Natalie says, “Fuck this, come on, Rams,” and walks toward the tents.
Ramola is left openmouthed for a moment, holding her badge out toward the indifferent officer. She says, “Wanker,” and then sprints to catch up to Natalie.
They approach the edges of a ring of humanity, ten to twenty rows deep, expanding out from the tents. There are four of them, ten feet in height, each the approximate width of a two-car garage and at least thirty feet long. They are stacked, side by side. Ramola cannot see through the crowd or over the tents to the emergency entrance’s sliding glass doors. This morning Ramola gave a cursory read to the hospital’s seventy-four-page Emergency Response Plan thinking she would read and reread it more thoroughly later in the evening. The tents are where they’ve set up triage and where everyone will be screened prior to entering the hospital. Medical personnel and service ambassadors in white coats, gloves, hair caps, N95 respirators, and green scrubs (decidedly not Hazmat gear) carry clipboards and flit from person to person like hummingbirds, serving as pre-screeners. They could be informing patients waiting to be seen for issues not related to the viral outbreak that they are to use a different entrance or perhaps they are being turned away; it’s likely that non-epidemic-related services have been suspended.
The crowd grows and presses forward heedlessly. Arguments rage over who is first in the formless line. Everyone is shouting. Bullhorns and police radios crackle with static bursts and unintelligible commands. Off-campus, sirens cry and cars stuck on Broadway and Washington continue to blat their horns. As unnervingly apocalyptic as the desolate, empty lanes of I-95 were earlier, this scene confirms Ramola’s worst fears.
“Is everyone here sick?” Natalie asks.
“I don’t know.” Is it possible this number of locals have already been infected? As Ramola scans the crowd she does not see anyone presenting the most obvious and worst symptoms of rabies.
“What are we—”
Ramola grabs Natalie’s right hand. “We’re going in.”
Natalie’s eyes are wide, the skin around her eyes is swollen and so deeply red as to be almost purple. She looks beat-up. She looks sick. Natalie says, “Don’t lose me.”
“I won’t.”
Ramola has given up on approaching a police officer or security guard for help, and she does not want to waste precious time in chasing down one of the frazzled medical staff, all of whom have seemingly disappeared. She walks directly into the crowd, sternly projecting in her best schoolmarm voice, an impressive one both in tone and volume. It is a voice Natalie has only been exposed to once, back during their sophomore year when Ramola accepted a late-night bribe (free pizza) to excoriate, anonymously via the telephone, a too-noisy-for-finals-week room on the dormitory floor above theirs.
“Excuse us! Let us through, please. Doctor coming through. I’m here to help but we must be let through. Let us by. Doctor coming through. Thank you. Let us through, please . . .” Ramola steps between people if they aren’t paying attention. She taps arms and shoulders of others and if they turn to face her, she doesn’t break eye contact until after they step aside. She leverages the bags slung over her shoulders to force a wider opening for Natalie. Stink-eyes and annoyed looks from the crowd soften, some turning to fear, at the sight of clearly pregnant Natalie gamely trailing behind, wounded and wrapped arm held against her chest like a bird might hold a broken wing. There are murmurs and complaints but those come from behind, from people who are not directly in their path.
Navigating becomes more difficult the closer they get to the tents, and some people attempt to engage Ramola, detailing symptoms, pleading with her to examine a loved one. Ramola apologizes and tells them they will be helped soon, and she does so without lingering but not without twinges of guilt. She and Natalie continue to push their way through until they come up against another set of the waist-high, steel crowd barriers that cordon off the tents.
A young police officer, as tall as a folktale, stands over an entry gap between steel barriers. Instead of asking for permission or instruction, Ramola points at the officer, then points at her badge. She shouts, not to him but at him, “We’re coming through.” The officer shrinks under her glare and dutifully drags one end of a barrier back, opening a gap for their passage.
Pausing briefly beneath the wide arch of the tent’s entrance, Ramola looks at her watch. It’s 12:17 P.M. If one hour post-exposure is indeed how long it takes this virus to travel up the nervous system and pass through the brain barrier, they don’t have much time left.
Natalie is breathing heavily and looking back at the boiling pot of people behind them. “Are they going to be able to help everyone?”
Ramola says, “Yes,” although she doesn’t believe it.
They step into the tent’s spacious interior. The whir of heated air blowers drone; the air itself oscillates between warm and cold. A lane splitting the tent down the middle is being kept clear for passage and foot traffic. Eight white, square-shaped nylon curtains hang from ceiling beams and partition spaces along both side walls, creating ten patient triage/screening cubicles. Each space has an overhead lamp clipped to a wall joist, a small medical treatment table, and a rolling cart with two shelves loaded with assorted supplies. All the cubicles, as far as Ramola can see, appear to be occupied with patients. Ramola doesn’t recognize any of the medical staff in the tent, as she and her coworkers from the pediatric clinic aren’t supposed
