Black Rot (Microfiction)

The doctor's grim face confirmed what most of the people in the room had already expected: Manuel had lost the battle and would never rise again. Confirming this already accepted certainty did not prevent disbelief from squeezing my heart. My rational intellect was slow to assimilate the fact that a constitution like that displayed by the heir to the Martinez empire had been defeated by the black plague from a fortuitous wound.

In the middle of the 21st century, the science that has guaranteed us an unthinkable life expectancy of nearly 50 years is unable to heal the fevers caused by such a miserable wound. This inability, this human ineptitude to keep even the stupidest of wounds healthy, is why surgeons as famous as Dr. Miller, who was present, are nothing more than miserable butchers, executioners who carry out sentences on operating tables.

I doubt anyone can explain why the garlic, ginger, and honey poultices used by Dr. Miller, a renowned expert in modern medicine, are the same "antibiotic" recipe that appears in Grandma Greece's old family medical book.

We are builders of monstrous buildings, designers of powerful machines, inventors of weapons capable of destroying entire villages in a single breath, and yet we are as weak as babies before the wound of a piece of iron with some rust.

In silence, I left that house, reflecting on the danger of this world with so few medical resources.

Note: (Jonbar Point) With the discovery of penicillin in 1928, Alexander Fleming marked a turning point in human history. The antibiotic era brought with it a quantum leap in medicine that laid the foundation for the technological society we know today. But what if antibiotics had never been discovered?

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