Dopamine | By Daryln Sia
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| Illustration by Jessica Peggy Riekert, Vincent & Azmina. |
Part One
A big gulp of the usual thick, heavy smog that hangs in the air fills my lungs, stuffing my alveoli, polluting my capillaries. The sun routinely hides behind the curtain of dreadful, overcast clouds, for it never shows its face nowadays. I fail to recollect the last time I’d basked in the warmth of the sun. Nevertheless, the start of a new day and its obligations heave me from bed, and off to the monotonous rituals that precede work.
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| Photo by Theodore Lee. |
Breaking my fast at the desk by my apartment window, I watch the bustle of this wretched city down below. Dull and grey asphalt roads are lined with vehicles, with a good number of pedestrians bustling about the pavements in a methodical and orderly fashion. Everyone wears either black or some shade of it, so the mood is always rather solemn.
The security checks are getting stricter by the day, and further down the road I can see several white tents: “hygiene booths” we call them, with their bright red siren lights at the pinnacle of each tent, indicating whether a tent is awaiting its next mandatory test subject. It’s a cruel irony that the only colour in this bleak town is that bright tint of the alarm that sits crudely at the top of those tents. Drivers and pedestrians have to line up for a test if they are to enter the city, and ever so slowly the line moves forward just as quickly as it lengthens, and one can never tell whether the drivers’ lane or the pedestrians’ lane is faster.
The streets are as frigid as ever, and I quicken my pace to join the line alongside the other pedestrians. Silence has been the new norm since the disease penetrated our city, and the low hum of car engines and the shuffling of shoes on the ground are all I hear amidst this crowd. Public chatter and music were forbidden after studies showed an exponential rise in cases, and the consequences were dire for offenders.
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| Photo by Liau Kah Man. |
The blaring shriek of the alarm from an adjacent tent jolts me from my trance. A growing anxiety becomes suffocating as we all witness a commotion sprouting from that same tent where its alarm is flashing brightly. Medical practitioners donned in their ghastly white contamination gear rush to the tent, before the loud broadcast on the speaker sends a chill down our spines:
“DOPA23 positive patient in Tent 4, nearby medical personnel within a ten-metre radius ordered to assist in containing the patient. DOPA23-positive patient detected in Tent 4, nearby contamination personnel within a ten-metre radius ordered to assist in containing the patient.”
We watch as a hoard of trained personnel drag the patient off to a marked ambulance and drive off with its sirens blaring, returning the testing checkpoints back to its still and eerie atmosphere, though unnerved by this unfortunate drama that plagued our otherwise routine and boring morning. The sirens and the broadcast were deafening, unnecessarily so, as some may suggest, but I can testify that this is to shield onlookers from hearing the maniacal laughter of these patients. It is, after all, one of the listed symptoms of this disease, albeit being one of the more severe. Nonetheless, laughter is contagious, and hence this preventative measure came into place.
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| Photo by Theodore Lee. |
I share a furtive glance with the medical personnel in my tent as the needle pricks my forearm. A standard test entails a blood test and a quick scan, and my turn at the white tent goes unobstructed by negative news thus far. My feet carry me aboard the scanner, and upon my arrival on the other side the medical worker is already reading the results of my blood test.
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| Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash. |
“You’re clear, get a move on,” he said, voice icy and emotionless.
That evening, I find myself back in my shelter, just moments before the daily curfew ensues. The lights within the apartment were lit, and a short, slim figure donned in a simple black turtleneck and grey tapered trousers bumbles about the kitchen, opening and closing several cabinet doors. “You’re back early today, Winfry,” I tell my housemate.
Winfry turns around, her face more haggard and worn from the last time I’d seen her, and yet a burst of surprise brought a tint of energy to her features. “Oh, it’s you,” she exclaims, huffing out a relieved sigh. “Yeah, the hospital let us off early today.”
I try to take that notion in a positive light, but a certain weight hangs in her words, leaving me with second thoughts reverberating through my veins. As commendable as it is that Winfry manages the emergency department of one of the city’s more renowned hospitals, this role, especially after the outbreak, has evidently strained her, and her arriving home before the curfew soon became a luxury. Granted, the prime institution that treats and contains this disease is only the government’s militarised institute and not that of the hospital, but this exponential outbreak has forced the government to part some of its burdens with several hospitals.
“It’s getting worse than I’d thought,” she continues.
“Why, then, are you back tonight?” I ask, setting my bag and coat down on a vacant armchair. “I’d imagine that your presence is much more needed at the hospital.”
“They relieved me—at least temporarily,” Winfry explains. Her spoon tinks softly as it’s stirred against the walls of her mug. “They finally managed to hire another manager to act as my understudy, by some miracle. I cannot imagine who would wish to work in the field of medicine at this hellish time.”
I hum a response. Satisfied, I submit myself to the comfort of the couch whilst Winfry continues sipping her mug of tea by the kitchen counter. Not long after, a light tap of ceramic on the kitchen counter is followed by the sight of Winfry walking down the hall and into the bathroom at the end of it—to take a shower, I presume.
Dragging myself to the fridge, I rustle through its contents before settling for several overnight quesadillas, and the ear-piercing beeps of the microwave penetrates the still silence of the apartment.
Part Two
“So, anything of particular interest occurred during your lengthy working hours at the hospital?” I enquire as we both settle at the dinner table to devour our languid meals. Winfry has settled for a bowl of canned tomato soup.
“It’s hellish, hellish I tell you,” Winfry confides before taking in a spoonful of her soup. “DOPA23 is rising, and we’re nearly at our wits end because of it. Our quarters are beginning to sound less like a hospital and more like an asylum with these cackling maniacs. It’s always the same virus, the same disease—but every individual case presents a different cause.” A sharp breath enters her lungs as she seems to be contemplating. “What about you?”
“Same old, Winfry, same old. The big guy has had to lay some people off, and cut the wages of those who were lucky enough not to lose their jobs. Sales are barely afloat, and I have a feeling we’ll be in deep waters soon. Alas, my end is almost just as dire as yours.”
“Mm. And I suppose that leaving is not an option?”
“If I leave, where can I go?” Winfry provides a brief nod of acknowledgement, returning to her soup. “This bastard government is raising our taxes, breathing down our necks, and people are out on the streets, in the outskirts, in dingy tents—with not a roof over their heads. No, if I leave, it is suicide!”
“You and I are the same,” says Winfry as she toys around with her soup spoon. Although confused and intrigued when I first caught a glance of it, I can solemnly swear that the flash of a small, pitiful smile stretched her cheeks right at that instant, leaving as soon as it came. The tinkering of her spoon abruptly stops, a look of sudden alertness and a tinge of shock evidently hanging on her face.
“You alright, Winfry?”
“Yeah… yeah. I’m alright. Must’ve been my days at the hospital and just seeing patients with their symptoms, somehow it might’ve been subconsciously ingrained in my head.”
I pause. “You should take a rest, Winfry. Might help clear up your mind.”
“I suppose so,” Winfry expresses before returning to her soup.
The blue-tinted light of the telly washes the room as the somber reporter monologues through the evening broadcast. It was the usual: daily infected cases, government happenings, several petty crimes. My gaze fixates on the television’s muddled projection. Winfry has already retired to her room, and as the night sky looms darker outside, I begin to grow keener to the same idea as a yawn escapes my lips. My hand reaches for the remote, and once again the room is still in its cold silence.
The same hallway to the bathroom also leads to the doors to both my room and Winfry’s. Passing by Winfry’s door, a curious noise suddenly alerts me back to my senses, whilst curiosity gravitates my ear to the door.
It was giggling.
Without a second to spare, my palm grasps the handle and the door flies open. Immediately my eyes lock on Winfry, who’s huddled on her bed, suffocating from an endless bout of giggles. They’re not maniacal, but uncontrollable as one can tell, and yet I can see from her eyes that her senses are still there. Her phone is sitting on the floor by her bed, as if she had discarded it, and on the screen I see what seems to be one of those ‘funny animal videos’, a banned novelty in a world of our time.
The dots connect as my heart plunges in my gut like an anvil.
Shaking with laughter, Winfry lifts up a hand and shakes it at me, in a desperate act of telling me that things are not as bad as I think. My shock melts away, and my hand reaches for my phone as I promptly leave the room, for the sight of Winfry in that state was steadily bordering upon unbearable. I feel the shudder in my fingers as I key in the number, and the familiar, elongated beeps of the call rattles my eardrums.
Part Three
The last I ever saw of Winfry was her being dragged off to one of those marked ambulances, still giggling slightly, but more composed than that I had seen in her room. I recall the chill of the air, how I’d decided to sit in the living room with the window open as I’d hoped the breeze would calm my anxiety. I remember propping my elbows on my knees, my back hunched, my gaze fixed on nothing as I counted down the time. A knock on the door, the white hazmats, and me standing by an open door as I’d let them in, but not snapping out of my daze as they went off to Winfry’s room to collect their patient. That was five nights ago.
The key turns, and the chilling stillness of the apartment permeates my body. Odd that I am supposedly used to this, and yet the past few days have been burdensome to endure. The empty apartment feels emptier, the silence quieter, the atmosphere heavier. I inhale a big gulp of air and drop my bag halfheartedly onto the couch before making my way to the shower. A jarring piece of leftover hazard tape remains as a concrete reminder of that tumultuous night, when the white hazmats had to seal off the room for investigation after they had stowed Winfry away. I pick it off the wall.
I gaze down at the bowl of canned tomato soup before me. It’s far from warm, but I manage to gulp it down. My mind is in deep contemplation. It has been, for every single day since the incident. Bombarded with questions that I cannot find the answers to, lingering with the bitter, pungent reek of regrets that hang like dead weights, and curiosities that are pushing me over the edge.
The familiar beeps of the phone ensues, until a slight click interrupts.
“Good evening, emergency services. How may I help you?” asks a female voice, young and slightly distorted by the phone call.
“I need someone to bring this guy away… he’s laughing. I have him locked up in a room.”
“Alright, will dispatch someone right away. May I ask for your address?”
“221B Lexting Road.”
“And your relations with the patient?”
“He’s… just a friend of mine. A housemate.”
A slight pause. I can tell she is dispatching someone at that moment. “Someone should be in fifteen minutes. Make sure to keep him inside his room until personnel arrive.”
“Alright,” I respond, taking a sharp breath of air. “Thank you.” The line went dead.
The phone, face down, sits atop the table next to the soup bowl as my mind wanders. It begins to reminiscence, as memories crash in like a flood. Back to when Winfry and I first met, back at university. We were part of the same group of friends, and we would frequently loiter around campus between classes. After graduating, our group of friends separated, leaving only Winfry and myself navigating through this local setting. Hence the housemate agreement. It has been like this ever since, the only difference being that Winfry devoted more of her time to the hospital as months went by and the virus progressively got worse.
A knock at the door startles me, but I soon regain my composure and stay firmly seated at the table.
“Emergency services.”
The doorknob rattles. I grin.
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| Photo by Theodore Lee. |
“Excuse me? We got a call from here just a moment ago.”
I begin to laugh. It becomes a cackle. I hear thumping on the door, the sound of clenched fists banging against a solid slab of pine wood.
The door flies open, but I couldn’t care less. It’s absolute bliss. They carry me off, those same, damned white hazmats. Into a marked ambulance I go, and the doors shut close. The white hazmats around me tumble about the small, constrained space of the ambulance, whilst a couple of them set me down. A nick at my forearm. Out of my peripherals, I can see that one of them is administering some form of drug into my veins.
As I begin to fade out, my suspicions become a reality. I smile.
Epilogue
“So, you’ve made it here too, André?”
Bright lights fill the room. I promptly sit up, in a cold sweat.
Here I am, in an unfamiliar room, but it is furnished. The first thing that strikes me is just the brightness, the vibrancy of this space. There’s finally colours. I turn, and to my surprise I see Winfry sitting beside me, on the same blue couch that I am lying on. She looks healthier, younger now, much less tired and worn.
“Right, you’ll need an explanation,” Winfry expresses before standing up. She reaches out for the remote, and the television flickers to life upon the press of a button. It immediately switches to a news anchor, who starts a new report.
“Today marks the 1783rd year that the city Pirella of the universe Despa has been plagued by what its inhabitants claim to be a virus called DOPA23. Allegedly, this virus determines the emotion, happiness, as a symptom of the disease,” the female anchor says, and my mind immediately floods with questions. Universe Despa? Universes?
“However,” the reporter continues, “our agents have once again obtained horrendous video footage of the leaders of Pirella engaging in their inhumane acts of promoting this fraudulent disease for the benefit of their pleasure. Please note that the following footage may be disturbing to some viewers.”
The screen transitions to what appears to be the view from a camera seemingly placed in a plant pot of sorts, showing a figure in a white office shirt moving around an office room with his arm towards his ear as if he was taking a call. My mouth drops agape as I recognise the man. He is our president.
“Don’t fret yourself, our virus plot is going smoothly,” says the president. “No—no, we can’t call off the operation! We have too many mouths in this country and not enough food. Not enough jobs. Unless you want to give them yours?” The president sneers darkly. “No? That’s what I thought.”
The TV cuts to black, and I stare at our reflections in the black screen. Winfry looks at me, and then looks down at her lap. “Yeah… that’s the real thing happening back there,” she admits.
A conflict of thoughts take place in my mind. There is so much I want to say, but all I can mutter out is, “Damn”.
“Those patients that were sent to the hospital, like you and me?” Winfry continues. “They were taken to some secret government facility once their illness was deemed ‘too severe’, and then they were killed. It was all a sick ploy.” She sighs heavily. “We’re lucky we got to stay at the hospital for a while longer. That’s when the people of Hornea—which is the universe we’re in right now—managed to get us out.”
My head is starting to spin with the amount of information Winfry is dumping on me. “Get us out? How?”
She shrugs. “Some inter-universe travel that they’d tried to explain, but I could not for the life of me grasp the idea. Anyway,” she adds, “I’ve spoken to a few people since I’d been transferred here. They’re all planning programmes to reintroduce happiness to Pirella. That’s why the virus seemed to get worse.
“Now they’re recruiting volunteers for said programmes.” She proceeds to stand up, and reaches out a hand, ushering me to do likewise. “Care to join us?”
Staring at Winfry’s beaming face, I still struggle to process all of this. Emotions are boiling, conflicting, confusing. But above all, resolution hardens within me.
My palm gladly grasps Winfry’s.
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