trans_9 | Outbreak

When Claire realized what Sherry was doing she tried to get her feet out of the way, but still, barfed on shoes were barfed on.

"Oh, yeah. You're totally fine." Claire grimaced, standing up and grabbing a nearby trashbin and setting it in Sherry's lap, before kicking off her ruined shoes and tiptoeing around the sick to get something to clean it up with. She got rid of it quickly, dumping her shoes into another bin, and grabbed her other pair of sneakers out from under her bed.

"Okay, c'mon. We're going down to medical to see what's going on." Because it seemed kind of unusual that a flu virus would just spring up out of nowhere. Claire wasn't a scientist by any means, but she was kind of an expert on how viruses happened.

"I don't want to..." Sherry's shoulders slumped. Couldn't she just be left alone? It was probably nothing, maybe she just had some bad grey goop. Knowing that her mother wouldn't take no for an answer, no matter what, Sherry trudged into her shoes and spat into her trash bin.

The worst part about it was the taste just... sitting there. In her mouth. She was particularly quiet as they walked down to Medical, and even though she still looked like warmed-over death, didn't slump like a sick person normally would have. If anything, she was fidgeting.

"You've probably just got a flu bug, or something," she responded kindly, though her mind was going anywhere but.

When they got down to Medical, Claire's worries were only increasing. She'd expected to have to carry Sherry most of the way, but the little girl was twitchy, which was...weird.

"Hello, is anyone around?" Claire called into the medical bay, keeping Sherry ahead of her as they moved in. If she couldn't find anyone in here, she'd probably drag Sherry across the hall to Contagion. Luis or Scarlet would be just as qualified to take a look at her.

Claire was fortunate Luis had run out of a few things over in the other lab, and so was embarking on one of his weekly trips to steal things from medical.

It was all for a good cause, don't judge him.

"Right here, amiga," he said, then looked concerned to see Claire and a very sickly-looking Sherry. "Uh oh... something wrong there, sobrina?"

Sherry continued to fidget in place, and very stiffly replied, "No." This was, naturally, not the truth at all.

She didn't want to be here. She didn't want to see Luis. She just wanted to go back to her room with her trashbin, and read. The little girl's face was even paler than usual, her eyes bright with fever. Sherry clutched the trashbin in her arm and frowned.

"She's got the flu, or something," Claire replied for her less-than-helpful daughter. She frowned at that, obviously not entirely believing that, herself. "I was kind of hoping she could get a checkup since I can't remember anyone getting sick before, on the ship." Beyond the whole zombie outbreak thing, but she's not mentioning that.

"Yeah, no problem at all," Luis said, looking over his shoulder to see if there was anyone else around. "I'd... leave it to a doctor but I guess if she's sick I can handle it."

He motioned for Sherry to come over and have a seat on one of the beds. "Don't worry, we'll get you feeling better in no time. What are your symptoms?" He was more asking Claire, but knew Sherry wouldn't appreciate being talked around.

Sherry pursed her lips in irritation, but did what she was told. She swung her legs back and forth speedily. "I just feel a little hot." Understatement. "But I don't feel queasy." Lie. "Mom is over-exaggerating, I probably just ate some gross grey goop stuff." Cover-up.

She put both arms around her trashbin and set her shoulders in a decidedly stubborn way.

"She threw up on my shoes," Claire replied, giving Sherry a bit of a Look, before her gaze returned to Luis. "And she's burning up. I'm guessing she's getting hot and cold flashes too, since she was bundled up when I came into the room."

"Ah." Luis didn't want to discredit Sherry's gray goop theory since it sounded perfectly plausible to him. Though they'd need to do something if she had a fever.

"Well, let's figure out how your fever is doing." He turned and dug in the cabinet for some thermometer patches-- a nice alternative to sticking something under her tongue-- then quickly pressed one against her arm.

"Fever all right. Are you cold too, Sherry?"

"No!" she replied and tried to yank her arm from his hand, while simultaneously throwing the trash bin hard enough to bounce it off Luis's head. "Let go of me! Let go!"

If Luis were a more fortunate person, he could say this was the first time he had been violently hit with something at work.

Unfortunately he wasn't great at reflexes and took the trash bin right in the face, tripping backwards and almost falling over while yelling a few impolite words in Spanish.

"Sherry!" Claire was astonished at her daughter's behavior for half a second before she was moving to grab her daughter, more concerned with her outrageous attitude than Luis's head (really, she's a 12-year-old girl, how hard could she have thrown the bin?)

"What has gotten into you?!"

When Claire got a hold of her, Sherry turned and punched Claire's arm as hard as she could (though, admittedly, it wasn't that hard). "Let me go! I don't want to be here! Let go!"

Luis was a nerdy guy and couldn't take a punch, let alone a metal bin to the face. And Sherry did have a surprisingly good arm on her.

He was a few feet back recovering from the sensation of getting his face smashed in, clutching at his watery eyes. "Jesus, Sherry, calm down!"

Claire didn't flinch when Sherry punched her, reaching out to catch Sherry's other hand.

"Sweetie, you need to calm down!"

Sherry's color blanched again and she convulsed, still trying to fight against her mother while she made that terrible, and tale-telling hnk-hnk-hnk retching sound.

If Claire valued her other shoes, she might want to move.

"Shit." Now that his face had stopped stinging he was in a little better shape to do something, though it still wasn't incredibly helpful.

He turned around to dig in the cabinet. "Keep a hold on her, hang on a second..."

Claire had a little bit more warning this time, so she swung Sherry around so she was facing away from Claire, though she doubted she had time to drag the little girl over to a sink.

"Hurry up, will you!" she barked at Luis, obviously kind of stressed out by whatever was happening to her little girl.

Sherry made an absolutely pathetic noise before vomiting again on the floor. Once that was done (ugh), she turned to attack Claire again, snapping at her mother's arm.

It didn't take Luis very long to pull a syringe out of the cabinet, carefully measure out some of the liquid inside, then step up beside Sherry and hold her still long enough to jab her in the arm.

"Sherry. Hey, Sherry, settle down," he said sternly-- though she wouldn't have much of a choice in the matter in a second, here. "It'll just take a couple of seconds..."

And just as predicted, within a few seconds the little girl flopped in their arms, out cold.

Claire barely managed to avoid getting bitten, twisting her arm out of the way as Luis administered the drug, and she let out a heavy sigh as Sherry fell unconscious, shaking her head.

"What's happening to her? She-she tried to bite me." There really wasn't much of a more horrifying thought, than what was going through her mind this second.

"I don't know," he sighed, as soon as the poor kid was unconscious enough for him not to worry about getting bitten or clawed. He hoisted her up and onto the nearest medical bed, carefully stepping around the mess on the floor. "Fever, chills, nausea and aggression is..."

Then he paused. "But if she had anything from the T-family it'd be showing on her by now." In the form of bruising, bleeding, rotting or other nasty skin problems. But Sherry looked completely normal.

Which was kind of reassuring, and kind of not at all. "How long has she been like this?"

Claire followed him to the bed, shaking her head slowly.

"I don't know... couldn't have been longer than a few hours. It's been... maybe fifteen minutes since I came back to the room, and she was looking pretty sick, then." She crossed her arms around herself, staring down at Sherry's still form. "I need to call Leon."

A few hours was pretty good news, actually. Things like the T-virus took much longer than that. And really dangerous things like T-Veronica would have gotten her much sooner.

"I'm going to move her across the hall and get her into a quarantine room," Luis told her. "It'll monitor her and keep it isolated until we find out what it is. Give Leon a call and let him know."

He paused again.

"She'll be okay. I'll make sure of it."

Outbreak

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