Plague (17 page)

Adelaide frowned.
She could see what Leonard was thinking. He was exhausted, and the past
forty-eight hours seemed to have bent and aged him. He was suddenly faced with
a choice – to shoulder the responsibility of saving what he had left; or to
close his eyes to his own loves and feelings, and plunge himself into a medical
battle that he knew was utterly hopeless.

‘Leonard,’ she
said softly, ‘I know that you’re a
doctor,
and whether
you can cure people or not, you still have to do your best.’

He didn’t
answer. He merely said, ‘Is there any more coffee?’

She held his
wrist harder. ‘Leonard, if you want to stay here, I’ll understand. But if you
want to make a break for it, I’ll understand that, too. I want to be with you,
that’s
all.’

Dr. Petrie
leaned over and kissed her cheek. She turned her face, and kissed him on the
mouth. There was passion in their kiss, but there was also a kind of
exploration and communication.
Lips touching each other,
tongues touching each other, questioning and asking.

At last, he
said, ‘A nurse downstairs told me they were going to burn the city. She heard
it from a fireman.’

Adelaide
stared. ‘They’re going to do what?’

‘The plague is
obviously out of hand. They’re thinking of burning the city.’

‘Who is?’

‘I don’t know.
Firenza, the Disease Control Center, the county health chief.
What does it matter?’

‘But that’s
insane. They can’t set fire to the whole of Miami!’

Dr. Petrie
stood up. ‘They can, honey, and they probably will.
Now, how
about that coffee?’

Adelaide stood
up, too.
‘Leonard – damn the coffee!
If this city’s
going to bum, I’m not going to burn along with it! You think I’m going to stand
here passively making cups of coffee while the whole place goes up in flames?
You’re out of your mind!’

Dr. Petrie held
her shoulders and calmed her down. ‘Don’t panic, Adelaide, for God’s sake. It’s
probably nothing more than a contigency plan, that’s all. Whenever there’s a
plague, you have to burn clothing and blankets and bodies, just to stop further
infection. Look – we don’t even know what’s really happening. We have no idea
how many people have died, or whether the plague is spreading or not.’

Adelaide looked
straight into his eyes. ‘Leonard,’ she said, ‘I don’t care. I just think we
ought to get the hell out of here before they put a match to us.’

‘Even if I decide to stay?’

‘You can’t
decide to stay!’

Dr. Petrie
turned away. ‘That girl downstairs – the one who told me they were going to
burn Miami – she’s staying. She wants to stand by her patients.’

‘This is her
hospital,’
persisted
Adelaide. ‘It’s her job to stay.
What about Prickles?

Are you just
going to leave her out there, and cross your fingers that she won’t get sick –
or burned – or raped by some maniac?’

‘Adelaide!’
shouted Dr. Petrie.

‘For Christ’s
sake, Leonard, this is not the time to play at heroes!’ retorted Adelaide.

‘These people
don’t need you! They’re all going to die, aren’t they? What’s the use of
staying, Leonard?’

Dr. Petrie
turned around, clenching and unclenching his fists. He stared at Adelaide, with
her fierce brown eyes, and her brunette curls, and that disturbing, angry,
beautiful face.

‘The use-’ he
began, uncertainly. ‘The use is...’

‘The use is
what?
interrupted
Adelaide hotly. ‘You can’t cure
them, so what are you going to do for them? Make sure that the last thing they
see on earth is your benign and self-sacrificing mug? Leonard, for Christ’s
sake, you’re not Albert Schweitzer!’

Dr. Petrie was
about to answer, but changed his mind. He simply said: ‘No, honey, I know I’m
not Albert Schweitzer.’

‘Then let’s
go,’ said Adelaide. ‘Let’s just get out of here while we can.’

Dr. Petrie
nodded. ‘I was going to go anyway. I guess I just needed someone to persuade
me. I just don’t feel very proud of myself.’

Adelaide sighed.
‘Leonard, it’s not a question of pride. It’s purely a matter of survival.’

Dr. Petrie sat
down heavily, with his face in his hands.

She knelt down
in front of him, and took his hands away. ‘You don’t have to justify what you
do. There doesn’t have to be a reason. It’s the same with everything. Why did
we fall in love? Why do I want to cling on to you so much?’

‘I’m not a
great sheltering tree, you know,’ said Dr. Petrie. T
don’t
even know if I’m a great sheltering man. I feel like a goddamned broken reed at
the moment.’

Aaton Selmer,
asleep on the couch, grunted and whispered something. Dr. Petrie gently laid
Adelaide’s hands aside, and walked over to look at him. The stocky, red-headed
doctor looked pale and sweaty. Petrie lifted his wrist and checked his pulse.

‘Is he all
right?’ asked Adelaide.

He counted the
pulse-rate and respiration-rate. Under his probing, long-fingered hands, Dr.
Selmer didn’t even stir.

‘I think he’s
okay,’ Dr. Petrie said at last. ‘But he’s totally exhausted. He needs all the
rest he can get.’

‘Are, you going
to wake him, and tell him, we’re leaving?’

‘I’ll try.’

Dr. Petrie
shook Dr. Selmer’s shoulder. The sleeping doctor licked his lips, and stirred.
Dr. Petrie shook him again.

‘Anton – wake
up. It’s Leonard.’

Finally, Dr. Selmer
opened his eyes. They were bloodshot from lack of sleep, and his mind was
completely fuddled. ‘Leonard... what’s going on? I was dreaming we were playing
golf.’

‘Was I
winning?’

‘Like hell you
were. You were three strokes down. What’s going on?’

Dr. Petrie said
awkwardly, ‘We’ve come to a decision.
Adelaide and I.’

Adelaide
interrupted, ‘We’re leaving.’

‘Leaving?’ Dr.
Selmer sat up. ‘I don’t understand.’

Dr. Petrie
shrugged. ‘We’re going to try and make a break. I want to see if I can rescue
Prickles, and then maybe we can get through the quarantine cordon and find
ourselves a remote place to stay until this whole thing’s over.’

‘But supposing
you spread the disease beyond Miami? Jesus, Leonard, this thing could wipe out
the whole damned United States!’

‘That’s why we
want to go some place remote,’ said Dr. Petrie. ‘We can keep ourselves under
observation until we’re sure that we’re clear.’

‘The National
Guard will kill you,’ said Dr. Selmer. ‘You saw what happened to that boy
downstairs.’

‘They’ll kill
us either way,’ said Dr. Petrie. ‘The rumor’s going around that they’re going
to burn the city down.’

Dr. Selmer
shook his head. ‘I don’t know what to say. I’m a doctor, and so are you.

How can we
leave this place?’

Leonard Petrie
couldn’t answer that. He didn’t know what the answer was. He only knew that all
his instinct and personality were telling him now that it was important for him
to survive. He completely accepted a doctor’s responsibilities to care for his
patients, yet he was unable to invest any belief in a hopeless situation. To
him, it was like moths flying into the windshields of speeding cars.

He knelt down
beside Dr. Selmer’s settee, and said, ‘Anton, I’m not running out. I just don’t
believe that it’s worth sticking around here any longer. We’re not doing anyone
any good.
Least of all ourselves.’

Dr. Selmer
looked thoughtful. “Well,’ he said, ‘I can’t prevent you from going. I won’t
say I’m not disappointed.’

“Will you come
along with us?’

Dr. Selmer
shook his head. ‘No, Leonard. That’s my emergency ward down there, and I have
to stay whether I like it or not.’ He got up from the settee. ‘I do feel
disappointed, Leonard, but that doesn’t mean I don’t wish you luck.’

Dr. Petrie got
up from his knees. Dr. Selmer gave him a small, rueful grin. ‘I can’t hold you
back, Leonard. Maybe it’s right that you should be the one to go. Someone has
to get out of here and tell the people of this country what’s happening. Now,
if I were you, I’d get my lady out of here as quick as I could, and high-tail
it for the city limits before dawn.’

Dr. Petrie
checked his watch. It was already 11:47. ‘Okay, Anton,’ he said gently. ‘But do
me
a favor, will you?’

‘If you promise
to keep on playing such a lousy game of golf in my dreams, I’ll do you any
favor you want.’

‘Look after
yourself. If they start burning the city, do your best to get out. When this is
all over, I want you and me to meet up, and have ourselves a couple of drinks
at the club, and drown the memory of this goddamned plague for ever.’

Dr. Selmer
scratched the back of his gingery neck. ‘I think you’ve got yourself a deal
there, Leonard.’ The two men clasped hands for a long moment, and then Dr.
Petrie took Adelaide by the arm, and led her out into the corridor. As he closed
the door behind him, Dr. Selmer called out, ‘Please, Leonard – take care.’

Dr. Petrie
nodded, and closed the office door behind him for the last time.

They pushed
their way along the crowded hospital corridors as quickly as they could.

Adelaide kept a
handkerchief over her nose and mouth, and Dr. Petrie steered her clear of
obvious plague cases. There was a background of low muttering and whispering,
occasionally interrupted by cries of pain or anguish. People sat and lay
everywhere, huddled in comers too sick to move, or gradually dying on their
trolleys.

The stench of
dead bodies was almost too much to bear.

Two patients,
nearly dead themselves, watched with glazed eyes as a doctor, gasping and
shuddering with his own plague, tried to inject them with painkilling drugs. In
the night outside, the streets echoed with the never-ending wail of sirens.

They broke out
of the hospital doors and into the warm, neon-lit hospital forecourt.

The place was
still cluttered with ambulances, but there was noticeably less activity than
there had been before. Dr. Petrie’s car was still at Margaret’s. By now it had
probably been stolen, commandeered or towed away. But there was a whole
hospital car-park round the side of the building, and they were bound to find a
car with its ignition keys left inside.

Adelaide said,
‘My God, it’s gotten so much worse. Look – there’s a couple of bodies over
there, by the hospital entrance.’

Dr. Petrie took
her arm. ‘Don’t worry about that. Let’s just get the hell out.’

They half-ran,
half-walked round to the side of the hospital. The car-park was dark, and
shadowed from the street-lights by the fourteen-storey bulk of the hospital
tower.

Dr. Petrie
said: “You take the first row of cars, I’ll take the second. Try the driver’s
door, and see if it opens.
If it does, check for keys.’

As swiftly and
silently as they could, they went from one car to the other, trying the
door-handles. By the time Dr. Petrie had tugged at his twelfth car, he was
beginning to wonder if the
staff of this particular hospital
weren’t
security-conscious to a fault.

Then Adelaide
hissed, ‘I’ve got one!’

She was opening
the door of a bronze Gran Torino. Dr Petrie skirted around the back of the car
that he had been trying to open, and crossed the space in between the rows of
parked vehicles. The moment he stepped into the open, a rough voice shouted,
‘Hold it right there,
buddy
!’

He froze, with
his hands above his head. A stocky shadow disengaged itself from all the other
shadows, and started to walk towards him. In a thin slanting beam of light from
one of the hospital windows, Dr. Petrie saw a solid, middle-aged security
guard, with a navy-blue uniform, a face as hard as a concrete post, and a
revolver. ‘I’m a doctor,’ Petrie said.

The security
guard came up close, and shone a torch in Dr. Petrie’s face. ‘Then how come
you’re trying to steal yourself a car?’

‘Someone took
mine. I have an emergency.’

‘You got ID?’

‘Sure. It’s in
my top pocket. Here – I’ll get it out for you.’

‘Don’t you move
a
muscle.
’

The security guard
came forward, reached into Dr. Petrie’s inside pocket,
then
tried to open the papers with one hand. As he did so, Dr. Petrie grabbed the
man’s gun wrist, and tried to twist the revolver out of his grasp. Forcing the
guard’s arm around in a circle, he jammed his leg behind the man’s calf, and
pushed him. The man fell backwards on to the tarmac, jarring his knee – but he
still kept his grip on the gun.

Dr. Petrie
pressed the guard’s wrist against the ground, and then trod on it, hard. At
last, the fingers opened, and Dr. Petrie snatched the revolver away from him.

The guard
cried, ‘Don’t shoot.’ He raised his arms protectively over his face. ‘I got a
wife with a bad leg.’

Dr. Petrie
said, ‘I’m not going to hurt you, you dumb ox. Just get up and get the hell out
of here.’

The guard got
to his feet, and dusted himself off. ‘You won’t get far, you know,” he said,
stepping cautiously backwards. ‘They got the cops on the lookout for bums like
you. All I have to do is call them up, and they’ve got your number.’

Petrie waved
the gun in his direction again. The guard said, ‘Hey – I didn’t mean it
serious. I was joking! You go right ahead.’

Adelaide was
watching, tense and fearful, from a few feet away, holding the door of the Gran
Torino. Dr. Petrie looked at her, and couldn’t see her eyes, only the dark
brunette curls of her hair. The guard was shuffling away from them, step by
step, holding his hands out in front of him.

As if in a
dream, Dr. Petrie fired the revolver twice. The guard yelped like a small dog,
and started running away across the car park. Dr. Petrie lifted the revolver in
both hands, held it steadily, and fired again. He missed. He fired once again,
and the bullet sang mournfully off the fender of a parked car.