Plague (13 page)

Dr. Petrie
walked across the road and knelt down beside him.

‘I’m a doctor.’
he said. ‘Do you feel bad?’

The man turned
his bloodshot eyes upwards to look at him. ‘I’m dying,’ he muttered hoarsely.
‘I got that disease, and I’m dying.’

‘Do you want
anything? A drink maybe?’

The man closed
his eyes.

Dr. Petrie
stayed beside him for a few minutes,
then
the man
opened his eyes again.

‘It hurts so
bad
,’ he whispered. ‘It hurts me in my guts.
In my balls.
It’s like someone’s eating me up alive.’

‘Don’t worry.
The pain will soon be over.’

‘I’m dying,
doc.’

‘Leonard, my
name’s Leonard.’

The man, his
face pressed against the rough sidewalk, tried to smile. There was a cold
wreath of sweat around his forehead, and his face was now a ghastly white.

‘Leonard ...’
he whispered.

Dr. Petrie took
out his handkerchief and wiped the man’s forehead. He turned him over, and
tried to make him as comfortable as he could. He checked the pulse, and the
rate of respiration, and it was quite obvious there was nothing he could do.
The man would be dead in a matter of minutes.

The man opened
his eyes one last time. He looked up at the night sky as if it was something he
had never seen before, and then he turned his gaze back to Dr. Petrie.

He stared at
him for a long time, and then, in a small, quiet voice, he said, ‘Leonard?’

Dr. Petrie said
gently, ‘Don’t try to talk. Just lie still.’

‘Thank you,
Leonard.’

‘You’ve got
nothing to thank me for. Now, stay still. It won’t hurt so
bad
if you’re still.’

The man reached
out with cold sweaty fingers and took Dr. Petrie’s hand in his. He attempted a
squeeze of friendship.

‘Thanks for –
thanks for...’

Dr. Petrie was
going to answer, but it was too late. The man was dead. He released his hand,
and stood up. He thought about going back to Firenza’s house, and telling the
police that the body was lying here, but then he considered that the police had
enough bodies to pick up, and that they’d spot this one soon enough. Maybe it
was better for his freshly-dead acquaintance to spend’ a last night in the
open, under the night sky, then be shoveled straight away into the back of a
garbage truck.

He went back to
the Lincoln, climbed in and slammed the door. He felt physically and morally
drained. For a moment, he held up his hands in front of him, and imagined they
were teeming with infected bacilli. The enemy was invisible and endlessly malevolent,
and so far there was no way of fighting back.

Dr. Petrie
released the brake, and turned the car east. There was no future in thinking
things like that. Right now, it was Prickles he wanted. A safe, healthy, and
happy
Prickles
.

He joined the
North-South Expressway and drove up towards North Miami Beach at nearly seventy
miles an hour. The ocean was turning pale misty blue on his right, and the sky
was growing lighter. The clock in the car reminded him that it was nearly dawn,
and that he hadn’t slept all night. There was hardly any other traffic at all,
and several times he had to pull out to overtake abandoned cars.

It was almost
light by the time he pulled up outside the white ranch-style house with the
stunted palms. He shut the car door with a bang and strode across the lawn.

There were no
lights in the house, but Margaret’s cream-colored Cutlass was parked in the car
port. He went up to the frosted-glass front door and rang the bell.

There was no
answer. He rang again and again, and shouted, ‘Margaret! Margaret – are you in
there? Margaret,
it’s
Len!’

He tried to
peer in through the sitting-room window, but it was too dark to make anything
out. He went around the side of the house and tried the side door, but it was
locked and bolted. He banged on it a couple of times and shouted his wife’s
name, but again there was no reply.

Dr. Petrie was
just walking back across the lawn towards his car when he turned and saw a
bedroom curtain move upstairs. The window opened and Prickles leaned out.

‘Daddy,’ she
called, with a serious frown.

‘Prickles!
Listen, give me a couple of minutes and I’ll get
you out of there.’

‘I didn’t want
to go but Mommy said I had to. Daddy, I’m frightened. Mommy says she’s sick.
Daddy, I’m real frightened.’

Dr. Petrie was
still standing there when the front door opened. It was Margaret. She was very
pale, and she was wearing a red flowery wrap. It gave him an odd sensation to
see her there, because she was at once so familiar and so hostile.

There was the
same bird’s-wing sweep of dark hair; the same wide-apart eyes; the same tight
mouth; the same long angular nose. But there was something else as well – a
blank stare of bitter resentment and dislike.

‘Margaret?’
said Dr. Petrie, walking back across the lawn towards her. ‘Are you all right?
Prickles said you were sick.’

Margaret
attempted a smile.

‘I have been
unwell, Leonard.
If that interests you.’
Dr. Petrie
pointed up to the bedroom window. ‘Why did you take her back? I thought you
were going to Fort Lauderdale to see your mother.’

Margaret was
holding the door so tight that her knuckles were white.

‘So you care
about her when it suits you,’ she said slurrily.

‘Look Margaret
– are you sick, or what? What’s the matter with you?’

‘I’m fine, now.
I was a little under the weather, but I’m fine.’

‘You don’t look
fine. You look terrible.’ Margaret laughed, humorlessly. ‘You don’t look so
good yourself. Now, why don’t you just get out of here and leave us alone.’

Dr. Petrie went
right up to the door. But before he could push his way in, Margaret closed it,
and latched the security chain. She peered at him through the four-inch gap
that was left, like a suspicious animal in its darkened den.

He tried to
force the door, but it wouldn’t budge. ‘Margaret,’ he warned. ‘Open this door.’

‘You’re not
coming in, Leonard. I won’t let you. Just go away and leave us alone.’

‘Margaret,
you’re sick. You don’t know what you’re saying. You could have the plague.
There are people dying in the streets. I’ve seen them.’

‘Go away,
Leonard! We can manage without you!’ Dr. Petrie slammed his shoulder against
the door. The security chain was wrenched in its screws, but it stayed firm.

‘Margaret –
you’re sick! For Christ’s sake, think of Prickles! If you’re sick, then she’s
going to get sick, and that could mean that both of you die!’ Margaret tried to
dose the door completely, but Dr. Petrie kept his foot jammed in it, and
wouldn’t let her.

He was so busy
trying to wrench the door open that he didn’t hear the car stop in the road, or
see the two men walking slowly across the lawn towards him. It was only when
Margaret looked up, and the cop said, ‘Okay, Superman, what’s going on here?’
that he realized what was happening.

The policemen
looked tired and hard-faced. One of them was standing a little way back, with
his hand on the butt of his gun. The other was right up behind him, with his
arms akimbo. They both wore sunglasses, and they both had knotted handkerchiefs
around their necks, ready to pull over their nose and mouth in case of plague
duty.

Dr. Petrie
pushed back his hair from his forehead. He knew how disreputable he must look
after a whole night without sleep. He said weakly, ‘This is my house. I mean,
this was my house.’

‘This was your
house?’ said the cop. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘This was my
house and this lady was my wife. We were having a slight argument.

That’s all.’

The cop
strained his eyes to see Margaret standing in the shadows of the hall.

‘Is this true,
ma’am?’

Margaret
sounded so different that Dr. Petrie could hardly believe it was the same
person. Instead of speaking harshly and bitterly, she was like a pathetic
little girl, all weak and heartbroken and begging for sympathy.

‘I was only
trying to reason with him, officer. He went crazy. Look, he broke the door.

He went
absolutely crazy. He said he was going to beat me up, and take my little girl
away.’

Dr. Petrie
stared in amazement. ‘But – this is preposterous – I was...’

The cop reached
down, and calmly attached a handcuff to Dr. Petrie’s wrist. ‘I have to advise
you of your rights,’ he said. ‘You have the right to remain
silent,
you have the right to...’

‘I didn’t do
anything!’ snapped Dr. Petrie. ‘My wife came around to my place and took my
little girl without my permission. Now she’s sick with the plague and she won’t
let me take my daughter back. For God’s sake, look at her! She’s sick with the
plague! If you take me away, my daughter’s going to catch it and die! Don’t you
understand that?’

The second cop
was opening the police car doors.

The first cop
said, ‘Listen, sir, we’ve all had a very trying time recently with this
epidemic. You know what I mean? I picked up a guy for breaking in a TV store
just half-an-hour ago. He said his old granny was dying of sickness, and he
wanted to make her last hours happy by letting her watch TV. It’s an emergency
situation. Lots of people are trying to take advantage of it. Now, let’s go,
huh?’

Dr. Petrie
said, T
don’t
suppose it would make any difference if
I told you I was a doctor?’

The cop pushed
him into the car and sat down beside him. The second cop settled himself down
behind the steering wheel, and pulled away from the kerb, siren whooping and
lights ablaze.

‘You’re a
doctor, huh?’ answered the cop, after a while. ‘Well, maybe you ought to be out
there healing some of these sick people, instead of bothering your ex-wife.’

Dr. Petrie said
nothing. The police car squealed on to the North-South Expressway, and sped
downtown.

They took his
money, his keys and his necktie, and locked him in an open-barred cell with two
black looters and a drunk. He was exhausted, and he lay on the rough gray
blanket of his bed, and slept without dreams for four hours.

It was eleven
o’clock when he woke up, feeling cramped and sore but slightly more human. The
drunk had gone, and the two
negroes
were left by
themselves, murmuring quietly to each other.

He sat up, and
rubbed his face. There was a small basin in the corner of the cell, and he
splashed cold water over himself, and wiped himself dry with his handkerchief.

He went to the
bars and looked out, but there was no sign of anyone.
Nothing
but a gray-painted corridor, and a smell of body odor and carbolic soap.
He turned around to the blacks.

‘What do you
have to do to get some service around here?’

The blacks
stared at him briefly, and then went back to their conversation.

‘I’m a doctor,’
Petrie insisted, ‘and I want to get out of here.’

The blacks
started at him again. One of them grinned, and shook his head.

‘They don’t let
nobody out today, man.
It’s
emergency regulations.
Anyway, if things don’t get much better out there on the streets,
maybe you safer where you at.’

Dr. Petrie
nodded. ‘You’re probably right. But what do I have to do to get some
attention?’

The other black
said, ‘This ain’t the Doral-on-the-Ocean, man. This is the Slammerin-the-city.’

They both
laughed,
then
resumed their talk.

Dr. Petrie went
to the bars and shouted, ‘Guard!’

The blacks
stopped talking again and watched him.

He waited for a
while, and then shouted, ‘Guard! Guard! Let me out of here!’

A few more
minutes passed, and then a young policeman with rimless spectacles came down
the corridor jangling a bunch of keys.

‘You Dr.
Petrie?’ he asked.

‘That’s right.
I want to see my lawyer.’

‘You don’t have
to. You’re free to leave.’

The guard
unlocked the cell, and Dr. Petrie stepped out. One of the blacks said, ‘So
long, honky, have a nice day,’ and the other laughed.

Dr. Petrie was
ushered back to the police station desk, where the -two arresting officers had
brought him that morning. Adelaide was there, with dark rings under her eyes.
She was still wearing the buttermilk-colored dress in which he had picked her
up last night.

‘Leonard – are
you all right? Oh God, I was so worried.’

She came up and
held him close, and he was so relieved to feel her and see her that he felt
tears prickling in his eyes.

The desk
sergeant said, ‘When you’ve quite finished the love tableau, would you mind
signing for these personal possessions?’

Dr. Petrie
signed. ‘Listen,’ he told Adelaide, as he tied his necktie, ‘I have to get back
to the hospital. I promised Dr. Selmer.’

‘It was Dr.
Selmer
who told me you were missing,’ Adelaide said. He
called at the house to see if you were there. When I said you weren’t, he
called the police, and they found out that you were here. I came straight
over.’

‘Have they
closed the beaches yet?’ he asked her, as they walked out of the tinted glass
doors of the police station into the brilliant mid-morning sunlight.

‘Not yet. The
news says that it’s serious, this plague, but that people mustn’t get too
worried. But it doesn’t make sense. What the newspapers are saying, and the TV,
it doesn’t seem to tie up at all. I’ve seen people sick in the streets, and yet
they keep saying there’s nothing wrong.’

Dr. Petrie
looked around. The sky was its usual imperturbable blue, flecked with shadowy
White clouds. But the city was quiet. There were only a few cars, and they
seemed to be rolling around the city streets in a strange dream. Some of them
were piled high with possessions -chairs, tables and mattresses – and it was
obvious that the few people who had realized what was going on were getting out
as quick as they could.