| “ | Beginning... | „ |
| ~ Rosalia Rossellini (about the Rosalia Virus). |
The Rosalia Virus , also known as "Twisted Rosalia" and the "Bloody Rose", is a dangerous and highly-contagious living organism that kills within days, if not hours and it is the main opposing force in the plot of Trauma Team.
History
Formation
Rosalia as seen in surgery, attacking a patient's liver (note the discolored bruises).
The virus is a fictional Group V RNA virus of the Filoviridae family, re-engineered by virology professor Albert Sartre of Cumberland College in Maine. Samples were acquired from Sartre's adoptive daughter, Rosalia Rossellini, the asymptomatic host of the strain and major contributor of the research at a very young age. Sartre sought to use the virus to attack malignant cells and tumors in hope of curing most diseases once thought "incurable", but the original strain of the organism proved too violent and infections. This resulted in the Cumberland College Incident, where hundreds of students and staff were infected and killed in what was deemed, at the time, a bio-terrorist attack. However, the blame for the incident was pinned, by Sartre, on his adoptive son Erhard Muller, and he was taken under custody as Rosalia and Albert escaped to Mexico to continue researching the virus and possibly to stop further infection from it.
However, the research was not successfully continued as Sartre was infected himself, the virus causing him to gradually lose sanity over time. In a rage, he shot and killed Rosalia outside of their cabin amidst a flower field in hopes of preventing another epidemic. However, the virus' residue, present in Rosalia's blood, was absorbed by the nearby Asclepias flowers and unknowingly taken in by Monarch butterflies, which became a vector for the virus as they flew to the coast of the United States during migration, infecting during the shedding of their scales.
Trauma Team
During the second and third acts of the game, Rosalia once again starts emerging. Naomi Kimishima, forensics expert and a former surgeon, investigates the case of a bombing that destroyed a little girl's home and killed her family. The suspect, a woman by the name of Sandra Lieberman, is cornered at an airport in an attempt to kill the country's First Lady in an explosion, but upon threat, she insanely claims she needs to do it, otherwise "Rosalia will kill (them) all". She then succumbs to disease and drops her detonator, her body lost in the ensuing explosion.
Resurgam Hospital then starts receiving notices of several people hemorrhaging and convulsing around Maine, all of them presenting a similar bruise on their skin. Attempts to block the infection's news from the public fail and a state of alert is issued, announcing the Rosalia epidemic. Erhard, now called CR-S01, returns to Resurgam and joins its main medical team to treat the epidemic in hopes of locating a cure. Fortunately, with the help of endoscopic observations, orthopedics, diagnosis and first response, an antiserum is developed from Rosalia's own blood, which is quickly distributed, eventually eradicating the pandemic.
Twisted Rosalia
However, Rosalia itself was not fully defeated. Naomi, upon inspecting Rosalia's body to determine her death and help with the antiserum, comes in contact with the mucous membrane that cause the infection and becomes infected herself. The virus then comes in contact with her terminal genetic disease (caused by high exposure to the previous games' GUILT strains) and combines with it, mutating and becoming a single entity. With the help of former Trauma Center protagonist Derek Stiles, Naomi is successfully treated and healed of Rosalia, eradicating the disease once and for all, as well as removing Naomi's condition.
Infection and symptoms
Rosalia spreads through contact with the mucous membrane it forms. Upon infection, the victim will not immediately suffer its effects, as the virus undergoes a dark phase in which it spreads and corrupts cells, creating tumors in unnatural amounts, usually on the surface of organs. During its dark phase, it cannot be contained or detected, the only possible sign being the tumor formation it causes. Once it has contaminated enough cells, it proceeds into its active phase and merges its fragmented forms, spreading them to organs and veins, forming fixated colonies. Said colonies then begin feeding off nearby cells, creating Rosalia's trademark discolored bruises that appear over skin and organ tissue. The colonies then grow until they burst, spreading the viruses to all nearby tissue, including organs, veins and even bones, giving the patients three days at max of life.
Additionally, some patients may begin suffering from auditory and visual hallucinations, much like how Albert Sartre and Sandra Liebman did when they were infected with the virus.
Treatment
The infection, metaphorically divided like a rose, is treated in many different ways through the game.
Diagnosis and First Response (Bloom/Thorns)
Diagnosis of Rosalia is done only once in the game, aiding an infected researcher of the military branch with his condition. First Response involves stabilizing the infected patients with the help of CR-S01, who provides antiviral drugs to stabilize the patients' conditions, giving them enough time to be taken into ER and treated properly.
Rosalia's "Blooming" refers to the viral colony's emergence within the body, while the "Thorns" refer to the notorious bruises created from the cells' destruction, which are often seen in rounded, claw-like edges spreading over the living tissue.
Orthopedics (Stem)
Orthopedics is another procedure that deals with Rosalia only once as it attacks the spine of a patient, forming tumors that are contained by blood vessels and mucus. Extraction of the tumors must be done carefully, and the blood vessels holding it in place must be cut off beforehand to avoid complications.
Rosalia's "Stem" refers to the blood vessels rigidly fixated by the mucous membranes covering the tumor.
Endoscopy (Petals)
Endoscopy treats the patient from the inside, directly seeking out the colony formations and treating them. A special antiserum spray must be used to neutralize the colonies before they burst, so they can be excised like a regular tumor.
Rosalia's "Petals" refer to the shape of the colonies in the endoscope's view, resembling orbs held by a flower's petals.
Surgery (Twisted Rosalia)
Twisted Rosalia's main body.
Surgery is performed on Rosalia for the first time on a patient's liver, preventing it from spreading any further. Said operation is only done again during the finale, to remove the mutated strain from Naomi's heart and excise its colonies.
Trivia
- Real-life examples of Filoviridae include the infamous Ebola virus, which Rosalia is based off of. Ebola is a viral disease that infects living tissue and provokes symptoms such as hemorrhagic fever and blood clogging. The fictional "sister" of Ebola, Rosalia can be interpreted as a more violent variation of it.
- Rosalia's base form, as seen on photos, also closely resembles that of the Ebolavirus.
- Asclepias, the flowers which took Rossellini's blood, are named after Asclepius, Greek God of Medicine and a recurring theme in the Trauma Center series.
- A flaw in the game's plot is that the butterflies migrated only to the coast of the United States, while natural Monarch migrations occur from the US to the East section of Asia. This was most likely overlooked by accident, while also acting as a reason for the epidemic to be contained within US soil.
- The Rosalia Virus shares similarities with The Thing from the 1982 John Carpenter sci-fi/horror movie The Thing based on the 1938 short story Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell, Jr.