Natalie snorts a hard laugh. “Yeah, why not?”
Dr. Awolesi walks away from the front cab toward the rear.
“I’m not sitting back there all by myself,” Natalie says. “I’m sitting in the front with Ramola. She’ll need my help navigating.”
Dr. Awolesi, speaking for the first time without her air of authority, says she’d feel better having Natalie in the four-point harness in the back and, more sheepishly, something about regulations against patients being up front.
Natalie says, “Right. Well they can sue me later,” and goes to the open passenger door. The two doctors help Natalie step up into the cab. She settles into the chair and allows Dr. Awolesi to fasten her seat belt. Natalie stows her overnight bag on the floor between her feet.
After they shut the door Ramola asks, “Will I be allowed through checkpoints, roadblocks? I’m clearly not the intended driver.”
Dr. Awolesi assures her that the communications team has already sent alerts and will continue to spread the message throughout state and emergency networks.
They walk around the front of the ambulance. Ramola opens the heavy driver’s-side door, which creaks on its hinges, protesting her coming aboard. Part of her wants to say, I cannot do this. This is too much. “Well, I drove a moving van once,” Ramola says aloud, though she’s really talking to herself. She returns the handheld radio to the doctor.
Dr. Awolesi stares at the device and blinks, empty of expression. She says, “Ames Medical Clinic is on Depot Street, right near Five Corners. Do you know where that is?”
Natalie shouts, “Yes!”
Ramola says, “Yes, I do.”
Dr. Awolesi hands Ramola a small card. “My cell-phone number. Calls have been iffy, but texts have a better chance of going through should you need to contact me.” She says the last sentence like a question for which she doesn’t have a proper answer. “Good luck. Not that you’ll need it. I’m sure she’ll be fine but—keep an eye on her.”
Ramola says, “Thank you, Doctor, I will.” She climbs into the cab and stows her bag behind the seat, and mumbles, “While keeping the other eye on the road? Fucking hell.”
Natalie says, “You and your eye will do great. And use both for driving, please.” She now has her bag in her lap and is rooting through it.
“Do you need—”
Natalie doesn’t look up. “No. Nothing. Drive.”
The ambulance’s design more resembles a tall, skinny delivery van than a truck. Other than its dramatically spacious headroom and the center console with its radio and two rows of chunky black buttons or switches, the front’s interior is similar to a typical automobile. Ramola is sunken into the too-large bucket seat that was not designed with the Goldilocks principle in mind. She roughly slides the chair forward until the tops of her knees are almost brushing the steering wheel. Inserting the key, its hard plastic sleeve as thick as her hand, she starts the engine.
Ramola checks her side mirrors, shifts into drive, and rolls away from the curb.
Natalie lets her bag drop between her legs and down to the floor again. She holds her phone with both hands. She says, “I hope someone calls that obstetrician, tells her to go back home,” using her this-is-Nats-being-sarcastic voice, which, at first blush, isn’t perceptibly different from her regular, conversational tone. Instead of employing hammy, exaggerated inflection peppered with head tilts and eye rolls, Natalie holds eye contact, so direct as to make her target self-conscious, and drops into a slightly lower, more serious register, speaking with the hushed wisdom of an expert or authority. It took Ramola years and more than a handful of misunderstandings before she could consistently identify Natalie’s sarcasm. “She’ll be very put out, I imagine, when she shows up and I’m not here. Not to mention the money her police-escorted hospital jaunt will cost the state. What a terrible mess.”
Ramola won’t look at Natalie directly. She needs to concentrate on getting them out of the hospital lot, through downtown Norwood, and pointed in the direction of the clinic before she’ll dare to keep that other eye on Natalie. The questions about symptoms and the increasing possibility of infection will simply have to wait. If she could put those questions off forever, especially now that it’s just the two of them again, she would. Ramola nods as though agreeing with something she said to herself.
The ambulance floats through small but tight turns within the lot, swaying and dipping like a dinghy in choppy waters. Knowing it’s a paranoid thought, Ramola is convinced the ambulance’s high center of gravity is actively conspiring to tip.
Natalie says, “Remember where we parked. Hope we don’t get towed.”
Soldiers remove the white-and-orange-striped sawhorses blocking Central Street. Ramola pauses at the exit, offering a last chance for someone to give her instructions, tell her what to do, what to expect, how any of this is going to work out. A half block to her left, hemmed in by cement barriers, Washington Street boils with activity: police and military herd and direct people away from the hospital; people shout and they honk horns; they wander aimlessly between stopped and abandoned cars, unsure of where to go or what to do; they wave arms and fists but not in a threatening way, instead, it’s a someone-please-see-me-and-help-me plea; everyone’s face shows confusion mixed with terror and incredulity, and perhaps most frightening, an odd look of recognition/resignation, and it’s a look Ramola fears she’ll find on her own face if she stares into the rearview mirror.
Dragging the tail end of the ambulance fully out of the lot, Ramola turns right. Central Street is empty of traffic, the curbs lined by a blockade of military and emergency-response vehicles. Packs of soldiers cluster around individuals attempting to cut across the road and funnel the interlopers back onto Washington Street or Broadway.
A Jeep pulls out ahead of the ambulance, a single flashing red light perched on its roof, and leads them away from the hospital.
Natalie presses one of the console buttons, turning
