As the last bodies from the war were being taken away, PlagueDoc finally managed to grab himself some free time. He had been up day and night constantly whisking away corpses always littered with bullet holes. Maggots festered within them, burrowing within the flesh and nearly causing the prevention of most open caskets. He was running out of leeches and spoons, and his garments had been plastered with dried blood which caused a rotting stench that followed wherever he went.

But now, that was over. He could finally clean himself, relax, and go back to his daily norm of either keeping up Honesty’s maple syrup intake to check or administering treatments to those in need.

Or so he thought.

”Hey! Doctor! Get over here, something’s going around and it ain’t too keen on stopping” one of his underminers inside his head called out to him. PlagueDoc spun around.

”More Spanish flu? Cholera? Hell, even plague?”

”No. Something different...something that doesn’t mess around.”

A corpse fell from a delivery wagon that was already overflowing. It was horrific to look at.

Instead of bullet holes, the man’s legs were shriveled. Instead of blue skin, his chest exposed his rib cage directly, and a quick test revealed his lungs were completely flattened. His arms had little muscle strength, and showed way too much weakness.

”What the fuck is this?”

”They’re calling it polio. Shit’s nasty. Paralyzes you, rots your limbs, then forces you to die trapped within your own body. Kills you slowly, unlike Spanish flu. It’s sweeping around the nation, and it’s only getting worse.”

”Polio? Why haven’t I heard of this yet?”

”Spanish flu killed tens of millions. Nearly everyone got sick. The 20’s were the high time, and now we’ve got the Depression.”

”How are the frauds treating it?”

”Most of these people can no longer breathe on their own. Their using these “iron lungs” to pump oxygen and stimulate breathing. Mainly the only thing keeping them alive.”

PlagueDoc quickly searched himself for anything that could help, but the only thing he found was more pneumonia vaccines. He had nothing to help against this. The researchers would have the upper hand. They would get the vaccine, and they would be the ones to cure it. Not him.

For some strange reason, that didn’t sit well with PlagueDoc. In fact, it came nowhere near it. He fell to his knees at his failure to treat a virus. One he had ignored in fear of outbreaks from the strife he knew how to treat. He couldn’t cure this. But there had to be some treatment, some way to help even the slightest bit.

PlageDoc searched himself once again, looking for anything that might work. And then, he found it. The orange leech. Apparently it had been sucking on an old finger for quite some time, and was lost deep within his garments tucked away soundly.

He took the leech and placed it on the shriveled legs of the unfortunate corpse. The leech immediately stuck itself within the flesh, and as it sucked, amazingly, the legs began to form back into their normal look.

He had found the treatment! But he knew he must keep it hidden within the mobster community and the mobster community only. If the doctors that had been stalking him found out, the leech would be taken away, his identity would be shattered, and there would be nobody left to treat.

As the legs finally grew back, he made a call to the family in particular and, in a cheery voice, announced that the open casket would be possible once more. Plucking away the leech off the leg with a loud “pop”, he strolled away from the cart, knowing now that new diseases meant jack shit to him and his medicine.