Teddy

Teddy Martin is one of the nurses that tend to Byatt. He says on page 120 that he's a Navy seaman and it's his first day. Camp Nash sent Teddy to the hospital although he doesn't understand much of what the doctors do.

Teddy is described as having brown hair, like Byatt's, and skin that's "golden but faded, like it's missing the sun" (120). He has full lips and a sharp jaw (167). He seems less professional than the CDC doctors and often treats Byatt more like a friend than a patient.

Byatt and Teddy become very close and very good friends. One day when Teddy takes Byatt outside, they share a kiss when Byatt claims the Tox 'isn't contagious to males.' Soon Teddy catches his own case of the Tox, his effect unclear at first.

Teddy later kills himself in the hospital via suffocation. He uses the strips Byatt ripped off of her hospital gown to clean him and tightens them around his neck like a noose. He dies at age 19.

Tox

 * "-and vomits over the side of the gurney. Black liquid, something grainy to the texture." Page 233
 * “The second flare-up ties him in knots, and when it’s over I can’t touch him without feeling a static shock.” Page 335
 * “Smiling. His mouth open, something starting to move behind his teeth. Shadowed, delicate, and there-there- a vine crawling out from inside him to curl around his lip. Like the kind that slinks across the fence at Raxter. Like the kind that drapes from tree to tree.” Page 236
 * “And more vines, another and another, branching and winding in a black tangle, blood leaking from his mouth, from his ears.” Page 236