Kate showed him where the supplies of swabs and saline and the safe-disposal bins were; many bins were already full to overflowing. She then led him over to the first group of four beds in a line that stretched the length of the church. They were occupied by two young men, a middle-aged man with a salt-and-pepper beard and a man in his seventies. All of them were seriously ill and none was fully conscious, although one was restless and threw his head from side to side as if in the throes of a nightmare. Kate signalled that Steven should start by tending to the elderly man, which he did.
He worked his way along the line of patients, doing his best to make them as comfortable as possible but also finding himself, reluctantly, on a voyage of discovery. The cries of the sick, although muted to a certain extent by his helmet and visor, were still clearly audible and they echoed up to the roof beams and off the old stone walls. They competed with the laboured sound of his own breathing to provide a soundtrack of hell inside his plastic bubble.
He found himself feeling relief that most of the patients were either comatose or only semi-conscious, because he suspected that reassurance and comforting words might well be beyond him. He felt pity and compassion, but revulsion, too. This was a revelation, because it was a gut-wrenching revulsion that threatened to overwhelm him. He wanted to throw up and make a run for it.
Such feelings brought guilt into the equation. He’d always known that he was no Mother Teresa but this… this was something else. He switched to autopilot, which he reckoned was the only way he was going to get through the shift. He cleaned up the blood and the vomit, he changed urine- and faeces-soiled bedding and clothing, and all without allowing himself to think too much about it. A job needed doing so he was doing it, period.
Occasionally he sneaked a look at Kate and the other nurses, and felt that they were showing much more care and compassion. Caroline, who was as unused to this kind of work as he was, looked to be doing a thoroughly professional job. He was probably being every bit as gentle, but what was going on in his head worried him. He had an awful suspicion that the nurses weren’t thinking the things he was. He was simply operating as a robot that had been programmed to handle eggs without cracking them. He suspected that they felt true compassion.
Steven worked for five hours with only one break of twenty minutes before the night shift came on duty. He was the last to leave the area, as he was the only male worker on the shift and there were no separate showers. When it at last came to his turn, he lingered in the plastic shower cubicle for a long time, leaning on the front panel, head bowed as he sought comfort from the clean, warm water that tumbled over his skin. He fought to come to terms with all that he had seen and with all that he felt.
‘You did well,’ said Kate when he finally emerged on the clean side of the barrier. ‘You too, Caroline, but you’re getting to be an old hand round here.’
‘Thanks,’ said Caroline. She looked exhausted, having worked ten hours that day.
‘Well, I’m off home to see my old friends, G amp;T,’ said Kate with a smile as she slipped on her coat and gathered her belongings together. ‘Will I see you tomorrow, Caroline?’
‘I’ll be here.’
‘Nice meeting you, Steven. Thanks for your help.’
‘It was little enough,’ said Steven. ‘Nice meeting you, too.’ They shook hands and Kate left without a backward glance.
‘She’s nice,’ said Caroline.
Steven nodded.
An ambulance drew up outside with a new patient and Steven and Caroline stood to one side to allow the spacesuit-clad attendants to bring the stretcher inside. Caroline made sure the night nurses were aware of the new arrival before following Steven out into the cool night air. ‘Where are you going to eat?’ she asked.
‘I’ll get something at the hotel,’ said Steven. ‘I’m not really that hungry.’
‘I felt that way too after my first shift. You have to eat something. I could do us both an omelette. What d’you say?’
Steven nodded. ‘Sounds good,’ he said, but the truth was that he was more interested in the company than in food; he wasn’t ready to be alone with his thoughts. He followed Caroline’s car through the city streets to the terrace where she had a modern detached house on a newish housing estate. It backed on to the railway, a fact that made itself apparent when a commuter train passed by on an embankment some ten metres above street level.
‘My own train set,’ said Caroline as she fumbled for her keys. ‘Come on in.’
Steven stepped into a warm house where the central heating hummed comfortingly and the living room was quickly transformed into a cosy refuge from the outside world with the switching-on of lights and the closing of curtains. ‘Drink?’ Caroline asked.
‘Gin would be good,’ said Steven.
‘For me, too. Why don’t you fix the drinks and I’ll make a start in the kitchen,’ said Caroline. She pointed to the drinks cabinet and Steven got to work.
‘You live alone, then?’ said Steven when he took Caroline’s drink through to her.
‘I do now,’ replied Caroline. ‘Mark and I parted when he found out I couldn’t have children. We’ve been divorced two years now. He re-married last month. She’s an air stewardess.’
‘I’m sorry,’ replied Steven quietly, slightly taken aback at Caroline’s frankness and not knowing quite what to say.
Caroline took the matter out of his hands. She turned and said, ‘So what’s bugging you?’
He automatically went on the defensive. ‘Nothing,’ he replied evasively. ‘I guess I was just a bit shocked by what I saw down at the church.’
Caroline looked directly at him and said doubtingly, ‘A bit shocked? I was watching you. The man who came out of that church was different from the one who went in.’
Steven took a sip of his drink as a delaying tactic but found that he had no heart to continue sparring. ‘I suppose I found certain things out about myself that I didn’t like,’ he confessed.
‘Then I suggest you get them off your chest before they take up residence,’ she said. ‘That kind of a lodger can make your life a misery.’
He gave a wry smile. ‘I’ve managed to kid myself for years that the reason I never practised medicine as an ordinary doctor was because I needed more excitement in my life. I needed a physical challenge, travel, adventure, any old excuse. Today I found out that it was a lie. I’ve been fooling myself. I was running away from the truth.’
‘Which is?’
Steven found the words hard to come by. After a few moments he said, ‘I don’t think I like people enough to practise medicine the way it should be practised. I don’t think I have it in me to care enough.’
‘You were doing a good job down at St Jude’s; I saw you.’
‘But the feeling wasn’t there.’
‘Do you think the patients would have noticed if the “feeling”, as you call it, had been there?’
Steven shrugged and thought, before saying, ‘I suppose not in a practical sense. I guess most of them were out of it, anyway, but quite frankly I spent most of the time wanting to run out of that place and keep on going.’
‘But you didn’t. And that’s the important thing. You did exactly what the rest of us were doing.’
‘I got through it. That’s different.’
‘That’s what we were probably all doing,’ insisted Caroline.
‘The nurses seemed to take it in their stride.’
‘It’s their profession. They have a professional face.’
‘But so should I.’
‘No,’ countered Caroline. ‘You have a medical degree but you’re an investigator and let me tell you, if you manage to find out where this damned virus is coming from, you’ll have done more good than all the rest of us put together. Horses for courses.’
Steven was unconvinced. He shrugged and finished his drink.
‘Believe me, Steven Dunbar,’ said Caroline, ‘in my time I’ve come across a few cold-fish doctors who lacked any vestige of human concern for the sick, but you are not one of them. A little too self-critical, perhaps, but your heart’s in the right place.’
Steven smiled for the first time and took the empty glass she held out.
