*****
As soon as she could she climbed to the changing rooms and stripped off her uniform and changed into sweat shirt and jeans. Had the showers been working she would have had a quick clean up but time was pressing and she had a pharmacy to break into.
However, she found it open but the lack of havoc surprised her. Alerted by a scampering sound she grabbed a fire extinguisher ready to use on whoever and dropped it when she saw who was there.
Everyone knew the diminutive Indian doctor who went by his initials V.J.
“What are you doing here, V.J?” she demanded.
He held up a packet of Paracetamol, ”Headache.”
“You need to go home,” Katya advised him, letting him be aware of her sympathy. “The gates are open.”
“Thank you,” he sighed, getting to his feet. “This – this thing – is over. I think – no, I believe so. Seventy-two hours and no new cases. It is as though the life span of the virus has expired.”
“Expired?” Katya questioned, unable to grasp the meaning of the whole idea. “What? Like it had a sell-by date.”
V.J. chuckled at the allegory:” Something like it. Maybe, man made because it mimics other diseases – I don’t know. What I do know is that it was airborne; infectious by touch and the exchange of bodily fluids. Well, maybe, that but definitely touch and in the air. Think about the speed that it swept around the world.”
He stopped as the enormity of what he was saying hit home. His head dropped and he sank back to his knees.
“Get out of London,” he whispered.
“What about you?” Katya asked. “I can’t leave you here.”
“I will go home,” his voice and smile were weak. “Somehow. I need to know if...”
He left the rest unsaid as though he knew the answer.
For a moment he just stood there forlorn until he realised what the nurse was up to. Together they put together four medi-kits and a back pack of essential medical supplies. Katya looked at some of the equipment and knew that for all the advances without technology none of it would work again.
“It has all gone,” V.J. said, softly. “All the advances we have made over the years – they count for nothing. Labour saving – machines doing what a skilled man could do. Cost effective – means nothing when you have lost all those skills that we need now.”
There was nothing that Katya could say for she knew how right he was.
“Come on, V.J.,” she urged, shouldering the rucksack. “Time to go.”
Spectacular Tales III Page 6
