When I woke up, three nurses were in my hospital room. They were dressed in full hazmat gear: masks, gloves, gowns, all tastefully colored a pleasant and nonthreatening shade of pastel blue. The only part of any of them that I could see were their eyes and let me tell you, the fear I saw there scared the crap out of me.

One was taking my blood pressure. She let out a little sound of disapproval when it came back 60 over 40. Another nurse was hanging a large IV bag on a tall chrome pole.

I felt like hell had come to earth. The whole right side of my body burned with pain.

“Cellulitis,” I remembered the admissions doctor telling me before I passed out. Staph infection. Chills, shaking, and the devil’s own pain. But why the hazmat suits?

So I asked.

The last nurse in the room said I’d picked up a anitbiotic resistant strain of bacteria.
A “Super bug,” she called it, as she injected something into my arm.

Heh.

That’s how my luck goes, I thought, as the pain meds kicked in.

Everything then faded to black.