by Meg Mundell
Mia’s hands were cold. Billie laid another blanket over the girl, rubbed her back and sang to her softly for a while, before turning her attention to her other patients. Her goal was to keep them out of the bodybags that lay waiting in storage; from the company of the dead, laid out unceremoniously in a refrigerated section of the hold. But with no proper set-up or diagnostics, she could offer no more than supportive care: manage symptoms, control pain, ease anxiety. Analgesics, pseudopiates, fluids, salbutamol, oxygen, anti-emetics. Mop up the shit and spew, plug the nosebleeds. And try to stop the bug from spreading.
Land was two weeks away, mortality creeping higher. The patients next door in recovery had stabilised, but their progress was not guaranteed, and all remained potential vectors.
‘Billie? He’s yanked his cannula out again.’ Ruben, bent over the patient who’d come in last night: Scoot, the young deckhand from Aberdeen, part of the Stocktakers’ crew.
On arrival he’d been in no state to recognise her: his fever nudging forty, guts in spasm, cognition skewiff. ‘I didn’t take it, Ma!’ he kept shouting at the ceiling. ‘I didn’t take it, I swear!’ They’d finally got his fever down, but he remained listless and confused, throwing off his blanket one minute and racked by shivers the next. Clocking off last night, she’d left Scoot in Owen’s care. Bruises now mottled the tender flesh of his inner arm: the junior medic’s clumsy handiwork.
‘Grab us a blue one,’ she said, donning new gloves. ‘And some tape.’ She touched the patient’s hand, checked the official name written on his chart. ‘Stewart, can you hear me? Scoot? Try to lie still, mate, I’ll pop your IV back in. Just a wee sting. Hold on to Ruben’s hand.’
Scoot whimpered as the needle punctured his vein. As Billie flushed the saline through there was a rap at the door and Kellahan entered, all gowned up. She’d lost track of time. She briefed the doctor, advised keeping a close watch on the girl, Scoot, Cate. Passing the woman’s bed, Billie gave her arm a gentle squeeze: unnecessary contact, a minor breach of protocol.
As Billie stepped into the decon tray she began compiling some lines in her head, the makings of a story. The kid would be waiting for her.
~
Sleep was proving elusive. As the death toll rose management had closed both bars, but Robbie had promised to procure her some fly rum to take the edge off. He hesitated when Billie asked to tag along, but she was too tired to wonder why.
Marshall intercepted them in the passageway just off the galley. ‘I’m not selling to her,’ he said, stone cold. It took Billie a second to realise who he meant.
‘Come on, man,’ said Robbie, as if they’d already had this conversation. ‘She’s doing the dirty work, caring for the sick ones. She’s one of us.’
‘Us?’ said Marshall, rearing back. ‘One of us is already at death’s door, thanks to this scab. How do you think Scoot got sick?’ He narrowed his eyes at Billie. ‘We never should have let you in,’ he said, pure venom in his voice.
Robbie tried to apologise for Marshall: said the chief steward was losing it, had gone radge, been ranting about terrorists and anti-migrant cults; Juliette had found him crying the other day, actually sobbing out loud behind the wheelhouse. But Billie waved his words away. The whole ship had been torn asunder by the sickness; emotions were raw, and weak alliances had no chance of holding. Juliette herself oversaw the patients’ meals, liaised with Billie on that front. But whenever their paths crossed, the cook was clearly on edge: a brief greeting, minimal talk, then a hasty retreat.
Contaminated: that’s how the nurses were seen. Carriers, vectors, shunned by both passengers and crew. It stemmed from fear, but the hostility was hard to stomach, and the nurses were now bunked and fed in a separate area of the ship. One blessing of this new arrangement: it gave you some respite from the families of the sick, whose desperate pleas for hope, for information, were neither escapable nor bearable. The task of family liaison had fallen to Owen and one of the senior officers. Billie didn’t envy them.
She had her own job on that front. It was more than enough.
~
Clocking on that night, Billie heard a racket through the antechamber wall: someone was screaming for a priest.
‘When did that start?’ she asked Owen, who was doffing out.
‘Fifteen minutes, off and on,’ he said, stepping into the decon tray. ‘You’d better give him a shot. He’s upsetting the others.’
Typical Owen: issuing instructions for a task he could have done himself.
‘Thanks for the tip, Einstein,’ she said, taping her gloves. ‘We’d be lost without you.’
Scoot was thrashing around as two nurses struggled to hold him on the bed. His fever was back with a vengeance. She cursed Owen beneath her breath: he had no business leaving a patient in this state.
‘Steady, mate,’ Ruben was saying, the strain showing. ‘Take it easy, Stewart.’
‘He’s too strong,’ said Holly. ‘Can’t hold him much longer.’
Scoot’s skin was flushed, the cords in his neck taut as rope. He threw his head back and roared: ‘Father Hendricks! Get me Father Hendricks!’ A bright line of blood trickled from his nose.
Billie took over from Holly, leant her full weight on the patient, spoke firmly. Restraining him was not ideal, but god knew what he’d do if he broke loose in this cramped room.
Patients were stirring. The sick child lay rigid, staring at the ceiling.
‘Stewart – Scoot. Can you hear me? It’s Nurse Galloway. Settle now. We’ve got you.’ One of his arms broke free and flailed wildly, his fist smacking against the side of Ruben’s head.
‘Fuck,’ snapped Ruben. ‘Where’s the guard? We need some muscle in here.’
‘Bless me, Father!’ sobbed Scoot. ‘It wasn’t me. Not the holy water! It wasn’t me, I swear.’ A long, shattered scream tore from his throat.
The man’s distress was spreading through the sick room, leaping from person to person. Mia whimpered, and a woman’s voice called out: ‘Help him! Do something!’
‘It’s okay, Mia,’ Billie called. ‘We’ll be there in a sec, my love.’ She pressed her bodyweight down on Scoot, turning her face aside, inches from his spittle and blood.
‘Prep me a shot of Haloperidol. Five migs,’ she ordered Holly. ‘And grab some long bandages.’
Trussed to the bed, his arms now strapped down tight, Scoot cursed and pleaded, screamed for his mother, a priest, a doctor. When Billie jabbed the needle into his thigh and shot the plunger home, the fight quickly went out of him.
‘Christ,’ said Ruben, prodding his bruised ear. ‘Remind me why I took this job.’
‘Better get some ice on that,’ said Billie. ‘But check on Mia first.’
Scoot lay flattened, his face gone slack, body drained of tension. Billie freed his arms and checked his vital signs.
‘You okay? Here, have a sip.’ She held his head, but Scoot turned away, refused to drink. She caught a mumble, asked him to speak up.
‘Poison,’ he croaked. She raised her eyebrows at Ruben, who was tending to Mia.
‘Paranoid,’ said Ruben. ‘And dehydrated. He won’t drink. We need to get a drip in him asap.’
Scoot’s head was lolling. ‘Poison money. Bastard took it. Get the priest.’
‘There’s a lapsed clergyman on board,’ said Holly. ‘Catholic guy. But no idea where you’d find him.’
They were already short-staffed, Ruben’s shift technically over, his replacement nowhere in evidence. And Billie knew that overhearing last rites would hardly calm the other patients.
She took Scoot’s hand. ‘Stewart? You’re going to recover from this, I swear. You don’t need a priest. But you must drink.’
His speech was slurring, consciousness fading out in a slow series of blinks. ‘No,’ he said. ‘There’s something in the water. Holy water. Devil water.’
&
nbsp; ‘Shhh. Just rest now.’ She pressed a damp cloth to his forehead.
‘They know where my mam lives.’ Fighting to keep his eyes open. ‘They know her address. Please don’t tell.’
Delirious patients said all kinds of things: spoke in tongues, got angry over nothing, confessed to past misdeeds, real or imagined; conversed with absent people, fought monsters nobody else could see. Talked all kinds of nonsense. But sometimes, in her experience, there was a grain of truth in what they said.
‘Scoot,’ she whispered. ‘Stewart?’
But he now lay motionless, unreachable.
TOM
I awoke on a sweaty mattress in an unfamiliar room: a girlie pic stuck to the wall, a porthole revealing a blue circle of sky, trolleys stacked with medical gear. A row of beds lined the narrow space, eight people laid out flat, sleeping or resting. The smell of disinfectant hung thick in the air.
A figure appeared, dressed in full protective gear, only the eyes visible. ‘Welcome back,’ she said. ‘You made it through. You’re in the recovery room.’ A Scots accent, her voice vaguely familiar.
Weak and dizzy, I struggled to prop myself upright. My limbs were jelly, and a dull ache emanated from my bones, as if I’d been bashed with concrete gloves.
‘Drink this,’ said the woman, holding a straw to my lips. ‘You’ve got some catching up to do.’
I pushed the sheet aside, examined myself. Barely recognised this gaunt apparition: pyjamas hanging off my bones, knees sharp, belly hollow, arms gone thin and stringy. Skin marked with purple punctures, IV bruises blooming dark as Rorschach blots. Sitting upright was an effort. A deep weariness pressed me back into the mattress.
‘It was touch and go back there,’ said the Scots nurse. ‘We weren’t sure you’d make it.’
I peered at the other patients, half of them asleep or dozing, recognised a few wan faces. Questions swam into my woozy brain. ‘The girl … Mia …’
The nurse lowered her voice. ‘Next door,’ she said. ‘She’s not out of the woods yet.’
‘Tell her I’m waiting for her. Tell her I’ll see her soon. Will you?’
‘Shhh,’ said the nurse. ‘Rest now. Save your energy.’
~
We slept a lot, we convalescents. The staff who tended to us, who brought our food and cleaned the room and monitored our progress, all wore full protective clothing. We still posed a risk.
Each day they checked our vital signs, made notes. The head nurse, Billie, kept the room in order and the patients calm. I recognised her now: the dark-haired Scot from that first crisis meeting. Recalled that wiry intensity, her firing off questions with a cool authority, despite the looming sense of panic in the room. The woman Cleary had sought out when his mother was struck down.
Every few days they’d carry in a new survivor from the sick room next door. Sound leaked through the thin wall, an audible reminder of the hell we’d left behind: the low murmur of nurses punctuated by moans and retching noises, the occasional shout or scream.
A hefty crewman watched over us around the clock. Stationed in a chair beside the door, eyes shifting nervously above his mask, keeping his distance, not happy to be in our midst. Or perhaps it was several crew, all big men of interchangeable build. A carer, the nurses called him, a hint of sarcasm in their voices. Not a guard, although that’s clearly what he was.
We were too weak and frail to pose any threat. But one night I was woken by a racket from next door. A woman screaming. A series of heavy thuds, then someone staggering down the passageway outside, fists pounding on a metal door. Our guard rushed from the room, yelling into his radio for help. The sounds of a struggle, a nurse speaking sharply: ‘Hold her still!’ More thumps and bangs, a dragging sound. Then silence.
I’d lost eleven days in that sick room, a black hole speckled by weird pinpricks of memory. Bright lights, pain, time warping. Blood on the sheets, voices fading in and out. I remembered vomiting into a white bucket, over and over, my body empty but unable to stop. Hyperreal dreams – strange writhing beasts, armies of machines, women with plastic bags around their heads. Someone screaming, raving nonsense. Me?
Then a slow surfacing, like crawling out of a mineshaft, back up into the light. Propped up in bed, sucking salty-sweet liquid through a straw. Then being half carried into this new room, hobbling like an old man, supported by a nurse on either side.
Ten of us were soon crammed into the narrow recovery ward, a hastily converted sailors’ cabin. Conversation, for the most part, was conducted at a whisper. We were fragile, oversensitive to noise and light. Aware, too, that not everyone had made it through alive.
Against the far wall lay a man whose wife had died back in that hellhole. Every night we heard his muffled sobs. The Irishman in the next bed would try to comfort him, offer hushed words: ‘I’m so sorry for your trouble, it’s too terrible. I’m here if you need to talk.’ A nurse would appear with a rattling bottle, and the man’s sobs would taper off to silence.
Two beds down from me lay Max, the man who’d tried to throw himself overboard. No longer crazed by fever, he was a cheerful presence, always ready with a joke or a kind word. My mind kept drifting back to that struggle: Max pinned to the deck beneath a blur of sailors, Stewart on top of the pile. Me retrieving the sweat-slicked broomstick, placing it safely out of harm’s way. Contagion taking place below the threshold of awareness, a series of invisible invasions: the virus a deadly trespasser, crossing cell boundaries, seeking out new hosts. Who could say when or how it had made the leap?
When I saw a nurse enter cradling a small figure in her arms, I felt a surge of relief. When Mia woke up, I wobbled over for a visit. I praised the girl for her bravery, urged her to eat, said her parents would want to see some colour in her cheeks when we got out of there. Eyes wide in her pale face, Mia asked when that would be.
‘Soon,’ was all I could offer. ‘Now you scoff down that soup and get some rest.’
No other children had fallen ill, and for that I was profoundly grateful. But I knew some had lost a parent, an uncle or an aunt. And it wasn’t over yet.
When I asked about the deaf boy, Billie shushed me. ‘He’s fine,’ she whispered. ‘Hold still, let’s check your blood pressure.’ Jerked her head, shot me a cautionary frown.
I peered down the row of beds at a sleeping form, the new patient they’d brought in overnight. Of course: stupid of me to speak so carelessly.
The moment she woke, Cate demanded news of her son. The junior doctor, Owen, tried to fob her off, spoke sternly, but Cate cut him short, called him a waste of space.
‘Get that Scotswoman in here!’ she yelled. ‘I need to get a message to my boy.’
Summoned to her bedside, Billie spoke softly, calmed her down. As I drifted off I heard Cate dictating a message to her son, the nurse repeating the words aloud, committing them to memory: To the moon and back …
Billie often sang young Mia to sleep, the pure bell of her voice washing over the room, a soothing incantation returning us to the protective dreamscapes of childhood. Folk songs, ballads and lullabies. Honey is sweet and so is he. Hush a bye birdie, my pretty little dove. Ally bally bee. As she bathed a patient, collected our dishes or changed our sheets, she’d sometimes hum a wordless tune beneath her breath, a drift of melody sweet as oxygen. We clung to her voice as if it had the power to transport us, take us away to somewhere better.
My own family, I was painfully aware, had no idea if I was alive or dead. Perhaps had no clue at all about this whole disaster. A twinge of guilt: at my farewell drinks Rosa had begged me not to leave, said Mum and Dad were getting on, they needed me. I’d ruffled my sister’s hair and bought her another gin and tonic, told her I’d be back before she knew it.
Outbound comms were still banned, the nurses told us. A bid (I thought, but did not say) to contain the scale of the inevitable shitstorm once we reached dry land.
As our strength returned, a common refrain began to circulate, sotto voce: the government had promised we’d be safe. Red Star had sworn this trip was zero risk, the superscreens infallible. How had this been allowed to happen?
Each day, my body came back to me by increments. Dizziness still struck without warning, but worse was the fatigue – a bone-deep exhaustion, both mental and physical. As if I was operating on half the normal blood supply. As if a vampire had sucked the life out of me, guzzled my energy, sapped my spark. Drunk me dry.
Privacy was non-existent. We became familiar with each other’s bowel movements and physical ailments, our dietary preferences and drug requests, the pleas for messages to be conveyed to worried loved ones.
To stave off cabin fever, I’d stretch my legs in the short passageway outside. Eight steps up, eight back, leaning into the walls for the big swells. I tried the door at the end: firmly locked.
Despite the grief and disbelief that permeated that cramped room, at times a strange elation would steal over me. A keen awareness that by some fluke – some accident of timing, blind luck or chemistry – I was not amongst the dead.
An announcement came: land was just over a week away.
Animated by this news, we sat up in our beds, a new brightness in our faces, talk flowing back and forth: speculation, expectations, hopes. We had no idea what lay in wait for us out there, but we’d be glad to see the back of this ship, return to an even keel. (Yes, the dreaded puns had returned: I was on the mend.)
8
CLEARY
Was he lost? The layout felt familiar, but he’d been fooled before. The lower decks were a tangle of identical passages that seemed to double back upon themselves, to crisscross in shifting configurations. The signs were confusing: figures, arrows and symbols, strange seafaring terms. Orlop. Stowage. Chain Locker.
