Jack had awoken at 1400hr as usual. The seagull was at the window and the shower was freezing cold until it warmed up a couple minutes later. Everything was the same as it always was – an endless loop of October 14th. The only thing that ever changed was him.
Every day Jack was more depressed than the last. He had longed every day for death, all his hope evaporated. But now things were finally different. There was someone else on the ship who was like him; someone who was not fixed in place or stuck in time.
Jack got dressed quickly and headed outside. He decided to go and take the sun lounger next to Claire and wait for one hour to see if the waitress turned up. It was probably the best place to start – the one place he knew she was at least supposed to be.
Jack threw aside the green beach towel and sat down on the sun lounger. Claire, as always, said hello.
“Hey,” he said back to her, glancing around the deck for the waitress. “How you doing today?”
“Good, thanks. The sun has been out most of the day, but I think it’s going in soon. Should have come earlier in the year.”
“Why didn’t you?” Jack asked, glancing around the deck again.
“Why do you think? Money. I’m only a hairdresser. I could barely afford to come in October, let alone during peak time.”
“What about your boyfriend? You should have made him treat you.”
“Conner? How did you know I came with my boyfriend?”
“I, er…saw you together. We boarded at the same time.”
“You couldn’t have. We arrived separately.” The girl seemed a little freaked out for a moment, but then she shrugged.“You must have seen us somewhere else. Anyway, Conner doesn’t earn that much more than me. He’s a mechanic at a place his dad owns, but he doesn’t get paid a lot.”
“How long you two been going out?”
“Six months or so. How about you? Are you with anyone?”
Jack thought about the last time he had kissed a woman and shook his head. “I’ve been single for a long time now. Not really interested in being with anyone.”
“Bad break up?”
“Something like that,” he said.
Jack looked around the deck once more, becoming more and more anxious that the waitress wasn’t going to turn up. If she didn’t, then he would have to resume his wild goose chase from the previous evening. Before he got going, though, he wanted to ask Claire one last question.
“Does Conner make you happy?”
Claire raised her eyebrows at him. “What? That’s a bit of a nosey question.”
“I know,” said Jack. “You just seem like a nice girl, that’s all. I hope he treats you well.”
“He does. Well…most of the time. To be honest, I-”
“Hey babe, who’s this?” Conner stood in the gap between Jack and Claire’s sun loungers. He glared down at Jack with an accusing look.
“My name is Jack. I was just having a chat with Claire. Is there a problem with that?”
Conner’s eyes narrowed. “Depends. If you’re on the pull, old man, then you and me have got a problem for sure. She’s half your age, innit.”
“Yes, she is,” Jack agreed. “Thankfully there are no laws against chatting to someone, regardless of their age.”
Conner snarled at him like a kicked dog. “You cheeking me, mate? Because that would be a mistake.”
Jack couldn’t help but smile. The threats meant nothing to him. He knew Conner’s fate, after all, and it wasn’t at all good. “You sure you want to start something, son?” Jack goaded the lad. “Because you’re not looking so hot, to be honest.”
“Yeah,” Claire butted in, trying to stop the back and forth between them. “You look bad. How are you feeling, babe?”
Conner turned his attention from Jack toward his girlfriend. “I’m fine. Just a cold.”
“Okay,” said Claire. “Let’s go get some food in you. This guy wasn’t doing anything except talking to me, so it’s not worth causing trouble over. You know I only love you.”
“You better,” said Conner. There was a slight edge to his voice that suggested it wasn’t just a joke.
The two of them started to walk away, but Jack shouted after them. “Hey, Conner.”
Conner turned around and said, “What?”
“It seems like a lot of people onboard have a cold. Do you have any idea where you caught yours?”
Conner shrugged. “I was fine until I got on this bloody ship. Probably just some bug brought on board by a greasy Spaniard.”
Nice, thought Jack. He’s a racist to boot. The lad’s a real catch. “Maybe you should go to your room and lie down,” Jack said.“It might make you feel better.”
Conner huffed. “I don’t need advice from you, mate. I don’t even know you, innit. There’s a doctor on the bottom deck. I’ll go see him if I need to, but you can mind your own bloody business.”
“Just trying to help,” Jack said absentmindedly. He was already thinking about other things. The first was that Conner had gotten sick once onboard the ship, not before. The second was that there was a doctor onboard. Jack was irritated at himself because he had known that already – it said so on the ship’s newsletter that came every day. There was a chance that the doctor could make some sense of whatever was infecting the passengers. Perhaps the ship’s doctor would already know something about what was happening. The question Jack now had to answer was whether to spend the afternoon looking for the brunette waitress or seeking out the ship’s medical centre.
Jack eventually made the decision to visit the lower decks and check out the infirmary. The reasoning being that he had no idea where to find the waitress anyway, so there was just as much chance that she would be there as anywhere else.
The main lifts in the foyer of the Mariner Deck(where High Spirits was located) took Jack all the way down to C Deck and opened up right outside the medical bay. It was a grim, green painted corridor with a couple of offices and consulting rooms on either side. There were no members of staff present and Jack went and took a seat on a green-cushioned bench running along one side of the corridor.
There were voices coming from somewhere nearby. It seemed to be coming from one of the rooms up ahead. Most likely the doctor was already with a patient and would pop back out into the corridor once he was done. Jack would have expected the waiting bench to be lined with coughing passengers, like a scene from a horror movie, but it was just him sitting there alone. Alone and waiting. Hoping to speak to someone that can make sense of all this. He didn’t hold up much hope for answers, but at least there was a sliver of potential.
Jack checked his watch and was surprised to see that twenty minutes had gone by whilst he’d been waiting. For the last several months every minute had seemed like an hour. Each day that repeated seemed longer than the last. But the last twenty minutes had flown by in what seemed like seconds, the anticipation of learning something new making time abstract and inconsequential.
Eventually someone came out of a consultation room up ahead. It was the two parents and their pigtailed daughter. Jack knew that the little girl was one of the first to turn savage in High Spirits. Whatever was wrong with her, the doctor obviously didn’t offer anything to help her, because every night her illness was the same. Jack could only assume that every day this same family would be in this exact place, following their routine like everyone else onboard.
Except the waitress.
Jack was still eager to talk to the brunette, but right now he had other things to concentrate on. The doctor had just entered the corridor.
The towering medic was dark-skinned and heavily bearded, obviously from African descent. When he asked Jack to follow him into the consulting room he spoke English very well, but with a French twang.
“Are you the doctor?” Jack asked as he entered the confines of the small office. There was a padded examination table in the centre of the room and several cabinets lined the walls.
“Yes, I am Doctor Fortuné. What is it
I can do for you, sir?”
“I need to know what was wrong with the little girl just in here.”
“I’m sorry? Are you ill, yourself?”
“No,” Jack replied. “But lots of other people on this ship are. I need to know what is wrong with them. I want to know what you know.”
The doctor seemed irritated. “I’m afraid I cannot discuss these things with you, sir. If you are not ill then you will have to leave.”
Jack sighed. He respected the confidentiality of the Hippocratic Oath – as a police officer he abided by similar virtues himself – but this wasn’t the time for convention. “Okay,” Jack relented, deciding to try a different tactic. “But there’s definitely something nasty going around the passengers on this ship. In the interest of my own health, can you tell me what I should look out for? You have a duty to inform me if I am at risk.”
The doctor let out a long breath and relaxed. “Okay, sir. What I can tell you is that there seems to be some sort of highly contagious cold virus aboard the ship. There have been several cases, but none are at all serious. It is just a cold, my friend. Nothing to worry about, okay? Wash your hands regularly and avoid touching your face. You will be fine.”
“It can’t just be a cold,” Jack protested.“People don’t turn into psycho killers because of the sniffles.”
The doctor looked confused. “I’m sorry?”
“Oh yeah,” said Jack. “That doesn’t make a lot of sense to you, does it?”
The doctor just looked at him.
“Look,” said Jack. “Is there anything…unusual…about this cold going around? You said it’s highly contagious. Is that normal?”
“No, it isn’t. Cold viruses are often highly infectious, but the numbers of cases I’ve seen today is unusual. Still no reason to be concerned though.”
Jack sighed. This was going nowhere. “Okay, Doctor. Thank you for your help.”
Jack was almost out the door when the doctor spoke again. “Actually, there is one thing that I found a little strange.”
Jack spun back around. “What?”
The doctor seemed to quickly change his mind about divulging his information. “Who are you, exactly? Why are you so interested in this?”
“I’m a police officer, and I have a very bad feeling. This isn’t just a cold virus.”
“Do you know something I don’t?”
Jack shook his head. Of course he knew something, but there was no way to explain it and not seem like a whackjob in the process. “No, I don’t,” he said.“Just, please, tell me what you know.”
The doctor let out a sigh. “There’s something strange about the virus. The people that have it are suffering from elevated blood pressure. The later it has gotten in the day, the quicker their pulses have been when I’ve measured them. It’s almost like their hearts are speeding up.”
“Jesus. Isn’t that something to be worried about?”
“I don’t know. I can’t explain it, but the measurements are still within safe levels. It’s just very strange, that’s all, because a simple cold cannot affect a person in such a way. At least, not typically”
Jack thought about things for a while. “What would happen if their heartbeats kept getting faster?”
“Tachycardia could cause excitement or even mania at first, but eventually it could lead to ischemia.”
“What’s that?”
“It is where the heart beats so fast that it can no longer supply the body efficiently with blood. The resulting oxygen deficit can result in the vital organs shutting down and muscle deterioration.”
“What can be done for someone with…ischemia?”
“An antiarrhythmic agent could be administered but, as I said, what I have seen is nowhere near the required levels to make a diagnosis like that. I’m just worried that the conditions I have been seeing may continue to worsen. Anyway, enough hypothesising. My prognosis is still a simple cold virus. In fact, I shouldn’t have spoken as freely with you as I have.”
“Okay,” said Jack. “I’ll leave you to your work, but I have one last question.”
“What is it?”
“If someone’s heartbeat gets to dangerous levels, how would I know?”
The doctor shrugged. “They would become lethargic. They might also have chest pain and become very pale.”
“If I bring someone like that to you, could you help them?”
The doctor stared at Jack, probably trying to work out what was going on. “Possibly?” he said finally. “I could try.”
“Okay,” said Jack. “That’s a start, I guess.”
Jack left the doctor alone and headed back towards the elevator. A plan began to form in his mind.
***
It was ten-past-seven and Jack was sitting in the High Spirits lounge nursing a shot of bourbon. The parents and their daughter were sitting two tables ahead. He was observing them intently. The little girl was lying across her mother’s lap. She was lethargic and she was pale.
It was Jack’s intention to get the girl downstairs to the doctor before eight-o-clock when her condition would take an irreversible turn for the worse. Jack knew that once the little girl started tearing into people and snarling like an animal, there would not be a doctor in the world that could help her. He needed to get her to the medical bay before that happened. The only thing standing in his way was getting her parents to comply. Jack knew it would be a task easier said than done.
I guess if I fail, I can just try again tomorrow. Or the next day. Or the next…
Jack was not without a plan however. He stood up from his table and downed the last of his beverage. Then he headed over to the family at their table. They looked up at him as he approached and seemed immediately distrustful.
Jack wore his most reassuring smile which he had perfected during years on the police force. It was something he relied on to calm people down more than anything else he had at his disposal. It worked, and the family loosened up as he got closer. Jack knew he would still have a challenge on his hands though.
“Hey, there,” he said in a friendly voice. “I’m sorry to come over like this, but I’m a nurse at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham. I couldn’t help but notice how poorly your little angel looks.”
The mother looked up at Jack and seemed on the verge of tears. It was obvious the woman was feeling under the weather as well, but her concern was only for her daughter. “She’s been ill since she woke up this morning. The doctor said she just has a cold but…I’m beginning to worry.”
Jack nodded as if he knew exactly how she was feeling. He’d never had children himself so he didn’t know what a parent’s concern felt like, but he could at least imagine it. “Well,” he said, making sure to look both the father and the worried mother in the eyes. “Why don’t we take her back down to the medical bay again? We can get the doctor to have another look at her.”
The mother’s eyes widened and she seemed alarmed. “Oh, God, you think there’s something wrong with her, don’t you?”
Jack held his hands up and shook his head. “She’s fine, I’m sure. But it’s obvious that she’s suffering, so we should go see what the doctor can do to help her.”
“Why, might I ask, are you so interested?” asked the father in a clipped, Scottish accent. Despite his accent, his speech was very prim and proper, in stark contrast to the casual idiom used by his wife. His age was also at least fifteen years her senior. He was perhaps mid-fifties.
Jack answered quickly. “It’s my job. I don’t stop caring about public health just because I’m on holiday.”
The father seemed to mull this over, eventually saying, “Okay then. Come on, Vicky. Let’s take her down.”
The mother handed her daughter to her husband and stood up on shaky legs. Jack reached out to steady her, but she shrugged him away and told him she was fine. Together the family followed after Jack as he led them back down to C Deck via the elevators on Broadway. When they reached the medical bay, it was dimly l
it and deserted.
“I don’t think the Doctor works at night,” said Vicky, sounding worried.
“He’ll be on call,” said the husband. “There’ll be some way to contact him.”
“There is,” said Jack, pointing.“Look!”
In the waiting room there was a notice on the wall. It read, CALL FOR DOCTOR. Jack located a small red button beneath the notice and stabbed at it with his finger.
Five minutes later, the same doctor he had spoken to earlier arrived from one of the staff areas. He looked sleepy, but was still well presented in his white lab coat. “Yes?” he asked, seeming to recognise all of them but not quite able to recall why.
“Our daughter needs help,” said Vicky.
“This man here is a nurse,” said her husband, pointing to Jack.
The doctor shook his head. “No, he is not. He told me that he was a police officer.”
So he does remember me, thought Jack, cringing at the position he was now in.
“What?” The husband sounded furious and his demeanour and stance changed to one of capable intent. Jack knew then that the older man was ex-army. From the tone alone it was obvious.
“Oh, God, Ivor,” Vicky whimpered. “Who is this man?”
“I don’t know,” Ivor told her, “but he has a great deal of explaining to do.”
Jack took a step back. “Okay, I admit I lied. But I only did it because I’m worried about your daughter. The doctor gave me some signs to look out for earlier. Things to suggest that this cold bug going around was getting worse.”
The parents looked confused. Doctor Fortuné butted in. “Sir, you have to stop meddling in affairs that do not concern you. I assure you that there is nothing onboard that requires your concern.”
As if to disagree, the little girl in her father’s arms started to moan.
“She’s lethargic,” said Jack. “She’s pale. Her condition is worsening. Look at her.”
The doctor glanced at the girl and then focused his attention on the father. “Has she been having any chest pains or bouts of breathlessness?”
Ivor nodded solemnly.
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