‘I wasn’t here. I came back, and everyone was sick. Jacob gave me some ipecac tablets and told me everyone had to have one. Except I won’t give it to you; it’s too rough for someone your age. How do you feel, Mrs McNeal? Do you feel like you want to be sick?’
‘Not at all.’
‘You have to help me then. I have to get everyone into their beds. You can find bowls and buckets and towels and stuff.’
Kate held up a finger. ‘One moment.’ She located her slippers then went to find Holly. The door to Bub and Belle’s room was open and Kate could hear their voices, urgent and distressed, interrupted now and then by stifled moaning. Kate stopped dead. She turned back to Sam and asked where Holly was.
‘I haven’t seen her. Shall I check her room?’
Sam ran along the hallway ahead of Kate and threw open the door of Holly’s room. Theresa was sitting on the edge of Holly’s bed, sweaty, pale, her mouth open and a string of drool hanging from it. She was shaking Holly. Holly’s head flopped and rolled. Her mouth was blue. Sam hurried to the bed and pulled Theresa out of the way. She felt Holly’s pulse—in her wrist first, but that limb was silent in a way that Sam knew very well, working in an old people’s home. She touched Holly’s jugular and waited a count of twenty, during which she felt only two sluggish heartbeats.
Kate had come into the room—she called her daughter’s name, but didn’t approach the bed.
‘She has to tell me what she did,’ Theresa said. She sounded drunk. Then she lifted her legs onto the bed and lay down beside Holly. Her pupils were huge and black. ‘Oh shit!’ she said. ‘I feel like I did the time I passed out at my gym, when my blood pressure bottomed out. Where’s Jacob?’
‘He fainted.’ Sam told Theresa she didn’t know what to do. Then she asked whether she had thrown up.
‘Not yet. Too tired.’
‘Did Jacob give you ipecac?’
‘Yes.’ Theresa took Sam’s hand. ‘Do triage, Sam. That’s what Jacob would say. Leave anyone who is too sick. But make sure Oscar’s okay.’
Sam nodded and pulled away. She had to get moving. As she went past Kate the old woman said, ‘Is my daughter dead?’
Sam said no. She didn’t say ‘not yet’. ‘Mrs McNeal, could you go and get buckets and towels. I need your help.’ She hurried out into the corridor, paused to listen, then rushed into Bub and Belle’s room. She found them in the bathroom, sitting either side of the toilet bowl, wrapped in duvets. She asked whether they’d taken a tablet. She showed them the box.
‘I have, but Belle hasn’t,’ Bub said. ‘But we’ve both been vomiting. That’s what Jacob wanted, isn’t it?’
Sam helped Belle up and told Bub they’d be better off in bed. ‘Holly’s heart is going all funny,’ Sam said, ‘so I’m watching out for hearts.’ Then she promised to be back soon and hurried off again.
She ran from room to room, checking. Warren was in bed. He looked very ill—was starkly pale, and the curly ginger hair on his chest was thick with blue. Sam tried to rouse him to ask him if he’d had a tablet, but he just moaned and pushed her away. She left him; she was doing triage.
She met William and Dan on the stairs. William was half carrying Dan. Both were salivating so copiously that their shirt fronts were soaked and opaque.
‘I was going to get him into a shower, then bed,’ William said. His tone was businesslike, but his expression was almost kind. Sam came and took Dan’s other arm. She gazed at him and tears sprang into her eyes. ‘You have to lie down, William,’ she said. ‘Take off your dirty clothes. I’ll wash Dan. And do you mind if I put you two in bed together? It’s easier for me to check on everyone if you’re not all spread out.’
‘Sure,’ William said. They steered Dan into William’s room. William staggered clumsily to the bed and climbed under the covers. He said his feet and hands were numb.
Sam manhandled Dan into the shower, lifted the shower head off its hook, and aimed it at the wall till the water ran warm. She rinsed Dan and his remaining clothes, then dropped the shower head and propped him in a corner, holding him upright against the slippery tiles by leaning on him. She pulled his sodden shirt off over his head. His arms were as heavy as two sides of lamb. She left him in his Y-fronts, hauled him out of the shower, and wrapped him in a big bath sheet. That was when he fainted again. Sam went down under his weight, half in and half out of the bathroom. Sam heard William moan and climb out of bed, then he was lifting Dan off her. She got to her feet and together they dragged Dan to the bed. William fell onto it with Dan. Sam got Dan’s feet up onto the covers and helped William extract his arm out from under the truck driver’s bulk. William was gasping. ‘My—chest.’
Sam put her fingers flat on his neck and felt his pulse. It wasn’t the pulse of the sick man who’d exerted himself. It was far too slow. ‘It’s like you took too many blood pressure pills,’ Sam said. ‘I’ve seen that happen at Mary Whitaker. But there I could just go to the nurses for help.’
Kate came in with a bucket. She looked older than she had only minutes before. Her complexion was papery, and her usual upright, definite stride had become a kind of aimless stumping. She placed the bucket on William’s side of the bed and said to Sam, ‘Could you please check on Holly again?’ Then, coldly, ‘If you can bear to tear yourself away from William.’
William fumbled for Sam’s hand. His was slippery and icy. He said, ‘If I die—’
Kate said, ‘Heavens, here comes an apology.’ Then, ‘Mr Minute—people are dying. My daughter is, I think.’
‘Look at me, Sam,’ William said. He caught her gaze. ‘Don’t tell Kate about Holly.’
‘I already know my daughter is as good as gone,’ Kate said. ‘I’m trying to get Sam to help her.’
William squeezed Sam’s hand, he pulled her close and said, in a whisper, ‘You know what I mean. For Kate to be of any use she can’t know that Theresa suspects—’
‘I don’t know what you mean!’ Sam wailed. ‘I never do!’
‘Oh God!’ William cried, in despair. He practically threw Sam’s hand from him. ‘Why do you play this game? Why now?’
Sam clambered off the bed and ran out the door. Kate followed her, shrieking, demanding that Sam see to Holly at once, this minute.
Sam bounded downstairs and began to look for Oscar. She shouted his name till finally she heard a miserable croak from out on the terrace.
Oscar was lying on the wicker sofa—under its thin cotton-covered foam cushion. He had pulled the cushion over him for warmth. His face was mottled and tearstained. There was vomit on the tiles by the sofa. Sam felt Oscar’s forehead, and his pulse, and asked a few simple questions. His answers were mumbled and disoriented. She thought for a moment, then flipped the mattress off him and onto the floor, and rolled him off the sofa and onto the mattress. Then she gripped the mattress by one end and dragged it indoors, heaving him over the doorsill. She dragged him into the atrium and found the mohair throw he liked draped over his legs when he was playing games. She covered him, neck to ankle—the throw was too short to cover his feet.
In the manager’s office she found Jacob’s store of Lucozade. She decanted some into a glass and went back to Oscar, sat him up, and got him to drink. Most of the Lucozade went into him. She laid him back down and explained that she had to go—she had to rouse Jacob and tell him the symptoms. Oscar murmured something. ‘Wait, wait, wait,’ he said. His eyes were rolling. ‘Sam. The man in black,’ he managed.
Sam didn’t want to think about the man in black. She was afraid of him. The last time she’d come to she was in his arms, and they were both sitting on the floor of a room Sam had never seen before—a beautiful, rich, hushed room. Her head was lying against his shoulder and he was gazing at her face, and for a moment she saw him only as a shadow—a man, warm and strong, and she mistook him for William. She thought it was William’s warm breath on her face. But then she
saw the fire light shining on his smooth black cheek and she understood that it was him—the man Theresa and Bub and Dan and William (her William) had been hunting for days. The man tried to address her then, but she panicked, struggled out of his arms and crawled away. She tried a door—it opened—and he had followed her outside, trying to question her, or reason with her, and finally had caught her and quelled her, held her still. Then he tried to continue the talk he’d been having with the other Sam. He asked questions about whatever it was that had interrupted them, something that had made Sam’s these-days-thoughtful sister just up and go in the middle of a situation that was dangerous or uncertain. He talked using braiding, beautiful words (he talked like William). Sam didn’t understand him, but she understood his tone. He was getting things off his chest. He was sharing secrets. He was thankful, and his gratitude was like love. Sam was reluctant to open her mouth and spoil it for her sister. But in the end he stopped talking and turned her face into the light and looked at her properly, and his expression became horrified and heartbroken. And then he just let her go. She found her way out of the house and down the hill and ran till she was out of breath. Then it was as if her sister’s phantom caught up with her and slammed into her and knocked her away into the other place, where she stayed—knowing nothing, doing nothing—till she came out and found herself in the spa conference room, with everyone around her distressed, and vomiting.
So, when Oscar said ‘the man in black’, Sam just patted him on the shoulder and went back to the manager’s office. She collected a dozen bottles of Lucozade before hurrying back upstairs to report to Jacob.
Kate was standing in the corridor outside his room with her hands pressed over her face. Jacob was in the grip of a powerful simultaneous bout of vomiting and diarrhoea. The bout lasted for a further five minutes after Sam arrived. She sat by him, supporting him on the toilet and over the bucket Kate had dropped beside the bed. She kept saying, ‘You’ll be all right, Jacob.’ And, ‘I’ll clean up once you’re done.’
Though he was exhausted Jacob cooperated intelligently when she removed his clothes and gave him a quick wipe with the sheets, before rolling him onto his bare mattress. Only then did Sam spare a glance out the door. Kate had gone, and Sam hoped she hadn’t gone to Holly.
Sam soaked a towel in warm soapy water and wiped Jacob off more thoroughly. She fetched a fresh sheet and made the bed up under him. He’d thrown off the duvet when the bout took him, so it was clean. Sam put it back over him, and got him to sit up and sip some Lucozade. She took his pulse.
Jacob said, ‘How are you, darling?’
‘I need Kate to help me. But Holly is dead, I think. Her heartbeat was so slow, she must be dead now.’
Jacob asked about his own pulse.
‘It’s not like Holly’s, but it’s not good.’
Jacob closed his eyes and leaned back on the pillow.
‘When people are this sick their hearts go faster,’ Sam said. ‘I mean, when they’re throwing up.’
‘Yes, that’s usually the case. But this is a poison that slows hearts. In hospital they’d use intravenous atropine to treat it,’ Jacob said. Then, ‘I have to think. You go check everyone’s pulse again. Take my watch.’ He took it off his wrist and gave it to Sam. ‘It has a second hand. Write down the beats per minute. Can you do that? And Sam, tell me what else you notice. Look hard. Then come back as soon as you can.’ She was at the door when Jacob called out. ‘Wait! Can you find some way to contact the man in black? He’s another pair of hands. We need him.’
Sam said, ‘I’ll try, Jacob. But I’m frightened of him.’
‘Then get Kate to do it.’
Kate was with Bub and Belle. She had taken them Lucozade. Belle was sipping hers—Kate had found some straws. Bub was still, and limp, and pale. Sam took his pulse again. She had to wait a full minute because she couldn’t manage to calculate beats per minute—could only keep her eyes on the watch face and count. Her own heart was banging. It was very hard to concentrate. When she’d done she scrambled around the room, found a pen and an old envelope, and wrote, ‘Bub—45.’
She took Belle’s wrist, said, ‘Shhh,’ and stared at the watch face, counting, her head nodding not quite in time—she was urging Belle’s heart on.
‘How is it?’ Belle said.
Sam wrote: ‘Belle—51.’
Belle turned to Bub. ‘Is he sleeping?’
‘Yes,’ Sam lied. She looked at Kate and jerked her head towards the door. She wanted Kate to follow her into the hallway. There she asked Kate how they might call the man in black. ‘Jacob says we need another pair of hands.’
‘Jacob is right.’ Kate frowned, then said, briskly, ‘You go about your business and leave it to me. I’ll think of something.’
It was some time before Sam was able to get back to Jacob. She had to help Theresa back into bed after finding her in the shower. Theresa was too weak to get out and dry herself. Sam wrapped her in a bathrobe and draped a coat over her. Theresa’s pulse was, after her exertions, far too slow—the same as Belle’s had been when she was resting.
Sam was with Dan and William again when she heard the howl of feedback from outside, then Kate’s voice, vastly magnified: ‘Please help us. We have food poisoning. Only two of us are caring for all the rest. Please come and render assistance.’ Kate had worked out how to use the loud hailer in Theresa’s patrol car.
As it got dark, it was Kate, coming slowly after Sam, who thought to turn on the lights. Not that Kate strictly followed Sam. Periodically she would take a detour to Holly’s room—where Theresa was still suffering.
Theresa had removed herself from Holly’s bed and had got as far from that bed as the room permitted. She was lying pressed against the wardrobe doors wrapped in a coat. Kate would see to Theresa, wiping her face with a towel, which she then stuffed into the rubbish sack she was dragging around with her. Then she’d go to the bed and look at the still form of her daughter.
Kate had been afraid to touch Holly when she was dying, afraid she’d hurt her daughter, or hasten the process, or see or feel something intolerable to her. She couldn’t now understand how she’d been able to think any of that. What had she been thinking? That Sam could do better? Sam, who was only a caregiver, which was more or less what they called hospital porters, and who was on a par with all those peculiar modern notions about protecting people’s pride, so that there were no more clerks, only administrative assistants, and no more secretaries, only personal assistants, and people were ‘challenged’ rather than ‘handicapped’. So—Sam, a caregiver, and challenged—could deal with Holly in her extremity better than her own mother? Why, Kate thought, had she stepped back for Sam? Had her recent history taught her to be so helpless, or was it just that these last weeks she’d been exempt from all the horrible tasks? The rest of the survivors—except perhaps Oscar—understood in their nerves that they couldn’t step back and wait for someone better qualified to help. They’d learned to cross lines and take responsibility.
Thinking on this, while stroking her daughter’s cooling forehead, it struck Kate that she was exempt in another way. She’d felt under the weather—not ill, only drowsy—and on Holly’s and Jacob’s advice had gone to bed straight after Lily’s funeral. Holly had brought her some cereal to go with her usual little handful of medications for her heart and blood pressure and thyroid—but that was all she’d eaten, two juice-softened Weetbix. Kate stroked Holly’s hair, brooding about this, and when she was next downstairs, she visited the kitchen. It was clean. Oscar always cleaned up after every meal and, presumably, had after today’s lunch. There was only the big stew pot soaking in the sink, a slick of fat on the surface of its water, and bits of transparent onion partially blocking the plughole. There was nothing unusual.
Later, when Kate caught up with Sam, and they had a quiet moment, Kate asked the young woman what everyone had had to eat after the funeral.
‘You ate, didn’t you?’
Sam turned away. ‘I don’t remember.’
‘And I suppose you don’t recall who served either?’
Sam shook her head.
Jacob felt the cold, rough touch of a towel on his cheeks. He opened his eyes and discovered a piece of paper before his face. Light lanced around its edges. On the paper was a list of names, and series of numbers. Sam said, ‘Their heartbeats are all too slow. I don’t know what medicine to give them. Please wake up, Jacob, and tell me.’
Jacob tried to sit. He was helped. He told Kate to be careful of her back. Sam’s clumsy handwriting swam in front of his eyes. Jacob saw that she had made a note of the time too. ‘Good girl,’ he said to her.
‘There’s a name for it, isn’t there?’ Sam said. ‘For when your heart goes too slow.’
‘Bradycardia.’
Sam looked relieved, as if learning the term might help fix the problem. Her curls were damp and matted. She smelled of vomit and Dettol. ‘Your heart’s slow too,’ she said.
Jacob was having trouble thinking. Time seemed to stop with a little hitch then proceed again in a surge. ‘We need atropine,’ he said. There had been some in a weak solution—one of the Mary Whitaker residents had it to control excess salivation. But that wouldn’t do; it was too dilute. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘I’m not a pharmacist, but I know this.’
He had spent several evenings going over the collected medications—sorting those he was familiar with from the others—alternative and weaker versions of the drugs used in intensive care and emergency medicine. The sorting had been difficult. He had kept looking at bottles and packets and flipping through the pharmacist’s many manuals, trying to digest paragraphs of exhaustively informative small print. ‘I know I came across something that worked like atropine.’
Kate raised the pen and paper she had ready. She looked like someone preparing to catch a fly ball.
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