"Dr. Bingaman." The nurse stepped back in fear, her face suddenly drained of color, almost as white as her uniform. "It can't be!"
"What on earth?"
"I was told you were dead!"
"Dead?" Bingaman took another step toward the nurse in the hospital corridor.
She almost backed away. "After Dr. Powell died and Dr. Talbot, I-"
"Wait a second. Dr. Powell is dead?"
"Yes, and Dr. Talbot and – "
"Dead." Shock overwhelmed him. Dizzy, he feared that he was having a relapse and placed a hand against the wall to steady himself. He took a deep breath, repressed a cough, and studied her. "What made you think I was dead?"
"That's what I was told!"
"Who told you?"
"A lot of people. I don't know. I don't remember. It's been so terrible. So many people have gotten sick. So many people have died. I can't remember who's alive and who isn't. I can't remember when I slept last or when.
Bingaman's fatigue and his preoccupation when he entered the hospital had prevented him from realizing how exhausted the nurse looked. "Sit down," he said, realizing something else – the reason no one had come to his house to find out if he needed help. Why would anyone have bothered if everyone thought I was dead? And there must be a lot of people who have died.
"You need to go home," Bingaman said. "Get some food. Rest."
"I can't. So many patients. I can't keep the living straight from the dying. They keep going out and others come in. There's so much to do. I…"
"It's all right. I'm giving you permission. Go home. I'll speak to Elizabeth." He referred to the head of the nursing staff. "I'm sure she'll agree."
"You can't."
"What?"
"Speak to her."
"I don't understand."
"Elizabeth's dead."
He found himself speechless, staring at her, horrified by the thought of being told that whoever else he referred to would also be dead. So much had happened so quickly. Stretcher bearers passed him, carrying the corpse of Mayor Halloway.
A further horrifying thought occurred to him. "How long?" he managed to ask.
The weary nurse shook her head in confusion.
"What I mean is…" His brow felt warm again. "What day is it?"
Confused, she answered, "Wednesday."
He rubbed his forehead. "What I'm trying to ask is – the date."
"October ninth." The nurse frowned in bewilderment.
"October ninth?" He felt as he had when he'd been struck in the face. He lurched backward.
"Dr. Bingaman, do you feel all right?"
"A month."
"I don't understand."
"The last thing I recall it was early September."
"I still don't-"
"I've lost the rest of September and…A month. I've lost a whole month." Frightened, he tried to explain, to give the nurse a sense of what it was like to spend so many weeks fighting to breathe through congested lungs, all the while enduring a storm-tossed black sea of delirium. He strained to describe the unbelievable thirst, the torture of aching limbs, the suffocating heaviness on his chest.
The disturbed way the nurse looked at him gave him the sense that he was babbling. He didn't care. Because all the time he struggled to account for how he'd lost a month of his life, he realized that if it had happened to him, it must have happened to others. Dear God, he thought, how many others are trapped inside their houses, too weak to answer their phone if they have one, or to respond to someone knocking on their door? When he'd left his house an hour earlier, he'd knocked on the doors of his neighbors to his right and left. No one had answered. He had been troubled by how deserted his elm-lined street looked, a cool breeze blowing leaves that had turned from green to autumnal yellow with amazing rapidity in just a few days – except that he now realized it had been a month. And those neighbors hadn't gone away somewhere. He had a heart-pounding, dreadful certainty that they were inside, helpless or dead.
"Jonas, you look terrible. You've got to rest," Dr. Bennett said. "Go home. Take care of Marion."
"She's doing fine. Others are worse. She insisted I help take care of them."
"But-"
"You and I are the only physicians left in town! People are dying! I can't go home! I'm needed!"
Every church in town had been converted into a hospital. All of them were full. The cemeteries no longer had room for all the corpses. Gravediggers could not keep up the labor of shoveling dirt from fresh pits. Corpses lay in rows in a pasture at the edge of town. Armed sentries were posted to stop animals from eating them, each man wearing a gauze mask and praying that he wouldn't catch the disease from the corpses. Funerals were limited to family members wearing masks, ministers rushing as fast as dignity would allow while they read the prayers for the dead.
"We have to keep searching!" Bingaman organized teams. "Who knows how many people need our help? Even if they're dead, we have to find them. There's too great a risk of cholera. Pestilence. The decomposing bodies will cause a secondary plague."
Leading his own group, Bingaman marched along streets and banged on doors. Sometimes, a trembling hand let them in, a bony sunken-eyed face assuring Bingaman that everyone inside was over the worst, obviously not aware that Bingaman had reached them barely soon enough to try to save them. Other times, receiving no answer, Bingaman's team broke in. Weak coughing led them to a few survivors. Too often, the odor of sickness and decay made everyone gag. Whole families had been dead for quite a while.
7 had a little bird. Its name was Enza. I opened the window Andin-flu-Enza.
The rhyme, which Bingaman happened to hear a gaunt-cheeked little girl sing hypnotically, almost insanely, as her parents were carted dead from her house, festered in his mind. He couldn't get rid of it, couldn't still it, couldn't smother it. I opened the window and in-flu-Enza. The rhythm was insidious – like the disease. It repeated itself in his thoughts until it made him dizzy and he feared that he would have another bout with Enza. Opened the window. Yes. The disease was everywhere. All around. In the sky. In the air. In every breath. Bingaman knew that after his ordeal he ought to follow Kramer's advice and rest, but no matter how dizzy he felt…in-flu-Enza…he persisted, as Marion urged him to do, struggling from home to home, performing the corporal works of mercy for the suffering and the dead. In-flu-Enza. He persisted because he had come to the firm conclusion that if this disease was God's punishment, it was also an opportunity that God was offering to make the world a better place, to eradicate evil and work for salvation.
Bingaman's team rammed the door open and searched through musty shadows, first floor, second floor, cellar, and attic. His apprehension had been needless. There was no one, alive or dead.
Grateful to return outside, scuffling their shoes through dead leaves, the team followed Bingaman along the wooden sidewalk.
"We haven't looked in this house."
"No need," Bingaman said.
"Why not?"
"It's mine."
"But what's that smell?"
"I don't know what you mean."
" It's coming from-"
"The house farther down," Bingaman said.
"No, this house. Your house."
"Nonsense. I don't smell anything."
"I think we'd better take a look."
"Stop."
"The door's locked."
"Stay away."