Day Zero / Season 1, Episode 7
Bleeding Through the Night
Nina Reyes’s hands are slick with sweat inside the latex gloves, her fingers trembling as she presses the gauze tighter against the teenage boy’s chest. The kid’s skin is gray under the dim emergency lighting of Houston Methodist’s west wing corridor, his breath a shallow rasp that barely moves the cloth. Jamal is on the other side of the gurney, his broad shoulders hunched as he grips the metal frame, pushing with everything he’s got. The wheels squeak and shudder over the uneven floor, catching on debris—smashed glass, a toppled IV stand, a smear of something dark and sticky that Nina doesn’t want to name. The air reeks of antiseptic and something sharper, metallic, like blood left too long to dry. Her boots stick to the linoleum with each step, the sound a wet slap echoing off the walls. “Faster, Jamal, come on,” she snaps, her voice cracking at the edges. Her throat burns from shouting over the chaos—screams from deeper in the hospital, the distant crash of something heavy toppling, and the relentless drum of rain against the windows. Floodwater seeps under the doors at the corridor’s end, a black mirror reflecting the flickering red of the exit sign above. It’s been three days since the grid died, and the hospital is drowning, inside and out. “I’m tryin’, Nina,...