Chapter 273
The fireplace had already been built directly into the wall, and Leonard had hidden it behind a large, seamless panel. They had even thrown open several windows to let the icy wind pour inside, quickly transforming the once-cozy apartment into a space as freezing as the wasteland outside.
Bill and Aaron were still outsiders. Suzy had absolutely no intention of letting them discover how comfortably her group was actually living; she understood too well the danger of flaunting resources.
If they realized how well-equipped her household truly was, greed would inevitably take root, and she had no desire to test the darker side of human nature. Avoiding unnecessary risk was always the wiser choice.
Now, stripped of its warmth, the apartment looked no different from any other looted unit in the building—save for its lingering, tasteful interior design, which both Bill and Aaron couldn’t help but discreetly eye as they walked through.
Suzy led them straight to the back, toward Derek’s room. Unlike the freezing living room, the bedroom was noticeably warmer. Though Leonard and Thomas had shut down the main heating system, they had worried about worsening Derek’s condition.
Using a backup solar battery, they had rigged up a small space heater right beside his bed. It was just enough to keep the air from becoming unbearably cold, but even so, Derek showed no signs of improvement. If anything, his complexion looked even ghostlier than before.
"Move aside," Bill muttered, his eyes narrowing as he studied the unconscious man on the bed.
Leonard and Thomas immediately stepped back. Approaching the bedside, the doctor didn’t examine the patient right away. Instead, he turned a sharp look back toward the group.
"Everyone except one person should leave. You stay," he added, his gaze settling firmly on Suzy.
Understanding the need for space, Leonard, Thomas, and Liam quietly withdrew to wait in the living room, leaving the bedroom door slightly ajar. Inside, a heavy silence fell over the remaining four: Derek, Suzy, Bill, and Aaron.
Anxiety churned violently in Suzy’s chest. She desperately wanted answers but didn’t dare rush the doctor. Sensing her distress, Aaron glanced at her before giving his brother a rough nudge. "Come on, hurry up."
Bill shot him an irritated glare. "What’s the rush? I know what I’m doing."
Ignoring his brother’s muttered complaints, the doctor calmly opened his medical bag. After sanitizing his hands, he lifted Derek’s limp wrist and pressed his fingers against the pulse point, his expression growing deeply focused as he listened to the subtle rhythm beneath his fingertips.
"Tell me everything that happened," he commanded without looking up.
Suzy quickly recounted Derek’s recent symptoms, tracing the timeline from his unusual, heavy sleepiness to the sudden, burning fever that refused to break.
As Bill listened, his expression gradually darkened. When she finally finished, he slowly released Derek’s wrist and let out a heavy sigh.
The sound made Suzy’s heart drop. "Can he be saved?" she asked immediately, her pulse thundering in her ears. If even Bill couldn’t help, she didn’t know what options she had left.
"This is complicated," he admitted after a long pause. He frowned, looking down at the bed. "Has he come into contact with anything unusual recently?"
Suzy shook her head. "No. We’ve been staying inside the apartment the entire time. None of us have gone out."
The answer only deepened the doctor’s frown, causing the knot of unease in Suzy’s chest to tighten.
Finally, unable to bear the suspense a second longer, she pressed him again. "Doctor, is there a way to save him?"
Bill remained silent for several agonizing seconds before speaking. "His pulse is... strange. I’ve never encountered anything exactly like this before."
The words struck her like a physical blow, instantly extinguishing half her hope. But then he paused, stroking his chin. "However..."
Suzy looked up sharply, a tiny spark of hope returning to her eyes.
Bill checked Derek’s pulse one more time. Deciding there was no point in confusing her with complex medical jargon they wouldn’t understand anyway, he bypassed the technicalities and went straight to the conclusion.
"This resembles a rare condition my grandfather once treated. If I remember correctly, there was a specific herbal formula he used. If we can prepare that medicine and get him to drink it, his condition may improve."
"What formula?" Suzy demanded instantly.
Bill looked at her, a complicated, heavy expression in his eyes. For the first time since entering the room, he saw a possible path forward—yet he felt no relief.
No one understood better than he did how impossible that path truly was. The prescription required several rare medicinal ingredients. Before the apocalypse, obtaining them would have been simple; all you needed was money.
Now? Most pharmacies had long since been picked clean, and finding those specific herbs would be extraordinarily difficult.
Worse still, they were racing against a clock. If they failed to gather everything within two days, Derek’s condition would deteriorate past the point of no return. In Bill’s estimation, the man on the bed was already a lost cause.
Still, looking at the raw desperation in Suzy’s eyes, he couldn’t bring himself to crush her with the brutal truth. When his silence stretched on too long, Suzy pressed again. "What herbs do we need?"
Sighing, Bill pulled a notepad and a pen from his bag. "I’ll write it down."
Rather than telling her outright that the odds were hopeless, he silently hoped the prescription itself would make the grim reality obvious.
He carefully penned each ingredient, tore the paper from the pad, and handed it over, deliberately avoiding her eyes as he murmured, "That’s everything."
Suzy eagerly scanned the list. A second later, her eyes lit up. "That’s all?"
Bill nearly choked on his own breath.
That’s all? Did this girl have any idea what she was looking at? This was the apocalypse, not a casual trip to the local market. If this had been before the world ended, he might have understood her casual reaction, but several ingredients on that list were exceptionally rare.
Finding them would have been difficult even in specialized traditional medicine clinics back then; ordinary pharmacies wouldn’t have carried them at all.
Determined to make her understand the sheer gravity of the situation, Bill opened his mouth to explain just how impossible the search would be.
But Suzy cut him off entirely. "So if I get all of these, that’s enough?"
The corner of Bill’s mouth twitched in sheer disbelief. "Yes."
"Wait here," Suzy said, shooting to her feet before he could utter another word. "I’ll go look for them right now."
With that, she turned on her heel and hurried out of the bedroom. For several seconds, Bill simply stared at the empty doorway, completely bewildered.
Go look for them? Now? Where on earth did she think she was going to find specialized traditional herbs in the middle of a frozen, ruined world?
The moment the bedroom door clicked shut behind her, Suzy slipped into an empty room down the hall and immediately manifested her consciousness into her hidden spatial storage.
She distinctly remembered stockpiling a massive amount of medicine before the apocalypse. She hadn’t just hoarded modern pharmaceuticals, either; she had also collected a considerable supply of traditional raw herbs.
Furthermore, during her various scavenging runs, whenever she passed a pharmacy, she had swept up countless miscellaneous medical supplies without paying much attention to the specifics.
Maybe. Just maybe...
Working quickly, she began tearing through her inventory. Dummy and Kitty sensed her urgency and immediately joined the hunt. The three of them threw open box after box, scanning shelf after shelf in a frantic, coordinated search.
And then, unbelievably, they found them. Buried in the back of her reserves lay every single required ingredient.
Suzy checked them against the prescription one by one, her heart racing as she read the labels. The names matched perfectly. Not a single herb was missing.