Prompt
If you were suspicious about the aurora that started up a few days ago, it seems like you have good reason to be. Ever since they began, no one seems to be able to get a good night’s sleep. Fatigue is setting across the town, making people a little extra cranky. It’s a complete downer to the holiday cheer but no one seems to know what to do. There’s no sign that there’s anything supernatural about the aurora, but there’s certainly something odd about it. People lucky enough to even fall asleep only get to rest for a few moments before they are violently jostled awake by the sensation of falling through a rainbow of colors. Some worse off may suffer from the sensation of drowning beneath strange, rainbow colored water. People are passing out from fatigue and some people are suffering from strange vertigo. There doesn’t seem to be an end in sight.
(WC: 558 )
"Christ, another one?"
While the bright and cheerful smile still kept itself plastered across her face, Julianne Payne felt herself inwardly cringe at the secretary's exasperated comment. Another one? Already?
This time of year brought in cases upon cases of the flu - it was to be expected. It was prepared for. All of the hospital employees had been re-educated over and over again about caring for patients with the flu and preventative measures that needed to be taken to ensure their own health didn't fall victim to the virus. Wash your hands. Get the mandatory flu shot. Take your vitamins. Wash your hands again.
What was plaguing Destiny City wasn't the flu, though. It was hard to tell exactly what it was that was befalling the citizens that came ushering themselves in through the automatic glass doors to the emergency room but it was unlike anything Jules had ever seen.
It had all started with the lights. She couldn't prove it but she had a sneaky suspicion that the lights in the sky had something to do with the literal dozens upon dozens of fatigue and exhaustion cases that kept crawling their way into the fifty-six bed ER of Destiny General. The News station assured the people that the lights were harmless - surely just some scientific phenomenon that made this winter particularly lucky in comparison to the others - but they also couldn't give a straight answer as to what they were. Popping in and about the Negaspace had proven to give her no resolution either, but the timing of it all was just too convenient to for the two not to link together.
Age wasn't a factor when it came to the sleepers. They'd come in exhausted, some claiming vertigo, others simply stating they'd been without energy for an unreasonable amount of time. Children, teenagers, adults, elderly - no one was spared from this mysterious illness. If any of them fell asleep, they'd awaken shortly after with random bursts of screams or shrieks that kept catching the nurses and Intensivist off guard, enough to make one or more jump with every startled yell across the unit.
Jules found herself exhausted as a result but she was fairly certain that it wasn't involved with whatever was spreading across the city like an epidemic.
That is, until she made it home that evening.
Being tired was nothing new, especially after a shift where the front door felt more like a revolving door. Admitting people, discharging people, back and forth, back and forth. There were more numbers than expected for the census, so the staffing as a result ended up being lower. Less workers, more patients - she was lucky to remember the drive home as it was.
Not bothering with dinner, she stripped herself of her scrubs and purged the lingering germs in the scalding shower. A quick teeth brush and an email check were in line before bed but the worn out nurse could hardly remember even hitting the pillow with her head.
What she did remember, though, was the incredible amount of bright colors racing through her mind - eyes? - before jerking herself awake with a startled scream. She could have sworn she'd been drowning - had it been a dream? What time was it? Oh.. only two minutes since she'd gone to bed?
Wait.
Oh god.
Had she contracted it too??
