I just bought this game yesterday off of Direct2drive.com and have been playing it since, unfortunetly my version did not come with a instruction manual of any kind and I was wondering if any of you had a link to one I could use.

I wanted to skip the first day and jump into when the "epidemic" is supposed to start claiming people's lives and I just died for some reason, so im a little confused.

Also, as I'm running through the streets a weird grey icon keep appearing in the top left corner of the screen, I have no idea what it means.

It's just your character finding items on the streets - like change and so.

why does drinking water raise my exhaustion? that makes no sense.

It's because the water is tainted. Also, you can't just fast-forward time and skip a day. The game will end if you don't complete your main task.

That's annoying that the Direct2Drive version doesn't come with a manual. You can download it here, though:

Pathologic manual

And you'll probably find this useful at some point:

Walkthrough

thank you very much.