Vassar straightened and stared straight at her. ‘You know, the way I see it, you’re lucky Jack selected you. I wouldn’t have. You’re opinionated, uptight and frigid. Fortunately, he’s a patient guy.’
Frigid? What had Sue told him? Now she was pissed off. ‘So I’m not allowed an opinion because I don’t have a penis? How like a man to use putdowns to silence a woman. I think your testicles contain your brains.’
Vassar shot her an exasperated look. ‘We’re on the knife edge of survival here. You get to have an opinion when you’ve earned the right. Try learning from your mistakes first. When you’re bitten; you speak up.’
Jesus, the sooner she got away from these misogynist dickheads the better. ‘It didn’t penetrate the skin. I’m a doctor. I know a bite when I see it. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to worry Sue and Lea.’
‘We have protocols in place. People who are bitten go straight to the cells. Report anything suspicious. We can cuff a patient if necessary.’
‘I noticed.’
Vassar raised his eyebrows, his expression amused. ‘Jack had to restrain you?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ Now didn’t seem to be the time to tell him she’d taken to Jack with a scalpel. Vassar wouldn’t consider it self-defence. He thought Jack had a right to have sex with her.
‘Sue cuffed me. I’m not complaining.’
Ruth held up her hand. ‘Too much information.’
Vassar snorted. He opened the door for her and stepped back so she could go through.
They walked into the foyer of the refurbished former dance centre. It was spacious with a large front desk. Long gone was the nice lady who manned the desk in the days of dance and yoga classes. Instead, a tired looking young man stood up straight and saluted Vassar. ‘Sub Lieutenant Carter, this is Dr Ruth Parker. She’ll be working with Nurse Susan Wells. I’m on ward duty today.’
For a moment, Ruth went to shake his hand but Carter saluted. ‘Pleased to meet you, Ma’am. Glad to have a real doctor on board. Captain Lang ordered me to give you this.’
Ruth recognised her smaller medical kit, the one she’d transferred to the duffle bag. ‘Thank you.’
So Vassar was guarding her and worse, he expected her to work with Sue, who hated her. No doubt Jack would find making her face her demon, an amusing experience. Her jaw clenched. She’d had enough of being watched and she really didn’t want to deal with Sue. Ruth turned to tell him what she thought but Vassar was staring mesmerised at a point past her so she followed his gaze. Sue stood at the door to the ward. A smile bloomed across her face on seeing Vassar before fading when she sighted Ruth.
‘I don’t want to work with Sue after last night,’ Ruth said to Vassar.
Sue put her hands on her hips. ‘Come on, Ruth. There’s no time for your only child tantrums. It’s serious. We’ve a lot to do. To think we could have been healing these men for several months if we’d called out for help. Instead of thinking of our own skins we could have been saving lives.’
More accusations were there in her voice. From a navy family, it seemed that Sue had fitted right in just as Vassar must have fitted into her. Okay, so that was low, but she was in a shit mood. The bone under her eye where Sue had hit her throbbed like a reminder of her public shame. ‘Just shut up. I’m not interested.’
‘That’d be right. It’s all about doing what you want when you want,’ Sue said, hands on her hips. ‘How you can look me in the eye after hiding a bite, I don’t know.’
‘How dare you hit me?’ Ruth started forward towards Sue.
‘Ruth. Behave.’ Vassar grabbed her arm.
‘Don’t touch me,’ Ruth snarled. Vassar thought her assignment to Jack was fine. Sure, she’d experienced the highest level of sexual frisson she’d ever known, but it was just chemicals. How could anyone possibly think she should be pleased about being rewarded to a man who was a complete stranger? It wasn’t as if she’d had many lovers. One long relationship which she’d thought would lead to marriage and a short, unsatisfactory one with the specialist wasn’t a lot of men to have at the age of twenty-five.
Vassar dropped his hand. ‘Then calm down. I’m not going to let you go at each other.’
‘Listen here, you thick-headed bastard, men do not own women and if you want me to tend to your men, get that into your head. This means you do not manhandle me at any time ever again.’
Vassar’s mouth turned down. For a moment he looked uncertain.
Sue crossed her arms and glared at Ruth. ‘And this is why you don’t have friends, except the ever-patient Lea. You don’t get the world has changed and we need these guys just as much as we need their skills. This means that you don’t use your razor tongue to shred people.’
Ruth stared at her devastated. The happiest she’d ever been was sharing an apartment with Lea and Sue. She got that her intense only child upbringing meant sometimes she made mistakes people from big families didn’t, but Sue’s words shredded her. It hurt. Really hurt because she’d been lonely as an only child with her mother working full time.
At the verge of tears, Ruth strode past Sue into the ward. Work. She needed it. Treating patients would stop the anger whirring in her mind. Sue often assisted as her scrub nurse in surgery and they worked with great synergy. This time, when she entered the ward, the air seemed to prickle between them.
The ward was the size of a small hall packed with beds side by side, containing twenty men. Each had a chart at the end of the bed, which reminded Ruth of the days before computers. Above each bed was a sign with the patient’s name.
‘Is this the real doctor you said was coming?’ One of the men with a heavily bandaged leg, pushed himself to a sitting position. Others stared at Ruth with hopeful expressions. The reality of seeing so many injured men kicked in. Sue was right. She should have volunteered her services earlier.
‘This is Dr Ruth Parker,’ Vassar said, introducing her to the men.
‘Good morning,’ Ruth said. ‘I’m a qualified doctor. I was specialising in trauma medicine before the virus hit. I’ll do the best that I can for you.’ While I’m here.
An audible sigh rang around the ward.
‘What are the most urgent cases?’ Ruth asked Sue. Stomach clenched, it made her feel sick that she was forced to talk to the very person she desperately wanted to avoid.
‘I’ve interviewed each man and listed his symptoms on his chart. Several have broken bones. The base has a radiologist who has taken x-rays but he didn’t know how to set bones. The man in bed five is complaining of abdominal pain. No fever. I’ve been working on changing dressings and I’m going to get back to that.’
‘I’ll start there.’ Ruth walked towards bed five.
The man’s eyes were closed. His face was the colour of chalk and his breathing shallow.
‘Hi, Darren,’ Ruth said, after looking up at his nameplate. ‘I’m Dr Parker. Can you talk to me?’
The man’s eyes flickered open. ‘Hi.’
‘What’s happening with you?’ Ruth asked, opening her medical kit and hunting out her torch.
‘I’m in pain. Started here.’ He touched his stomach. ‘I was on guard duty last night. Dropped my torch. Scratched my hand on something when I picked it up. It was too dark to see what it was.’
‘Mind if I examine you?’ Ruth asked, noticing the dirty, red wheal mark on the back of his hand.
The man nodded. ‘Sure.’
Vassar moved closer. ‘You get bitten, Jobs?’
The man’s eyes widened. ‘No, sir.’
Ruth knew that Vassar was right to be suspicious.
‘Jobs, if you’re lying you’ll put the other men in danger. They’ll have trouble defending themselves if you turn,’ Vassar said, his tone urgent.
Ruth took the man’s blood pressure, noticing it was elevated and his pulse was racing, but then Vassar was fingering his gun. When she felt under Darren’s armpit, she noticed the glands were swollen. She shone her torch into his
eyes checking for the tell-tale trauma of those bitten. Nothing. Yet. ‘Darren, your body is fighting an infection. Your spleen’s slightly enlarged. I can clean the wound and give you general antibiotics, but without a blood test I can’t tell you if there’s anything else causing the swelling.’
‘The needles are over there.’ Vassar pointed to the cabinet set against the wall at the end of the ward, which had supplies written on it.
‘Can I talk to you for a minute?’ Ruth said. She noticed Sue, who was stitching a wound, glance up at her as she walked to the end of the ward.
‘Jobs isn’t one of our men,’ Vassar said, his voice low. ‘He answered Jack’s call that we put out for any available fighting men, a couple of months ago. I don’t trust him. That could be a braindead wound.’
Ruth went through the list in her mind of all the other things it could possibly be. ‘Whatever it is, it has entered his bloodstream because his nodes are swelling, but there’s no brain trauma.’
‘You know that comes later.’ Vassar finished her sentence for her. ‘I’ve been crafting metal stakes. Jack and I mounted them on every wall. They’re to kill braindeads.’
Ruth looked to where Vassar pointed to see several lethal looking stakes mounted just above each patient’s head. Jack had thought of everything. ‘You know terrorising Darren isn’t going to make him tell the truth.’
‘He turns, I’ll smash his brains in,’ Vassar said.
‘Ugh.’ Ruth flinched. No matter how right Vassar was she wouldn’t get used to this level of aggression.
Sue joined them. ‘Lea can do the blood work. She’ll know immediately if it’s the virus.’
‘Get blood. I’ll have Carter run it down to Lea,’ Vassar said to Ruth.
‘Where is Lea?’ Ruth asked, wondering how she had survived as Lieutenant Armstrong’s possession. Her sweet, trusting face came to mind. Ruth swallowed. Had Lea thought she’d betrayed her too?
‘Armstrong has set her up in our lab in the main complex where she’ll be safe to work. The lab has good equipment and a coded lock system,’ Vassar said. ‘No one can get in.’
But could Lea get out? ‘I’ll take blood now,’ Ruth said. She wondered, while she chose the right-sized syringe, if Lea was a prisoner like she was. She was tempted to ask Vassar.
When she looked over to him she saw that he seemed to have other things on his mind. He marched up to Darren’s bed and cuffed him. ‘Dr Parker is going to take blood. I find out you’re lying to me, I’ll take you outside and shoot you.’
Jobs blanched, his chest rose and fell and he made a strangled noise. He turned his head and vomited all over the floor.
Ruth could no longer restrain her irritation. ‘Vassar, that’s enough. Stop terrorising my patients.’
‘He’s lying. They had trouble guarding the Balmoral fence at dawn,’ Vassar said, his eyes narrowing as he looked from Jobs back to Ruth.
‘We don’t know if Jobs is lying. By the way, the protocol is to escort bitten men to the cells.’ Not threaten to shoot them. How could Sue like this arsehole?
‘I know my job,’ Vassar said.
‘Then do it,’ Ruth said.
Vassar bristled.
Sue slipped in between them. She placed her hand on Vassar’s arm. ‘Honey, do you know where the clean sheets are kept? I need to tidy this up.’
Vassar’s gaze instantly softened when he looked at Sue. ‘Sure. I’ll get them for you.’
‘Thanks, sweetie.’ Sue took his hand and squeezed it.
Vassar turned towards reception and left the ward.
‘You haven’t lost your touch,’ Ruth said to Sue. The woman had the ability to neutralise a volatile situation in a heartbeat.
The men who had been watching the exchange slow clapped Sue. ‘Smoother than the bomb diffusers,’ one of them said.
She flashed them a smile before turning back to Ruth. ‘You’re not good at picking up nuances, but I need you to go easy on Vassar. He’s just found out his brother’s been bitten. Braindeads swarmed one of the fences early this morning, nearly took it down. He owned up immediately and is in the cells.’
‘Why isn’t Vassar with him?’ Ruth asked. ‘You know how quickly some people turn. He mightn’t have much time left.’
‘He won’t leave his station until Jack returns,’ Sue said.
‘You mean Jack has ordered him to guard me.’
‘These people need you, Ruth,’ Sue said.
‘That should be my choice to make.’ She hadn’t forgotten that Sue had quite happily gone off with Vassar, leaving her to deal with Jack alone. Disgusted, Ruth turned from her, slipped on her gloves and proceeded to take blood from Darren.
‘It’s always all about you, isn’t it, Ruth? You never look at the greater picture, you’re so tunnel-visioned,’ Sue said, bending and cleaning vomit off the floor with a paper towel and disinfectant.
‘I have the right to make my own life choices,’ Ruth snapped back. ‘And the moment I get the chance, I’m out of here.’
‘Great. Run when people need you.’
‘Why should you care?’ Ruth withdrew the needle from Darren’s arm.
‘Because I thought we had a friendship until you pulled that bite number, then I realised you didn’t give a damn about me and Lea.’
Ruth turned on her. ‘That’s not true. How many times do I have to say this? The bite didn’t break the skin. If it had I would have told you.’
‘Sure you would, Ruth.’ Sue shook her head. ‘Darren, I’ll get you a glass of water.’ She turned and walked to the sink.
Darren gripped Ruth’s arm when Sue was out of earshot. ‘Don’t let him shoot me,’ he implored her.
‘It’s a braindead scratch, isn’t it?’ Ruth asked him. She watched Darren’s blood fill the syringe tube, knowing it could be a time bomb.
Darren nodded. ‘I was scared. The braindeads were pressing against the fence. Hundreds of them. I dropped my torch and it rolled against the wire. I went to pick it up and one of the braindeads tried to grab me. A child. Its hands were small enough to reach through. It scratched me.’
‘I’m sorry.’ His acute misery struck a chord in Ruth. She’d come so close herself when Mrs Nichols had lunged at her snarling. Her brilliant mother had brought her up to use her words to fight. She couldn’t adjust to using violence, worse, to bashing an old lady she’d loved. All she’d wanted to do afterwards was curl up in her bedroom and hide. Even now, she wanted to get on her boat and motor away from this horror. Surely she should have the right to make that choice? Yet, Sue made her sound so selfish, so mean.
Tears rolled down Darren’s cheeks. ‘You don’t understand. I said I was ex-military to get into the base. I knew it would be safe here. I lied. I’m a merchant banker.’
Jack’s words that he was the best kind of man to have by her side in a crisis rang in her mind as she watched the snivelling, cowering banker. Probably the biggest fight he’d ever had was to get a cork off his bottle of Grange. ‘Darren, Lea’s working on a cure. She was developing a vaccine and an antiviral, but it’s never been properly tested.’
‘I want it,’ Darren said, his voice urgent. ‘Test it on me. I’ll pay you whatever you want.’
‘Money doesn’t have currency on the base.’ What a dickhead. She certainly wouldn’t miss the overpaid, oversexed, money-men who’d inhabited the area.
‘I have a mansion on Ruby Street with views of the Harbour Bridge and Opera House. Get me better and you could move in with me when all this is over. You just have to clear out the ex-wife and that lion keeper from the zoo who moved in with her. He bit her after he turned. Served her right. Get one of those navy boys to help you shoot them.’ He gave an insouciant flick of his hand towards Vassar.
‘Umm, pass. If the captain can make the area safe, I prefer my apartment close to the base. The access isn’t braindead friendly.’
Did this wanker ever look in the mirror? Ruth watched as Darren blew his nose on the bed sheet. He’d make a
good guinea pig for the trial.
‘But you’ll give me the antiviral?’
‘I’ll see what I can do.’
Sue returned with a facecloth and a glass of water, closely followed by Vassar carrying a clean set of sheets, which he set down on the bedside table.
‘Here’s Darren’s blood sample. He’s admitted to the braindead scratch,’ Ruth said quietly to Vassar, once he was out of Darren’s earshot. She handed the stoppered tube of blood to Vassar.
Vassar took it and turned to stare at Darren. ‘The pathetic coward. I’ll kill him.’
‘Wait.’ Ruth grabbed Vassar’s arm before he could turn on Darren. ‘Lea was working on a vaccine and an antiviral. She brought some back with her from the lab. Knowing Lea, she would have packed them. Darren has given me permission to test it on him. I want Lea to run his blood test. We need a confirmation that the braindead infection is what is causing Darren’s illness. I also have to know the viral count.’
‘Lea has a cure?’ Vassar’s voice was hoarse.
Ruth saw the hope in his eyes. ‘I don’t know if it works, but we’ve got nothing to lose. It’s never been tested outside a lab.’
‘I’ll get Carter to deliver this immediately,’ Vassar said, starting to walk towards reception and then I’m moving Jobs to a different room and restraining him.’
‘Vassar?’ Ruth followed him.
‘Yeah?’
‘I’m sorry to hear about your brother. I’d be happy to inject him with the antiviral if you’d like me to.’
Relief played across Vassar’s face like dawn light sweeping across darkness. ‘You’d do that for me?’
Ruth shrugged. ‘I took the Hippocratic Oath. I love being a doctor. It’s all I ever wanted to do. Look, what I’m trying to say is that I’m sorry I was mean to you out there. I’m not used to my living arrangement. I’m tense as all get up.’
Vassar looked her over. ‘You, Lea and Sue are the most precious people on the base. We need your skills. But if you’re unhappy with Jack, talk to me. It’s too dangerous to settle you into your own house until you’re good with weaponry. I do have a spare bedroom.’
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