Plague

'What?'

'Kiss me, Leonard.'

He saw that she was almost dead. Her eyes were glazing, and she could barely summon the breath to speak. Her head was slowly sinking towards the rough blanket trying to treat you like a doctor on which she lay, and even the shudders of plague had subsided in her muscles.

There was no time to decide whether to kiss her. Instead, he pulled the blanket over her face.

Sister Maloney, busy with a sick boy, said, 'Has she gone, Dr. Petrie?'

Dr. Petrie nodded. 'Yes, sister. She's gone.'

As he passed by, Sister Maloney laid a hand on his sleeve. Her sympathetic green eyes showed above her surgical mask.

'Was she someone you knew rather well, Dr. Petrie?'

Dr. Petrie took a deep breath, and looked around him. 'No, sister, she wasn't. I didn't know her well at all.' It was not a callous denial, it was the truth. There were parts of Margaret he had understood thoroughly, and hated — but there was so much, he realized now, that he had not known at all.

Afterwards, as he walked back down the crowded corridor towards the elevators, he felt oddly calm and numb. He didn't feel happy; he had never, in his bitterest moments, wished Margaret dead. But now the problem had been taken out of his hands by chance, and by Pasteurella pestis. He was free at last.

A nurse came up to him and touched his arm. She was a small, pretty colored girl. He had seen her around the emergency wards before, and even toyed with the idea of asking her out for a drink.

'Doctor Petrie?' she said.

He looked at her. 'Yes, nurse?'

She lowered her eyes. 'I don't know how to say this. It sounds ridiculous.'

He looked at her steadily. Like every nurse in the hospital, she had been working for hours without a break, and all around her, she had seen doctors and interns and sisters dying on their feet. She was tired, and her black face was glossy with perspiration.

'Why not try me?' he asked huskily.

'Well,' she said, 'I heard a rumor.'

'What kind of a rumor?'

'My brother's friend works for the Miami Fire Department. It seems like he told my brother they've been given special orders. The firemen, I mean. They've been told to get ready for some big blazes.'

Dr. Petrie felt a cold sensation sliding down his spine.

'Some big blazes?' he said. 'What did he mean by that?'

'I don't know, doctor,' said the nurse. She still didn't look up, and her voice was barely audible. 'I guess they mean to burn the city.'

Dr. Petrie let the words sink in. I guess they mean to burn the city. It was a medieval way of dealing with an epidemic, but then, all things considered, they were faced with a medieval situation. For the first time in a hundred years, they had a raging disease on their hands that modern medical treatments could neither suppress nor deflect.

He reached out and gently lifted the nurse's chin. 'I'm not going to pretend I don't believe you,' said, 'because I've seen enough of this administration's tactics to believe it could be true. You might as well know that Miami has been thrown to the wolves. The city is surrounded by National Guardsmen, and there's no way out.'

She held his hand for a moment, and then nodded. 'I guessed they would do that,' she said simply.

They stepped back for a moment while a medical trolley was pushed between them, carrying a shivering middle-aged woman in a soiled white summer coat.

'Well,' said the colored nurse. 'I suppose I'd better get back to work.'

Dr. Petrie said, as she turned, 'You could try to escape, you know. You could run away.'

She looked back. 'Run away? You mean, right out of Miami?'

'That's right. Right out of Miami.'

'But there are people here who need me. How could I leave my patients?'

'Nurse,' said Dr. Petrie, 'you know and I know that they're all going to die anyway. You don't think that anything you can do will prevent that?'

'No, I don't,' she said, without hesitating. 'But it's my duty to stay with them, and do whatever I can. It's only human.'

Dr. Petrie said, 'You know that you'll die yourself, don't you?'

She nodded.

He didn't say anything else — just looked at her, and thought what a waste it was. She was young and she was black and she was pretty, and she had everything in the world to stay alive for. Now, because of some crass and destructive official bungling, she was going to die.

'Doctor,' she said quietly, 'I know what you're thinking.'

He looked away, but she stepped up to him again and laid her hand on his arm.

'Doctor, we're all human here. We're nothing special — just ordinary people. I want to stay because that's my choice, but maybe you want to go. Doctor, you don't have to seek my approval to do that. You only have to walk right out of here, and take your chance.'

'I have a daughter,' he said, in a trembling voice.

The nurse smiled, and shook her head. 'There's no reason to make excuses. Not to me, nor anyone. Just go, Doctor Petrie.'

He bit his lip, then turned away to the elevators. The last he saw of the colored nurse was her forgiving, resigned and understanding face, as the elevator doors closed between them. There are some people, he thought, whose devotion makes everything else around them seem tawdry and irrelevant.

Dr. Selmer was fast asleep on the couch when Dr. Petrie returned to the office. Adelaide was sitting beside him reading a medical magazine and yawning.

'That didn't take long,' she said.

He sat down next to her and rubbed his eyes. 'It was Margaret,' he said wearily. 'She just died, about five minutes ago.'

Adelaide slowly put down her magazine. 'Margaret?' she said, shocked.

'She's dead, Adelaide. She had the plague.'

She reached over and grasped his wrist. 'Oh, Leonard. Oh, God — I'm sorry. I know that we wished all kinds of things on her. But not this.'

Dr. Petrie sighed. 'There's nothing we can do. She caught it, and she died. It doesn't matter what we wished or didn't wish.'

'What about Prickles? Has she got it too?'

'I don't know. Margaret said she hadn't. She left her with the woman next door when they took her into hospital.'

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!'