Pestilence (25 page)

He was rudely awoken by the telephone and the crick in his neck, when he sat up, told him that he had been asleep for some time. The clock confirmed it; it was a quarter to midnight.

“James? It’s Jill; I’m still at the hospital.

It took Saracen a few seconds to clear his head and gather his thoughts. “What’s the problem?” he asked.

“Mary is very ill and Dr MacQuillan thinks it would be a good idea if I didn’t leave the hospital right now.”

Saracen was suddenly wide awake. “What’s MacQuillan doing there?” he asked in alarm. He was aware of Jill breathing quickly as if she was very upset. “What’s going on?” he asked. “Take a deep breath and tell me.”

“They think Mary has plague.”

Saracen felt his stomach go hollow. His mind started to race but he kept a tight rein on his tongue while he considered the implications. Mary Travers had been the nurse on Medic Alpha on the night it had brought in Myra Archer. She, like the others, had been given tetracycline cover. It seemed that all the drug had done was slow down the development of the disease. An outbreak among the other contacts could be imminent.

“James are you still there?”

“Sorry. You say that you are staying on at the hospital?”

“Dr MacQuillan thinks it would be a good idea if those of us who have been in contact with Mary stay here for the moment. They’re opening up Ward Twenty as an isolation unit and asking for volunteers to staff it. I thought that as I was here anyway…”

“You volunteered.” Saracen closed his eyes for a moment. “Take care,” he said softly.

“You too,” said Jill.

“Can I speak to MacQuillan before you hang up?” asked Saracen.

“Hang on.”

After a few seconds MacQuillan’s voice came on the line. “Dr Saracen?”

“Staff Rawlings told me about Nurse Travers,” said Saracen. “It looks as if the contacts are beginning to go down.”

“I wish I could disagree,” said MacQuillan.

“That means that there could be half a dozen or more people scattered over Skelmore about to develop plague. It’s like having incendiary bombs in a wood-pile.”

“Braithwaite’s people are bringing them in and isolating their families.”

“But will they be in time?”

“It’s touch and go. It could go either way that’s why I’ve requested a government order.”

“Government order?”

“From 6a.m. tomorrow morning nothing moves in or out of Skelmore.”

“Can the Police cope?”

“It will be a military affair,” replied MacQuillan. The town will be under martial law.”

“
Good God!” said Saracen. “That has an unpleasant ring.”

“There’s no other way.”

“Staff Rawlings said that ward twenty is being opened and staffed with volunteers.”

“And you are wondering about the volunteer angle?”

“Yes.”

“There’s a moral dilemma involved,” said MacQuillan. “We know that the patients admitted to twenty will almost certainly die but they have to be cared for. On the other hand there is some doubt about the efficacy of the vaccine offered to staff as protection. While that doubt persists I felt we had to make the job voluntary.”

“About protection for the staff…” Saracen began.

“I’ve placed an urgent request for respirator suits from the Ministry of Defence. They will be here by tomorrow morning. In the meantime we have isolated Nurse Travers in a plastic cocoon.”

“Is there anything I can do?” asked Saracen.

“Get some sleep while you can,” replied MacQuillan. “And if you’re a praying man now’s the time to do it.”

The sound of the National Anthem woke Saracen up. He got up from his chair rubbing his neck and turned the television set off before padding over to the window to look out at the rain. Something told him that he had just had all the sleep he was going to get.

The phone rang at two a.m.; it was Moss.

“Where are you?” asked Saracen.

“At home. The hospital just rang to say that four of the other Archer contacts have developed full blown plague.”

“Which ones?”

“The two ambulance men, the police constable who attended the incident and one of the porters.”

“How about their families?”

“The Public Health people are working at full stretch trying to reach them in time.”

“I don’t envy them.”

“Braithwaite is beginning to fray at the edges.”

“Have they established any link between the dead workman and the other three cases from the Maxton?” asked Saracen.

“The woman was having an affair with the dead man. Braithwaite isolated the man’s family but no one told him about the other woman. Just about everybody knew but no one liked to say. You know how it goes.”

“And the kids?”

“Two belonged to the woman; the other was a school friend who happened to be staying.”

“God, what a mess.”

“I believe ‘tangled web’ is the expression.”

“You’ve heard about the quarantine order?”

“From 6am. Yes.”

“Do you know when the public are being told?”

“In the morning when the road blocks are in place and it’s too late to decide on a snap visit to Auntie Mabel in Birmingham.”

“Makes sense.”

“The Police have had a meeting with the heads of local radio and television. It’s been decided to present the measure as a sensible precaution and a chance for Civil Defence bodies to have a major practice. Appeals will be made to British common sense etc.”

“It’s still hard to believe this is happening.” said Saracen.

Moss murmured his agreement.

Saracen lay back on the headboard with his hands behind his head and listened to the sound of the rain outside in the darkness. There was no way that he was going to be able to sleep. He swore softly and got out of bed.

Tremaine looked surprised when Saracen walked into A&E. He looked at his watch and saw that it was five am.

“Couldn’t sleep,” said Saracen.

“Things that bad?”

“And getting worse. How was the locum?”

“No problems. He’s just having a cup of tea.”

Saracen had asked about Malcolm Jamieson, one of two locum housemen appointed to compensate for the loss of Chenhui Tang and Nigel Garten.

“When does the other chap arrive?” asked Tremaine.

“Tomorrow, if they let him in,” replied Saracen. He told Tremaine about the Quarantine order on the town.

“Claire is going to love that,” said Tremaine. “She was planning to go to London for a few days.”

“Can’t be helped. I’ll just take a shower and then I’ll have a chat with Jamieson.”

Saracen showered in the locker room under the pitiful trickle that eventually emerged from the sprinkler head after a noisy journey through endless overhead piping. The room, like all the others in the General, was at least fifteen feet from floor to ceiling and tiled with tiles so crazed that they appeared brown. The ventilator fan had been broken for some months so, on days when it rained, the window glass acted as a condenser for the steam and water streamed down it.

Saracen watched the steam drift up past the metal light shade and hang in a pall round the electrics. “If Legionnaire’s disease doesn’t get you in this place the wiring probably will, he thought. He dressed and returned to A&E to speak to Jamieson.

Jamieson, a tall young man with ginger hair and a serious expression, got up when Saracen came into the Duty Room and seemed uneasy at having been caught drinking tea. Saracen put him at his ease and asked, “Have you had your vaccination?”

“Dr Tremaine gave me it last night,” replied the houseman.

“And you know why?”

Jamieson nodded and said that Tremaine had told him. “This is all a bit of a surprise,” he added.

“Wishing you hadn’t come here?” asked Saracen.

“I didn’t say that,” replied Jamieson.

“No you didn’t,” Saracen agreed. He told the houseman about the isolation order on the town.

“It’s that serious then?”

“It could be,” said Saracen, “That’s why I wanted to have a talk to you. Be on your guard at all times. Think plague. Every apparent drunk that you see pewk on the floor. Think first! Every apparent junkie with cramps and cold sweat. Think first! Things might not be what they seem. None of us are too familiar with the disease.

“I thought that plague could be easily cured these days,” said Jamieson.

“That’s what the books say but this isn’t the book, this is for real and there’s a problem.”

“What kind of a problem?”

“At the moment we can’t treat it.”

The houseman’s eyes opened wide. “Are you serious?” he asked.

“Very.”

Jamieson seemed to pale slightly. He covered his discomfort with an embarrassed grin. “Well, this really is something,” he said, flicking some imaginary dirt from the knees of his trousers.

“In practise we are going to set up a separate reception area for potential plague cases but the odd one could slip through under the guise of something else.”

“I’ll be on my guard,” said Jamieson.

Saracen covered A&E on his own until Prakesh Singh joined him at half past seven. There had only been one patient in the interim, a Gas Board worker who had fallen off his bicycle on the way to work and fractured his wrist. The man was leaving as Singh arrived. Saracen gave Singh the same warning as he had Jamieson and satisfied himself that the man had understood before leaving him in charge of admissions. He himself retired to his office to start making plans for the new reception area.

The immediate problem was to find a route between reception and ward twenty that avoided all contact with the rest of the hospital. His attention was drawn to a room beneath ward twenty itself that was currently being used as a store room for empty gas cylinders awaiting collection. According to the hospital plan there existed a staircase that led from the room up to the ward above. If access were restored then the location of the room would make it an ideal reception area for plague patients. Ambulances would be able to take their patients directly to it. Saracen decided that he would have to check with the hospital secretary whether or not the connecting staircase was wide enough to permit the passage of stretchers. He would do this at the next meeting of the emergency committee which was scheduled for eleven.

Saracen was surprised when he got to the Lecture Theatre. There were a great many people there that he had not seen before. Two of them were wearing army uniform; the others were introduced by Saithe as being heads of department in Skelmore’s administration.

“And now,” said Saithe, “I am going to hand you over to Lt Col Beasdale who, from six o’clock this morning, is technically in command of Skelmore.

The officer smiled and cleared his throat. “Let me begin by saying that this situation gives me no pleasure at all.” He smiled again as if to reinforce his statement but no one smiled back. Beasdale continued. “Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see an end to this business and the restoration of the town to the proper civil authorities. In the meantime however, my orders are clear and simple. No one is to enter or leave Skelmore without my say-so. Secondly I am charged with the maintenance of law and order.” Beasdale looked round at his audience but no one spoke. He continued, “In practise we would all hope that things would continue pretty much as normal. The civilian authorities will continue to operate as usual and my men will maintain a low profile. They will stay outside the town in fact except for transfer duties.”

Someone asked what transfer duties were.

“Essential goods coming in to Skelmore will be transferred to military vehicles outside the town and delivered by my men. Civilian delivery drivers will not be permitted to enter.”

“What happens if someone absolutely insists on leaving the town?” asked the County Hospital’s Senior Nursing Officer.

“My men would explain the position to them and politely turn them back,” said Beasdale.

“And if they still persisted?”

“They would not be allowed to leave.”

“Meaning?”

Beasdale rubbed his forehead in a nervous gesture of frustration and said, “We would be obliged to use as much force as was necessary to maintain the integrity of the cordon.”

“Thank you Colonel.” The woman sat down again with an air of self satisfaction that Saracen found hard to fathom for Beasdale did not seem to be an unreasonable character at all. If anything, he seemed to be rather embarrassed by the situation and was deliberately playing down his authority rather than flaunting it.

Beasdale continued. “This, of course, is not a routine military operation in that the problem is not one of civil unrest but of medical necessity. For that reason all of us concerned with administration of the town will be heavily reliant on medical advice, not just for situation reports but for forecasts as to how things might develop.”