by Meg Mundell
‘You’ve done an incredible job,’ said the female medic as they left the donning chamber, hazmatted to the gills. She’d introduced herself as Jane, but was badged as Doctor Hart. She paused before the door to the isolation ward.
‘We helped with the evacuation,’ said her colleague, Sullivan, who hadn’t offered a first name. ‘The conditions you were working under …’ He trailed off.
‘And with untrained staff,’ the woman added. ‘I can’t imagine how tough that must have been.’ Sympathy in her voice, an invitation to elaborate.
Owen took the bait. ‘No training for a scenario like that. You just do what you can.’
Billie rolled her eyes behind her visor, saw the female medic notice.
The door opened onto a long white room. The local medics encouraged them to do the rounds, stop at each bed, chat briefly with their former patients. This contact would help to ‘personalise the transfer of care’, as Hart put it.
The patients began to stir as they recognised their hazmatted visitors. Tom, the teacher, propped himself upright as Billie approached, gave a mock salute. ‘Reporting for shore leave,’ he said.
The Nightingale’s set-up was impressive: top-line gear, ample nursing staff, everyone decked out in proper PPE, a separate recovery ward for those deemed symptom-free. Nano-monitors ingested by each patient, data from their hand-scrawled charts already digitised to screens above each bed. Kellahan remarked wryly on how shipshape the place was – so clean and well appointed, the paint job clearly recent. Light poured in through translucent windows and the decon room had a sophisticated airlock. Textbook protes, Billie noted. They know what they’re doing.
She’d assumed the patients would be rushed offsite, no chance to check on them or say goodbye. She was happy to see them, her survivors – a feeling tempered by relief that they were no longer her responsibility. Under scrutiny by the local medics and their mute spies she greeted each person, asked after them, passed on what limited news she could. They wanted to know how long they’d be kept here; when they could see their loved ones, contact home; what would happen next. All questions Billie wanted answers to herself. The local doctors deflected these queries, offering assurances that were scant on detail.
Cate slept beneath a white sheet, her body all slopes and ridges. Billie hovered, hoping she would wake, but her eyes remained closed, her breathing slow and regular. Her readout was good, but the IV was still in place. The Aberdeen crewman, Scoot, seemed to be feigning sleep, but his readout had steadied too.
Mia was sitting up in bed, bright-eyed, cheeks pink. Billie took the girl’s small hand in her own gloved one. She spoke softly, her back to their observers. ‘Your mum and dad are waiting for you. You’ll see them soon, I promise.’ Met Mia’s doubtful gaze, hoped there was some truth in this.
‘When?’ asked the girl. ‘When can I see them?’
Sullivan tried to butt in but Billie held her ground, kept issuing calm reassurances until the child seemed to take them to heart.
Kellahan was peering around. ‘Someone’s missing.’ There was a silence.
Hart pointed at the wall. ‘There’s one patient in critical. Not out of the woods yet.’ A young man, the last person to fall sick. Outwardly strong, but his body had refused to rally. Had purged itself violently for three days, then fallen into an ominous stillness.
‘How is he?’ Billie asked.
‘Critical,’ Sullivan repeated. ‘We’ll let you know if anything changes.’
When the medics trooped them upstairs to see the onsite lab, the implications took a moment to compute. The facility was slick, clearly expensive. Through a plastic window they watched technicians label samples, squint into a high-tech microscope, scroll data up screens. Billie scanned the gear: at least a million pounds’ worth, surely. She met Kellahan’s eye, saw her surprise mirrored there.
‘Why the onboard lab?’ she asked, the answer already dawning. ‘Aren’t the patients being transferred to a proper hospital?’
‘Nobody’s going anywhere,’ said Sullivan, then more gently: ‘Not yet. And you’ll all be required to make regular trips to the Nightingale.’
‘Family liaison,’ said Hart. ‘The patients have been asking for you – their own doctors, their head nurse. Keeping that channel open will help foster community resilience.’
Billie untangled this jargon: so her services were still required.
Next up, three hours in a windowless room, verbally logging patient case notes and timelines, Sullivan and Hart asking the questions. The discussion went beyond due care and viral analytics. Their observers had vanished, but Billie had no doubt the room was wired. You do not have to say anything, but anything you do say …
She had to hand it to Kellahan. The doctor’s demeanour was courteous, collegial, disarming. Confiding details in a candid way, while hinting at the unreasonable pressure they’d been under, how under-equipped the ship had been, how they’d had to improvise to cope, to save as many lives as possible. No bad-mouthing of brass, just a gentle inkling that the guilt lay further up the food chain. A bid for absolution that covered their whole team of press-ganged nurses. A subtle refusal to take the blame for all the horror they’d endured. For those twelve lives erased.
Weeks ago now, Kellahan had warned them: once they reached dry land they must present a united front. Owen wasn’t making that easy here, with his self-effacing hero act. The big balloon was acting breezy, tossing medical jargon around – neurovirulence, mutation rates, gestation period – while dropping mentions of the few work-arounds he’d devised, in truth a scant list against all the innovations Billie had dreamt up. She felt irritation rising: twelve people dead. Nobody was up for a medal here.
‘This virus, its clinical manifestation: how does it compare to what you encountered back home?’ Hart, directing this at Kellahan.
‘I’ve worked outside the UK these past few years,’ said the ship doctor. ‘Missed the worst of the pandemic, left six months before it hit. Billie’s the one who’s been at the coalface.’
Doctor Hart glanced down at her device, flicked unseen docs across the screen; a subtle movement, one finger. She turned to Billie. ‘You worked as a healthcare assistant back in Scotland? Forgive me, we use different designations here. Is that a nursing role?’
‘An orderly, I think,’ Owen broke in helpfully. ‘Is that what you’d call it here?’
Billie glared at him, felt Kellahan watching her. ‘A nurse’s auxiliary,’ she said. ‘Patient monitoring and transfer, wash and dress, prep. PPE compliance, waste disposal protes. I worked the isolation wards at Glasgow South. Hands-on, worst cases.’
Kellahan spoke up. ‘We were incredibly lucky to have Billie on our team. Without her experience, her training in ID containment, patient care …’ He trailed off.
Owen yawned and examined the ceiling, telegraphing disdain.
‘What’s your sense, Billie?’ asked Sullivan. ‘How does this thing compare with what you saw back home?’
‘The ALT virus mutates so fast,’ she hedged. ‘The stats were never constant.’
‘Just a general picture.’
She recalled the death wards: the sense of hopelessness, the reek of death and its entangled stinks, the chemical efforts to keep it at bay. Braced herself to muster up a neutral account.
‘Mortality’s slightly lower with this bug. We lost around fifty per cent of the sick ones, and that was under hugely sub-par conditions. With ALT, in a hospital setting, mortality was just over seventy. Although we had superbugs to deal with too, the AB-resistants – that ramped up the stats.’
The local medics waited, their full attention on Billie.
‘ALT’s airborne,’ she went on. ‘It’s an enterovirus, so encephalitis was a major risk. This new thing … the onset’s quicker. More febrility – confusion, delirium, hallucinations. Getting the fever down was a real battle.’ A
wave of fatigue washed over her. She needed rest, food; to find the kid, lie on the deck and watch the clouds change shape.
Owen again: ‘What’s the nano-data showing?’
‘We’re running diagnostics,’ said Sullivan, with a frown. ‘But so far it doesn’t match the profile of anything on record, ALT included.’ He pawed at his neck, hunting an itch trapped beneath his suit. Despite the heat the locals were all fully kitted up, ventilators and the whole shebang. Billie’s own team had been issued more minimal gear.
‘Do we have any treatment options?’ asked Kellahan.
‘Nothing tailored,’ said Sullivan. ‘This bug looks novel.’
‘We’ll be trialling three,’ said Hart. ‘A nano-viricide, laser deactivation and a broad-spectrum anti-viral. We’re optimistic, but it’s too soon to tell.’
A sigh escaped Kellahan.
‘Let’s wind up,’ said Hart. ‘You must be exhausted. We don’t want to overtax you.’
Bit late for that, thought Billie. ‘What do we tell everyone? When can we go ashore?’
Hart performed a helpless shrug. ‘I wish we knew. If it’s any consolation, you’re not alone.’
‘None of us can leave,’ said Sullivan. ‘Not until we know exactly what we’re dealing with.’
Viral profiling was just part of the mystery. The superscreen – that intense regime of pre-departure scans – had granted all on board a clean bill of health. They’d been at sea three weeks before the first symptoms appeared. Either this bug had lain latent all that time, somehow dodging the screening – or what? Kellahan had raised the issue of a stealth virus, or deliberate onboard contamination, but the locals had swiftly moved the conversation on.
‘There’ll be an investigation?’ Owen asked as they stood to leave.
‘Is,’ corrected Sullivan as he swiped the door, releasing them. ‘It’s already underway.’
Outside the sky was wide and cloudless, the air tepid as they filed into the boat and returned to the Steadfast in the wordless company of soldiers.
Back on deck, in the shadow of the foremast, Kellahan removed his glasses and rubbed them on his shirt. Owen stood back, fists on hips, awkward now. Nearby a group of kids attempted cartwheels across the Steadfast’s deck, their laughter floating out across the water. Billie spotted Robbie by the wheelhouse, deep in conversation with a yellow-clad man, waving his arms, like the two of them were down the boozer together. She’d talk to him later, tell him Scoot had pulled through.
Boats milled around the ship like misdirected ducklings: a forensics team collecting evidence. A stink hung heavy in the air, and on the shore a yellow figure hosed down a smoking heap of mattresses. From what Billie could tell the yellow-clad men were assigned to do the grunt work; the white hazmats were the ones in charge.
‘I’m off to find Captain Lewis,’ said Kellahan. ‘See what he knows.’ He levelled a look at them both. ‘We’re a unit now. Heads will roll for this. Let’s not make it easy for them.’
Billie found a private spot to roll a smoke. She’d kept up a professional front on the Nightingale. A sense of duty to her patients, plus a strong dash of self-protection, rather than any official capacity she might still hold. No doubt the nurses’ wages had ceased, if they’d been paid at all. She tried to envisage the freedoms all those zeroes might offer, but couldn’t fix on it.
Cut off: the feeling was palpable. During the journey she’d adjusted to going dry – unable to speak home, hear her parents’ voices or see Jamie’s toothy grin. The silence had been bearable for knowing it was finite. Now that there was no clear endpoint, no way to reassure her family, she felt the separation keenly – a tangle of pining, worry, guilt.
Her parents had never endorsed her decision to leave. But nor had they persuaded her to stay. Glasgow they mistrusted; the hospital more so, an unvoiced fear of her daily proximity to death. There’d been mention of alternatives – aged care, disability. Things that weren’t contagious. Unable to secure another medical job, she’d presented this trip as a safer and more promising path.
‘Will you get a boyfriend?’ her brother had asked. ‘A nice Australian man, with a hat?’ She’d promised to call at Christmas and sing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ together. Jamie had a terrible ear, but sang with wild enthusiasm, striving to match his sister’s range. Despite the racket, his efforts never failed to light her up. How would her parents explain her silence? Jamie was sensitive, stubborn. Wore his anguish close to the surface. What kind of distress were they enduring right now?
Enough. This would lead nowhere. She should go and check on the kid.
TOM
Our new ward was a vast improvement: a long narrow room suffused with milky light, that hospital hush. Clean sheets and nourishing meals, room to stretch our legs.
But no word on what would happen next. The portholes were screened and nobody could leave. A locked ward on a hospital ship … best not to think of it as a prison, we agreed. White on white, all surfaces scrubbed clinically clean: white walls and floor, white equipment, white sheets and screens and furniture, the nurses’ coveralls. Our new pyjamas the one exception, random splotches of colour in that ghostly room.
When our Steadfast medical team was first escorted in, it was clear that they were no longer in charge. There’d been a changing of the guard: now they were merely visitors.
Instead local nurses tended to us. A drawling accent, all flattened vowels and rising inflections. They were friendly, but hard to tell apart: white hazmats and respirators, red armbands marking them out as medical. The plump one, Ally, was my favourite. Asked me why such a posh-sounding guy was wearing these bog-standard pyjamas. Wasn’t I a duke or something? Where were my velvet slippers, my silk dressing-gown?
Ally won me over, too, because she broke the rules, shared whispered snippets: we were anchored offshore from an old quarantine station, she told me, on a sleepy peninsula south of Melbourne. A heritage site, protected parklands, ocean research and ecotourism, not used for quarantine in half a century or more. A place where rich people holidayed and scuba-diving scientists measured crabs.
A few days in, a social-worker type showed up for a ‘chat’. Nice enough, on the surface – blue armband, convoluted job title, the word ‘support’ in there somewhere – but what began with routine pleasantries soon strayed into outright quizzing. Did I have family back in England? Did I enjoy teaching? Didn’t I find it stressful? Why had I applied to the BIM program? Her insincerity was grating, and my answers verged on flip.
‘They promised us pina coladas,’ I said. ‘I’m thinking of suing.’
Her response: earnest nodding. She soon progressed down the row, plying my wardmates with the same routine.
Officially we were in Isolation, our lucky subgroup in Recovery. States of limbo, cut off from the world. But alive: that fact kept returning to me. Each time, without fail, it carried a sweet charge of exhilaration. A twinge almost sexual in its intensity.
They’d moved us off the Steadfast in the depths of night. Big hulking men in yellow suits, the muscle of the operation; white-clad medical staff standing back, courteous and efficient, as if the dirty work was not their business. Everyone in hazmats, like a disaster flick.
I’d protested, said my legs worked fine, but they’d insisted on lugging us here on stretchers – strapped flat on our backs, filing out into the night. Manhandled by torchlight into boats, then jostled onto this new vessel, through a complicated antechamber, and deposited in our beds. Smuggled aboard and stowed away, like human contraband. Contaminated cargo.
The nurses were generous with the meds. ‘After what you’ve been through,’ said Ally, waving a latex glove in gay abandon. ‘Ask and you shall receive!’
But to my surprise, I didn’t feel the need. Yes, I dabbled, softened the edges. But that old hunger, that urge for oblivion, had receded. I found myself lit by a strong desire to remain completely pre
sent. The afterglow of having cheated death, perhaps.
Risky detox strategy, but surprisingly effective.
I hankered for something to read, something to watch besides my own internal data flickering up the wall, but strict rules governed what was permitted in and out.
Trauma: our official diagnosis, head-wise. On the physical front they were at a loss. Whatever struck us down remained unnamed.
The Steadfast medics made regular visits, bringing what news they could, but their stopovers were short, the info scant, the conversations monitored. I always asked Billie about the children. Most were doing well, she reported, but at least four had lost a parent. She couldn’t provide surnames, so I couldn’t connect all the faces.
‘What happened to us out there?’ I asked her once. A simple question, on the surface of it.
‘They’re saying—’ she began.
Doctor Sullivan interrupted: ‘Your wellbeing is our primary focus right now. How’s the fatigue? Any more headaches?’
Isolation: an apt term. Mum, Dad, Rosa – there was still no word in either direction. Outbound comms remained banned, no inbounds being relayed. But our families had apparently been notified: now at least they knew we were alive.
In fact, Ally told me, the whole world knew: our names, and the names of the dead, had been released into the stream. The shitstorm had begun.
I yearned to call home. Had no idea how long they’d waited for news, fearing I was dead. Picturing them fretting, hoping I’d made it through … the thought of it broke my heart. Made me angry too, or would have done, if I’d had the energy to spare.
Little Mia was a trouper. Each day we chatted about her family and friends, made up stories about the world awaiting us outside – giant kangaroos, fruit trees thick with peaches, sun-tanned locals bearing get-well cards. She was restless, wanting her parents, worried about her little brother. Said he refused to sleep unless she’d given him his goodnight tickle. At times this had seemed like a chore to her, but now she’d tickle him forever if only she could.
