Plague (15 page)

‘I just hope
you see what we’re doing in the right light,’ said the sub-editor, with
unexpected sincerity. ‘I mean, we love this city, and we’re real worried about
this plague, but if we let the pig out of the sack, this whole place is going
to be ripped apart in five minutes flat.

Especially when
people realize that they can’t escape.’ Dr. Petrie nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I
should think you’re right.’ Then he laid the phone back down, and sat there for
twp or three minutes with his head in his hands.

‘Well?’ said
Adelaide. ‘What was all that about? Don’t keep us in suspense.’

He took her
hand, and squeezed it. ‘It appears that we have been taken for mugs.

Donald Firenza
and his health department have known about the plague since Friday. As soon as
they identified it, they sought advice from the federal government, which is
probably the real reason that Becker is in Washington. The federal government
has covertly sealed off Miami during the night, and is arresting and detaining
anyone who tries to get in or out.’

Dr. Selmer
said, open-mouthed, ‘They knew? They knew about the plague all along and they
didn’t warn us?

‘I guess they
realized that warnings were futile. This plague kills people so
fast,
the whole population might have contracted it by now.
All they want to do is stop it spreading.’

‘But what are
they doing about it? Are they trying to find an antidote? What are they doing
about us? They can’t just seal off a whole city and let it die.’

Dr. Petrie
drummed his fingers on the edge of Dr. Selmer’s desk.

‘No,’ he said
softly. ‘I don’t suppose they can.’

Throughout the
afternoon, and into the evening, it became clear that the plague was spreading
through Miami and the suburbs like a brushfire on a dry day. Dr. Petrie and Dr.
Selmer tried several times to get through to Washington, and to Donald Firenza,
but the telephone switchboards were constantly busy. They were aware that four
of their plague victims had been telephone operators, so it was likely that the
exchange was seriously undermanned.

They worked
hour after hour in the bald fluorescent light of the emergency ward, sweating
in their flea-proof clothing, comforting the dying and easing the pain of the
sick. Dr. Petrie saw an old woman of ninety-six die in feverish agony; a young
boy of five shuddering and breathing his last painful breaths; a
twenty-five-year-old wife die with her unborn baby still inside her.

Ambulances and
private cars still jammed the hospital forecourt, bringing more and more people
to the wards, even though the regular ambulance drivers had almost all sickened
and died. Nurses made makeshift beds from folded blankets, and laid the
whispering, white, dying people down in the corridors.

During a break
in his work, Dr. Petrie stood in one of those corridors and looked around him.
It was like a scene from a strange war, or some whispering asylum. He rubbed
the sweat from his eyes and went back to his latest patient.

Dr. Selmer
looked up from giving
a streptomycin
shot to a young
teenage girl with red hair. ‘What’s it like out there?’ he said hoarsely. ‘Are
they still coming in?’

Leonard Petrie
nodded. ‘They’re still coming in, all right. How many do you reckon now?’

Dr. Selmer
shrugged. ‘If all the hospitals are coping with the same amount of patients –
well, six or seven hundred.
Maybe more than a thousand.
Maybe even more than that.’

Dr. Petrie
shook his head. ‘It’s like hell,’ he said. ‘It’s like being in hell.’

‘Sure. Would
you take a look at Dr. Parkes? He doesn’t seem too well.’

Dr. Parkes was
an elderly physician who used to have a practise out at Opa Locka.

Dr. Petrie had
met him a few times on the golf course, and liked him. Now, across the crowded
emergency ward, he could see Dr. Parkes wiping his forehead unsteadily, and
taking off his spectacles.

‘Dr. Parkes?’
he said, pushing his way past two part-time trolley porters.

Dr. Parkes
reached out and leaned against him. ‘I’m all right,’ he said quietly. ‘I just
need a moment’s rest.’

‘Dr. Parkes, do
you want a shot?’

‘No, no,’ said
the gray-haired old man. ‘Don’t you worry about
me.
I’ll be all right. I’m just tired.’

Dr. Petrie
shrugged. ‘Well, if you say so. You’re the doctor.’

Dr. Parkes
smiled. Then he turned away from Dr. Petrie, and immediately collapsed, falling
face-first into a tray of surgical instruments, and scattering them all over
the floor.

‘Nurse I’ Dr.
Petrie shouted. ‘Give me a hand with Dr. Parkes!’

They lifted the
old man on to a bed, and Dr. Petrie loosened the pale blue necktie from his
wrinkled throat. The elderly doctor was breathing heavily and irregularly, and
it was obvious that he was close to death. ‘Dr. Parkes,’ said Dr. Petrie,
taking his hand. Dr. Parkes opened his pale eyes, and gave a soft and rueful
look. ‘I thought I was too old to get sick.’ he said quietly.

‘You’ll make
it,’ said Dr. Petrie. ‘Maybe you’re just tired, like you said.’

Dr. Parkes
shook his head. ‘You can’t kid me, Petrie. Here – lift up my left hand for me,
would you?’

Dr. Petrie
lifted the old man’s liver-spotted hand. There was a heavy gold ring on it,
embossed with the symbol of a snake and a staff, the classical sign of medical
healing.

‘My mother gave
me that ring,’ whispered Dr. Parkes. ‘She was sure I was going to be famous.
She’s been dead a long time now, bless her heart. But I want you – I want you
to take the ring – and see if it brings you more luck than me.’

‘I can’t do
that.’

‘Yes you can,’
breathed Dr. Parkes. ‘You can do it to please an old man.’

Dr. Petrie
tugged the ring from Dr. Parke’s finger, and pushed it uncertainly on to his
own hand. Dr. Parkes smiled. ‘It suits you, son. It suits you.’

He was still
smiling when he died. Dr. Petrie covered his face with a paper towel.

They had long
since run out of sheets.

Anton Selmer
came across, patting the sweat from his face. ‘Is he dead?’ he asked,
unnecessarily. Dr. Petrie nodded.

‘I think I’m
becoming immune,’ said Dr. Selmer. ‘Even if I’m not immune to the plague, I’m
immune to watching my friends die. I don’t even want to think how many good
doctors and nurses we’ve lost here today.’

Dr. Petrie
fingered the ring. ‘It makes you wonder whether it’s worth it. Whether we
should just leave all this, and get the hell out.’

Dr. Selmer tied
a fresh mask around his face. ‘If there was any place to get the hell out to,’
he said, ‘I’d go. I think we have to face the fact that we’re caught like rats
in a barrel.’

The ward doors
swung open again, and they turned to see what fresh victims were being wheeled
in. This time, it looked like something different. A young dark-haired boy of
nineteen was lying on the medical trolley, with his right side soaked in blood.

He was moaning
and whimpering, and when the amateur ambulance attendants tried to ease him on
to a bed, he screamed out loud.

Dr. Selmer and
Dr. Petrie helped to make him comfortable. Dr. Selmer gave him a quick shot of
painkiller, while Dr. Petrie cut away the boy’s stained plaid shirt with
scissors.

‘Look at this,’
said Dr. Petrie. He pointed to the fat, ugly wound in the boy’s side.

‘This is a
gunshot wound.’

Dr. Selmer
leaned over the boy, and wiped the dirt and sweat from his face with a tissue.
There was asphalt embedded in the youth’s cheeks, as if he had fallen on a
sidewalk or roadway.

‘What happened,
kid?’ said Dr. Selmer. ‘Did someone shoot you?’

The boy gritted
his teeth, and nodded. With his face a little cleaner, he looked like the sort
of average kid you see working behind the counter at a hamburger joint, or
delivering lunchtime sandwiches for a delicatessen.

‘Who shot you,
kid?’ asked Dr. Selmer, coaxingly, ‘Come on – it might help us to make you
better. If we know what kind of gun it was, we can find the slug faster.’ The
boy took a deep whimpering breath, tried to talk, and then burst into tears. Dr.
Selmer stroked his forehead, and spoke soothingly and softly to him, like a
mother talking to a child.

‘Come on, kid,
you’re going to be all right. Tell me who shot you, kid. Tell me who shot you.’

The boy turned
his head, his eyes squeezed tight shut. ‘We
was
– we
was going to get out-’ he panted. ‘Me and my friend – we heard there was plague
– and we
was
going to get out...’

‘What
happened?’

‘We – we took
his dad’s old – Buick. We drove up as far as – the turnpike – and they – they
sent us back.’

‘Who sent you
back, kid?’ asked Dr. Selmer. ‘National – Guardsmen – sent us – back – said we
couldn’t – leave...’

‘So what did
you do?’

The boy was
biting his tongue so hard that blood was running down his chin. He shook his
head desperately, as if he was trying to erase the memory of something that he
never wanted to think about again.

‘What did you
do?’ Dr. Selmer repeated. ‘Did they shoot you?’

‘My friend –
said – we ought to make a – break – said – they wouldn’t really shoot us. So we
– put the gas – down and – tried to get – through. They – they blew off – his
whole – they blew off his – they blew off his head-’

Dr. Petrie laid
his arm on Dr. Selmer’s shoulder. ‘Leave the kid alone, Anton. We might have
guessed they were going to keep us in the hard way. It’s either
die
here or else die on the city limits.’ Dr. Selmer nodded
bitterly. He called one of his assistants to see to the boy’s bullet-wound, and
then he went through to the scrub-up room to wash. Dr. Petrie came with him.

‘I’ve been on
the emergency wards for a long time,’ said Dr. Selmer, drying his hands. ‘And
if there’s one thing that constantly amazes me, it’s how totally callous we
Americans can be to each other. Over the past ten years, I’ve had people
brought in here who were found bleeding in the street, while dozens of
passers-by walked around them. I’ve had women who were raped or beaten-up,
while crowds just stood around and watched.
And now this.
We may be two hundred years old, Leonard, but if you ask me we’re still a
nation of strangers.’

Dr. Petrie was
combing his hair. ‘Would you do any different, if you had the federal
government’s problem? Wouldn’t you seal off the city?’

‘Maybe not.
But at least I would let us unlucky rats, caught
in our barrel, know what the hell was going on. So far as we know, and so far
as the rest of the country knows, this is just a mild outbreak of Spanish
influenza.’

Dr. Petrie
said, ‘Has it occurred to you that this might be germ warfare?
That the Russians might have started this disease?’

Dr. Selmer
laughed wryly. ‘The Russians didn’t need to, did they? We’ve done a good enough
job of it on our own. I don’t know where all this sewage came from, but I’m
ninety-nine-per-cent convinced that you’re right. The shit of sophisticated
society has come to visit upon us the wrath of an offended and polluted ocean.
What a way to go.
Poisoned by our own crap!’

Dr. Petrie
said, ‘
You’re
tired, Anton. Go take a rest.’

Dr. Selmer
shook his head. ‘The rate this plague is spreading, the whole city is going to
be dead by Thursday. If I went to sleep I’d miss half of it.’

‘Anton, you’re
exhausted.
For your own sake, rest.’

‘Maybe later.
Right now, I could do with some coffee.’

They left the
emergency ward and went out into the corridor, stepping over sick and dying
people wrapped up in red regulation blankets. A couple of thin and desperate
voices called out to the doctors but there was nothing they could do except
say, ‘It won’t be long now, friend. Please be patient,’ and leave it at that.
No treatment could arrest the course of the plague, and most of these people
would have done better to stay at home, and die in their own beds. Dr. Petrie
found there were tears in his eyes.

A cop came
slowly down the corridor towards them
,,
wearing a
bandit neckerchief around his nose and mouth. ‘Excuse me, doctors.’ he called.
‘Excuse me!’

‘What’s wrong,
officer?’

The cop stepped
carefully over an old man who was wheezing and coughing as the plague bacillus
clogged his lungs.

‘It’s the Chief
of Police, sir. He’s been taken real bad.’ Dr. Selmer looked at him, without
moving. ‘So?’ The cop seemed confused. ‘Well, sir, he’s sick. I thought that
maybe someone could come out and take a look at him.’

‘What’s wrong
with him?’ Dr. Selmer ‘asked. ‘Is it the same as these people here?’

The cop nodded.
He was only a young kid, thought Dr. Petrie.
Twenty,
twenty-one.

His eyes were
callow and uncertain as they looked out from between his bandit mask and his
police cap.

‘Well, then,’
said Dr. Selmer, ‘don’t you think that if I could cure these people here, I’d
have done it?’

‘I guess so,
doctor, but...’

‘But nothing,
officer, I’m afraid. I can’t save your Chief of Police any more than I can save
these folk. Keep him comfortable, and dispose of the body as quickly as you can
when he dies.’

The cop seemed
stunned. He looked around him for a moment at the huddled shapes of the dead
and dying, and Dr. Petrie was surprised to find
himself
feeling sorry for a policeman. He touched the cop’s arm and said, ‘I should get
out of here now, son. This place is thick with the plague, and if you hang
around too long, there’s a danger you’ll catch it yourself.’