The white walls of the isolation/waiting room had started to close in on me by the time someone finally arrived. There was a puffing noise as the suited medical advisor came in. The relief that there was finally progress died as soon as he spoke.
     
“I’m sorry, your application for medical treatment has been denied.”
           
“Excuse me?” After all the hours spent filling out forms and having the computer triple check them, I couldn’t believe that a person was telling me that treatment was being denied. It wasn’t just the denial for a simple and routine procedure; it was that a real person had been sent to tell me.
           
“Your application for medical treatment has been denied.”
           
“On what grounds?”
           
“I can’t discuss that. I have other duties—”
           
I got up and tried to rush between the bureaucrat and the door. The effort pulled what little energy I’d gained during the hours-long wait. “We’re talking about antibiotic treatment. What possible reason would there be for denying it? Uni-cef antibiotics are cheap. I can pay for it out of pocket with my own money, if there’s no money left in the hospital budget.” Please don’t accuse me of bribery or mixing private and public money! “There’s no shortage—” at least, none that made the news— “so there’s no reason you can turn the request down.”
           
“There are laws.”
           
“What laws?”
           
“We have to deny you treatment per the new medical directive under President Edwards.”
     
“What directive?”
     
“You refused to donate stem cells.”
     
“I thought donation meant optional?” I caught myself and focused on the more essential charge. “I have no recollection of being asked to donate stem cells.” Please let this be a check box I forgot to fill in and can fill in now! I could feel a chill coming on. I hoped it was from the stress and not the fever returning. The black market Tylenol wouldn’t last much longer. And if the fever came back, they’d ship me down to storage with the other patients waiting to die of the latest biowarfare strain. “I’ll fill out the form now.”  
     
The younger man seemed a little sympathetic through this protective suit. “Do you know how Uni-cef is manufactured?”
     
“I think it’s brewed in chicken eggs.”
     
“No. It’s made via natural antibiotic excreted from human tissue during the healing process, especially during the formative phases.”
     
“That would explain why it works so well.” But what is that supposed to explain?
     
“Yes. But there is a very limited supply of tissue to use. Prior administrations outlawed corporal punishment about the same time they created the one payer medical system. Demand went up for medical services even as supply went down. Rationing worked for a while, hopefully until the medical manufacturers caught up with demand. But they all went out of business or went overseas. Look. This is the first new antibiotic put out in decades since the government clamped down on the excesses of the pharmaceutical industry. Moreover, it’s a whole new class of drugs! It’s made by creating massive swaths of human tissue. Then it is damaged in a precise chemical-mechanical method. As the tissue regenerates, natural antibiotic compounds are released. Because these are stem cell cultures, the antibiotics released are separate and unique from those used in the adult body; that is why the antibiotic is so effective. The batch is processed to remove the antibiotic. It’s like the growth hormone they used to get from human cadavers, before cremation became mandatory following the biowarfare strikes.”
     
“How does that relate to me not donating stem cells?”
     
“You’ve never had cosmetic surgery,” his eyes criticized me for forgoing such a routine, and in his eyes necessary, procedure, “so no sample could be taken from your body fat. You never had an abortion, so no collection was taken then. Furthermore, when you underwent fertility treatment a few years ago, you explicitly refused to let any excess embryos be used for scientific research or for medical uses.”
     
“It was an ethical decision—”
     
“The Supreme Court, against the President’s wishes, decreed that the individual does indeed have the right to donate or not donate tissue when medical procedures are done. However, it is within his right to determine who gets medical treatment under these times of scarcity. And since you didn’t contribute to the supply, you shall not be allowed access to it.” The medical technician left then.
     
I felt queasy. Was it the disease reasserting itself or was it the knowledge of how the cure was created? I didn’t have time to ponder it as the walls turned red and the room started to grow warm. The decontamination and sterilization sequence had begun. The door’s security seal clicked securely and the medic’s back was visible through the window as he hurried away. His modern ethics kept him from personally supervising the destruction of the disease biohazard I had been relegated to being.