"I'll have to consult with the other members of the school board."
"That's fine," Bingaman said angrily. "While you're consulting, I'll be setting up beds in the gym."
"This is really as serious as you say it is?"
"Serious enough that you're going to have to think about closing any places where people form crowds -the restaurants, the movie theater, the stores, the saloons, the – "
"Close the business district?" Halloway jerked his head back so sharply that his spectacles almost fell off his nose. "Close the…? Maybe the saloons. I've been getting more and more complaints from church groups about what goes on in them. This prohibition movement is becoming awfully powerful. But the restaurants and the stores? All the uproar from the owners because of the business they would lose." Mayor Halloway guffawed. "You might as well ask me to close the churches."
"It might come to that."
Mayor Halloway suddenly wasn't laughing any longer.
He's worried about the epidemic's effect on business? Bingaman thought in dismay as he drove his Model T along Elmdale's deceptively sleepy streets toward the hospital. Well, there's one business whose prosperity the mayor won't have to worry about: the undertaker's.
This premonition was confirmed when Bingaman reached the hospital's gravel parking area, alarmed to find it crammed with vehicles and buggies, evidence of new patients. He was further alarmed by Powell's distraught look when they met at the entrance to the noisy, crowded emergency room.
"Eighteen more cases," Powell said. "Three more deaths, including Joey Carter's mother."
For a moment, Bingaman couldn't catch his breath. His headache, which had persisted from yesterday, had also worsened. The emergency room felt unbearably hot, sweat making his heavily starched shirt stick to him under his suit coat. He wanted to unbutton his strangling shirt collar but knew that his position of authority prohibited such public informality.
"Has anybody warned Ballard and Standish?" he managed to ask. He referred to Elmdale's two morticians.
Powell nodded, guiding Bingaman into a corner, away from the commotion in the emergency room. His manner indicated that he didn't want to be overheard. "They didn't need to be told," he whispered. "Each has been here several times. I'm still adjusting to what Ballard said to me."
"What was that?"
Powell dropped his voice even lower. "He said, 'My God, where am I going to get enough gravediggers? Where am I going to find enough coffins?'"
"We're out of oxygen." Elizabeth Keel, the head nurse, stopped next to them. "We're extremely low on aspirin, quinine, and camphor oil."
"We'll have to get everything we can from the pharmacists downtown," Powell said.
"Before the townsfolk panic and start hoarding," Bingaman said.
"But without medical supplies – "
"Try to get fluids into them," Bingaman told the nurse. "Do your best to keep them nourished. Soups. Custard. Anything bland and easy to digest."
"But we don't have anyone to cook for the patients."
"The Women's League," Powell said. "We'll ask them to do the cooking."
"And to help my nurses," Keel said. "Even with the volunteers who arrived this morning, I'm hopelessly understaffed."
"Who else can we ask to help us?" Bingaman tried desperately to think. "Has anyone spoken to the police department? What about the volunteer fire department? And the ministers? They can spread the word among their congregations."
It was almost two a.m. before Bingaman managed to get home. Again he extinguished the headlights of his Model T. Again a pale yellow light appeared in the bedroom window. Despite his weariness, he managed to smile as Marion met him at the door.
"You can't keep going like this," she said.
"No choice."
"Have you eaten?"
"A sandwich on the go. A cup of coffee here and there."
"Well, you're going to sit at the kitchen table. I'll heat up the chicken and dumplings I made for supper."
"Not hungry."
"You're not listening to what I said. You're going to sit at the kitchen table."
Bingaman laughed. "If you insist."
"And tomorrow I'm going with you. I should have done it today."
He suddenly became alert. "Marion, I'm not sure – "
"Well, I am. I'm a trained nurse, and I'm needed."
"But this is different from what you think it is. This is – "
"What?"
"One of our nurses collapsed today. She has all the symptoms."
"And the other nurses?"
"They're exhausted, but so far, they haven't gotten sick, thank God."
"Then the odds are in my favor."
"No. I don't want to lose you, Marion."
"I can't stay barricaded in this house. And what about you? Look at the risk you're taking. I don't want to lose you, either. But if you can take the risk, so can /."
Bingaman almost continued to argue with her, but he knew she was right. The townsfolk needed help, and neither of them would be able to bear the shame if they didn't fulfill their moral obligation. He'd seen amazing things today, people whom he had counted on to volunteer telling him that he was crazy if he thought they would risk their lives to help patients with the disease, others who never went to church or participated in community functions showing up to help without needing to be asked. The idea had occurred to him that the epidemic was God's way of testing those who didn't die, of determining who was worthy to be redeemed.
The idea grew stronger after he ate the chicken and dumplings that Marion warmed up for him, his favorite meal, although he barely tasted it. He went upstairs, but instead of proceeding into the bedroom, he entered his study, sat wearily at his desk, and turned on the wireless radio.
"Jonas?"
"In a moment."
Hearing crackles and whines, he turned knobs and watched dials. Periodically, he spoke into the microphone, identifying himself.
Finally he contacted another operator, this one in Boston, but as the operator described what was happening there – the three thousand new cases per day in Boston, a death toll so fierce that the city's 291 hearses were kept constantly busy – Bingaman brooded again about God. According to the radio operator in Boston, there wasn't a community in the United States that hadn't been hit. From Minneapolis to New Orleans, from Seattle to Miami, from north to south and west to east and everywhere in between, people were dying at a sanity-threatening rate. In Canada and Mexico, in Argentina and Brazil, England and France, Germany and Russia, China and Japan…Not an epidemic. A pandemic. It wasn't just in the United States. It was everywhere. Horrified, Bingaman thought about the bubonic plague known as the Black Death that had ravaged Europe in the Middle Ages, but what he was hearing about now was far more widespread than the Black Death had been, and if the mortality figures being given to him were accurate, the present scourge had the potential to be far more lethal. Lord, the cold weather hadn't arrived yet. What would happen when the worst of winter aggravated the symptoms of the disease? Bingaman had a nightmarish image of millions of frozen corpses strewn around the world with no one to bury them. Yes, the Spanish influenza was God's way of testing humanity, of judging how the survivors reacted, he thought. Then a further dismaying thought occurred to him, making him shiver. Or could it possibly be the end of the world?
"It appears to have started in Kansas," Bingaman told the medical team. They had agreed to meet every morning at eight in the nurses' rest area at the hospital to relay information and subdue rumors. After the meeting, they would disperse to inform volunteers about what had been discussed.