by Rhys Thomas
Mary’s eyes widened and she smiled. ‘No!’ She laughed.
He opened his mouth and pulled the finger towards it. She squealed with delight as he made a chomping sound and pretended to devour the offending appendage.
Edward lumbered into the room. Henry’s father saw him from the corner of his eye and stopped playing with Mary. His grandson’s dishevelled hair fell almost to his eyes and he collapsed on to the sofa. He lay there for a moment, his eyes vacant.
The old man’s body stiffened.
‘Edward?’ he said, nervously.
The boy turned his body over to face away. Mary jumped down from her grandfather’s lap and skipped across to her brother. She clutched his shirt with both hands and gently shook him.
‘Edward?’ she sang cheerily.
The old man forced himself to rise. The fear mushroomed inside him, creeping along his veins from his centre in great sweeps. He knelt on the carpet, his muscles tightening with the effort.
‘Edward, what’s the matter?’
Edward did not respond. Instead he wriggled further into the sofa as if trying to disappear inside it.
‘Edward.’
This time his voice was stern and loud.
The boy jolted and he fell on to his back. There was a look of shock on his face. An emotion. He had never heard his grandfather’s voice so terse.
‘What?’ he said.
The light in his eyes was still there. He was still alive. Henry’s father said, ‘Oh,’ and grabbed Edward and hugged him. ‘Oh, my boy,’ he whispered. He thought he might squeeze the life out of him. ‘You mustn’t behave like that.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like –’ he thought about what he was about to say – ‘like you’re sad.’
The boy’s face was confused. ‘But I am sad.’
‘I know you are.’ He thought for a moment. ‘OK, we’re going to invent a code.’
The children’s ears pricked up.
The old man swallowed, his heart still beating fast.
‘If I say, “Robin Red Breast One” – that’s you, Edward – or “Robin Red Breast Two” – that’s you, Mary – and then, erm, I say, “Robin Red Breast One, where are you?” you have to say, “In the clouds. Everything is sun.”’ He paused. ‘OK?’
‘What’s the code for?’ Mary asked.
‘It’s just a code. A secret code to let me know that you’re all right. Shall we try it?’
The children nodded.
‘All right.’ He looked at Edward. ‘Robin Red Breast One, where are you?’
Edward sat up and his eyes centred on his grandfather. His feet didn’t reach the carpet. Mary watched in silence.
‘In the clouds,’ the boy said, seriously and slowly, in concentration. ‘Everything is sun.’
That night a smoke fell on London. Miriam watched it from the living-room window. It was heavier and more still than the fog of last night. It was threatening.
She checked on Dorothy. Her sleeping mass lay huddled beneath the blankets. Miriam waited to watch her chest rise so she knew she was still alive, and closed the door behind her. For a moment she considered calling Joseph but it was late. She went to her bedroom and removed her running shoes. The cool air on her feet felt good. She climbed into the bed and lay on her side.
There was a large mirror mounted on the wall that glimmered orange from the street lamp outside the window. Somebody had once told her that mirrors were tunnels through space, like worm-holes, and if you knew how, you could climb through them and come out through another mirror somewhere else in the world altogether. She had always liked that idea. She looked at the mirror on the wall and wished she could climb through and come out from the one hanging above the fireplace in the living room of the house in Cornwall. Then she could see her kids again. The guilt of having left them grew with every passing minute.
They would be reunited soon enough, though. Henry’s father would bring them to the house by tomorrow evening. Less than twenty-four hours, she thought, less than twenty-four hours. One thing she knew for certain now was that she would never, ever leave them like this again.
Edward woke to the sound of crying. There was a faint line of moonlight marking the wall opposite the window. He could feel his sister writhing next to him. She was in the middle of a nightmare. He jolted her awake. His eyes were becoming accustomed to the gloom. He could see his sister’s eyes open, blinking awake.
‘What?’ she said sleepily.
‘I think you were having a nightmare.’
His sister took a few moments to order her thoughts. Her eyes flicked around the room. She paused for a moment and rolled over.
‘Were you dreaming about Dad?’
She was too tired to answer and was already falling back to sleep. Edward looked at the back of her head. He was beginning to realize that he was the man who would have to look after her now. He was four years older than his sister. He had received four more years of Dad than she had.
‘Are you awake?’ he whispered into her ear.
A damp patch of sweaty hair had fallen across her face. Delicately, Edward lifted it from her skin and placed it behind her ear.
‘I promise I won’t let anything happen to you,’ he whispered to her, and also to himself, because when he made the promise a new resolve stiffened in him that ensured that what he had just said was the truth.
Miriam’s mother had been volunteering at the hospital. The children wouldn’t get to London until the evening and Miriam didn’t want to stay in the house on her own. They walked the half-mile to the hospital.
The main building was old and made of small, red bricks. A wide clock tower in the centre of its front wall loomed above the trees. They reached the main drag and the hospital looked as if a giant spider had spun a thick web over it. White nets had been erected over some sections of the front wall, tethered to the building by long, thick ropes attached to a framework of scaffolding. A large white tent stood in front of the main entrance just beneath the clock tower, and smaller tents were dotted around the grounds.
To her right there stood a large pagoda-type structure. It had no walls, just a pointed roof covered with shiny, white tarpaulin, held up by thick steel frames. It was circular, maybe fifty yards in diameter. Two men were standing at one of the giant poles, looking up towards the hospital. They were dressed in army fatigues. They both wore gas masks. It was the first time Miriam had seen soldiers out in public since the spread of the illness began.
They had watched the television that morning for news of the fire that had caused the smoke they had seen the previous night but there were no reports. Internationally, many countries were in even more desperate times than Great Britain. In Japan, it was reported, an incident had occurred in a nuclear power plant but details were still hazy. Miriam had absorbed the news calmly. Just another thing to go wrong. In America ten per cent of Congress were dead, they said. There was still no connection with Russia and an envoy from the United Nations was flying into Moscow. The news circled around Miriam but she paid it little attention.
The only way to deal with the situation was to live each day as it happened, just ensuring survival, praying that the illness would not come for any more members of her family. She would help all she could but she would not be able to help everybody. This fact had revealed itself in the early hours of the morning when Dorothy’s dead body had been taken away.
As they approached the building, Miriam was told to put on the white mask her mother had given her.
‘I thought you said it wasn’t contagious,’ she said.
‘People are happier to be around you if you have it on.’
There was a yellow circular vent on the front of the mask. It was the same type that Miriam had seen the paramedics wearing when they had come to collect Henry. That seemed like more than just a few days ago. Time was slowing down. Every moment was a struggle. There were eight hours before Henry’s father would be able to bring the children to her and those hours
would concertina out into interminable units of for ever.
The smell was the first thing she noticed: strong and chemical, more pungent than the usual disinfectant used in hospitals. Her face felt warm. The mask made her breathing claustrophobic, as if she was in an incubation chamber.
The main reception area was filled with people. Doctors in white coats rushed between them. Nurses carried boxes. Cleaners tried to manoeuvre through the crowds with their equipment. Some of the staff wore white suits with hoods over their uniforms. Most did not.
‘This way,’ said Miriam’s mother.
A dark, narrow corridor led off reception with a handwritten sign taped above its entrance: ‘Volunteers this way’. They came to a wooden door. Miriam’s mother knocked once and entered. The room was quiet.
‘I don’t think many people are volunteering at the moment,’ her mother said. ‘They have enough to worry about already, I’d imagine.’
Miriam looked around her. There was not a single person in the room. Her mother completed a form on the desk and gave Miriam a volunteer badge to pin to her clothes. They went back into reception.
The hospital seemed to have no order.
‘I thought they would have things under control.’
‘Lots of the nurses aren’t able to come to work if their families are sick.’
‘But the Prime Minister said we should keep working.’
‘Are you going to work tomorrow?’
Miriam didn’t need to answer. The idea of serving tea, cake and coffee in the café as if nothing was wrong was ridiculous.
‘Come on, we’ll go where I was yesterday.’
The ward was split into separate rooms. She had half expected to see mosquito-net defences and people walking around in spacesuits but that was not the case. The ward receptionist, a young Japanese girl, called over from behind her desk.
‘They’ve switched things around,’ she said, recognizing Miriam’s mother. ‘They’ve had a breakthrough.’
Miriam’s heart skipped. She felt her breathing quicken in her mask.
‘We had people come in last night.’ She spoke conspiratorially, in a strong Japanese accent. ‘I don’t know who they were. They talked to the families and moved some patients out and some patients in. They think they know what makes them violent.’
She paused dramatically, waiting for a reaction.
‘What is it?’
The receptionist shrugged. ‘They don’t tell me. But they say this ward is safe.’
Miriam looked into the rooms again, at the patients lying still in their beds. Her heart was thumping. She sensed something in her, a stirring of hope. It had been gone only days but its absence, now that it had returned, became suddenly obvious.
‘Didn’t they give you some idea of what it might have been?’
‘Not to me, I’m just a secretary. But it’s good news, no?’ She smiled expectantly.
Miriam’s mother nodded quickly.
They took some white tunics and put them on. A nurse appeared from one of the wards. She looked up and down the central corridor and when she saw Miriam and her mother her eyes drifted down to the volunteer badges they were wearing.
‘We’ve got a woman in here that needs changing,’ she said. ‘Will you be able to deal with it?’
‘Of course.’
‘Bed six.’
And the nurse walked quickly into another dorm.
‘Changing?’ Miriam asked.
Miriam’s mother opened the door to the store cupboard opposite, reached confidently up to a shelf and handed Miriam some paper underwear. She then took out two pairs of plastic gloves, some plastic bags, two pairs of perspex goggles and some toilet paper.
Bed six was in the far corner, underneath a large window. A woman of Miriam’s age lay facing them, in the foetal position. A man, probably her husband, was sitting in the armchair at her side. When he saw Miriam and her mother approach he looked away.
‘Hello,’ said Miriam’s mother, cheerily.
Her voice sounded strange, filtered through the mask.
The man smiled, embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry about this,’ he said. ‘I just don’t think I can . . .’
Miriam’s mother shook her head. ‘It’s fine. Don’t worry.’
Miriam drew the curtain around the bed. She looked at the man in the armchair.
‘If you don’t want to stay, you can go and get some fresh air.’
‘Thank you.’
He stood up and left.
With the curtain drawn the smell of faeces was cloying. Her mother drew back the sheets.
‘All right, dear, can you roll over for me?’
The woman did not move.
Miriam’s mother took her arm and pulled her on to her back. There was no resistance. Miriam straightened her legs. Patches of brown stained the sheets. Her mother lifted the woman’s nightdress and Miriam winced. Stains ran down the inside of both thighs.
‘Are you OK, Miri?’
Miriam glanced at the woman’s face. She had turned away, looking out of the window. Her neck was long and slender and she was attractive. The humiliation of what she had done did not seem to register.
‘I forgot the water,’ her mother said. ‘Can you go and get it from the store cupboard? It’s in spray flasks, like you have for watering plants.’
Miriam went out into the corridor and opened the first door on her left. But it was not the store cupboard. It was a small, rectangular room with a window in the far wall. The blinds had been pulled down and it was gloomy and silent. A dozen blank faces turned in unison towards her. The people were sitting on benches that lined each wall. They said nothing. Their skin looked white in the low light, peering out of the darkness. As she went to close the door a young woman put her hand into the air, as if Miriam was a school teacher and they were in a classroom.
‘Yes?’ she said, feeling foolish.
‘I don’t believe in ghosts any more.’
Miriam hurriedly pulled the door shut, and then she heard the voice again, whispering out between the crack of the door and its frame. ‘There is no such thing as hope.’
The words made Miriam stop. The door handle was in her hand and something compelled her to go back into the room. She went to turn when another voice spoke to her.
‘Are they all right?’
It was a nurse. Miriam smiled and closed the door. ‘What are they doing in there?’
The nurse shrugged. ‘Their families have gone and we needed the beds. They’re all in their third day. It won’t be long.’
‘So they’re just being left?’
The nurse stopped. ‘What else can we do? We can check on them, but that’s all.’
Miriam waited for the nurse to disappear and then turned back towards the door. She pushed it open slowly. Again the dozen faces turned towards her. They looked like robots. There was nothing left in them. They were proxy, not there; deep down in the ancient sense that had been awakened by Henry’s death, she knew the creatures she was looking at were no longer human beings at all.
When the doctors came to the ward they wheeled before them a drugs trolley. The taller man had large, puffy bags under his eyes. He lifted the first box and placed it gently on the reception desk. From it he brought a tray of small vials, each filled with fluid. A nurse was working on another trolley. On top was one large box that contained hypodermic needles.
Miriam watched them in silence from the corner of the ward.
When the doctors had unloaded all the vials from the first box, one said to the nurse, ‘How many do we need?’
‘We have twelve staff, two volunteers, and you two.’ She looked at the doctors.
‘How many patients?’ he asked, with a hint of reproach.
The nurse reddened. ‘Fifty-two. Eighteen are in Day Three.’
The two doctors conferred.
‘OK. All the staff and volunteers get one. Give one to each of the patients. But not the Day Three ones. It won’t help them anyway.’
‘Mum,’ she called. The old woman looked up from the bed. ‘They’ve got something. In Reception.’ She turned back to the doctors. ‘It looks like medicine.’
There was a sudden burst of shouting from the corridor outside the ward, the sound of fast footsteps clicking on the hard floor. A group of men appeared at the reception desk. When the doctors saw them, they instinctively placed themselves between the men and the trolley of medicine.
The man at the front of the gang stepped threateningly forwards.
‘Give them to us.’
He pointed at the vials. There must have been fifteen of them, maybe more. The doctor’s voice was muffled by his mask.
‘We can’t. We need them.’
‘So do we. Now give them here before we hurt you. I’m not going to ask again.’
The doctors took a step backwards.
‘Please, there are procedures for this,’ said the smaller doctor. ‘The staff need them. Don’t you see that?’
The leader raised his voice menacingly.
‘If you don’t give me that fucking stuff, I’ll—’
One of the nurses took hold of the drugs trolley and wheeled it back into the room behind them.
‘Stop,’ the leader shouted. The room was becoming a shock of disturbed air. He went to side-step the doctors. The taller doctor moved to block him. The leader pushed him hard in the chest and rushed for the trolley. Miriam saw another member of the gang lifting the two cardboard boxes from the receptionist’s desk. The men didn’t look like thugs: their faces were fearful and confused but they did nothing to stop their leader. They wanted the medicine.
‘Stop!’ Miriam’s mother ran up the corridor.
The crowd turned their heads towards her. The leader did not stop. He wrestled the drugs trolley from the nurse. Some of the vials rolled on to their sides and over the lip. They smashed on the floor, spilling their contents in viscous pools.
‘What are you doing?’ the shorter doctor yelled.
