Plague

'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?'