopped by the sight of the jelly reaching her husband’s neck and beginning to transform his face. Everywhere the jelly moved it converted Richard’s skin, flesh and bones to a pale, semi-transparent mass. 

‘Rich!’ she cried, reaching out to him, but remained fixed in place. 

Ariana watched as her husband’s face became a single indiscernible blob. Slowly but diligently, Richard’s entire body turned into the gelatinous mass. As it was consumed by the foreign substance, it lost much of its strength, and the elbow he was propped up on gave to the weight of his body. Richard’s torso collapsed into his arm, then his head fell too, shrinking and seemingly being sucked up into the rest of the body. The other limbs shrank in size, leaving only tiny ligaments of jelly behind. The more of Richard’s body was lumped into the blob of jelly, the blob itself could be seen shrinking in size. Once Richard’s trousers fell flat and all of him was reduced to a single clump, he was no larger than a cap. Tiny gelatinous tentacles stuck out from under him, scattered languidly on the operation table.

Ariana finally pulled her eyes away from the massacre that took place to look at Dr. Manuel. She had expected him to reciprocate some of her horror at the scene, but instead he was widely beaming.

‘Behold!’ he said with a grin, looking at what had become of Richard, ‘the immortal jellyfish! The pinnacle of health!’

But the wife was not so pleased.

20.V.2024