Did you know that babies learn to breath 10 seconds after they are born? Millions of children around the world had the luxury of being able to take their first breath on their own. That was a luxury I was not fortunate to have. See I was born with a crippled lung. 10 seconds after I was born I was unresponsive. Another 30 seconds later I was being force-fed oxygen through a nasal cannula. My parents didn't even name yet because they didn't want to get attached to a kid that was barely going to be alive on this earth for less than a day. Finally, after one week of intense pediatric respiratory therapy and careful monitoring, I was welcomed into the world. William Jay McKenzie or eventually William "iron lungs" McKenzie. I finally got to meet my older sister Christin. According to mom, she was bouncing around the house when my parents drove up to my grandma's house. Christin took an oath to always watch over me. I was a fragile kid so naturally, my parents wanted eyes on me 24/7. But for Christin, it was more than that. It was that sense of no longer being alone. She finally had someone to share time with.
Growing up with a ventilator attached to you is hard. I had undergone 5 surgeries from the time of kindergarten all the way to seventh grade. I wasn't allowed to be out for more than two hours due to the oxygen available in my custom tank. I wasn't allowed to participate in sports, obviously, and if all that sounds bad I wasn't even able to make friends properly. Not without them calling me a retard or a cripple. One can say that my childhood, and the couple of years that led up to my adolescence, were rough. If it wasn't for my sister I would've just shut the tank off and let go in my sleep. But thankfully through thick and thin, she was there for me. She gave up friends and even boyfriends if it meant that I was always with her.
My sister was adamant about finding a solution to my breathing problem. So adamant that she decided to pursue nursing school. My sister graduated top of her class at Emory University. She was one of eight students selected by a top-grade nursing program in England. She however refused and decided to attend a small college in our town of Lennon, Illinois. The same college I would be attending five years later. I eventually got used to my restraints and was able to finish my high school education with a fairly high GPA. I had a hybrid schedule where I went in on Tuesdays and Thursdays for math and science. I only spent 45 minutes in each class before I was returned home.
Going on to college wasn't anything new to me. I got a special dorm to myself with my sister only a building away. I befriended a couple of my floor-mates during my first week there. I even got the attention of one girl that lived in room 415. I think her name was Amy, I'm not entirely sure. I was in school for 1 month and life seemed good. Until it wasn't....
My ventilator was always loud during the night. I felt like Darth Vadar every time I took a breath. I wore a pair of headphones to block out the noise. But what I heard the night of August 21st was something that I couldn't block out.
The best way I could describe it was hoarse screaming. It wasn't loud, but it leaked through the walls like distance echos. I heard choking, whaling, and coughing. My eyes slowly opened up. As my eyelids slid back; my ears began searching out the source of the sounds. It was coming from every wall and my door. My body arched forward.
I shook my head around. As I did a loud bang slammed against the wall left to me. It startled me, but it wasn't the first time I heard noises like that from my neighbor. I stood to my feet and started to shuffle towards my door. Someone began knocking violently against my door. As I unlocked the door one of my floormates busted through, landing right on top of me. I struggled to get him off me as the oxygen was slowly being cut from me. The tube connecting me to the machine was being interrupted and slowly I began to feel the unusually thin air that was present in my room. I pushed him off of me and was able to regain my composure. As I stood I looked to him. His body was twitching violently as if he was trying to move. He was spitting up blood in waves and bleeding from the ears and eyes. Fear can be a powerful sedative sometimes. It's in the same nature that a deer freezes when faced with headlights or when a person has a gun pointed at them. As much as my mind wanted to help my body was poised in a state of paralysis. It was only mere moments later that the boy came to a halt. His limbs fell to the ground and his eyes laid glazed upon the carpet floor. I didn't have to be a doctor to know he was dead.
I switched over to one of my oxygen tanks and slowly moved my way around the corpse. I propped my door open and peered outside. Many of my floormates laid motionless across the hall. Blood smeared and painted on the tan-colored walls like those cheesy haunted houses that you occasionally go through. Except there were no cheap make-up or that rank smell of outdated latex. I moved out from my room and looked over the entire hallway. See the problem with a crippled lung is that I am unable to scream. I tried my hardest to keep breathing smoothly, but my first reaction was to let out a howl.
Echos of car alarms came from the window down the hallway. I started to move towards the elevators which were around the corner down the hall. I pulled along my oxygen tank, the wheels rolling on the blood-stained wood, and watched carefully as to not trip. I paid close attention to the bodies. As my eyes looked over the continuing line of carnage my paced picked up. I needed to see if there was anyone else alive. Just as my thoughts were racing inside my head the elevator bell went off. I looked up.
My sister, Christin, came rushing around the corner from the elevator. She looked to me in both a sigh of relief mixed with panic. Her eyes began watering. She had an oxygen mask strapped to her face and a tank right behind her.
"Will?!" she said.
"Christin?!" I replied. Before I could come to my senses my sister had already wrapped her arms around me. She squeezed tight as if she hadn't seen me in years. As she backed away I noticed dried flakes of blood that were on the outer rims of her mouth. It seems that the student hospital, on the other side of campus, was affected as well. "Are you ok? How's your breathing? Short of breath?" she asked.
"No, I'm fine. What the hell is going on out there?"
"I have no clue. Listen we have to get out of here now, so I would hold any questions till we get down to the car yeah?". I nodded in agreement. The two of us ventured towards the elevator and started to descend down to the lower floor. The same carnage found on my floor was present in the lobby and connecting hallways. The student lounge area, which had a white couch, was covered in blood and hints of vomit. I tried to avert my eyes, but I couldn't help but stare in shock. Exiting outside the sound of car alarms rang throughout the night sky. I looked to the street just out front. Both lanes had cars piled on top of each other. A couple of vehicles had been t-boned or straight flipped over. It was hard to tell those who died in car accidents and those who died from the mysterious pathogen that might've been present in the air. Christin's silver civic was parked on top of the green lawn out front of the dorms. After we had entered the car Christin started the ignition. Her silver "Bullet" as we liked to call it in the family had a faulty starter. It always took a couple of turns of the key to kick start it. That's what you get for buying a cheap car from a neighbor.
As she struggled to get the car started I peered out to the world around me. The campus had always had an active nightlife. This was the first time I had seen it lay still. Whatever had hit us must've killed everyone.
The car finally gave a thunderous roar as the engine gave its first breath. Christin backed out onto the road and continued north.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
"Burlington, I need to see if Dr. Crenshaw is ok," replied Christin.
"Do you think it hit Burlington?"
"I'm not sure."
