~ Tema ~

“Keep your breathers on whenever you’re with a patient.” Doctor Maynard had issued the instructions to all the staff on the day Olwen Kennady collapsed, and confirmed that whatever disease had stricken Caroline, it was contagious. Tema had been winding down her shift when it happened; she was on her way to take a shower when Barbara Flower called out to her from the main entrance. Olwen had fallen, suddenly, as she was arriving to work.

By the time they’d got her onto a bed, she’d developed deep welts all over her arms, ringers for the one on Caroline Ballard’s thigh. Olwen’s condition degenerated quickly. While Caroline was still clinging to her sensibilities a full fortnight after falling ill, and if anything seemed to be lightening up a little, Olwen was induced into a coma almost immediately. She’d have died then and there otherwise. The pockmarks spread, and with them a terrible fever. To calm the younger nurses, Tema had a curtain put up around Olwen’s bed, keeping her secluded. Only the senior staff were to treat her. Lily Day led the junior nurses in a series of hopeful songs, so they wouldn’t dwell on Olwen.

They’d been wearing gloves whenever they handled Caroline or her effects, thick single-use things which were summarily dumped deep into the trash when they were done with. It hadn’t been enough to keep Olwen from being sick, useless just like the rest of the precautions. So new orders had come along. It might be an airborne disease, Doctor Maynard had reasoned, and they were best off wearing masks if they entered the contaminated wards.

In theory that was what should have been happening from the start, but for one reason or another most of the staff didn’t like it. Both of the models that met the Unity’s standards had their disadvantages. The standard ones, the old-school cloth, were lightweight and relatively unintrusive, but it was difficult to talk with one on and they always left a bitter taste around the mouth when they were removed. In contrast, their ergonomic equivalent, a newer design specially made to allow communication by shaping itself to the wearer’s mouth, was heavy and clunky and somehow tasted even worse.

With Maynard’s directive, not wearing a mask was enough to get a person struck off. If the taste of the masks was unpleasant, the idea of being unemployed was worse. Dissent in this regard dried up almost immediately. The few quarters where laziness prevailed were silenced when Olwen Kennady passed away. It came on slowly over the course of one night. Tema hadn’t been there herself for much of it, but Doctor Staniforth relayed the key facts. One of the sores on her arm had burst and festered unnoticed until the infection made for the heart. Antibiotics had stayed the infection for a time, Staniforth said, but not long enough. By the time Tema arrived for her shift, Olwen was just clinging on to the last vestiges of life; she was gone before Tema was done in the shower. In the end even a ventilator couldn’t keep her breathing.

They held a brief memorial for her, in a little chapel off from the mortuary. There so grieving visitors could pray for their ailing loved ones, it had seen no use. The accoutrements, all the holy books and hassocks, were still taped into boxes stacked at the sides of the room, in front of the portraits of the Seventeen. It had the feel of a meeting with the Gods in a warehouse somewhere. Somebody lit some candles, and the junior nurses wept softly, and Olwen Kennady was consigned to the frigid confines of the mortuary’s cold storage.

By this time the sick numbered four. Caroline was declining again, though fighting valiantly. The nurses Brigstock and Huston had caught it on successive days, as had an unfortunate cook in the employ of the wealthy Fiouharts who had been receiving treatment for a severe burn. The poor woman would have been better off taking some salve and bearing the pain at home.

That had been a week ago. The cook was dead too. She’d been lapsing in and out of consciousness for three days, begging with every waking moment to be allowed to die, before she got her wish. Nobody had been in to visit her, which made Tema sad. A day after she’d died, the Lady Fiouhart came by to ask when her cook would be returning. Told that the cook was unlikely ever to return, on account of her being dead, the Lady Fiouhart wrinkled her nose and muttered something about the cost of hiring somebody new.

In place of the cook, a soldier recovering from a gunshot wound had contracted the same sickness. The lad had been brought in the same day as Caroline, and by now he’d have been released. But ill fortune had given him an infected wound. The quick actions of Doctor Fleming had staved off sepsis, but set back the soldier’s recovery by a few days. Those few days had been enough for him to become sick.

Tema had tasked Delphine Janley with transferring the soldier to Caroline’s ward. It was better to keep this disease contained to as small a space as possible, so that the rest of the hospital could run smoothly. If things carried on, the time might come for Tema to split the workforce. She’d need half of the staff to commit their full focus to fighting this disease, putting themselves in harm’s way without respite, and finding enough volunteers would be a bitch, but it was better than risking everybody. For now, things proceeded as normal. She left Viola Watling to disinfect the bed that the soldier had been housed in, and made her way to her office. The soldier’s commanding officer, one Lieutenant Sharp, would want to know that his man wouldn’t be returning to duty for a little while. Tema scribbled a letter of courtesy for Lieutenant Sharp.

As she was finishing, she heard approaching footsteps.

“Miss Tema.” That could only be Janna Davis calling. What was the matter now? Janna meant well, but she’d grown increasingly flustered as the days were passing by. Tema often had to step in to fix what Janna had done wrong. It didn’t help that she was staying past the end of her shift every day. The very idea of leaving others to do the work seemed anathema to her.

Tema turned.  As expected, Janna was there.

“Oh, Miss Tema, you need to come at once.” Janna’s lip was quivering. She raised a finger to hold it in place.

This feels bad.

She followed Janna through empty corridors, until they came to what had come to be known as the Lily Ward, the room where Caroline Ballard and all the others had been kept, where Lily Day had died. A hand-drawn sign on the door reminded ‘all staff’ to put their masks on, and included a lovely illustration of what strongly resembled a man giving cunnilingus to a midget squid.

Tema’s mask had been dangling around her neck. She fixed it in place as she entered the room. Two nurses—at a guess, Delphine and Colin, though she could only see their backs—were crouched over a woman with a stained dress lying still on the floor.

Emmeline.

There was no mistaking Doctor Maynard. The stain was the result of her using the wrong sort of chemical to try and clean off some spilled coffee; Emmeline Maynard wore it proudly, to show that anybody can make a silly mistake. It was a lesson better suited to the classrooms of first year students at Raconesta, but the time for debating its applicability here was not now. Now was the time to take charge.

She sprang into action on autopilot, parting the two nurses with a single word. “Get a bed made up,” she said, pointing at Colin. He trotted off dutifully to find one while she turned to scream at Delphine. “Morphine.” And then at Janna, who had hung back and was lingering in the doorway. “I want an ECG. Get the monitor hooked up.”

“What’s going on?” Caroline Ballard spoke suddenly in a parched whisper, like a ghost in her bed. Tema looked at her, but she didn’t seem to see. Her eyes were glazed over. “Tessa... Tessa, I’m drowning.”

Delphine had stopped to watch. Tema snapped her fingers. “Get moving, Doctor Maynard needs morphine.”

With Delphine gone, Maynard was alone on the floor. She was a piteous sight. Her eyes, barely open, were brimming with tears and mucus. Her breathing was shallow, rattled. The skin had jaundiced. She wasn’t long for this world. With the right treatment, perhaps they could hold on to her for some time—weeks at most, in all probability, though there was no point trying to take an accurate guess before she’d been stabilised. Without treatment, she might not even last the day.

Not so smug now, Tema thought. Emmeline Maynard was Mother and Father, Lightness Gilkes from the church, the Unity correspondent who always showed up at her front door asking loudly for ‘Mister Caerlin’. She was Harry Baldwin, pinning Tema down on the floor with a pair of pliers at her groin, threatening to pull her penis off if she hated it that much. Emmeline Maynard’s crimes were bureaucratic, but they carried the same evil spirit.

It would almost be sweet to see her die. It wouldn’t be difficult to arrange, either. Tema was in charge. If she sent the wrong orderlies to do the wrong jobs, Maynard might just pass away. Catharsis.

But no. That wasn’t what she’d signed up to do. So what if Emmeline Maynard was a bitch? She was still human.

Tema crouched down beside her and wiped a line of drool away with her little finger. Half-shut eyes followed her from an unmoving head. Eyes in pain. “It’s okay,” she said, softly-softly. “The pain will stop soon. I’m here to help you.”

Maynard groaned weakly.

Why was she in such a bad way? None of the others had gone down quite this quickly. Few had even reached this stage after a few weeks of treatment. Could the disease be evolving, the quicker to banish its hosts to the demesne of the dead? She reached for her face, searching for the feel of her mask, just to check that it was still on. It was.

A cough. Emmeline Maynard was riven with bile, which she brought up in a sour dribble that ran over cracked lips. “Tema.” Her voice was so faint, so hoarse, that Tema wasn’t sure she’d heard anything.

“Here.” She grabbed a flask of water from the table beside Caroline’s bed, and upturned it into Emmeline’s mouth. The prostrate doctor choked and gagged, and finally swallowed. Red splotches covered her throat.

She grabbed Tema’s dress by the hem. Tema nearly toppled straight onto her, but managed to just about maintain her balance. Emmeline didn’t let go. For someone so feeble to look at, there was a considerable grip in her fingers. “I don’t want to die,” she said, speaking a little stronger now. “Don’t let me die.”

“You aren’t going to die,” said Tema. She didn’t believe a word she was saying, but it would be worse to tell the truth. Did Emmeline know? Could she see the hopelessness behind Tema’s eyes? After all, she’d been doing it for years, making the same comforting promises to moribund inpatients. She knew the words.

Emmeline coughed again. She hacked up more bile, and with it clots of mulberry blood, everything merging together on the lilac canvas that was Tema’s skirt. “Doctor Staniforth...”

Staniforth couldn’t help more than Tema could. Why was Emmeline calling for him?

Emmeline exhaled slowly, a crackled sigh. Her eyes drooped shut. Where’s the bed? The morphine? What’s taking them so long? She stood by Emmeline’s side until the woman was unconscious and, at last, on a bed.

It was in a haze of her own broiling thoughts that Tema set off walking from the hospital, looking a hot mess with sticking-up hair and red marks on her face from a mask. She hadn’t even taken the time to put on her coat. She was somewhat aware of the biting cold of the evening’s air, but she didn’t let it bother her. All through the town she ran, her destination Government Hall.

Did she have the right to leave the hospital?

She was the senior doctor. Two doctors were out for the count. It was irresponsible, in a way, to just leave. What if the situation materially changed while she was gone? Only Staniforth remained in the hospital premises and conscious, and he was likely locked away in his office. The nurses would have to handle things.

The nurses aren’t idiots. Half of them will be doctors themselves, one day.

Tema had spent four years on placements, working as a nurse herself. The only difference between Tema the nurse and Tema the doctor was a piece of paper, confirming that she’d achieved the requisite qualifications. She was still the same person. The hospital was furnished with great nurses at all levels. If there was something they couldn’t handle, her being there or not was unlikely to make a difference.

And on top of that, the situation wasn’t going to be tenable forever. Things were escalating, and at a rate that was beginning to alarm her, but right now she could still barely afford to take her leave for a few minutes. Wait a day or two and it might be too late. If she became overwhelmed, everything could very quickly spiral. The disease might break free of the hospital, into the valley. That would be calamity.

But people are still going to need a hospital. What will they do if the hospital’s locked down? Where will they go?

Sometimes there were no easy answers. Sure, accidents won’t ever stop. Even with the best will in the world, someone somewhere will find a way to break an arm or tear a tendon. Those people needed a hospital, really. But how long could they keep the disease confined to a single ward? Tema wasn’t sure how it was spreading. For all she knew, it was already all over the hospital, just waiting for new hosts to come too close. Keeping the hospital open for everyday purposes was running the risk of letting the disease into the valley.

And if it got into the valley, there’d be nowhere else to run. Most of Essegena would get sick, before there was time to stop it. They might even die. For all Tema knew, the disease could be unique in its lethality.

There was always Peseltane. It wasn’t the nicest place to be, but it had basic medical facility. It would do for a stopgap. If nothing else, it was better than a horrible death at the hands of an unknown sickness. Because those were the options. And Barbara Flower still had a key for Peseltane, from her short time there. Barbara wasn’t on duty tonight. She’d be spared.

Suddenly, she saw Government Hall looming into view, its pargeted walls towering over the plaza. The time for doubting was done. The decision had to be made. She was here now. She took a deep breath, and headed up the steps towards the entrance.

At once, a soldier with a black band around his kepi stepped forward to block her path. “The Council are meeting,” he said. “Nobody’s to be allowed in.”

She gave him a withering look. “It’s an emergency.”

The soldier laughed. “Sure it is. Look, if you go somewhere out of the way to wait you might catch a glimpse of the Governor when the meeting’s over. If you keep bothering me, maybe I’ll arrest you instead.”

“I need to go inside,” said Tema. “Every minute you keep me waiting is another minute that everybody’s in danger.” Truth be told, it was unlikely to be so serious yet that she was clawing for every minute. But it didn’t hurt to ramp up the drama.

The soldier looked side-eye at her. “Nobody’s going to buy your funny herbs, and I don’t care what fancy stories you try to tell. Now clear off. Flog your madness elsewhere.”

“I’m the Chief Doctor,” Tema shouted, only half a lie. “I have a right to sit at the Council’s meetings. Let me pass.”

The soldier scowled at her. “Why didn’t you bloody say, you dull wench?” But he stood aside, leaden-footed, and opened the door for her. She didn’t bother thanking him.

Nobody on the Council seemed to notice her at first. They talked of tax rates, and stuff she didn’t really understand, while she stood in the corner of the room looking like she’d just escaped from ground zero. In a way, she had.

In the end, it was the Governor’s deputy who spotted her first. Ian Fitzhenry was midway through replying to something one of the others had said when he stopped in the midst of a sentence. “It appears we have a visitor,” he said, pointing at Tema. All of the others turned to her then.

“Can we help you?” said the pompous General Bradshaw.

“I—” She hadn’t bargained on it being quite this difficult to say what had to be said. When it came to it, the words caught in her throat. Who was she to make this decision, after all? Here she stood in the presence of these men, experts, chosen specifically to make the tough decisions. And she was but an upstart—technically the Chief Doctor, but only through happenstance, only because Caroline had taken a shine to her. She was anything but qualified to tell these people what was going to happen.

General Bradshaw’s brow furrowed. “Well?”

“Are you alright, Tema?” Oliver Wrack was looking at her with some concern.

“You may take a seat, if you wish,” said an oily-haired man at the head of the table. “Though in future you should try to arrive in advance of the meeting, rather than halfway through it.”

“I’m not here for the meeting.” Her head was ringing. It was the sudden pressure of all these eyes on her. “I need to speak to the Governor.”

The Governor offered a thin smile. “Speak away, then.”

“In private.”

General Bradshaw was shaking his head. “The Council is in session. You don’t get to pull the Governor aside and whisper in his ear, not until the meeting is over. If you have something needs saying, it can be said in front of all of us.”

For a moment she felt like backing away, running back to the hospital and muddling through for a little longer, and hoping the Governor wasn’t long in coming to visit his wife again. It was a decision borne of fear, but it was better than making a fool out of herself in front of the Council. Then she caught sight of Edward Ruddingshaw out of the corner of her eye. He was clutching the tip of his spindly cane as he sat, running gnarled fingers over the bumps. His words came running back to her. It’s human nature to fear. You have to put that fear aside to be great. It was easier said than done, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t be done.

“Things are bad at the hospital,” she said. She wasn’t sure who she should be aiming for as she spoke, so she focused on a little knot in the wood on the far wall. “Doctor Ballard’s sickness is spreading to the rest of the staff,” she told that knot, “and we’re finding it hard to contain.”

“A bit of sickness shouldn’t cause any worry,” said one of the men around the council. “Ply them with antibiotics and wait.”

“Medicine’s more complicated than that, Master Mannion,” General Bradshaw barked.

“Then what?” Master Mannion looked directly at Tema as he asked the question.

Whatever you do, people will judge you for it. Do the right thing, and do it for you.

“I’ve made the decision to put the hospital into lockdown,” she said, remaining razor-focused on that knot. She heard various noises of discontent from the Council. It was all she could do to ignore them. She had to carry on speaking. “As acting Chief Doctor, the hospital’s my responsibility. I can’t in all good conscience let things continue as normal. As soon as I’m done here, I’ll be returning to the hospital, and I’ll be locking the doors behind me.” She breathed in one last time, then opened her ears to the reactions of the Council.

Unsurprisingly, they weren’t best pleased. “You can’t do that,” thundered one thick-necked fellow. “How will people get medicine?”

“There’s a satellite clinic in the town,” said Tema. “Two score staff will be outside the hospital for the duration of the lockdown, and able to do whatever’s necessary.”

“All of the outer forts are equipped with basic medical supplies too,” added General Bradshaw. “Plateau Watch excepted, they’ve small-scale hospitals of their own. I see no reason why they can’t be adapted for the civilian population too, should the need arise. The Governor need only give the word.”

“How long will this lockdown last, Doctor Caerlin?” Ian Fitzhenry spoke with a friendly lilt.

Hopefully not too long. “I really couldn’t say. It could be days, it could be months.” It could be forever. “As long as it takes to get it under control—assuming that happens. Worst case scenario, it spreads to everybody in the hospital.” Tema swallowed. She hadn’t said it out loud before. “If that happens, the disease should burn itself out before it has a chance to get to the outside world.”

“So might it be on your person right now?” As soon as General Bradshaw asked the question, every chair scooted a few feet away from her.

She shrugged. “It’s possible.”

“Then what if we get infected? If you’ve passed this disease on to the entire leadership...”

“If you feel sick, isolate yourself. Don’t leave your house until you’re back to normal. I wish there was a pill to give you, just in case, but if it was as easy as all that we wouldn’t be having this conversation now.” She dabbed away at a tear forming for Caroline. “General, it would be a great help if you could spare some soldiers to stand guard outside the hospital doors. Half a dozen at a time, just to make sure the lockdown’s obeyed. It’s easy enough for someone to override the door locks, if they’re determined to do so.”

General Bradshaw nodded. “You’ll have the soldiers you need.”

“What about Caroline?” asked Ian Fitzhenry. “Is she alright?”

Tema turned to him. “She’s not in a good way, but she’s stable,” she said. “That’s probably the best we can hope for until we know what this disease actually is.”

Master Fitzhenry took that information in, stroking the stubbly beard he had growing in.

“This can’t have been a decision taken lightly,” said the Governor, rising. “And to come here for the first time and announce it as fact? I have to respect your conviction, even if I don’t think it’s the right call. Caroline has always had nothing but good things to say about you, Doctor Caerlin. For her sake, I’ll trust your judgement. I will endorse the lockdown.”

“You won’t find any dissent here,” said General Bradshaw. “I’ll defer to the wisdom of the expert.”

The others said words to the same effect, and as Tema turned to go she saw Master Ruddingshaw beaming at her. Despite the situation, she couldn’t help but grin a little to herself.

She left buoyed by the support of the Council, but worried too by the prospect of the coming weeks. Twilight was thick in the air by the time she departed Government Hall. Distantly she could see the sun’s spectre disappearing over the horizon. It made her strangely sad. There was a finality to this sunset, like she might not see the glory of the sun again. Her last trip to Fréreves’ grove flickered back to the forefront of her mind. It had been a terrifying one. The birds and the sunlight had been replaced by ink-black shades, which lurked behind the treeline and watched silently. She’d forgotten that dream the moment she woke up, sweating, in the night.

She wished it hadn’t come back to her memory now. The final words Fréreves spoke to her crept up on her with an eerie feel of foreboding. <You see the woman running from the wind, sealing herself away in her little prison? She’s scared. She won’t emerge into fresh air.>

And as Tema breathed the last breath of air before she stepped aboard the Eia, those words fell into sharp focus. She could think of worse places to die, though, than the hospital. All her friends would be there with her. Viola Watling and Janna Davis and all the other young nurses, still in the summer of their youths. They’d be with her to die together.

No. That’s not going to happen, and it’s monstrous even to think about.

Tema entered the hospital. Betsy Clanackan was sat at the front desk, and Tema smiled at her. Then, with trembling hand, she pressed a button on the wall, and the thick shutter doors of the hospital slid down behind her. There was no walking back the decision now. She just hoped that it wouldn’t be too long she’d see those shutters rising once more.