The Flower That Blooms in Adversity

By Angela Nolan

It’s hard to believe it only started four weeks ago. That’s when I saw my first patients with the small green bumps under their skin, initially on their hands and feet. I’ve been a GP for 17 years and you get used to seeing more or less the same thing every day. Those little green protrusions were unlike anything I’d ever seen though. If it had just been one person I probably wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but I saw seven just that first day, and my colleagues saw more. The bumps were itchy, the skin above them was red and irritated. They all had slightly elevated temperatures and felt a little under the weather, so I referred them for urgent scans to see whether they were foreign bodies, and how deep they were embedded. The patients all assured me that they hadn’t fallen on anything previously that may have been healed over. They’d simply woken up that morning with the lumps and a sense of pressure as though they wanted to break the skin.

With my medical training I’ve wondered since if I could have done more but really how could I have known what was going to happen to them, and so, so many others? It was all so unexpected, and bloody, and awful.

Over the next few days, we saw more and more cases, but now they were rapidly spreading over the body rather than being isolated to the hands and feet. They became increasingly raised, looking like engorged viridescent spots that were about to erupt. We kept referring for urgent scans and prescribing ointments to deal with the itching, but we were wildly out of our depths. We’d reported it to all the relevant authorities due to its unusual symptoms, and apparent progression, but we received no real instructions or advice. They just advised us to keep watching and monitoring.

By the second week, they’d begun to break the skin. It was clear this was painful from the screaming coming from our waiting room, although I’m sure it was nothing compared to what came next. The protrusions had a colourful centre once they tasted the air, but the actual colour seemed to vary. At this point we began sending the patients to A&E under the guise of heavy bleeding, but really we just didn’t know how to treat them. Once we started shifting responsibility, the practice became eerily quiet. Our patients seemed to almost exclusively be either those with the vicious bumps or staying away in case they caught them.

It was during the third week that we finally realised what they were. I was in my office with a rare patient, who’d only come in because she was adjusting her medication I think otherwise she’d have been avoiding the place too. We heard the most terrible scream, like that of a petrified wounded animal. I advised her to stay in the room where it was safe and went out to see what the disturbance was. It was one of the first women I’d seen with the mystery condition, making her way to my room from the staircase. She didn’t make it all the way. She locked her wild, terrified eyes on mine and screamed for help. She held up her arm, from which there now protruded two large flowers. They were honestly one of the most beautiful flowers I’d ever seen with unusual shaped petals and co-ordinating vibrant colours swirling into the centre. Had they been anywhere other than embedded into this poor woman’s arm I would have been glad to see them.

I began to move toward her, but I’d barely made it one shaky step before the rest bloomed. She was still making eye contact with me when one exploded through the top of her skull, and I watched her lights go out. It’s what I see every time I close my eyes. Within just a minute or so, this adult woman had been reduced before my eyes to a pile of exotic petals and a blood stain. The flowers seemed to crowd against each other to hide what remained of her flesh, but a few were flecked with blood. A memory of the massacre they’d brought.

Of course we closed down the practice, and I haven’t been back since as my nerves just aren’t up to it. When they tried to remove the flowers and what was left of her body, there were thick, viny roots that had somehow burrowed into the floor and anchored her there. Anyone that tried to cut these roots was attacked by an acidic sap inside that ate through layers of flesh like a hot knife through butter. This turned out to be the case wherever the victim dropped. They secured themselves wherever they fell down so people just had to carry on, walking round them and pretending these beautiful bursts of flowers were just that, not thinking of the person they used as their unwilling fertiliser.

It’s happening all over the world; the numbers of the dead are growing each day, hell each minute. Due to the aggression of the plants, scientists’ current best guess is that it’s the Earth herself finding a way to use her biggest parasite to her advantage to replenish biodiversity. There are certainly more bees around since these flowers have bloomed.

My practice has been back open for a couple of days with a skeleton staff, acting as though there isn’t a woman’s body slowly rotting on the upstairs carpet. I’ve been offered counselling and a phased return to work. I don’t know if I can face it, all these people carrying on as normal makes me feel sick to my stomach. It doesn’t really matter now anyway, this leafy coloured bump on my wrist is really beginning to itch.