"A researcher of deadly viruses goes on an ill-fated trip in a run-down apartment complex."

Remember when you were a little girl? When Mom made you a cup of hot cocoa and warm brownie and said, "Baby girl, you can be anything you want to be." It was a bad day to begin with. Rachel McPherson said you were too short to be a famous Hollywood actress. Cody Gatenby said girls aren't any good at math. Even Mrs. Walling, the music teacher, she said you'd be better for clarinet than a big old bass drum. You didn't have rhythm. But, mom, she said, "Anything you can dream up, you can achieve," and on a white plate with green circles looping around it in endless orbit, she served up another fresh brownie.

"You can be anything."

Well, I turned out to be Candace. Someday, Dr. Finnick. But, today, just Candace.

In an old, run-down project on Chicago's south side, I'm on the third floor with one more to go. Already I've passed two rats, yellow-ochre vomit stains that would make Jackson Pollock blush, and a bucketful of ancient cockroaches with thick, brown shells on their backs like little armored cars. I've got less protection. Just a thin, blue coat and a pair of sensible sneakers that Mom said would be good for me, what with me being on my feet all day long.

When the call came in I was halfway through an Italian sub. Salami and pepperoni on white bread with extra cheese and lettuce. The guy at the deli, Marco, he always fills the au jous cup all the way to the top and smiles like those extra half-ounces of broth are all adding up to something more. The voice on the other end of the line was Kevin, sounding panicked and tense as always. He's sweating something. Who knows what. The PT-3 reports are full of false positives, the autoclave is jamming at the end of its cycle, the Blackhawks lost in overtime last night. Can I believe that shit? This time, though, there's fire as well as smoke.

County Hope admitted 13 patients over the last 12 hours. Every one of them came from State and 111th. They presented with distended abdomens, pustules, and upper-respiratory inflammation. An 8-year old girl with braids and a Hannah Montana t-shirt died at 11:18 this morning. She vomited 3 pints of blood before the tremors came, then called for her mother and went in to a coma.

No one said, "It's like nothing we've seen before," but I got the impression all the same. It's not unusual, these mini-epidemics. Tuberculosis, Meningitis, Staphylococcus. You pack enough uninsured people in to a drafty, beat-up old building and one cough just leads to another.

I broke a sweat on the third flight of stairs. Between the 90 degree heat and a massive humidifier called Lake Michigan, it's not a day for cardio. What's worse is the paper mask on my face. The sweat stings your cheeks when it collects around the elastic band pressing tight and pulling at your hair.

Remember when you were in high-school and Carol Petersen said Andy Richert was way out of your league? She laughed. "I don't think you're fat," she said, "but you know the girls he dates," she said. So, that night you skipped Mom's baked chicken and passed on the brownie. You spent the rest of the night flopping around your bedroom floor, fumbling through as many pushups as your flabby arms could bear. You told yourself that knee-pushups aren't necessarily girl-pushups. They still count if you do enough of them.

You broke a sweat for sure that night. When you woke up the next morning and your hairline was thick with tiny pimples breaking out everywhere, well, you decided that a few extra pounds might be overlooked, but a face full of zits was a death sentence for sure.

At the top of the stairs, my knees are aching. I gave up my quest for a Victoria's Secret stomach before my last year in med school. I traded the yoga mat and ankle-weights for a hand-me-down love seat and the wonders of high-speed internet. But now, with my breath coming in heaving gasps and my feet groaning inside my sensible shoes, I'm thinking maybe a little exercise might not have killed me after all.

The hallway here makes the dorms at Pritzker look like a work of modern art. Of the six light-bulbs lining each wall, only two are responsible for the dim light. A window at the far end would do its part were it not for the thick tape holding it together. Most of the doors are in various stages of open, like individual frames of a stop-motion animation, but all rearranged. A lighter path of wood panels running along the center of the floor makes the thick grease and smoke caked along the hallway edges that much more apparent. A good forensic doc could tell you how long ago the super got tired of the constant vacuuming and just ditched the carpet altogether.

It's now that I'm secretly thanking the voice on the phone for insisting that I wear this cheap, paper mask. Anything between the stench of week-old vomit and my nose is a welcome addition to the wardrobe. Not its intended purpose, but just knowing there's a barrier, thin as it is, is at least a small comfort.

Somewhere near the broken window, in one of the apartments, behind one of those stop-motion doors, a faint cry tells me I'm not alone. Now, my heart's beating fast, but not from the cardio. Now, I've got a new goal.

"Hey." "There's someone here." "No." "I don't know." "I'm looking." "You said the place was clear." "Well, yeah, I know that, but-" "I don't know." "Okay." "Ten minutes." "Right."

Remember when Jason Burke told you he loved you? He called you and begged you to let him stop by. When he got there, when you opened the door and saw him there, swaying in the hallway of that work of modern art, you told yourself not to let him in any further, but five minutes later he's following you around the place. Two steps behind and closing fast, he's telling you how he's sorry for what he did. He says that you were the best thing that ever happened to him and he was just stupid. An asshole, he said. He called himself an asshole and he said if you'd just let him back in, he's a whole new person. After tonight, he said, he's not drinking anymore. He didn't really have all that much to begin with. He's a little buzzed, but not like that night. She just made him feel "okay", he said. He never felt good enough for you, but she wasn't like you. She's not special like you.

You told him to go home and sleep it off. He said, and for real he really said this, he said, "You know how I know?" "You know how I know that I really, for sure, love you?" He said, "All that time when we were apart. All that time, I couldn't jack off without thinking about you." "I couldn't even get hard," he said. No shit. This time, you laughed. Not because it was funny. More like a "I can't believe this is my fucking life" kind of laugh. Nothing funny about that.

You led him to the door by the wrist and wished him luck. Wished him a good life.

You went to class the next day and all eyes were on you. These people, the ones you secretly called your "crew" because you wanted so badly to just be a part of something good for once. These people who represented all the hard work, all the late nights studying those painfully boring textbooks. They're all staring right at you.

Over coffee, after class, Dave Redmond told you what all the fuss was about. He apologized. He took long sips from his paper cup and his chubby fingers trembled when the words finally came.

Jason told everyone. Well, not everyone, but he told Karen Phillips and that's the same thing anyway.

Three months ago, you told Jason you were pregnant. You were so angry and you really let him have it. All that work to get this far and now you had to deal with this too. How could he be so stupid? How could you be so stupid? You asked him what he was going to do. He said, "I slept with Katie." Fucking asshole.

You got the abortion that Friday. You slept all day Saturday and all day Sunday. On Monday you took a shower and put your books together for class. You walked to the door, but when your hand touched the knob, it was like it was electric. From your fingers, through your arm, and down your spine, it dropped you to the floor and you cried. On Wednesday you went back to class.

That's what he told Karen Phillips who told everyone else. That's what was up with all the stares. Fucking asshole.

I check the door on the left, near the window. It's a shit hole for sure. I can smell the tangy punch of something cooking in a frying pan not long ago. Lamb, probably. But the place is empty. The toilet is running. Has been for who knows how long. I stop to lift the cover off the tank and free the chain. By the time I reach the door, I'm back in the hallway, the tank is full and that god-forsaken water has stopped running.

Across the hall, I push the door open and step through. I know I've found the right place when the cries get crisper, not louder, but clearer. I'm getting close. I've pulled the mask down around my neck and I say, "Hello?" I say, "I'm with Chicago CDCP." "Are you okay?," I ask.

Of course she's not okay. No one in this place, no one left here could possibly be okay.

In the apartment, in 312, the floorboards seem to sink with every step. Every step takes me another quarter-inch closer to the street. Another quarter-inch closer to being out of this place.

The living room is empty. The television is playing a Law & Order re-run, but the sound isn't right. It's music I'm hearing now. Christian rock, I think. One of those compilation cd's you see advertised on basic cable at two in the morning. Some thiry-something Canadian is singing about "His light" and "saving grace."

There's a bookshelf in the corner. "Hello?" Dan Brown novels. "Are you in here?" Vince Flynn. "I'm a doctor." Three years worth of National Geographics. "My name is Candace. I can help you."

I pull my mask back over my nose and mouth and push the bedroom door open. She's there on the bed. She's clinging to a stuffed giraffe and rolling back and forth, her fingers pulling at her bottom lip. I see her stomach, bloated and round. Her cheeks are hot red and wet. She lies on her right arm, but I can see her left is thick with blisters. Her eyes are bloodshot and swollen.

"My name is Candace."

Remember the day you graduated from med school? It wasn't one of those Hollywood graduation scenes. It wasn't outside. It wasn't a beautiful late-Spring afternoon. You weren't tall enough to be a famous actress. Your name was called and you stood up from the cafeteria table where you'd sat for the last hour and a half listening to Chris Derrick talk about the future and being "anything you want to be". He talked about the next generation of doctors, scientists, the future, healers, saviors, samaritans.

Two years ago, Chris Derrick drove his new Toyota Land Cruiser across a double-yellow line and sent a 4-door Mazda forty feet in to a ditch. The driver of the Mazda lives two blocks west of Pritzker now at Chicago's Lady of Peace. It's an assisted living building where they organize book fairs on Friday afternoons.

After graduation, you followed the "crew" to O'Halloran's on 16th and Wabash. Chris and his pals were playing shuffleboard and throwing back vodka-tonics. Dave Redmond was there, of course, sipping Michelob from a bottle. His chubby fingers wrapped around the label so all you could see was "chelo".

Dave followed you around all night. He tried to hang back and keep to himself, but everywhere you went, he was there. When you looked in his direction, he looked away. When you moved away, he followed, always a few steps behind. When you were alone, he gathered up his courage and offered to buy you a drink. You showed him the glass in your hand, but agreed, stupidly, to another. Someone paid fifty cents to hear Brian Adams sing "Everything I Do," again.

There, with his Michelob, and you with your two seven-and-sevens, Dave told you how he always had a crush on you. "Silly," he called it. He told you how he always liked you. He said you were beautiful. How he didn't think all that stuff with Jason was such a big deal. He told you how you didn't deserve all that. He was sweet, you thought. You thanked him for the drink and patted his hand like you did the old folks and invalids at The Lady of Peace.

I'm on my knees beside the bed. I comb my fingers through the girl's dark, matted hair. It's greasy with sweat and stuck to her cheek in spirals.

"My name is Candace."

She looks past me. Something on the ceiling. Over my shoulder, by the door frame, a crucifix holds vigil over the bedroom. Over the whole place. "Are you alone?"

She whimpers and pulls at her lip. I see her thumb, slick and coated red. Her gums are white and blistered. She wheezes and gnaws at the air.

"Kevin." "Yeah, I found her." "I don't know." "Six, seven maybe?" "I don't think so." "Ten minutes?" "Okay." "No. I know."

She strains to hold the giraffe up for me to see. Its fur is bare in places so I can see the cotton mesh below, yellowed and brittle. Even from here I can smell the sour tang of blood and vomit. Her chapped lips part and tremble. "Morris," she tells me. "I like him," I tell her. "He has a long neck, so he can eat leaves from tall, tall trees," she says.

Outside, the sun is in the west. Flecks of dust, dead skin cells, and mites hover the air, riding on a beam of light that ends on the girl's bare leg. I tug at my paper mask. The elastic band presses deep in to my cheeks.

Remember when your mom told you could be anything you want to be? Remember when you skipped baked chicken and brownies and forced yourself through as many push-ups as your flabby arms could bear? Remember when Jason Burke told you he loved you? Remember graduation? Remember everything you'd suffered and overcome and suffered again? Remember all that?

I'm seeing Kevin at the end of the bed. He's standing so still and rubs his nose with his fingers like it might go away. I'm seeing my mother talking to a white-haired doctor by the door. Her fingers count rosary beads. I'm seeing Jason swaying in the hallway. His fingers testing the air. I'm seeing Chris in a maroon gown and hat. His fingers grip the podium on either side. I'm seeing Carol. Her fingers twisting her blonde hair in to curls at her collar.

I'm seeing little Barbara Peck through the reinforced glass by the side of my bed. Her fingers clutched around the long, bare neck of a smiling giraffe. She looks at me through swollen eyes and holds the grinning animal up for me to see.

Remember any of this?