by Meg Mundell
Talking to Mia was no chore: she was a sweet kid. I’d have done it anyway, regardless. As for how she’d fallen sick … Her sunhat, dropped on the deck; me bending to retrieve it, handing it back to her … I tried not to dwell on that.
For the parents amongst us, this prolonged limbo was a source of great distress. Single mother to a vulnerable child, Cate took it particularly hard. Hungry for news of Cleary, angered by the bland doublespeak of our keepers, she got some of the local nurses offside. Bit back at their gentle admonishments to rest, their suggestions she might benefit from a sedative.
‘I need to see my child,’ she’d say. ‘Is that so hard to understand? Are you robots?’
The desire for dry ground was palpable. On one visit Doctor Kellahan told me there was an inquiry underway, a mass inquest of sorts – to uncover how the outbreak had occurred, how it was handled. Adept at micromanaging our conversations, the local medics cut him off, said not to tire me out.
My strength slowly returned, that deadening fatigue receding. The nurses encouraged us to pace the length of the ward, move our limbs so they wouldn’t atrophy. Without fail, each time Max and I shuffled past each other in our pyjamas, he delivered a cheery greeting: ‘Lovely day for a walk!’
Max had no memory of when the fever hit. He knew he’d tried to throw himself overboard, but it wasn’t something we discussed. Ditto the broomstick he’d brandished, the one I’d helpfully picked up and stashed away. What would be the point?
On the Nightingale we existed in a state of suspended animation, as if waiting for some unspecified announcement. We were like dazed survivors from a war zone: all the recent horrors, the sharp edges, were muffled by medication, or sheer gratitude at being alive.
One image from that time persisted: a figure slumped over at the far end of the ward. The man who’d lost his wife, face buried in his hands, a nurse rubbing his back as if comforting a child.
He was on the Nightingale too, of course: my holiday romance. Fool that I was, I hadn’t quite given up hope, still imagined we might yet become comrades in arms.
One day, fortified by two coffees, I stopped by his bed, loitering with intent. He closed his eyes and lay there like a corpse.
‘Hey,’ I said softly. ‘Stewart. You still alive in there?’ No response, so I gave up and shuffled off.
I couldn’t work it out: why pretend we’re strangers? Did he blame me, assume I’d made him sick? Or was his coldness a silent plea, an appeal to keep our brief affair a secret? Was anyone still that repressed?
He shouldn’t worry on that count, I thought with a trace of bitterness. Privacy’s a scarce enough commodity. I won’t help drive it to extinction.
10
CLEARY
The spooks came for him after lunch. That’s what Declan called the strangers in white hazmats – spooks. The men in yellow hazmats were code-named bananas.
A female spook led Cleary to a room set up like a doctor’s clinic: a low bed, a trolley with gauze and swabs, a tray of scary implements. A male spook held a scanner to his brow, and the woman tilted a talk-screen at him. As she spoke, her words popped up on the screen, spelt out in big letters.
Just a little injection, she said. To keep you safe. Don’t be scared. Everyone’s getting one.
She waggled a red lollipop wrapped in plastic. For after. Just a tiny sting. I’ll hold your hand, okay?
A sharp white pain, then a burning feeling. She’d lied to him.
The woman patted his back and pressed the lollipop into his hand. Well done, she said into the talk-screen. Brave boy.
Tears prickling his eyes, he examined the place where the jab had gone in. Beneath the skin rose a small bump, as if a matchhead was stuck under there. He reached for it, but the male spook caught his wrist, then taped a wad of cotton to his arm.
Don’t touch it, mate, the man said into the talk-screen. And keep that dressing on till bedtime.
Led to another room, Cleary found a matching pair of spooks waiting. Splayed across the table were coloured pens and sheets of thick blank paper. They gestured at the empty chair between them, and warily he took a seat. Another talk-screen appeared. Cleary pulled out his notebook and flicked to a fresh page.
Hi Cleary. You like to draw, don’t you?
Left alone with these treasures Cleary would have been content, but the spooks had other plans: they kept breaking his concentration, shoving the talk-screen under his nose, bombarding him with odd requests: draw this, draw that. He tried to be polite, and they gave him real orange juice, plus biscuits with icing in the middle, but some of their questions were so dense they left him at a loss.
Could he draw his family? Easy: he sketched his ma, himself, Granda, Gran and Uncle Liam, down the fish pond at Phoenix Park. Added a sun, flowers, and one of the park deer, antlers spread like wings above his head. The woman pointed to the deer: Who’s this? she said into the talk-screen. A deer, he wrote, puzzled. Had she not seen a deer before? Her next question was no better: That deer looks like it’s got something on its mind. What do you think it might be? How would he know what the animal was thinking? He wasn’t a mind-reader. It was just standing around, doing deer stuff, but he knew that wasn’t much of an answer. He racked his brains, then replied: He wants one of Gran’s Jaffa Cakes.
Why does your mum look sad? the male spook asked.
His drawing showed the day of Granny’s birthday, a Saturday afternoon, not long before they’d left Dublin. She’s not sad, he wrote. She’s cheesed off cos she left Gran’s present on the train.
Winter had been coming, and his ma had bought Gran a soft green scarf to keep her cough away. When she’d realised the gift was lost, she dropped the bag of bread and clapped her hands over her eyes, a childlike gesture of despair. Gran had hugged her tight, patting her back as the ducks squabbled at their feet.
Cleary blinked, willed his tears into reverse. He would not cry in front of these spooks.
Asked to draw his da, he reproduced the only image he remembered. An old pic, shot from some distance away: a man dangling a fish from an invisible line, his features indistinct beneath the shadowed peak of a cap. Did his dad like fishing? Cleary had no idea. He couldn’t remember his da. He put the drawing aside, asked for another biscuit.
Next question: could he draw his friends?
It would take ages to sketch his pals from back home – the gang from the Pearse Street flats, and his best mate, Ben, who’d moved up north last summer with his family, his ma a wreck from worry, afraid of losing another one to the bug. So he sketched Declan in a fighting stance, waving a sword, scowling ferociously. The pose came out a bit bow-legged, but his pal would be rapt with the biceps.
Then he drew Billie, a smoking fag tucked in her fist. Billie wasn’t big on smiling, but the spooks wanted happy pictures, so he plastered a wide grin across her face.
The Steadfast, said the lady spook. Could he draw the ship, out at sea? The picture came out flat and lifeless, the vessel lost amongst blue waves, so he added a sea-serpent. The monster was pure class, all coiled muscle and bloodshot eyes. Below its jagged snarl the ship resembled a bath toy, a snack to be devoured in a single crunch. The sight of it gave him a chill.
Now the questions came thick and fast. What was the monster up to? Where had it come from? Why was it angry? There was too much to explain: the ocean’s lukewarm dead zones, all the sea creatures sickened by chemical waste; diseased squid and poisoned sharks, jellyfish hordes sifting the desolate currents, acid-ravaged mutants roaming the sea floor. The way deep water sheltered fearful things. Even back home, you never knew what was down there: selkies and merrows up the coast, the serpent lurking in Lough Foyle. Sea monsters are real, he wrote. Granda saw one once.
The spooks turned aside, conferred. Then tilted the talk-screen at him: Just one more picture, Cleary. Something you saw on the ship. The night you found that man, the on
e who got hurt. Could you draw that for us?
He drew the bare facts, no more: the window framed by darkness, the shelves stacked with supplies, the dead man’s legs, the blood on the floor. Then he pushed the drawing aside: Can I go now please.
~
Escaping the gloom for the bright sunlight of the upper deck, he saw a crowd gathered around a ladder propped against the kiosk wall. A line of soldiers was padding up the rungs.
On the kiosk roof a group of passengers huddled together, holding a white sheet. Against the sky, Cleary glimpsed smeared black letters: HELP US! High in the blue, he spotted a small aircraft, a rare sight. Someone rich, a prime minister or a millionaire, circling overhead, peering down at them.
The first soldier paused at the top of the ladder, his pals crammed in behind him, nose to bum. He spoke to the men on the rooftop, gesturing for them to come down, but although they seemed frightened they clearly did not plan to obey the order. Instead they edged further out of reach, moving in an awkward bunch, struggling to hold the sheet taut.
The crowd below was getting rowdy: a raised fist, a woman shouting through cupped hands. As the first soldier heaved himself up onto the roof, the crowd surged forward, and Cleary was jostled to the back.
He turned to see more soldiers lining the gunwale, their weapons aimed out to sea or overhead, tracking unseen prey. Out on the water, white flashes: boats speeding past.
Then he was hemmed in, the crowd in motion, a blind surge of bodies; a woman was dragged under, then hauled upright like a sack of spuds – a fistful of shirt, flesh, any handhold. Sweat and trampling feet, the smell of a panicked mob. Cleary was swept along in the crush, fighting to stay afloat, as the soldiers herded everyone below decks.
BILLIE
About to disembark from the Nightingale, Billie spotted chaos across the water: boats circling the Steadfast, the upper deck swarming with people. A crack of gunshot. Then she and the ship doctors were hustled back into the depths of the hospital ship.
The incident commander strode past, radio crackling, staff hurrying after him.
‘Keep them out of sight,’ he ordered. ‘Media incident.’
Directed to a narrow bench in a windowless room, minders standing guard, they waited in silence. Owen stared at the floor, head in hands. With bad news to be broken, none of them were in a hurry to get back.
The first death at anchor: the man who’d looked so strong, but had succumbed so swiftly. The local medics clearly rattled, shaken to have lost a life, despite all their superior equipment. Their confidence taken down a notch.
These regular ward visits – brief trips to the hospital ship, conducted in the name of ‘social continuity’, as their overseers put it – were bringing unwelcome attention. Kellahan had voiced what Billie herself suspected: their role as go-betweens less a compassionate measure than a bid to quell disquiet, keep them implicated.
Ferried between the two vessels, Billie felt scrutiny from both sides. People approached her daily now, passengers and crew, even those who’d shunned her or been outright hostile during the trip. A few voiced gratitude or apologies; others left such things unsaid, but let their shame show through. Some acted as though they’d never spoken a bad word to her. She remembered every slight, but lacked the will to conjure it all back up. Fear cornered people, hit their panic buttons. You couldn’t take it personally.
They sidled up to her in passageways, seeking inside knowledge she wasn’t privy to: how long they’d all be kept here, when they’d be taken ashore, or sent home. You tell me, was the gist of her response. She was gentler with those seeking news of the patients. She’d tried to reassure Mia’s parents – faced down the father’s helpless anger, the mother’s raw distress. So much for family liaison. Owen had well and truly dropped that ball, left her and Kellahan to field the questions: is my husband out of danger? How is my wife’s mood? Can you pass my cousin a message?
And the bereaved: the spouses, siblings, children of those twelve dead. Families shattered, their loved ones rendered into the past tense. Broken by grief, many had retreated into private cabins deep below decks.
She didn’t know them all by sight. There was no helpful map of all the faces on the ship, how one related to another. At night she lay awake, recalling the features of a person racked by pain and fever, the names they’d called out near the end, weighing them against a person she’d passed that morning in a passageway, their own expression distorted by grief and shock; scanning their face, appraising skin tones, trying to pick the family resemblance.
This latest death: another blow. Another hole left in the world. This ragged collection of souls again reduced by one. How much more could people bear?
She took the sleepers Kellahan prescribed, but not the Calmex: mistrusted its balmy numbness. Half the nurses were now dosed up on the stuff, haunted by images that neither sunlight nor safety could quash. But so far she’d resisted, knowing that any moment she could turn a corner and encounter one of the bereaved, that empty Calmex grin plastered across her face. A face that had no business smiling – not given what she’d seen, and what they’d lost.
Owen lifted his head from his hands. His eyes were bloodshot, his skin blotchy.
‘I can’t do it,’ he said to Kellahan. ‘You’ll have to tell them.’
The doctor just nodded, his gaze fixed on the wall.
‘I never signed up for this,’ said Owen, defensive. ‘I’m not a grief counsellor.’
Kellahan did not respond, and Billie held her tongue. No point stating the obvious.
An hour later they were released and ushered into the transfer boat. Climbing the gangway, Billie braced herself for questions. But soldiers aside, the deck of the Steadfast was empty.
She found Cleary in the fore saloon, playing cards with Holly. Billie wove through the crowd, avoiding the anxious looks that followed her. The kid was her first priority.
A wail rose, and she turned to see a young woman drop to the floor, Kellahan kneeling to comfort her. The dead man’s girlfriend: felled by shock, her sobs now audible to everyone.
Head down, Billie made her way towards the boy.
‘All okay?’ she asked Holly.
‘He’s a card shark,’ said the nurse, but Cleary’s sights were set on Billie.
He snatched the note from her outstretched hand, bent over it as if trying to translate a foreign tongue. Scribbled in haste on the transfer boat, the message bore the lurch and wobble of the crossing: How is my sweet boy? Behaving yourself? Be patient, darling. I’m getting stronger every day.
‘No problems today?’ she asked Holly.
‘All fine,’ said the nurse. ‘Poor mouse. He should be with his mum.’
Billie bit back her irritation. ‘Nothing I can do about that. Thanks for watching him.’
Holly indicated the sobbing woman now being led from the room. ‘Another one?’
A curt nod: no death talk in front of the kid. He picked up more than he let on.
‘No word on …’ Holly trailed off, but it was clear what she meant.
‘No. We’re all in the dark.’ Billie touched Cleary’s shoulder, and he dragged his eyes from the note. Come on, she signed. Let’s go eat.
In the stairwell a familiar figure blocked their path. Cutler, wearing civvies, an incongruous sight. Brass had ditched their uniforms after a quiet word from their new masters, a reminder that they were no longer in charge.
So far Billie had managed to avoid the man, bar one brief conversation: she’d asked him whether the nurses would still get their pay. Yes, he’d said – they’d signed a legal contract, fulfilled their side of the pact. No word on when, however.
‘Galloway,’ said Cutler now, dour as ever. Her surname less a mark of comradeship than a reminder of rank. Former rank, the way she saw it.
‘Cutler,’ she shot back, giving his shorts and t-shirt the once-o
ver. No epaulettes now, but neat as a pin, as always. A small, mean-minded man who still carried himself as if he was in full regalia.
He stepped back to let a family troop past, waited until they were alone. ‘Government’s holding formal hearings next week. You’ll be summoned for questioning.’
‘Right,’ she said, a tendril of unease stirring. She drew Cleary close. The boy did not look up at the officer.
‘They’re trying to spring it on us, minimise the chance for any arse-covering. Collusion.’ Cutler snorted. ‘Not that colluding would do us any good.’
Us? They’d worked together passably, when forced, but that was the sticking point: brass had made it clear she had no choice.
‘The nurses too?’ she asked. Those with families had returned to their dorms, but the single women were still bunked together, as were the single men. United by their shared ordeal, their refusal to bear blame, the nurses had closed ranks.
‘Everyone,’ said Cutler. ‘Be prepared. Captain’s called a meeting for tomorrow night, all crew, to discuss what we’ll be up against. Let your lot know.’
‘We’re crew now?’ she asked, unable to help herself. ‘I thought us lot were scabs.’
He directed a baleful stare over his mask. ‘I never saw it like that. You were hired to save lives – and that’s what you did. My crew might not be geniuses, but they’ve grasped that much.’
Billie said nothing. Through the worst of the journey Cutler and his cronies had let the crew’s animosity go unchecked.
‘No-one’s laying out the welcome mat for us here,’ he warned. ‘We need to get our story straight.’
Your story, she thought. Ours is already straight: we did all we could.
‘Message received,’ she said, taking the boy’s hand, and together they set off for the dim confines of what now passed for home.
