by Pike, JJ
“Anything we can do to get you to stay?” Betsy was in full agreement with Nigel. He wasn’t much use in the surgical suite, but he was everything when it came to Midge. Having a pediatrician on hand was going to be crucial in the coming days.
“I’ve got a wife and three kids waiting for me in Buffalo. I told them to head west already. They’re with her mom, but if Indian Point is on fire we need to move even further west. You do, too. We all do. Everyone needs to get out. New York’s over. Right? We need to go west!”
Betsy ignored his over-the-top protestations. “Dr. Handel. Answer this question, if you will: do they need you in the same way that we do?” She wanted to appeal to his sense of duty. “As Nigel said, Midge is by no means out of danger.”
Fred nodded, then shook his head. Well, which was it, yes or no? “You two know what you’re doing. The last four hours proved it. You have the skill of a surgeon and he has a billion more years of experience under his belt than I do.”
If he wouldn’t bite for honor, perhaps he could be bought. Everyone has a price, isn’t that what they say? “I know Sean and his folks offered you a lot of money, but my husband and I have some savings put by too. I’d be willing to give you a significant sum just to help us get Midge safely to the mines.”
“Look…” Fred pointed at Nigel. “He already promised me his cut of the payout to stay until she came round and was properly alert to her surroundings.” He shuffled his feet, digging his hands into his trouser pockets. “I’m not generally a greedy man, but it was worth it when I thought I could pay off my mortgage and have enough money left over to stay at home with my kids while they’re small. But I’m not going to have a mortgage to pay off at this rate.”
Betsy was irritated that Nigel had allowed himself to be scammed out of his paycheck by a doctor who was clearly his inferior when it came to actual skills. Nigel was, practically speaking, far more valuable than Fred.
Fred looked around the room, sheepish.
Betsy reeled in her sneer. She’d lost all respect for the man, but she hadn’t meant to let it show. “No mortgage? I’m not following. How do you mean, ‘no mortgage?’”
“If Indian Point is on fire and the wind changes, I’m not going to have a house to return to. At least not one that anyone could live in anytime soon. No house, no mortgage, no need of money. I might as well go get my kids now and head to Canada.”
Betsy didn’t argue. The man had her there. “You’d best get going.”
Nigel walked Fred to the door in silence.
“Got them.” Aggie was back with the blister packs of potassium iodide pills. She handed a pack to each person in the room, Fred included.
Mimi stepped around Betsy and took the pack from Fred’s hand. “You’d best be on your way.”
“Seriously?” said Fred.
“Seriously,” said Mimi. “You’re not one of us anymore.” The liquor had made her bold. Not illogical, though. Betsy didn’t disagree with her assessment. Fred wasn’t one of them anymore. Why should he get a share of what they’d worked so hard to accumulate?
“What’s going on?” said Aggie.
“Fred has to go back to his family.” Betsy did her utmost not to let her personal feelings color what she had to say. The man had a family to go to. She’d never had that luxury. If Esther—or any of those sweet babies who hadn’t even made it to full term—had lived, mightn’t she have done the same thing? Crossed hell itself to save her baby?
“What Betsy isn’t saying is that Fred here is abandoning us, right as we need him most. I vote we send him on his way.” Mimi was still talking as if she wasn’t quite in control of her tongue, but the words were all in the right order and she was clearly on top of her argument, if not her temper.
“But, I…” Fred looked to Nigel. “Help me out, man.”
Nigel turned to face Mimi. “I understand how you feel. You love Midge. I can see that. But Fred is a professional. He came here to do a job. Midge is family to you, but not to him. That’s the plain truth of the matter,” he said. “Fred worked on the promise of a large paycheck. That paycheck has since evaporated. I don’t think we can ask him to continue work for no money. Do you?” He waited. Neither Betsy nor Mimi answered. “Is it fair to ask him to work for free?”
“What’s fair when there’s a life on the line?” Mimi’s eyes had that bright-but-glazed quality of the drinker who was sure they have the moral high ground. Betsy had been the same in her drinking days. The booze brought a certain kind of clarity, if not compassion. Mimi was speaking from a place of unvarnished conviction. She wasn’t being fair per se, but she was speaking directly from her heart.
“You’re asking me to trade my kids’ lives for your grandbaby’s life,” said Fred. He hadn’t raised his voice and seemed not to be flustered by Mimi’s outrageous outburst.
“Does it hurt if we give him something?” said Nigel. “He did an outstanding job assisting with Paul’s surgery and he’s been taking care of Midge for days.”
“How long will we need to take these pills, Betsy?” Mimi ignored Nurse Nigel altogether.
“Until we get to safety,” said Betsy.
“And how long will that be?”
“Well…” Betsy turned to Aggie. Good grief, they were relying on a child who was barely old enough to know right from wrong, let alone get drawn into a complex argument like this one. But, looked at rationally, it comes to us all this terrible thing called “adulthood.” She herself had only been a pup when she’d arrived in Vietnam. It just so happened it was coming to Aggie sooner than most, but that couldn’t be helped. Betsy needed Aggie’s expert opinion and she was determined to get it. “How long will it take us to get to the mines?”
“With Midge on a sled, I’m going to say half a day.” Aggie had probably done the calculations while she was out there doing Aggie-stuff: hunting and fishing and finding them a safe place to live. Perhaps she was less of a child than Betsy had given her credit for.
“Let’s double that,” said Betsy, “now that we have two patients.”
“Who’s the other patient?” Aggie frowned.
“Paul.”
“Paul?”
“She told you already.” Petra got up from her place by the empty fireplace and made her way to her sister’s side. “Or weren’t you listening?”
“She said Paul had been hit. She didn’t say with what.”
“Well, take a guess, Einstein. What could Paul have been hit with?”
“A motorbike?” Aggie was backing up.
“No.” Petra didn’t slow her advance. “Try again.”
“Petra, tell me what’s happening. You’re scaring me.”
“He was hit by a bullet which came from the gun that you gave me and said was cool to fire because we were going to ‘shoot first and ask questions later’ even though you’re supposedly the sensible one who stops me from doing stupid things when Paul’s not around.” She collapsed into her sister’s arms, overcome with floods of tears. “I didn’t know it was him. There was this bloody man ambling down the path and I couldn’t hear him in my mind. It was totally silent. I thought he was an intruder. I shot him. I shot Paul. I made this all happen. What am I going to do Agg? I’m going to die of sorrow if he doesn’t make it. I can’t bear it. It’s awful. Make it go away.”
Aggie stroked her sister’s hair while she sobbed, but looked to Betsy for answers. “How bad is it?”
“We’ve removed the bullet,” said Betsy. “He was very, very lucky. We’re going to have to keep an eye out for further bleeding and possible infection, but all in all, it could not have been much better than this. If you had to be shot, that is.”
“Okay. I get it. So he’s immobilized for the time being?” Aggie was back in calculation mode.
“Correct,” said Betsy.
“Can he ride? I have Indie and Floofy saddled and ready to move.”
“No. He’s only just out of surgery. He’ll need to be carried.”
“Lik
e, slung over a saddle…?”
Petra wailed. “Noooooooooooooo. He has to be flat. Completely flat. Like Midge.”
“Where was he hit?” Aggie hadn’t allowed her sister’s panic to leak into her. She was a remarkable kid. Betsy was impressed.
“In the stomach.”
“Right. So, we need to create another pallet to drag him. We can do that. What’s the hold up here?”
“We need to know how long we’re going to be exposed to fallout.” Betsy could think of no way to dance around the subject and still get them to the place they needed to be, which was—Lord help us all—walking out the door with two critically injured patients. “That means we have to calculate how many people will be in the party and how long we’ll be outside.”
“I get it.” Aggie closed her eyes for a second. “You, me, Mimi, Petra, Sean, Paul, Midge…” She opened her eyes again and looked directly at Dr. Fred. “You’re leaving us, but you want a pack of pills?”
“I just want a dose large enough to get me to Buffalo,” said Fred. “If I’m on foot, I’m looking at days of potential exposure…”
“Wind travels west to east.” Either Aggie had been studying geography or her man Widget was advising listeners on how best to protect themselves from the coming disaster. Either way, she was impressive.
“Yeah, but we have no way of knowing whether that will hold up. The wind can change at any moment.”
Aggie nodded. “One dose every twenty-four hours. How old are you?”
“How old am I? Thirty-five. Oh, you want to know what dose I’d take? Right. Do you have 130 mg tabs or 65 mgs?”
“130 mg,” said Aggie.
“Eighteen to forty-year-olds should be given one 130 mg tablet every twenty-four hours when they’re potentially exposed.”
“How long do you think it will take you to get to Buffalo?”
“I have no idea. If you can spare a pack, I’d be grateful.”
“How much do we have, Aggie?” Mimi had rounded Fred and was standing between the pediatrician and her granddaughter.
“We don’t discuss supplies with strangers in the vicinity, Mimi. It’s one of the family rules.” Aggie might have been being civil to Fred’s face, but she was unyielding when it came to the family code.
“If we have to stay on the road for a month…” Golly, was Mimi doing some real thinking? Was the Everlee grandmother stepping up her game? Betsy held her breath waiting for whatever was going to come out of Mimi’s mouth next. “…do we have enough for all of us, in that eventuality?”
“Give me a second, I’m doing the math in my head.” Aggie closed her eyes again.
“Those at highest risk are infants and children, as well as pregnant and nursing females because of the potential for radioactive isotopes to suppress thyroid function in the developing fetus and the newborn. The recommendation is to treat them at the lowest threshold.” Fred sounded like he was quoting a medical paper. Betsy recognized the change in tone.
“Like I said, anyone over eighteen and up to forty years old should be treated at a slightly higher threshold. Finally, anyone over forty should be treated only if the predicted exposure is high enough to destroy the thyroid and induce lifelong hypothyroidism. There are times when it doesn’t make sense to give it to people over forty.”
“Are you saying I shouldn’t get it?” Mimi was all over him like white on rice.
“Not at all,” said Fred. “I’m saying the FDA has guidelines and if your granddaughter wants to make precise calculations she needs to know everyone’s age as well as the length of time they’re likely to be exposed to fallout. If you’re all headed to the mines, you’re going to be safe in a day or so. I have much further to go than you.”
“He knows about the mines?” said Mimi. “How’s that safe?”
“Okay.” Aggie took the blister pack from Mimi and handed it to Fred. “We’re good.”
Mimi snatched it back. “You have ignored me since I got here. First Midge was kidnapped out of the hospital, which was unbelievably stupid. Then Sean and Jim went off on some harebrained adventure to buy drugs from a drug peddler, which ended in Jim being arrested. Now Paul has been shot and we’re still talking about moving all these terribly sick people when that’s the last thing they need. You’re going to listen to me and you’re going to survive. We’re going to the mines you say? Then what? Are we going to stay there, like a bunch of foxes trapped in our den? When will we come out? What will the landscape look like? Have you thought this through? We might need potassium iodine for years.” She’d gotten the name of the drug wrong, but her logic wasn’t half bad.
Aggie grabbed her grandmother by the elbow and pulled her towards the kitchen. “Family meeting. You two stay out here.”
“Me?” said Sean. “I stay out here?”
“No, silly, you’re one of us,” said Petra, beaming her biggest, brightest smile at her beau. “She means Nigel and Fred. They stay out here.”
“Who’s with Midge? No one?” said Betsy. “Right, you two…” She pointed at Nurse Nigel and Doctor Fred. “Make yourselves useful. Make sure Midge is comfortable.”
Betsy marched into the kitchen and checked on Paul while the family gathered.
Petra was even and calm the second she saw her brother. “Can I touch him? I want to hold his hand.”
Betsy nodded. “Gently. Very gently. Fingertips only. And only after you put some gloves on.”
“Can we put these on? Aren’t they on the forbidden list?”
Betsy shrugged. “I don’t care. You’re not touching my patient until you’re sterile.”
“I figured the mines would be our base until we know what’s happening,” said Aggie. “They’re deep enough that we’ll be safe, even if the wind changes and blows this way.”
“But Aggie,” Mimi sounded more exhausted than drunk. “Radioactive waste lasts for thousands of years. Don’t you know your history? Chernobyl will be on lockdown for a hundred-hundred generations.”
Aggie nodded. “But you can move about for short times, especially if you’re using potassium iodide. You can all stay underground while Midge and Paul recover and I will spend that time looking for our new home.”
“I don’t need it,” said Petra.
“God, don’t be stupid.” Aggie spun around to face her sister. “You’re not going to go on some martyr’s crusade and say you don’t deserve to live unless and until you know Paul’s going to live. That’s just idiotic. Of course he’d want you to take it. No matter what happens to him. Paul would want you to live, like, forever.”
“It’s not that,” said Petra. She wrapped her gloved fingers around her brother’s pinkie finger and reached for Sean with her free hand. “You’re going to be an uncle, Paul.”
“He’s what?” said Aggie.
“And you’re going to be an auntie, Agatha.”
The sisters looked at each other for a long, long time. Betsy wasn’t sure she understood.
“Oh!” Mimi collapsed into the nearest chair. “Tell me it’s not true.”
“It’s true,” said Petra. “I’m pregnant.”
CHAPTER SIX
Even in his drugged-up state, Bill knew he and Alice were in trouble. There was an army sergeant and a couple of minions in front of their van. He couldn’t see who had stripes or bars or pips or whatever insignia they used to show who was supposed to defer to who, but rank didn’t matter when their enormous guns were slung across their fronts and their tank had a weapon that could blow them out of existence.
Alice had both hands on the steering wheel. Smart cookie. Don’t give them anything to worry about. Keep them on your side. Look and sound like a friend. Don’t make any sudden moves.
The sergeant had a sheaf of papers and a couple of small, dark blue folders in his hand.
Had Alice handed over their passports? That wasn’t necessary. They were American citizens in America. No need for ID.
Alice was talking. Fast.
The dogs were quie
t but panting harder.
Bill had a vague memory of Alice barking orders at them. He snickered. Even with this wildly altered brain he was full of Dad jokes. Entirely suitable for Midge; not the best idea to be giggling when literally under the gun.
He sat up a little straighter and tried not to look like a strung-out addict, jonesing for his next fix. Blinking too much to keep his eyes open would be bad, too. Being normal was a real chore.
“My name is Alice Everlee. I’m a Senior Vice President with Klean &Pure Industries.”
“Klean & Pure…the morons who got us into this mess?”
