I need this thing to hibernate. I wrap my left hand in several layers to keep the infection contained and go to my desert environment. I have to borrow several sprays of water suckers. Seeding them in my lab, which is warmer than the desert garden, they immediately, joyfully expand.  

My phone rings and I answer it.

“Rose?”

“Yes,” I reply.

“This is Dr Saunders. We saw you move out of your lab, what’s going on?”

“I got some water suckers. Trying to dry the fungus into hibernation. It’s spread to my entire left hand.”

“Okay. Be careful, we’re working on this on our end too.”

“Sure. I’m gonna sleep now.”

“Copy.”

The spread seems to slow in the dry environment, it remains only on the hand, but I feel thirsty more, and I suspect my blood is providing an inefficient water-substitute to my own infection. The night-glimmer seems perfectly healthy. Even the leaf I tore has reappeared. Healthy, but covered in lace.

I use a heavily-controlled algae, that reproduces quickly with any amount of moisture, and introduce it to one of the three environments, as well as a fourth environment with untouched species. Fire bloom, it’s called, as it tends to spread like fire. I find that this is not enough to kill the fungus, but it does keep it from expanding any further, containing it like a ring of green fuzz around the lace.

After another conversation with Dr Saunders, I am told to examine my skin above the hand, and to test a blood sample. I do both, and both are lacking any trace of the fungus. He says he’ll get back to me. I do not wait for him to get back to me. I use fire bloom on my wet wrist, creating a green fuzz. My skin feels itchy and dry beneath the algae, but through the day, the fungus reaches, but does not go past the fire bloom.

Dr Saunders is surprised and impressed, when he hears what I’ve done. He offers a means of escape. I would have to undergo thorough testing and decontamination, which is perfectly fine. But I can hear his grimace at the next words.

“You’d have to cut off your hand.”

After two days of isolation, it sounds insane. But two days drags into two weeks, with daily applied fire bloom keeping the infection where it is. I begin to run low on food plants. Mine is a garden, not a farm. When the hunger kicks in, the low blood sugar, the two weeks of isolation talking only to suits and lab coats on a phone, I agree to do it. With my phone on speaker, I get an axe, a saw, shears. I inject coca into my arm, just above the ring of fire bloom on my wrist. Aloe is there, and a powder muddled from an agave that serves as a coagulant. A garden can be a pharmacy too. Rather than try to hack my own hand off, we concoct a scheme to attach it to something very heavy, and let it drop onto my hand. Precision and force. I have the saw ready should it go wrong.

The blade drops. My coca-numbed arm feels nothing, and I blink stupidly as I lift my blood-pulsing stump of an arm. I pass out.

When I wake, I am in a hospital bed, in a head fog. Dr Saunders is there, in a yellow rubber hazmat suit. Behind a window. He’s bigger than I expected. I’m still in a clean room. Still in plastic.

“What happened.”

“We’ve moved you to a containment lab for the time being. We don’t think you’re infectious, but… well, we’re not taking any chances.”

“But I cut my hand off,” I say. My own voice sounds strange.

“I know,” he says. “But look at it.”

And I do. There on my wrist is my left hand, fully intact, fresh and new as a baby’s.

Part 2/2