Kalychenko asked, astonished.
'For you,' said the lieutenant. 'To help you get settled in your new home. A gift from the peoples of the Soviet Union. Now move along quickly, there are others behind you!'
Kalychenko counted over the notes, frowning. He followed Raia to where the passengers from bus number 828 were now ordered to assemble. The soldier from Pripyat was standing there at the closed bus door, a mug of tea in his hand. He looked more cheerful than before, and he nodded to Kalychenko. 'Now all of you listen,' he ordered. 'When you get back on the bus, be sensible. The ones in the last rows go first. Take the same seats you had before. Otherwise it will simply be a disorderly mess, and—'
Then he fell silent as an Army captain came up with a clipboard. 'Reboard now,' he ordered in a weary voice, punching at the door until it opened. 'Just a few more hours, Comrades, then you'll be in your new homes. Where?' He looked at the clipboard. 'This is bus number eight two eight? Well, you've got a trip still ahead of you. It's a place called Yuzhevin.'
Chapter 16
Radiation kills the cells of living things by spoiling the way the cells grow, and so it is the fastest-growing parts of the human body that suffer the most. The lining of the mouth and the digestive tract are quickly damaged, but it is the bone marrow that is most at risk. The marrow of the bones is where the blood's cells are manufactured, thousands at a time, to replace those that are always being lost in the body's normal wear and tear. When the bone marrow is damaged by radiation, blood counts drop. The blood loses its ability to fight off infection, to carry oxygen from the lungs, even to clot. It does not much matter whether the harmful radiation comes from nuclear war, from a natural source, or from something like Chernobyl. What matters is how much radiation is received.
There are many ways of measuring the damage caused by radiation, but the handiest unit is called the 'rad,' which is short for 'radiation absorbed dose.' (In technical terms, one rad is defined as that amount of ionizing radiation that deposits 100 ergs of energy in each gram of exposed biological tissue.) The number of rads tells the story. A person who has received no more than 150 rads is likely to recover completely. Around 300 rads his life is in balance, but blood transfusions, antibiotics, and the best of nursing care should pull him through.
Five hundred rads and over means that the bone
marrow is destroyed, and without bone marrow no one can live for long.
In the swaying, jolting ambulance en route to Hospital No. 18 in Kiev, Tamara Sheranchuk wished she had ironed fewer of her husband's shirts and taken more time to look at his books. Perhaps there would have been something in them about these 'rads' and 'roentgens.' She knew very well that such dose numbers were very important. The experts from Moscow's Hospital No. 6 had explained that to all of the Pripyat and Chernobyl doctors, in that quick, twenty-minute briefing that was all anyone had time for that weekend. Unfortunately, she didn't really know what they meant. Even more unfortunately, the casualties who came to her medicpoint didn't wear numbers. Some of them didn't wear much of anything at all. Before they got to the medics they went through radiometric screening. As often as not, the counters squealed the alarm as they sniffed the garments, and then their contaminated outer clothing was taken away from them and added to the heap of condemned goods. They were lucky if they got a smock or a bathrobe from the dwindling stores to cover their underwear. They were luckier still if it was only their clothes that made the detectors squeal.
And even the ones who had swallowed or inhaled radioactive material were not as frustrating as those who had merely been exposed to intense radiation. They were the hardest ones to diagnose. There wasn't any visible wound. They were weak, they felt nauseated, they vomited unpredictably; yes, very well, those were precisely the early symptoms of radiation sickness. They were also the symptoms of shock or overexertion or a hundred other things, even simple fatigue, and certainly every human being working to control the damage from the accident had every right to a great deal of fatigue. Including Tamara Sheranchuk herself.
So what Tamara had been doing, before she was ordered onto an ambulance to accompany four of the seriously wounded to Hospital Number 18 in Kiev, were the simple medical things she had always done for injured people: poultice and debride, sew and dress. It was not enough.
There wasn't really room for four patients in the ambulance, much less for Tamara herself and the stands that held the plasma and antibiotics that trickled into the bloodstream of two of the patients. There were not enough clamps for so many stands, and so, as the ambulance swayed, Tamara had to have one hand to steady a glucose drip and another to catch a stand of saline solution that was about to topple, and none at all to keep herself from bouncing about.
These particular patients had — at least, were thought to have had — only light doses of radiation, if any at all. Three of them were seriously burned. Unfortunately, only one of the three was unconscious. The other two could not help moaning and crying out as the ambulance lurched and Tamara fought to stay awake and steady the IV stands. There was a nasty smell in the ambulance, part vomit and part smoke and part what really smelled most of all like burned meat.
The fourth patient was a woman, with chest pains, perhaps the beginning of a heart attack. She was elderly and conscious; she lay there without speaking, watching Tamara as she tried to deal with the others. When Tamara sat back for a moment, brushing hair out of her eyes and wishing she dared close them for a moment, the woman spoke. 'I've seen you before,' she said, and when Tamara identified herself nodded. 'Yes, to be sure. Don't you remember me? I'm Paraska Kandyba. Deputy Director Smin's secretary.'
'Of course,' said Tamara, letting go of the saline stand to reach for her chart. 'Yes, and they've given you heparin and nitroglycerine. How are you feeling?'
'A headache. Nothing more now.'
'Yes, that is from the nitroglycerine. It is unpleasant, but it's better if I don't give you anything for it until you reach the hospital.'
'I don't want anything.' The woman added apologetically, 'I know it was very foolish of me to try to help out, at my age. But in such a terrible thing—'
Tamara saw that the secretary was weeping. Yes, certainly it had been very foolish; Paraska Kandyba had been near the plant all day, begging for the chance to get into the administration block to rescue her boss's papers, and what was the importance of that? But all Tamara said was, 'It was very brave of you.'
Paraska raised her head to stare at the doctor. 'Brave? But not sensible. And Deputy Director Smin is also not sensible! He is not a young man. And yet I saw him in and out of the plant, right with the firemen, until they sent him off to the hospital in Moscow. Oh, he didn't want to go, I can tell you!'
'No, of course not,' Tamara soothed, letting go of the chart to rescue the toppling saline stand again. 'Tell me, Paraska,' she ventured. 'Did you by any chance see my husband today?'
But Paraska Kandyba only shook her head and continued weeping. It was obvious that her tears and her concern were all for Deputy Director Simyon Smin.
When they reached Hospital No. 18 in the city of Kiev, Tamara Sheranchuk dragged herself out of the ambulance for the transfer of the patients. She wasn't needed. She stood aside while the hospital's own orderlies took over, efficiently unloading the patients and wheeling them into the receiving room. She was looking forward to the ride back. It would be nearly two hours! Two hours in which she could stretch out in the ambulance and sleep. She leaned against the door of the ambulance, dreaming of that wonderful two-hour trip, when she realized the driver had poked her and said, 'Look at them.'
Tamara blinked. 'Look at what?'
'Those people! Look, they are acting as if nothing had happened!'
It was true. She gazed around the streets of Kiev wonder-ingly. Here in Kiev, at least, it was, after all, a peaceful Sunday afternoon! People were strolling the wide streets, children were laughing as they played, a few early blossoms were on the chestnut trees, the bright posters were everywhere for the May Day celebration. How incredible, Tamara marveled, that all these people could be going about their normal lives, unaware of the hell that was raging less than a hundred and fifty kilometers away.
'They're lucky,' grumbled the ambulance driver, and Tamara shook her head.
