A Lovely Way to Burn

by Louise Welsh

  They had been walking along the corridor all this while and had now reached a set of double doors. Stevie followed Nurse Webb through them, into a room that reminded her of the television studio just before a programme went live, every member of the crew focused on their task, working against the seconds, with a determination that left no room for panic.

  Nurse Webb seemed to lose her poise for a moment. She hesitated, as if unsure of who to talk to, but then a woman in a white coat looked up from her task and asked, ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’ve brought Miss Flint down to have her blood tested.’ Nurse Webb produced a form Stevie didn’t remember anyone filling out. ‘Dr Ahumibe phoned ahead to let you know we were on our way.’

  The woman’s hair was neatly tied back in a ponytail but she touched a hand to her forehead as if expecting to push away some stray strands.

  ‘Who did he speak to?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘In that case, I suggest you find out.’

  ‘Miss Flint thinks she’s survived the virus. Dr Ahumibe thought it might be worth taking some samples from her.’

  ‘That’s a lot of speculation.’ The woman’s voice had a Liverpudlian lilt. Her skin was pale gold beneath the harsh fluorescent lights. Her hand went to her temple again, smoothing her already smooth hair. ‘But I guess speculation is pretty much all that we have at the moment.’ She took the form from Nurse Webb and glanced at Stevie. ‘I’m Dr Chu. How do you feel?’

  ‘Okay. A lot better than I did.’

  ‘Good.’ Dr Chu’s grin reminded Stevie of the smiles she forced after hours of late-night selling, but her glance was sharp enough to cut through flesh and into bone. ‘If you don’t mind waiting here for a moment, I’ll see if I can get someone to do the deed.’

  ‘I can do it if you like.’

  Nurse Webb was wearing her war-memorial expression again, sweetly noble and ready to sacrifice someone else’s blood.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Dr Chu unlocked a metal cabinet and took out a cellophane-wrapped syringe, not giving the nurse time to change her mind. She smiled at Stevie. ‘We may want to hang on to you for a little while.’

  ‘I have to go to work.’ Stevie hated the combination of apology and panic in her voice. ‘I’ll come back if you need me, but I can’t hang around much longer.’

  ‘Ah yes, work.’ Dr Chu looked at her as if she was an interesting sample it might be worth putting under the microscope. ‘The sky may be falling on our heads, but the wheels of commerce grind inexorably on.’ She turned her attention back to Nurse Webb. ‘You really think she has had it?’

  The nurse shrugged. ‘That’s why Dr Ahumibe sent her down.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll go and speak with Mr James.’

  Dr Chu turned her back on them and returned to the mysterious busyness of the lab.

  Nurse Webb pulled out a chair. There was nothing to stop Stevie from walking out of the room and then out of the hospital, but she sat down, tucking the bag with Simon’s precious computer in it between her feet. The thought of the needle piercing her skin made her feel sick. She asked, ‘Those children in the ward upstairs, where I was to meet Mr Reah, do they all have cerebral palsy?’

  ‘Some of them.’ Nurse Webb tore open an antibacterial wipe. ‘Roll up your sleeve, please.’

  Stevie unfastened the cuff of her thin cotton shirt and pushed the sleeve up as far as it would go. She held out her arm and the nurse swabbed the crook of her elbow.

  ‘At least you’ve got good-sized veins.’

  Stevie wondered at the ‘at least’, but she said, ‘That’s the best compliment I’ve had in a while.’ The antiseptic was cold against her skin and she swallowed a gasp. ‘Will the children in the ward still get cured, even though Simon won’t be there to help them?’

  Nurse Webb broke the seal on the syringe’s cellophane packet.

  ‘It’s not as easy as that. I’m afraid there isn’t a straightforward cure.’

  She fastened a tourniquet around Stevie’s upper arm.

  ‘But the breakthrough he made will still help them?’

  ‘This will be easier if you don’t look.’ Stevie turned her head to look up at the ceiling and steeled herself against the needle’s sting. She felt Nurse Webb’s fingers firm against her flesh, and then the burn of the needle as it pierced her skin. ‘Don’t worry.’ The nurse’s voice was unexpectedly soothing. ‘We don’t need much.’ Stevie felt the nurse attach something else to the puncture and then the fluid being drawn from her body. Nurse Webb repeated, ‘Look away,’ but Stevie glanced at her arm and saw her blood sliding through a transparent tube into a sealed bag. A drop of moisture landed on her arm. She looked up and saw that the other woman’s face was shiny with perspiration. Nurse Webb said, ‘Dr Sharkey was part of a team. He’ll be sadly missed, but they should be able to continue without him.’

  They sat for a while in silence. Stevie stared at the satchel between her feet until she felt the nurse’s cool fingers against her skin. ‘Hold that until the bleeding stops.’ The nurse pressed a cotton-wool pad to the wound.

  Stevie did as she was told, her fingers dark against the whiteness of the cotton wool. Some of the polish had peeled from her nails. She should have made time for a manicure before this evening’s programme but she would have to rely on whoever was on make-up to touch up her nail varnish instead.

  She asked, ‘Did Simon’s team offer their treatment on the National Health Service?’

  Nurse Webb held up the bag of blood, checking its seal. The hospital lights shone redly against it.

  ‘Unfortunately the treatment is too expensive to roll out on the NHS. It can only be obtained privately.’

  ‘So it’s only available to children with rich parents?’

  Nurse Webb gave the bag a last check and labelled it.

  ‘The only way to make the treatment cheap enough for the National Health Service was to develop it, and the only way to do that is through private practice.’ She dumped the needle she had used on Stevie in a bin marked Sharps. ‘Dr Sharkey could have lived entirely off his private earnings, but he continued to work for the NHS as well.’

  Stevie pressed the pad to her arm, trying to displace the nausea in her stomach with a more manageable pain.

  ‘But he profited from sick children.’

  ‘No.’ Nurse Webb sounded exasperated. ‘He helped sick children. Without Dr Sharkey and his team the treatment wouldn’t exist. You were going out with him. You know he was a good man.’

  ‘Yes,’ Stevie said.

  The large apartment made sense now, the over-the-top cars and over-priced restaurants too. She lifted the cotton-wool pad. The puncture mark was bold against her skin, but the blood had congealed and a bruise was already forming. She could see Dr Chu walking towards them from the other side of the department, deep in conversation with a tall sandy-haired man. Dr Chu nodded in her direction, they stopped, and the man said something to the doctor that made her glance again at Stevie.

  Nurse Webb said, ‘Dr Sharkey made a lot of sacrifices for his profession. Whatever he earned, it was less than he deserved.’ There was a catch in her voice, a threat of tears. ‘You should be glad he enjoyed life while he could.’

  ‘I am.’ Stevie was watching the tall man now. He was on the telephone, talking intently to someone. He glanced in her direction, caught her gaze and quickly looked away. Stevie wondered if he was speaking to Dr Ahumibe and what had made her think that he might be. She said, ‘Why would they want to keep me here?’

  ‘If you survived the virus, there might be tests that we can do that could help us find a vaccine.’

  ‘Are there other survivors here?’

  Dr Chu was back at their side. She took a notepad from her pocket and wrote something in it. ‘We’ve taken samples from a few.’ She turned to Nurse Webb. ‘I think we can manage from here.’

  The nurse hesitated. Stevie saw the sweat on her forehead glisten beneath the harsh fluorescent lights and asked, ‘Are you okay?
’

  Nurse Webb gave a curt nod, but her attention was focused on Dr Chu.

  ‘You should keep her until you find an antidote.’

  Across the ward, as if on cue, someone stumbled. There was the sound of smashing glass and a flutter of activity, but although they both glanced in its direction neither Dr Chu nor Nurse Webb moved to help.

  ‘Thank you, nurse.’ The doctor touched Nurse Webb’s arm and her voice softened. ‘Don’t worry. We’re not the only ones working on this. Labs all over the world are pooling their resources.’

  The nurse stepped closer to Dr Chu and Stevie saw the doctor take an involuntary step backward. She wiped a hand across her face and held it up, displaying the slick of moisture across her palm.

  Dr Chu said, ‘Nurse, if you are feeling unwell, follow procedure and take yourself to quarantine.’

  Nurse Webb’s hand was still raised and for a moment Stevie thought she was going to touch the doctor’s face. But then she turned and walked slowly from the room, letting the door swing shut behind her.

  ‘Will she be all right?’

  Dr Chu was still staring at the door, as if unsure of whether she should go after the nurse.

  ‘Do you mean will she live?’

  The starkness of the question shook Stevie, but she was surprised to realise that it was exactly what she had meant.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  The doctor looked at her. ‘I’ve been doing my homework. In the fourteenth century sixty per cent of Europe’s population died from plague. It’s a myth that it was all down to rats. The truth is, we still don’t really know what it was. Of those that survived, there wasn’t anyone who hadn’t lost someone close to them. Many lost their entire families.’

  ‘This isn’t anything like that though, is it?’

  The doctor looked away. She lifted her hand to her hair again. This time a few strands had escaped. She tucked them back in place.

  ‘It’s impossible to know.’

  ‘You said labs across the world are working on it. Surely someone will find an antidote?’

  ‘Perhaps, but there’s not a physician alive who isn’t regularly reminded that we’ve failed to find an effective cure for the common cold.’ Dr Chu glanced towards where the tall, sandy-haired man was standing. He had put the phone down and was beckoning to her. ‘I think Mr James needs me. Is there anyone waiting at home for you? Children?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It might be useful if you could hang around for a bit longer.’ She gave Stevie’s arm a reassuring squeeze. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you’re kept in one piece.’

  Stevie watched Dr Chu cross the room to where Mr James was waiting and saw him hand the doctor a piece of paper. She scanned its contents quickly and the two began to talk in low murmurs. Mr James looked at Stevie. Dr Chu followed his gaze and then they stepped closer, like conspirators towards the end of an intrigue.

  Stevie flung her bag over her shoulder, stepped smartly through the double doors and walked out of the department. She thought she heard a shout behind her and upped her pace, sprinting along the corridor until she found a fire escape. She took the stairs as fast as she could, feeling the blood pounding in her head, and blessing all the dark, wet winter mornings when she had forced herself out of bed and into her running gear. When she was sure that the clatter on the metal staircase was caused by her footsteps alone, Stevie paused on a landing, bending forwards, panting hard until she recovered her breath. Then she stepped out into the silence of a deserted hospital corridor. A sign on the wall pointed towards intensive care. She glanced in her bag at the laptop and then walked in that direction.

  Thirteen

  Joanie had once told Stevie that she believed in alien abductions. She looked like the subject of an alien experiment now, webbed in a network of tubes so dense and complex they might be outgrowths of her body. Joanie’s golden-brown glow had sunk to a sallow beige. Her eyes were closed and caved deep in their sockets, like the absent eyes of a death mask. Stevie whispered her name, ‘Joanie,’ and a voice behind her said, ‘It’s no good, she can’t hear you.’

  Joanie’s husband Derek had lost the wide-boy swagger that had sometimes made him seem a more likely candidate for prison than the police force. He stepped into the room and stood at the end of the bed with his head bowed, as if he was about to say a prayer.

  Stevie asked, ‘What’s wrong with her?’

  ‘Out on the streets they’re calling it the sweats.’ Derek turned to face her. He had taken off his uniform jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt, but kept his stab vest on. He looked as if he was broiling beneath its weight. ‘In here they don’t know what to call it. I suppose they’ll come up with a bunch of letters and numbers that won’t mean much to the rest of us. The sweats seems as good a name as any to me.’

  Stevie had spent a fair bit of time in Derek’s company when he and Joanie had been together. They had gone out for drinks, shared meals, once even spent a weekend together in a rented cottage in Dorset, but Stevie had never really been alone with her friend’s husband. She hadn’t seen him at all since he had told Joanie that he couldn’t help it if he loved someone else.

  Stevie had heard the story so often it had almost become part of her own stock of memories: Joanie turning to greet her husband as he stepped into the bedroom, her recent purchases laid out on the counterpane; the cold beer she had uncapped for him untouched on the bedside table; Derek muttering accusations and excuses, not daring to meet Joanie’s eye as he bundled his clothes into the sports bag he used for football practice; his voice breaking as he said goodbye; the look he gave Joanie before he walked out of their bedroom and then out of the house for the last time; the bottle of beer still sweating cold on the table.

  ‘Why are you here, Derek?’

  ‘I’m still her husband. Joanie always hated doctors. She’d be terrified if she knew she was in hospital.’

  Less than a week ago Joanie had been her usual sweet-vain-self, dragging Derek into their on-air sales pitch, pretending she did it to humiliate him, though she and Stevie both knew it was her own form of SOS, an appeal for him to come home.

  ‘Doesn’t Francesca mind?’

  Derek ran a handkerchief over his number-one buzz cut.

  ‘I don’t suppose she knows I’m here. Her mum stays out in Norfolk; she took off and drove up there. We were meant to be going on holiday, first week with her mum, second week on a barge, but all leave’s cancelled and …’

  He let the sentence trail away, but his eyes were on Joanie’s slight figure draped in tubes on the bed.

  Stevie asked, ‘Will she be okay?’

  Derek’s shrug was miserable.

  ‘Joanie’s one of the lucky ones. She caught it early and got hooked up to all this.’ Derek gestured towards the paraphernalia weaving its way in and around Joanie’s bed. ‘There’s people as look to be in the same state, lying on trolleys in A&E.’ He looked at Stevie, his round face blotched with pink, a flush of broken veins high on his cheekbones. She could imagine him as a child, a boy who had come off worst in a playground fight and was trying hard not to cry. He said, ‘Joanie’s not the dying-young type. She doesn’t even like to leave a party early.’

  Stevie looked at the slender shape beneath the sheets and wished her friend hadn’t lost so much weight. She reached out a hand to touch Joanie’s face, but Derek caught it in his own. ‘Best not.’ He was wearing a pair of leather gloves at odds with the warm weather.

  Stevie slipped free of his grip.

  ‘What do the doctors say?’

  ‘Fuck all. I thought Afghanistan was the worst I’d see, snipers hiding Christ knows where, picking men off one by one.’ He gave Stevie a small smile, an apology for swearing in front of her. ‘But at least we knew what we were fighting. This thing?’ Derek shook his head. ‘It really is bloody invisible.’

  More than once Joanie had arrived at work, weary from waking to her husband’s screams, complaining that if only
Derek would talk about his war he might stop fighting it in his sleep. Mention of it now felt like an appeal for sympathy, as disconcerting as the regular beeps coming from the machines Joanie was wired up to. It made Stevie want to hurt him. She said, ‘So, will you join Francesca in Nottingham?’

  ‘Norfolk,’ Derek corrected. ‘Go AWOL? Not my style.’ He glanced at Joanie and gave a battle-weary smile that was sweet with regret. ‘Not usually. But if I were you I’d think about taking a bit of a holiday until all this blows over.’

  ‘I’ve got things I need to do here.’

  ‘It’s your funeral.’ Derek let out a quick bark of laughter, loud in the small room. ‘My last review said I was lacking in diplomatic skills. I guess they were right.’

  Stevie had only ever tolerated her friend’s husband. He was too brash, too black-and-white in his judgements for her to warm to him, but the sight of Joanie, laid out on the bed, made her wish that he would reassure her, in the same definite voice that was inclined to hold forth on the benefits of CCTV and the need for women to stay sober if they wanted to avoid being raped, that everything would be okay. She resisted an urge to touch his arm.

  There was a commotion of activity in the corridor outside. They both looked in its direction, but neither of them made a move. Derek said, ‘I’d better get going before someone notices I’m not where I should be.’

  It was Stevie’s cue to leave him alone with his wife. She shouldered her bag.

  ‘Can’t you get compassionate leave?’

  ‘I told you. All leave’s cancelled. We’re men down and the sweats has meant we’re in demand.’

  Stevie thought of Simon’s poor body, lying in a freezer in a morgue somewhere. She had seen such things on television, could imagine how it would be.

  ‘What’s happening to ongoing investigations?’