Dr Chu was back at their side. She took a notepad from her pocket and wrote something in it. ‘We’ve taken samples from a few.’ She turned to Nurse Webb. ‘I think we can manage from here.’
The nurse hesitated. Stevie saw the sweat on her forehead glisten beneath the harsh fluorescent lights and asked, ‘Are you okay?’
Nurse Webb gave a curt nod, but her attention was focused on Dr Chu.
‘You should keep her until you find an antidote.’
Across the ward, as if on cue, someone stumbled. There was the sound of smashing glass and a flutter of activity, but although they both glanced in its direction neither Dr Chu nor Nurse Webb moved to help.
‘Thank you, nurse.’ The doctor touched Nurse Webb’s arm and her voice softened. ‘Don’t worry. We’re not the only ones working on this. Labs all over the world are pooling their resources.’
The nurse stepped closer to Dr Chu and Stevie saw the doctor take an involuntary step backward. She wiped a hand across her face and held it up, displaying the slick of moisture across her palm.
Dr Chu said, ‘Nurse, if you are feeling unwell, follow procedure and take yourself to quarantine.’
Nurse Webb’s hand was still raised and for a moment Stevie thought she was going to touch the doctor’s face. But then she turned and walked slowly from the room, letting the door swing shut behind her.
‘Will she be all right?’
Dr Chu was still staring at the door, as if unsure of whether she should go after the nurse.
‘Do you mean will she live?’
The starkness of the question shook Stevie, but she was surprised to realise that it was exactly what she had meant.
‘I suppose so.’
The doctor looked at her. ‘I’ve been doing my homework. In the fourteenth century sixty per cent of Europe’s population died from plague. It’s a myth that it was all down to rats. The truth is, we still don’t really know what it was. Of those that survived, there wasn’t anyone who hadn’t lost someone close to them. Many lost their entire families.’
‘This isn’t anything like that though, is it?’
The doctor looked away. She lifted her hand to her hair again. This time a few strands had escaped. She tucked them back in place.
‘It’s impossible to know.’
‘You said labs across the world are working on it. Surely someone will find an antidote?’
‘Perhaps, but there’s not a physician alive who isn’t regularly reminded that we’ve failed to find an effective cure for the common cold.’ Dr Chu glanced towards where the tall, sandy-haired man was standing. He had put the phone down and was beckoning to her. ‘I think Mr James needs me. Is there anyone waiting at home for you? Children?’
‘Why?’
‘It might be useful if you could hang around for a bit longer.’ She gave Stevie’s arm a reassuring squeeze. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you’re kept in one piece.’
Stevie watched Dr Chu cross the room to where Mr James was waiting and saw him hand the doctor a piece of paper. She scanned its contents quickly and the two began to talk in low murmurs. Mr James looked at Stevie. Dr Chu followed his gaze and then they stepped closer, like conspirators towards the end of an intrigue.
Stevie flung her bag over her shoulder, stepped smartly through the double doors and walked out of the department. She thought she heard a shout behind her and upped her pace, sprinting along the corridor until she found a fire escape. She took the stairs as fast as she could, feeling the blood pounding in her head, and blessing all the dark, wet winter mornings when she had forced herself out of bed and into her running gear. When she was sure that the clatter on the metal staircase was caused by her footsteps alone, Stevie paused on a landing, bending forwards, panting hard until she recovered her breath. Then she stepped out into the silence of a deserted hospital corridor. A sign on the wall pointed towards intensive care. She glanced in her bag at the laptop and then walked in that direction.
Thirteen
Joanie had once told Stevie that she believed in alien abductions. She looked like the subject of an alien experiment now, webbed in a network of tubes so dense and complex they might be outgrowths of her body. Joanie’s golden-brown glow had sunk to a sallow beige. Her eyes were closed and caved deep in their sockets, like the absent eyes of a death mask. Stevie whispered her name, ‘Joanie,’ and a voice behind her said, ‘It’s no good, she can’t hear you.’
Joanie’s husband Derek had lost the wide-boy swagger that had sometimes made him seem a more likely candidate for prison than the police force. He stepped into the room and stood at the end of the bed with his head bowed, as if he was about to say a prayer.
Stevie asked, ‘What’s wrong with her?’
‘Out on the streets they’re calling it the sweats.’ Derek turned to face her. He had taken off his uniform jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt, but kept his stab vest on. He looked as if he was broiling beneath its weight. ‘In here they don’t know what to call it. I suppose they’ll come up with a bunch of letters and numbers that won’t mean much to the rest of us. The sweats seems as good a name as any to me.’
Stevie had spent a fair bit of time in Derek’s company when he and Joanie had been together. They had gone out for drinks, shared meals, once even spent a weekend together in a rented cottage in Dorset, but Stevie had never really been alone with her friend’s husband. She hadn’t seen him at all since he had told Joanie that he couldn’t help it if he loved someone else.
Stevie had heard the story so often it had almost become part of her own stock of memories: Joanie turning to greet her husband as he stepped into the bedroom, her recent purchases laid out on the counterpane; the cold beer she had uncapped for him untouched on the bedside table; Derek muttering accusations and excuses, not daring to meet Joanie’s eye as he bundled his clothes into the sports bag he used for football practice; his voice breaking as he said goodbye; the look he gave Joanie before he walked out of their bedroom and then out of the house for the last time; the bottle of beer still sweating cold on the table.
‘Why are you here, Derek?’
‘I’m still her husband. Joanie always hated doctors. She’d be terrified if she knew she was in hospital.’
Less than a week ago Joanie had been her usual sweet-vain-self, dragging Derek into their on-air sales pitch, pretending she did it to humiliate him, though she and Stevie both knew it was her own form of SOS, an appeal for him to come home.
‘Doesn’t Francesca mind?’
Derek ran a handkerchief over his number-one buzz cut.
‘I don’t suppose she knows I’m here. Her mum stays out in Norfolk; she took off and drove up there. We were meant to be going on holiday, first week with her mum, second week on a barge, but all leave’s cancelled and . . .’
He let the sentence trail away, but his eyes were on Joanie’s slight figure draped in tubes on the bed.
Stevie asked, ‘Will she be okay?’
Derek’s shrug was miserable.
‘Joanie’s one of the lucky ones. She caught it early and got hooked up to all this.’ Derek gestured towards the paraphernalia weaving its way in and around Joanie’s bed. ‘There’s people as look to be in the same state, lying on trolleys in A&E.’ He looked at Stevie, his round face blotched with pink, a flush of broken veins high on his cheekbones. She could imagine him as a child, a boy who had come off worst in a playground fight and was trying hard not to cry. He said, ‘Joanie’s not the dying-young type. She doesn’t even like to leave a party early.’
Stevie looked at the slender shape beneath the sheets and wished her friend hadn’t lost so much weight. She reached out a hand to touch Joanie’s face, but Derek caught it in his own. ‘Best not.’ He was wearing a pair of leather gloves at odds with the warm weather.