The Nuclear Catastrophe (a fiction novel of survival)

by Billig, Barbara C. Griffin

  “I thought we’d hashed this out long ago, Paula. How is it that we’re fighting over your folks again?”

  “I don’t know, Frank. It’s just that sometimes you trigger the worst in me.” And she returned the favor, always.

  “We were doing fine when we were so far away from your parents that we never saw them. Now, all of a sudden, we’re taking their hand-outs and I’m feeling like pure hell. Damn, Paula, people back in Los Angeles are dying from some foul crap in the air, and here we are bitching at each other. My God, we ought to feel lucky just to have gotten out of that mess. What’s wrong with us, anyway?”

  She gazed out the window for a long moment, then answered, “I tried with you, Frank. I agreed to let you have your own way, while I sat in that stinking subdivision swapping lurid tales with Flo. Well, that’s behind us now. This explosion at White Water has forced me to face the facts.”

  “You can’t blame the radiation crisis for forcing us into this, Paula. You’re well aware that you never had reconciled yourself to San Mirado—or me either, I guess. You were always searching for something better,” he said testily.

  “Yeah? What kind of searching did I do, Frank?” she asked as she faced him.

  “Flo’s husband probably knows more about that than I do.” His answer was sullen.

  She’d have slapped him, but sitting under the steering wheel made the movement impossible. Lowering her voice in a sinister warning, she replied, “That’s a filthy accusation that could only have been made by a son-of-a-bitch, Frank Waring.”

  “Do you deny it?”

  “Certainly I do,” she snapped. “Although I can’t see why I should bother.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about the baby, Paula? I have a right to know since I’m the father,” said Frank. “I am the father, aren’t I?”

  “I could kill you for that,” she said venomously.

  He disregarded her threat and asked, “Why did you confide in your father but not me? My God, I’m your husband.”

  A tired, bored sigh escaped her lips. “Because I wasn’t ready to tell you. And that’s just as well, I guess,” she answered. “I went in to check with an obstetrician this morning. He thinks the pregnancy should be aborted.”

  “Aborted?” Frank asked in stunned disbelief. “That’s murder! No, there’ll be no abortion on a child of mine!”

  “It’s not even a child, yet, Frank. It’s a tiny glob of cells about the size of my thumbnail,” she said quietly.

  “Glob, hell! It’s human life! What does that butcher give as his reason for ordering an abortion?”

  “Dr. Hellman says there’s a good chance that the baby, even if I carried it to full term, could be horribly deformed because of my exposure to the radiation.”

  “Well, I won’t stand for it. It’s a sin and a criminal offense. No,” he shook his head emphatically, “I won’t stand for it!”

  “It’s neither a sin nor a crime to terminate a pregnancy on an embryo that might never live.”

  “You can’t be sure that it’ll be deformed. It could be a perfectly healthy baby.”

  “Dr. Hellman will know. He expects hideous abnormalities in children of mothers who were exposed in the first three months of pregnancy,” she said. “He thinks the risk is too great for the child.”

  Slowly the realization began to sink in. “How far along are you?” he asked.

  “Over two,” she replied.

  He obstinately shook his head. “No, Paula. I’ll never agree to it. Not ever, not on a child of mine.”

  Paula answered flatly. “I’m not sure you’ll have any choice in the matter.” The days of his importance were rapidly passing.

  “Oh yes I will. A wife can’t even be touched by a surgeon without her husband’s approval.”

  “And you’d withhold it, I suppose, and bring a helpless, marked child into this world?”

  “Yes, I would,” he stated. “I sure as hell would.”

  “Huh, that’s precisely what I told Dad you’d say. Maybe he was right about you all these years, Frank, and I was the one who was wrong.”

  “Answer me one other question, Paula. The other night when we talked about returning to San Mirado after this was over, you said you wanted a new house—one of the de Lorenzo places. Why did you change your mind so quickly, to not even considering going back?”

  She pondered his question. “It’s difficult to explain. In a way, I believe it’s what you feel when you refuse to work with Daddy, Frank. You realize how much I want you to join the business, but it’s more important that you live your life your own way, without being under the dictates of my father.”

  “Well, I’m surprised that you understand,” he said.

  “For me, the situation is similar. It’s not that I don’t love you, for I do... .but I want something more, something gratifying to me, personally.”

  “And you think you’ve been walking in my shadow, is that it? You need to be more than just a housewife?”

  “Oh, I like being a wife, but can’t I also be other things? Someday Daddy’s estate will be ours... .if you want a part of it. Then, I’d like to be able to have an active role in the business, make some decisions. Use my brain. Is that such a crime?” she asked.

  “But look where we are, Paula! You want this and I want something a hundred and eighty degrees opposite it. Obviously we can’t both be satisfied,” he argued, “when we’re so far apart. So one of us has to give in.”

  “Compromise, Frank, not give in,” she said.

  “No! Either you or I will have to forfeit, Paula.”

  “That’s a strange word—forfeit. It means one of us has to be penalized. Is that it, Frank? Will one of us have to be penalized in order that our relationship can survive?”

  Dejectedly, he asked, “Put like that it doesn’t sound very pleasant, does it?”

  She sadly shook the hair from her face. “No....it doesn’t.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  There are certain background noises that are taken for granted; the whir of tires against warm concrete, the low buzz of human activities intermingling with bits of conversation, a door softly clicking shut. At Beckman General Hospital, staff and patients alike were cognizant of the abrupt cessation of the motors and the purring of ventilation systems. Death of the electric buttons connecting the nurse’s stations with various departments and rooms was observed with the sudden loss of all the hospital’s lights. For minutes, talk stopped as each person evaluated the unusual quiet.

  It hadn’t been unexpected. The hospital’s stand-by power system could continue only so long as the fuel held out. The staff knew they worked on borrowed time. Once the auxiliary system was switched on, the personnel had been diligent in cutting power usage as low as possible, and they had fervently hoped that public power would be reinstated before the emergency system used all its fuel. Now there was simply no more oil to burn. Time had run out.

  In the isolation unit, Dr. Parsons was suturing a twelve-inch gash extending from the upper chest to the right ear of his patient. The cut had been clean, having occurred as the boy, a radiation victim, fell through a window in the rear of a neighboring house. The type of accident seen in the past couple days had distinctly differed from those normally admitted. No longer were people driving their cars into each other; they were spending more time breaking and entering.

  “What the hell!” Parsons yelled as the lights went out.

  “That’s it! The generators are dead!” said Max through the darkness.

  “Goddamit, I can’t see a damned thing! Somebody get me some light!” Parsons felt the last four inches of gaping wound under his fingers. “Some light, damn it! Sharon, isn’t there something around? A flashlight?” he bellowed.

  “We didn’t get flashlights in our inventory, Doctor,” answered the nurse as she fumbled toward him in the darkness.

  “Oh hell, who’d have thought of flashlights in a hospital? Well, I’ve got to close this boy, and I sure as the devil ca
n’t do it in the dark.”

  “Here, Doctor.” Sharon Henry snapped on the butane lighter that she carried in her pocket.

  Parsons peered through the weak beam at her. “You’re a smoker, huh?”

  “I was when I had time,” answered Sharon.

  “Humph....cigarettes are bad for you, girl, but I’m damned happy to see that little torch of yours right now.” He bent in closer to his work. The faint illumination was sufficient to allow him to complete a slightly crooked row of stitches in the skin. After he dressed the wound, he turned to the nurse and gave her an appreciative smile. “My kid sister could have done a prettier job of stitching than that,” he said.

  “In the dark, Doctor?”

  He released a long tired breath. “I wish I had a sense of humor right now—then I’d tell you what I excel at in the darkness, nurse.”

  Sharon showed the same bone-weary exhaustion that she had heard in his voice. During the last seventy-two hours, days had merged into nights with hardly an awareness of the change. Sleep and rest were luxuries snatched in small amounts by the personnel within the isolation unit. Arrival of daylight was always announced by increasing numbers of patients waiting on the outside.

  Those admitted never really recuperated before their release from the special ward, but massive overflowing of the facility compelled the staff to administer treatment and send them away. All but the most extreme cases were handled in this manner. Admitted, examined, treated, and sent away. Unfortunately, the vast majority suffered from forms of radiation sickness, conditions for which the medical staff had no cure. The grotesque pile of loosely-wrapped bodies was growing larger by the day, as those whose lives had terminated were placed beyond the outer walls of the hospital, and closely draped with canvas.

  Parsons moved over and pushed the door to the outside open, admitting weak moonlight to the interior. The aged, the infirm, the very young—every conceivable cross section of people—were grouped at the outer door. “Good grief,” said the surgeon as he peered through the night at the masses on the parking lot, “why don’t they just stay in their homes. They’d be much better off in their houses than straggling through the streets, trying to find a hospital.’’

  “They’re scared and they’re sick. It’s natural that they’d want help,” said Dr. Feldman, groping his way forward.

  “Yeah, but if they only knew how little we can do for them, then they would lock themselves in and concentrate on trying to stay alive until this is over.”

  “When will that be, Bernie?” asked Max.

  Dr. Parsons’ broad shoulders seemed to have narrowed over the past couple days, pulled together as they had been by his ever-busy hands. Lack of proper food and rest, coupled with a steady, grinding pace that never let up, were leaving their mark on him, despite his natural physical stamina. But he never slacked his pace willingly, always driving himself to see the next patient, to ease as much suffering as he could. “Lord, how I wish I knew, Max. When I have time to think of it, I tell myself that we have to get relief soon, that the radiation can’t hang there over us forever. But I don’t know. With the loss of electricity we’ve really had it.” Feeling his way back to the examining table, his mind raced with ideas of how to put together sufficient lighting to continue through the night. Lighting, the one thing they must have. “Well, we can’t do anything in the dark... and there’s no use in bringing in another patient until we can get some light to work by.”

  “How about alcohol, Bernie? We can throw together some makeshift alcohol lamps,” suggested Max.

  “With what? Jars?” asked Parsons, interested at once.

  “Sure, why not? Punch a hole in the lid and feed some sheeting strips down into the alcohol. It’ll burn.”

  “Yeah....that’s not a bad idea....but we’ll have a holocaust if that fire gets away from the wick and into the liquid,” he said, as he began to search for the vessels.

  “We’ll make the wicks a tight fit,” said Max as he joined him. “They’ll sure be better than no light at all.”

  The two physicians quickly began the chore, collecting jars and sheeting. Max gouged the holes in the lids and twisted the cloth into wicks; Bernie stuffed the thick cords through the lids. Sharon poured the alcohol. They worked as a well-organized team.

  “Dr. Parsons, you’re awfully nervous,” said the nurse. “Are you all right?”

  He paused, annoyed that the stubborn cord wouldn’t enter the perforation. “I’m running a touch of fever, but nothing more serious.”

  “It’s the radiation, isn’t it?” asked the nurse.

  “Well, we couldn’t hope to avoid it, Sharon. I’d be surprised if others of us don’t have some symptoms. You, maybe?” asked Parsons, intent on threading the wick.

  “Headaches and nausea, Doctor.”

  Max asked quietly, “I wonder how long we can go on at this rate?”

  No one bothered to answer him as they set the cigarette lighter to the first lamp and a weak flame flared up. “All right,” said Parsons, “let’s bring in the next patients.”

  A big man stepped forward, working his way through the gloom to the table. A woman walked frantically to keep pace with him, trying to hold on to the boy he carried in his arms. Parsons took one look at the lad, checked the angle of his jaw for a pulse, and said to the man. “I’m sorry....your son is dead.”

  Harry stood immobile, transfixed to the spot. Suddenly his lips began to quiver. Moving up from behind, Max took the boy from Harry and started toward the outside with the body.

  “Harry. Harry,” said Flo, “come on. There’s nothing we can do for Rickey now.”

  Parsons understood their helplessness. Every death was now becoming a personal loss to him. But children....they were the hardest to give up. “Wait,” he said. “Since you’re here I ought to check you.”

  Flo had Harry by the arm, steering him in the direction of the exterior. “It doesn’t matter, Doctor...not now.”

  “Yes, but...” the couple had walked out into the darkness.

  For a long, solitary moment the surgeon could only stare after the departing couple. Their pain reached out to him. If they’d brought the boy here sooner; if he’d had more time with the youngster....Parsons shook himself. There were too many, too many. Fifty physicians were needed here....a truckload of supplies. Death came so easily....he turned to the next patient just as a commotion caught his attention.

  A thin, disheveled woman pushed past the intern and staggered into the room. She searched the near darkness wildly, then stumbled to him. Her face was instantly recognizable to Dr. Parsons, only it seemed to have aged since he had observed it earlier. Now she was a woman weary, ill, and on the verge of madness—if the strange glint in her eyes meant anything.

  She clasped him by the front of his dirty jacket, yanking him into her body. “You’ve got to help me, Doctor! Please, you have to do something.” Her arms jerked spasmodically as she held onto him.

  He gently attempted to break her grasp. “Now, now, try to be calm, Mrs. Harrington. Try to stay calm.”

  She had no more tears to shed, but dry sobs still racked her as she poured out her plea. “The medicine is gone, Doctor, and he’s in such pain. Can’t you give me something for his pain?”

  “Mrs. Harrington, we don’t have anything. We haven’t had for a long while,” Parsons said.

  She sank down on her knees and fastened her arms around his legs. “There is no one, if you refuse to help me. I beg of you, have mercy on my poor Ben!” she cried.

  The others turned their backs to the rending scene. The woman’s humility, her self-abasement was a private experience to be shared by her and the man of whom she pleaded.

  Parsons gently but firmly lifted her to her feet. Tenderly he brushed the matted hair from her tear-stained face. “All right, Mrs. Harrington,” he said softly. “I do have some morphine.” He backed away and unlocked a white metal cabinet. In his hand was a small squat bottle. His reserve—for the ultimate emergency�
��the last of the precious drug. He placed it on the table.

  “I can’t give you all of this but wait a second and I’ll draw out enough for one injection.” The woman was both pathetic and admirable in her insistence to save her husband. Such a wife every man should have, thought Parsons.

  Bending toward the sink he selected an instrument with which to withdraw the fluid. “I’m sorry that this is the best I can do,” he said with genuine regret. Needle poised, he turned to the table to find that she was gone....and the bottle of morphine had disappeared.

  Sara raced through the darkness of the house, bumping against the wall as she hastened to him. “Ben, darling! Ben. It’s me. I’m back.” Swiftly she pushed through to his bedside. By the flickering of a candle, Sara loaded the tube with the narcotic and plunged the needle into his arm.

  He received the needle without a hint of awareness. Its fine sharp point split the microscopic nerve filaments, causing short waves of pain that were completely lost in his greater anguish. Physiologically, his systems, his vital organs, were deteriorating. Breathing sluggishly, he moved very little now, but lay still, almost comatose. Unable to take nourishment for the past twenty-four hours, his condition had steadily worsened.

  “Ben, can you hear me, darling?” asked Sara as she tenderly ran the wet towel over his neck.

  He hadn’t spoken in the last day, but soft distressing moans had issued from him, an indication to Sara that the breach between life and death was narrowing.

  “The medicine will help, Ben. You won’t hurt now.”

  Sara traced the outline of his brow, pausing to gently caress the tight skin. Parched, cracked lips and the stubble of beard reminded her of his long hours of agony. She murmured soothingly of their lives together, how they had met as young adults, of her happiness with him. Her voice grew sweeter as she recounted glistening moments of pristine bliss that she had shared with him— of the times of exquisite tenderness between woman and man. Whispering softly, she crooned, “Please hear me, Ben. Please know that my life had no meaning until you, dear.” Finally she sobbed quietly in the dimness of the lone flickering candle, breaking the string of endearments.