During the forty minutes it had taken her to drive from the Office of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner to her destination, she had made a conscious effort to blank out the reason for her trip. Her mind had wandered, and at one point she had figured that the original German settlers must have named the fort Dietrich as in Marlene, and that time had corrupted it to Detrick, the soft German ch that came from the back of the throat hardened to a ck from much further forward on the tongue. And she had almost laughed at herself for allowing such trivia to fill her thoughts. Except that laughter was impossible, and now that she saw the orange flashing lights at the gates of Fort Detrick on the road ahead of her, she felt a constriction in her chest and found it hard to breathe.
The duty doctor was a young woman, dark hair scraped back into a ponytail. She wore army fatigues and carried the rank of major. Her complexion was sallow, and she had large sad eyes that conveyed something of the apprehension she was doing her best to mask. She led Margaret briskly through the labyrinth of corridors to Ward 200. The air at the receiving desk was bristling with tension. Several medical staff looked at Margaret with a mix of curiosity and concern.
‘He’s not good,’ the doctor had said when she picked Margaret up at the front desk. ‘Temperature’s high, over a hundred and six, and there’s fluid in his lungs, intermittent vomiting. He swings between fever and lucidity without warning. His symptoms have developed incredibly fast.’
Margaret reached the door to the Slammer and peered through the window. There were two medical staff in Steve’s room, both wearing light blue protective suits, yellow cable corkscrewing behind them. She could barely see the figure lying on the bed. But she could see the IV feeding lactated Ringer’s solution into his arm to combat dehydration and a forest of wires leading off to the equipment monitoring his condition.
‘We’ve done everything we can to keep his temperature down, but it’s a losing battle,’ the doctor was saying. ‘And it’s impossible to tell at this stage if the rimantadine is having any effect. But he’s strong, you know; he could ride it out.’
Margaret wondered how much homework the doctor had done on the symptoms and progress of the Spanish flu. She remembered Markin’s words: It could reduce a strong, vigorous adult to a quivering wreck in a matter of hours. And then it occurred to her that when the prognosis is bleak and all hope gone, comfort is all that remains. It is the doctor’s final crutch with which to face the patient’s loved ones. Margaret searched the doctor’s face for some sign that she knew something she wasn’t telling. ‘What do you really think?’ she asked.
The doctor shrugged hopelessly. ‘I have no idea. The next few hours will be critical.’
Margaret said, ‘I have stuff for him. A picture of his little girl. Can I go in?’
The doctor closed the door behind her, and she found herself in a small changing room, shelves rising to the ceiling, cotton pants and shirts arranged in colours: white, khaki, blue, brown. Margaret laid her pale blue personal protective suit on the bench and undressed quickly. She slipped into a pair of white pants and shirt, fingers fumbling with the ties, before stepping into the protective suit and zipping herself in.
For a moment she was gripped by panic. Claustrophobia, fear. She turned and saw the plaque on the door, red lettering on white. EMERGENCY DOOR RELEASE. And almost gave in to an impulse to hit the release and get the hell out. She took a deep breath and heard it quivering in the sealed confines of her suit, and then saw her world turn opaque as it misted her visor. She put a hand on the wall to steady herself and then turned toward the outer shower. There was no need to decontaminate on the way in.
Clumsy in the suit, she stepped through a short, narrow corridor past the outer shower, closing the door behind her, and opened the heavy stainless steel door into the large chemical decontamination shower. On the inside of it, above a push-handle for opening, was a red warning sign: CLOSE OUTER SHOWER DOOR BEFORE OPENING INNER SHOWER DOOR. She pulled it closed behind her, and looked around the glistening walls of the stainless steel cubicle, pipes and shower heads, stop-cocks with knurled red turning handles. On the way out she would be bombarded in here by liquid chemicals designed to kill every living thing. Her breathing had become shallow and rapid, emphasised in her head by the loudness of it. She thumped the push-handle of the outer door with her open palms and it swung open into the anteroom with the white-painted brick walls that she had seen through the window from the outside. She swung the door shut again, and twisted awkwardly to find the nozzle at the back of her suit that fit the end of the yellow corkscrew cable that hung from the wall on her left, fumbling through her white latex gloves to make the connection. As it locked into place, the suit immediately began to fill with cool, filtered air, expanding around her, and she began to feel the panic diminishing. She could breathe again. The misting on her visor evaporated. She looked around and saw on the shelf behind her the rows of short green booties that the doctor had told her to put on. Moving with the awkward, slow-motion gait of a spaceman, she reached up and pulled down a pair of boots, checking them for size and then slipping her inflated feet inside.
She saw the doctor, through the glass, waving her to the door. She disconnected from the yellow cable and waddled over to where she could open the hatch of the ultraviolet chamber to retrieve the photograph, cassettes, and handful of books she had bought at the airport. Then she turned back toward Steve’s room. The nursing staff had spotted her by now, and one of them pointed to a yellow cable hanging free from the window wall on the far side of the bed. She hurried across the anteroom and into the special care room, rounding the bed and connecting to the cable before she turned to look at Steve where he lay in the bed. The air rushed back into her suit and blew down over her head.
Steve’s face was a strange putty colour, with incongruously red patches high on his cheeks and forehead. His mouth was open and his breathing shallow, eyes shut, sweat beading across his brow. One of the nurses laid a cool wet towel across his forehead, and his eyes flickered open. He inclined his head a little to his right and the dull glaze left his eyes, a lustre returning to them as he recognised Margaret behind the visor. He smiled, and reached out a hand to take hers, wires trailing in its wake.
‘Welcome back to Wally World,’ he said. ‘It’s a fun place to spend forty-eight hours.’ Phlegm caught in the back of his throat, throwing him into a convulsion of coughing that turned him scarlet and left him gasping for breath. When he had control again, he said, ‘I knew I should have paid those goddamned parking fines.’
Margaret squeezed his hand tightly. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t make it yesterday.’
‘Hey,’ he said, ‘what’s twenty-four hours between friends? I knew if you couldn’t make it there’d be a good reason.’ He paused. ‘So what the hell was it?’ And then he broke into a grin. ‘Only kidding.’ He nodded toward the bag. ‘What have you got for me?’
She held it open for him to see. ‘Some books. Your personal stereo. And I didn’t know which tapes you’d want, so I just brought them all.’
He flicked his head toward a blue and silver portable stereo on a shelf on the opposite wall. ‘One of the nurses loaned me her ghetto-blaster. Jesus, she only had tapes of rap music. You know, that’s rap with a silent C. Go figure.’ He stopped to catch his breath. ‘Put Clapton on for me.’
Margaret glanced up at the nearest nurse who gave an imperceptible nod of her head. ‘Sure,’ she said, and rummaged through the cassettes until she found the Pilgrim tape. She crossed to the stereo, slipped in the tape and pushed the play button. The creamy sound of the Clapton guitar swooped and slid around the room, rising and falling in skin-tingling crescendos. And then his soft, tremulous voice praying for a healing rain to restore his soul again.