“Mine just turned off—” someone else added.
“Doctor!” someone screamed. It might’ve been in Dutch, but if so, the word was similar enough to leave no doubt. “Doctor!”
Snippets of shouts. I caught a word here—heart—and there—help—which was enough.
Lights out. Tabs dead. Sudden heart attacks.
“The shielding didn’t work,” I said.
Abruptly, it hit me what that meant. If there was an EMP, it meant the comet had hit, that it really had happened after all these months, and Latvia was—
The notion slipped away.
“Help me onto the bed,” I said. There was no use in theorising and panicking. Everyone else was doing a fine job of that already. I groped in the darkness for Mum’s arm, then used it to steady myself and climb on. My legs buckled once or twice, the soft mattress too unsteady, but once I stood, I remembered a dozen concerts I’d given, and a dozen smaller shows besides. I remembered crowds hanging on my every word. I got them to scream at the top of their lungs, and to go so quiet a moment later that they could’ve heard me whisper even without the microphone. I got them to shout in support of deregulated Internet and better accessibility and against Russia’s latest stunts.
At home, I’d been Iveta, teen novelty. Here, I was just another refugee.
Let’s see if I can still pull it off.
I braced myself against Mum and called out, “Listen up! Get on the beds! Keep the paths clear!” I wished my accent when speaking English didn’t mark me as a refugee so clearly. I kept shouting, again and again, until it shut up the panicked voices around me. “Keep the paths clear! Keep quiet! If your neighbour is hurt, help them to the exit. Keep the injured in the hallway until someone finds a doctor—”
“I’ll find someone!” a voice from near the exit called.
Around us, I heard the shuffle of people climbing onto their beds, shouts in other languages that I was half-sure were people repeating my instructions.
I let Mum help me sit, already aching from exertion.
“Good,” Dad murmured. “That was good.”
“Not exactly lying low like Mum said.” A nervous laugh escaped me. People passed by in a rush of air and footsteps and urgent Dutch words. I wiggled my fingers under the KAFO to massage my calf, which hovered between numb and painfully tingly.
Mum tugged lightly at a curl of my hair. “My daughter would never listen to such silly advice.”
God, that tingling was annoying—it reminded me of forgetting to take my pain meds and—
My fingers curled tight as the realisation hit.
“The EMP,” I whispered. “My spinal implant died.”
“Oh.” Mum pulled me in close. She made another small sound: “oh.”
I couldn’t tell if the pain was worse than before or if, after a year of blissful nothing, every small prick simply felt like a stab.
It made it impossible to sit still. So I didn’t.
People had found candles by now. Flickering flame lit up the broad central hallway, which contained an urgent mess of people slipping into different rooms to seek familiar faces or staff and tossing out occasional half-shouts of “Keep your bags close!”
Every now and then, a rumble went through the walls and floor. I groped the wall for stability. The first big shakes had been enough to knock people down, but now, it was just occasional trembles.
I didn’t want to think about what the world above looked like. What buildings that hadn’t been built with a comet impact in mind looked like.
There should have been an announcement by now. Why hadn’t shelter management stepped up?
I wasn’t the only one wondering. I caught snippets of Russian and English. Something about the EMP. About Dr Kring. About death.
Goosebumps shuddered across my skin. I stayed close to the walls, ready to grab them for balance in the push-and-shove of the crowd and the inconstant tremors. I scanned the dimness for familiar faces. Samira, shelter management, neighbours from the refugee centre.
“Listen, listen!”
It was a male voice, his English tinged with a Dutch accent. He stood so tall above the crowd that he must’ve been standing on a chair. He held a candle in one hand, lighting him in eerie yellow.
“I wanted to update… My name is Ahmed. I’m with the Amsterdam police.” If his name made the murmur increase, his job had people quieting down a little. Relief flashed over his face. “It looks like an EMP hit us.”
Someone shouted in Dutch. For a moment, I worried I’d lose track of the conversation, but Ahmed responded in English without missing a beat. “Yes, the shelter was shielded. It must not have held. What we know is that our generator… stopped working. Several people were injured putting out the fire. Lights, tabs, radio equipment, much of the kitchen—anything electrical is gone. We may have functional flashlights, but we’re not sure.”
He repeated the answer in Dutch, but was quickly drowned out by further questions.
“What about the doctor?”
“What about fresh air? Will we be okay without electricity?”
“Why are you talking to us? Where’s shelter management?”
Ahmed’s candle flickered beneath his face. “Between, ah, pacemakers failing and the generator fire, not all of shelter management has survived.” He rattled off a list of names, some deceased, others—like Dr Kring—injured. “The rest of management is discussing options. Others are helping the injured, including Sam—including my sister-in-law. Anyone with medical know-how, come to the med bay.”
“There won’t be other doctors. We were lucky to have Kring!”
So much for Kring looking at my KAFO, I thought, jittery. Without a doctor—with amateurs looking after a dozen injured people—my situation became a lot less urgent. What if the pain worsened? What if I got headaches? Nausea?
“Can we eat okay? Without the kitchen equipment?”
“We don’t know yet. If—”
Voices surged. A burly Russian man nearby argued with someone by his side. I picked up just enough to know that his wife was one of those with a pacemaker. I chose the opportunity to wobble through the crowd towards Ahmed.
He spoke louder. “Anyone who knows about engineering or air ventilation systems, come talk to me.”
He stepped off the chair just as I broke through the crowd. I wasn’t the only one trying to talk to him, but I was the only one he happened to stand right in front of. “Samira?” I called.
He frowned, half annoyed, half distracted.
“Your sister-in-law! Samira? Tell them she’s a doctor.” I struggled to speak loudly enough to be heard, let alone keep his attention.
“She’s not—” He stepped past me.
I followed him through the crowd. We reached a less packed part of the hallway, and I took the opportunity to surge closer and talk privately. “End on a positive note. Public speaking 101. Back when I—never mind. You had bad news. People are panicking. Lie—give them something.”
“I shouldn’t even be doing this. If I lie…”
“Shelter management doesn’t know about that speech? What are they doing?”
“Panicking,” he said wryly. “Get to your cot. That’s all anyone can do right now.”
The pain was a vindictive thing. I lay flat on my bed, arms under my back, knuckles pressing into my skin.
Shelter management didn’t serve dinner that night. Once they got their act together, they rattled off the state of things and encouraged us to eat and share whatever food we’d brought. People did share, to their credit, but only with those they knew.