The staccato two-note fire alarm blares again. Ramola steps out of the bathroom, turns right, and almost knocks into Natalie. She has her bag slung over her right shoulder.
Natalie says, “We can’t just sit here in this room.”
“Yes, I know, but—”
“Tell the doctor they need to try something, something new. Anything. Give me the booster early, like now.”
“We can’t. The booster doesn’t work like that.”
“How do you know that? How does anyone know that? It’s a new fucking virus, so they should be trying or testing new treatments. We’re just sitting here and I don’t have the time. I don’t. And I don’t want to die. Don’t let me die. It’s not fucking fair, not fucking right . . .” Natalie turns away.
Ramola can’t tell her she isn’t going die. She can’t tell her everything will be okay. She doesn’t say anything. How could she possibly say anything? Ramola places a hand on Natalie’s back. The fire alarm squawks and the lights flash, their rhythms not synced but unyielding; it’s easy for one to imagine these broadcasted warnings continuing through the darkest of ages, ceasing only when there is no one around to heed them.
Natalie turns around. “Okay. We need to do the C-section now. Right now. Get one of the surgeons, anyone, I don’t care. Give me an orderly with a penknife. Get an operating room, lock it fucking down, and get it done.”
Dr. Awolesi says Ramola’s name repeatedly on the radio.
“Yes, yes. I’m here.”
“Open your door, please.”
Ramola opens the door. Dr. Awolesi rushes inside and says, “Change of plans, Natalie. We’re transporting you to Ames Medical Clinic. Oh, I see you’re already packed and ready to go.”
Natalie cocks her head and pulls at Ramola’s yellow sweatshirt, stretching it over her belly. It falls away when she lets go. “Why can’t we just do it here?”
“Both of our surgeons have been injured. The obstetrician has not arrived, and I don’t know her ETA. Most importantly, I cannot guarantee the procedure could be performed safely here at this time. You’ll be sent via ambulance. The Ames Clinic is less than twenty minutes away and they’ll know you’re coming. But you need to leave before this building is quarantined, which could happen at any moment, and that would mean no one will be allowed to leave until that order is lifted.” Dr. Awolesi speaks loudly to be heard over the alarm. Unlike earlier conversations, she gesticulates while talking, but instead of aiding in communicating and projecting calm confidence, her traitorous hands are held low, at her side, and palms-up, as though pleading. Her shoulders slump and shrug.
Natalie looks past Dr. Awolesi to Ramola, watching for her response.
Ramola hides her ungloved hands in her coat pockets, as though they might betray their thermometer ways. She says, “All right. We should move quickly then.” She walks past both women and retrieves her bag.
Natalie says, “I—I’m not feeling well. Should I take my temperature—”
Dr. Awolesi holds up stop hands (or are they surrender hands?) and says, “Stop. Natalie. I didn’t hear you say that . . . .” She pauses, looks down, defeated, and shakes her head.
Ramola instantly extrapolates from this shocking statement, questions avalanching within her head. Is the doctor implying Ames wouldn’t take Natalie if she were infected? Would the clinic break protocol (and federal quarantine law) for her emergency case? Is the clinic willing to risk exposing their patient population (presumably healthy mothers and babies) to a potentially infected Natalie and her child? Where do they go if the clinic refuses Natalie, high temperature or no high temperature? Are things so dire here that this is their best or only option?
Dr. Awolesi looks back up at Natalie and says, taking care to enunciate as though each word were a story: “You are well enough to get on that ambulance. Isn’t that right?”
Natalie says, “Yeah. Okay, I’m fine.” She doesn’t break eye contact with the doctor. Her expression is blank and, for Ramola, worryingly indecipherable.
“Good. We need to go now,” Dr. Awolesi says, and before Ramola asks any one of her questions, the doctor turns and walks out of the room, adding, “You can take your temperature on the ambulance if you feel you must.”
A security guard is waiting in the doorway to escort them. He is a young white man, about six feet tall. His patchy, thinning black hair is buzz-cut short. A respirator mask dangles from around his neck and he touches it with a gloved hand as though it were a talisman. He wears a blue vest, security written in bold yellow across the midsection. He is armed with a Taser, holstered at his hip.
Dr. Awolesi hurriedly introduces the guard as Stephen. He nods and flashes the variation on a smile where one’s lips disappear entirely. He motions for everyone to follow. Dr. Awolesi walks with him, stride for stride.
The hallway is not empty. Medical staffers duck in and out of rooms, buzzing from patient to patient. There are no signs of the struggle with two infected patients Ramola briefly witnessed. She wonders what happened to them and where they were taken, and she can’t help but imagine the woman with the rolled-white eyes, the one who in her stressed memory now looks like Natalie, is waiting behind any one of the doors they might pass. The alarm reverberates, echoing from one end of the hallway to the other, made more piercing by the distance traveled.
Refusing an offer to have her bag carried, Natalie trudges forward, following the doctor and guard. Ramola shuffles behind Natalie, sidestepping left and right in an attempt to see through and beyond the group; she is too short to see over them. Every other step, she throws a look over
