by Liz Grzyb
Then Old Man Hendrik walks Magda to her dormitory, which she had indeed booked for the night, knowing somehow this was the right place to come to open her heart. Hendrik concedes it just might have been a lucky choice, even though he feels he has been a poor instrument of acceptance. Magda insists that is not the case and she will be back to this place, to Hendrik and his kindness, to St Roch and the Stang chapel. Like so many, she never committed to a formal religion but now she is sure the breakaway Church of Diversity might offer her tiny family shelter in this storm. She might even persuade Herbert to come for a retreat while he is transforming.
They part and in the evening light, Hendrik makes his way back to the Stang Chapel to sit for a moment and listen to the wind and the nightjars calling. For the first time ever he remembers his mother without feeling pain. Remembers the incredible devotion she had to him as a child, how she made his dresses, plaited his hair and told stories every night to her Darling Rosalee. How she fought for Rosalee when she became Richard, disowning her own friends and brother who didn’t support the change, and how Richard as a young man tried to save his mother from the diseases that were the aftermath of the great flood. Change exacts a high price. Refusing to change, an even higher one. Perhaps next time he will tell Magda more of those stories.
His knee gives him trouble as he finally stands and walks outside to view the white crescent moon in the navy blue sky. He feels oddly optimistic. Who knows: this Church of Diversity he helped found might yet see another great social movement, might yet play its part again in supporting those experiencing the turmoil of change. Anderson is due back from the mainland in two days and as senior prelate she will need to know about this turn of events and begin preparations.
* * ** * ** * *
Trivalent
Rivqa Rafael
Some days I think we should just let the viruses win. Viruses are simple. Viruses are easy. Sure, they might mutate in the blink of an eye and wipe out our species, but at least they don’t have feelings. But no, survival instinct is stronger than misanthropy and so I kept working, trying to save people I can’t stand from death and pain by mosquito-borne disease. Which is why I was sitting in a rickety chair, waiting for Larry to get to the lab meeting agenda item that said ‘publicly castigate Kay’. Life choice regret levels: high.
At last he turned to me with a shit-eating grin. “Kay.” Another lab manager might have spoken to me privately, but that wasn’t Larry’s style. He was all about ‘public accountability’ and that kind of shit.
Resisting the urge to sit up straight in my chair, I replied, “Yes, Larry.” Technically we were a co-op, doing science as best we could in a crumbling building with chipped glassware and homegrown agar. Government funding was a thing of the past, but there’s always going to be a hierarchy, and being young and new meant I was low in the pecking order. All the hard work had happened when I was a kid, stranded in Cairns like so many people were, not understanding why we couldn’t just get on a plane and go home. When I was old enough to join the co-op, they had food growing everywhere and a functional library (OK, so some of the books were getting tattered) and if you were tenacious and smart enough to learn the science as you went, you could get on a work roster and try to find a supervisor.
“We’ve discussed mutual respect and teamwork many times, Kay. And somehow it doesn’t seem to sink in. I’ve lost track of the amount of times you were unacceptably rude to me or someone else.”
“What about not talking to people when they’ve finally got a chance to use the cell culture hood? After other people have been hogging it forever?” Under the hood, it’s hard enough keeping two thoughts in your head: whatever you’re actually doing, and keeping everything sterile. Put a lid down the wrong way and you’ve wasted half a day’s work and a bottle of reagent. Do that enough times and you’ll be assigned to the distillery to brew up more ethanol. (I know brew isn’t the right word, shut up.) Point is, it’s boring as batshit compared to actually growing viruses so you can try to mass murder them—the viruses, I mean. Which isn’t even that exciting if you forget the endgame: no more dengue, chikungunya, zika and everything else those bastard bloodsuckers carried around.
“That kind of attitude is exactly what I’m talking about. You can’t just think about yourself, or even just your own subgroup.” Just because there were already dengue and malaria vaccines (even if they were kind of shit), and zika was so important because it involved babies and pregnant women. Yeah, I know, I’m all unnatural and not a proper woman because I don’t want babies, but noooo thank you.
Chiku and ‘other’ were left for the rest of us, but ‘other’ was where I liked to play. It was less about vaccine development and more about studying the way the viruses mutated, trying to predict what might come next and kill us all while we worried too much about Guillain–Barré syndrome. It was the closest to basic science that I could get, seeing as basic science was a luxury and we were never, ever getting our jetpacks. “My subgroup gets the least time under the hood, and you had to pick right then to talk to me.”
He hadn’t even put on his labcoat. In the wet lab. And he stood way too close to me, hood or no hood. When I finally had a turn while the zika team seemed occupied with something super exciting. Fuck being polite under those circumstances, seriously. Especially when you should know better.
But no, he wasn’t going to be drawn into any discussion about his shortcomings, and no one seemed willing to back me up. He sighed deeply and shook his head; if he was putting on the seriousness for a show he was actually doing a pretty good job of it. “What you need, Kay, is a secondment on another team. Learn to work with others, properly. We don’t have the luxury of silos here. The epidemiology team needs another body for some fieldwork.”
“You can’t move me to epi.” I couldn’t keep the whinge out of my voice. “I’ve got no expertise. I don’t even do my own stats. I have cultures in the incubator and they’re really, really important!” Great, now I sounded like the zika team. Not what I was going for.
“The rest of your team can handle them, and epidemiology really needs you. It’s not a punishment because it’s busy-work.” He grinned around the faces at the lab meeting. “It’s a punishment because you don’t want to do it, Kay.” Oh, he’d practised that one, I was sure of it.
The chairs squeaked in protest as people shifted in their seats, not meeting my eyes or Larry’s.
I sank back into my own chair, defeated by the silence and by Larry. “So, what do you guys need?”
“We’re heading out to the field to recruit for the next phase of the vaccine study.” Fiona, who headed the zika epi group, folded her dimpled brown hands in her lap as she spoke, looking at the rest of her people rather than at me. I knew little about her, other than she was one of the last people to make it over from Thursday in time, before the whole Torres Strait went under. Oh, and she was a brilliant epidemiologist, but I’d kind of never paid attention. Nothing against them, I knew it was important, it just seemed so bloody boring. “Mike’s farm was hit hard in the last cyclone. I gave him leave to go home to help his family rebuild.”
“Recruitment?” My voice graduated from a whinge to a squeak. “Talking to people? Getting permission to stick them with needles? Oh, hell no.” I was a virologist. Really, what I wanted to do was work on a project to squash every mosquito in the world, but apparently that wasn’t a workable solution because whatever filled the niche in the ecosystem would spread the same diseases anyway, or similar ones. (Also, that’s what you learn when you talk to scientists who can’t take a joke.) So I settled on the next best thing and learned how to grow the viruses that they carried in cell cultures, in the hopes of developing vaccines that actually worked. Point was, I was not a people person and never would be.
“Without Mike, we really need someone.” Fiona’s voice was calm and level. “It’s too much work for two, between the driving and keeping us safe and fed, apart from the actual work.”
“Well, I
can do some of that, anyway.” Curse my traitor of a mouth, but I was realising that she was pretty, and there was something mesmerising about her soft voice. “I’d hate to muck up your science.”
“You did the phlebotomy course last year. Get a refresher this week and we’ll fill you in on the rest.”
“You read my file.”
She didn’t even blink, and as she replied I decided that I liked her. “Well, obviously. I wouldn’t risk the study taking someone who couldn’t pull their weight, no matter how hard Larry leaned.”
Larry wore the expression of a man whose thunder had been well and truly stolen. He waved a hand at Fiona. “Work out the details on your own time. Next item?”
* * *
Finding myself unwilling to disappoint Fiona, I traded off a phlebotomy refresher for a session of cleaning and autoclaving the path lab’s glassware. Fiona poked her head in as I practised attaching a tube to a child-sized needle. “Do the kids really sit still through this?”
“Sometimes,” she said. “It helps if we can get a supply of local, numb the area first. Sometimes they freak out a bit, though.”
“Awesome.”
She patted my shoulder. “Don’t worry, you can leave the tricky ones to us. Winnie—my 2IC—is wonderful with kids.”
“Bet you are, too,” I found myself saying. Super smooth, that’s me.
To her credit she didn’t roll her eyes at me, just smiled politely and excused herself. That just made me like her more. Godfuckingdamnit.
We finished our preparations and packed up a few days later; I won’t bore you with the details but of course we had to be self-sufficient and prepared for disaster, even though it wasn’t cyclone season. All the supplies for the study, food, biodiesel and camping gear made for a pretty packed Land Rover. Together with some of the other scientists, Larry waved us away as we left, his smug brain no doubt thinking of how nice it would be in the lab without me to tell him what a shithead he was.
Fiona had checked in with me regularly during the prep time, but I didn’t meet Winnie until we were loading up the car. I guessed she was about my age, but it was hard to tell because she was super petite. She had a delicate look about her that made me think I’d snap her bones if I tried to hug her, so it was just as well she limited our meeting to a cool handshake. Whatever, she’d probably heard what a giant bitch I was. I’d sussed out that she was a nurse practitioner and very skilled, but not much more than that.
Winnie took the first shift driving while Fiona navigated and I sat crammed in the back seat with the gear. I had nothing in particular to do, so I practised keeping my mouth shut and sneaking glances at Fiona when I thought I could get away with it. She had a definite plan for where we were headed, although settlements rose and fell and moved quickly out here, so we had to stay flexible. It would be nice if people stayed put for follow-up in a year or more, but they weren’t necessarily going to. They had to take so much into account with this kind of study, I was learning. I was as much in awe of their science as I was Fiona’s unflappable demeanour. They chatted about their work and other things as we travelled, often in voices so soft I wasn’t sure if they were even speaking English. When Fiona didn’t need to navigate, she looked back at me occasionally but spent most of the time looking out the window or at Winnie. Probably making sure she wasn’t getting too tired.
Our first stop was Mareeba, where there was a large, stable settlement with a dynamic Aboriginal Medical Service. A rusted sign with a faded smiling sun greeted us as we rolled in. “Low-hanging fruit first,” Fiona said, and she wasn’t wrong. Everyone seemed to know her, at least by sight. Winnie got a few nods as well, but mostly she hung behind Fiona. You’d have thought it would be a chance for Winnie and I to bond a bit, but you’d be wrong. Every time I tried to make small talk I got a one-word reply. If I was lucky. Small talk isn’t exactly my strong point, but damn if it wasn’t like talking to an agar plate.
After a while, I gave up and concentrated on setting up our clinic space in the AMS while Fiona organised the paperwork. Neither task took long: setting up for bloods and vaccinations was easy enough, and Fiona didn’t exactly need to strain to convince the staff that the study was important and would benefit the community. The building was in better nick than most of the town—don’t get me wrong, the town was doing OK but the AMS was squeaky-clean, its stark white paint job eased by colourful dot paintings. Winnie had disappeared; annoyed as I was that she wasn’t helping, it was kind of a relief. It was easier to stay quiet while I shifted boxes alone than it was with a wall of silence next to me.
Just as I finished unpacking the last carton, Winnie rounded the corner with a gaggle of kids, all following her like she was a tiny Pied Piper. They chattered excitedly while their parents trailed behind at a slower pace.
“School just finished,” she said to Fiona. “Thought we may as well get started.”
“The clinic will recruit for us, too. We’ll probably be here most of tomorrow, at least.”
Winnie nodded. “I promised these ones a game while we wait. And you-know-what after.”
“Lollies!” The kids’ screeching drilled into my skull. Fucking hell, how did such small people get so loud?
Fiona just smiled, head tilted a little as she watched. “Well, we’re ready, and Kay can assist me. Who’s first?” As they clamoured around her, she put a hand on my shoulder. “The eager ones shouldn’t be difficult. This is a good place for you to start.”
Swallowing the nervousness in my throat, I nodded. She flashed me a quick smile, her teeth bright white in a grin that lit up her whole face.
My job was easy enough. I set out the equipment for each participant while Fiona explained the trial to the parent. Then I gloved up, found a tiny vein and slipped the tiny needle in while Fiona distracted the kid by asking about school or whatever. As soon as I had the needle out, she grabbed their upper arm tightly and gave them the jab—the new dengue–malaria–zika shot for the trial group, or the old dengue–malaria vax for the controls. If I couldn’t find a vein, Fiona just did both, working as fast as she could to keep the trauma brief. Most of the kids were fine but some of them cried, each scream stabbing a knife into my brain.
The crowd never seemed to get any smaller, as word-of-mouth passed through the town and more people turned up. People wanted protection from the bugs, of course. But they were also thrilled to be in a study, even if they got the control shot. For some of the tiny kids, especially, it might have been their first encounter with structured science, and even I had to admit that was kind of cool. I wondered how many of them might show up in Cairns in a decade or so, begging for a job the way I had.
But the shine of that enthusiasm wore off as the evening dragged on. My head hurt and I was hungry. And still people kept coming. At eight o’clock, Winnie handed out tokens for the last ten participants and sent everyone else home, promising the kids that the lollies would still be there tomorrow. When one of the Aunties showed up with a basket of hot food, I nearly hugged her. We went to sleep soon after, aware that we’d be doing the same thing the next day.
And so we were, until the last kid and woman of childbearing age was stabbed and jabbed. The second day was much like the first, except that as the day wore on there were more difficult kids, just like Fiona had predicted. Some of them clung to their parents like limpets; more than one wouldn’t let me near and screamed for Winnie, who entered smug mode whenever she had to snap on her gloves for one of those.
“Why doesn’t she just do all the bloods then, instead of playing with the kids?” I muttered to myself.
Unfortunately for me, Fiona heard. “Because then you’d have to keep the kids out there happy,” she said, one eyebrow arched. “Happy kids out there makes our job in here easier. It’s real work, you know. Unless you’d rather do it.”
You’ll be glad to hear I kept my mouth shut for the rest of the day, even after we left Mareeba and set up camp that evening. Impressive effort on my part, I know.
That night I lay awake for what felt like hours, trying my best to will away the throbbing in my head. My ears were still popping from the undulating road through the Tableland, too. After a while I heard one tent unzip and rezip, then the other. Soon there were soft voices talking, laughing, and eventually moaning. Every muscle in my body clenched in a futile attempt to protect myself against the simultaneous arousal and disappointment. Of course Fiona and Winnie were together, keeping it on the down-low to avoid scrutiny (or worse) from Larry. Of course no one wanted to cuddle me—or do anything else with me—in a tent in the middle of nowhere. I wondered if Mike felt the same way when he was on these field trips, but no, he had a partner and a little baby. It was 2 A.M. in Far North Queensland and I’d never felt more alone.
Of course, it was about to get worse.
* * *
The next day, it took me an extra coffee to feel awake enough to drive. I tried a new technique for keeping my mouth shut—clenching my teeth together tightly enough to hurt. It worked, apart from a couple of brow-furrowed glances from Fiona. Winnie loitered at the campsite until Fiona climbed into the passenger seat behind me. Did I smell bad enough that neither of them wanted to sit next to me? It was worse than primary school, being one of the interstate strays that no one wanted or cared about. Fiona slammed her door shut with uncharacteristic vigour. Blinking, I shrugged and turned the ignition. No clue what that was about, and I didn’t think I wanted to know. It’s bad enough to think that nobody likes you, but being sure would be worse.
