Wildcard sd-3

by Ken McClure

  A year later he had been adopted as Conservative Party candidate for the Manchester seat which he now held. He had been adopted in the face of stiff competition, because it was generally regarded as a safe Tory seat, and his father, Rupert, was believed to have played a significant role in securing junior’s selection. Spicer senior had long been an influential character in the local business community and Conservative Party Association.

  ‘The son shall also rise,’ murmured Steven. Spicer was married to ‘Matilda, nee Regan’ and they had a daughter, Zoe, aged seven. He was currently acting as a spokesman on health matters and was widely tipped as a future minister. He supported Manchester City and enjoyed hill-walking. Steven felt that a little gloat might be in order. There was now no doubt in his mind that he had found the elusive Victor.

  Spicer had recently returned from an expedition to Nepal, where he had narrowly escaped death through illness. Steven could feel the pulse beating in his temples as he read the story. Spicer and three companions, one European and two Nepalese, had fallen violently ill with altitude sickness when several hundred miles from the nearest civilisation. Spicer was the only survivor when another walking party had eventually come across them.

  ‘Altitude sickness, my backside,’ whispered Steven. ‘It was haemorrhagic fever, my son, and you lived to tell the tale.’

  It made perfect sense. Spicer had fallen ill with haemorrhagic fever while in Nepal but he’d survived and come home to infect Ann Danby with the virus, which he was still harbouring inside him. It was odds on that he had infected her when they made love on the Thursday when they’d last met, but then it looked very much as if Spicer had ditched her and she had ended up taking her own life.

  The spotlight was now swinging away from Ann and the question was no longer how she had got the disease — he’d answered that one. What he had to find out now was how Spicer had contracted it. Steven could see one big plus in this change of emphasis. Unlike Barclay from the African flight and the Scotsman McDougal, Spicer was alive. He was the one prime mover in this affair who could answer questions. This was a cause for elation.

  However, it was not going to be plain sailing. Spicer would have to be handled with kid gloves. He’d probably start off by denying any involvement with Ann Danby so Steven would have to win his trust and assure him of complete discretion in the affair, whatever he felt about the man on a personal level. The object of the exercise would be to gain Spicer’s co-operation in finding out how he had contracted the virus, not to blow his career out of the water or destroy his marriage.

  Steven wondered how best to contact Spicer and concluded that there must be a good chance that the MP had remained in Manchester after his televised spat with the Labour man, just to see if any more political points could be scored by decrying the current handling of the crisis. His Manchester home address and telephone number were included in the Sci-Med report.

  Steven picked up the phone and dialled.

  A woman answered. She had a plummy contralto voice and Steven immediately had an image of her standing at the gate of her home announcing to a waiting gaggle of reporters that she would be standing by her man in spite of everything. He dismissed the thought and asked, ‘I wonder if I might have a word with Mr Spicer?’

  ‘Who’s speaking please?’

  ‘My name is Steven Dunbar.’

  ‘My husband holds surgeries on the first Saturday of each month, Mr Dunbar. Perhaps you’d like to go along to one of them? I’ll just check when the next-’

  ‘I’m not a constituent, Mrs Spicer,’ interrupted Steven. ‘It is Mrs Spicer, is it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m an investigator with the Sci-Med Inspectorate. It’s to do with the current virus outbreak.’

  ‘One moment, please.’

  ‘William Spicer,’ said the voice from the TV programme.

  Steven made his request for a meeting.

  ‘I really don’t see how I can help,’ said Spicer, sounding puzzled.

  ‘Don’t worry, I think you can, Mr Spicer,’ said Steven cryptically.

  ‘Oh, very well. Come on over tomorrow morning at eleven. I can give you fifteen minutes.’

  Steven put down the phone.

  At five in the evening, with confirmed cases standing at fifty-seven and eleven more deaths reported, Fred Cummings rang Steven to say that a state of emergency had been declared in the city.

  ‘Justified?’ asked Steven.

  ‘No, it’s political. HMG are determined to appear on the ball, so we’re taking this step, with the support of the CDC Atlanta team, to divert attention from the fact that City General can’t take any more virus patients. We’re going to start using a couple of disused churches to accommodate new cases.’

  ‘Churches?’ exclaimed Steven.

  ‘Yes. I know it’s unfortunate and I know Joe Public won’t like it, but it makes sense. There’s no point in trying to squeeze virus patients into other hospitals where they’re not going to benefit anyway because there’s nothing anyone can do for them except give them nursing care. They’ll just be a danger to everyone concerned. It makes much more sense to house them together, away from other patients and the community and concentrated in an area where trained staff can cope.’

  ‘How are you doing for trained staff?’

  ‘It is becoming a problem,’ admitted Cummings. ‘We’re almost stretched to the limit but we’ve had a good response to a request for volunteers. Nurses who’ve left the profession in the past few years have been calling in to offer their services. We’ve had retired GPs volunteering to help and Caroline Anderson has been working as a volunteer down at one of the churches.’

  ‘Good for her,’ said Steven. ‘I wondered what she was going to do. Which one?’

  ‘St Jude’s on Cranston Street.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll go round and see her. She got a raw deal.’

  ‘The vagaries of public life,’ said Cummings.

  ‘You didn’t say what emergency measures you were bringing in,’ said Steven.

  ‘Closure of public places like cinemas, theatres, night clubs and restaurants in the first instance, asking people not to make journeys that are not absolutely necessary, and a leafleting campaign about simple precautions to be taken in avoiding the disease. We’re also going to have to insist on cremation of the dead from the outbreak within twenty-four hours. Apart from the mortuary space problem, the bodies are just reservoirs of the virus.’

  ‘It sounds as though you think it might be airborne, after all,’ said Steven.

  ‘We still can’t be sure,’ said Cummings, ‘but it’s hellishly infective if it’s not. Contacts are going down like David Ginola in the box. We could be looking at over two hundred cases before we’re through, and that’s providing there are no new nasty surprises.’

  ‘Then the new cases are all still contacts?’

  ‘That’s the one good thing,’ said Cummings. ‘There are no new wildcards.’

  ‘Thank God for that.’

  ‘One other thing,’ said Cummings. ‘Three patients have recovered, so at least we know now that it’s not a hundred per cent lethal.’

  ‘Good,’ said Steven. He felt sure that he could think of a fourth. ‘What’s the state of the Scottish problem?’

  ‘Eight cases, three deaths, but they’re containing it well. I understand they don’t have any high-rise housing schemes to worry about. People have more room to breathe up there.’

  ‘Let’s hope their luck holds.’

  Steven drove down to St Jude’s church and found a police cordon round it. It comprised a series of no-parking cones and striped ribbon tape except for an area near the front entrance, which was guarded by two constables and where ambulances had access. He showed his ID and was permitted to enter. As he walked in through the stone arch he found himself thinking that this was the first time he’d ever entered a church and found it warm. Industrial fan heaters had been pressed into service to raise the temperature to hospital stand
ards. Large signs in red warned against proceeding any further without protective clothing.

  At the reception office, he found two tired-looking nurses sitting drinking tea, with an open packet of Jaffa Cakes on the table in front of them. He said who he was, then asked if Caroline Anderson was on the premises.

  The older nurse looked at her watch and said, ‘She’s due for a break in ten minutes. Would you like to wait?’

  Steven said he would, but declined her offer of tea. ‘How are you coping?’ he asked.

  ‘We’re running just to stand still,’ replied the younger nurse. ‘It’s a rotten feeling.’

  ‘I can imagine. What about the building itself?’

  ‘Every time I go through there,’ said the first nurse, nodding towards the nave of the church, ‘I feel like I’m stepping into a scene from Dante’s Inferno. It’s an absolute nightmare.’

  The other nurse checked her watch and said to her colleague, ‘We’d best get ready.’ She turned to Steven and said, ‘It takes us a good five minutes to get into these suits. Just wait here, and Caroline will be with you when she’s had her shower.’

  The older nurse popped a last Jaffa Cake into her mouth and said, ‘Once more into the breach…’

  ‘Good luck,’ said Steven.

  Five minutes later Caroline Anderson came through the door accompanied by a woman in her late thirties, whom she introduced as Sister Kate Lineham. Their hair was wet and they were wearing fresh white uniform jackets and trousers. Their faces glowed from the shower.

  ‘What on earth are you doing here?’ exclaimed Caroline.

  ‘I came to see you and find out what you’re doing here,’ said Steven with a smile.

  ‘I volunteered,’ replied Caroline. ‘They stopped me doing what I do best, but they couldn’t stop me doing this. I understand all about cross-infection and I can mop up blood with the best of them, so why not?’

  ‘I take my hat off to you,’ said Steven.

  ‘You could always take your coat off as well and give us a hand,’ said Caroline. ‘We’re short on staff around here.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘You’re a qualified doctor?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Well, throw your degree in the bucket. These people don’t need your medical skills, just simple nursing care and good aseptic technique. Think you could manage that?’

  ‘I can try,’ said Steven. ‘Where do you want me to start?’

  It was the turn of the two women to be surprised. ‘Really?’ exclaimed Caroline. ‘I was only joking.’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ Steven assured her.

  ‘I’ll get you a suit. Oh, and we may both be doctors, but in this “hospital” we do what Kate here tells us. She’s a specialist nurse in infectious diseases. Comfortable with that?’

  ‘No problem,’ replied Steven.

  ‘We’re back on in fifteen minutes. We’ll show you the ropes.’

  Caroline found a Racal suit for Steven and briefed him on the respirator function. ‘We’re using a portable entry/exit system the Swedes developed for dealing with just such a situation,’ she said. ‘Basically it’s just a clean-side/dirty-side system with a shower interface. Anything you take through there you don’t bring back out again. Okay?’

  Steven nodded.

  ‘It’s just a matter of trying to keep the patients as clean and as comfortable as possible,’ said Kate. ‘The only medical procedure we carry out is the replacement of lost fluids, and that’s the most dangerous thing of all. Many of them are delirious, so we tend to do it with one of us holding the patient and the other inserting the needle. We’ve had to resort to tying some of them down to make sure the shunt stays in.’

  ‘The human rights people won’t like that,’ said Steven wryly.

  ‘Well, they can come and do it their way, and we can all go home and watch the telly,’ said Kate.

  ELEVEN

  Steven made a final adjustment to his respirator and checked for gaps between his cuffs and gloves. Satisfied that all the seals were in place, he followed Caroline and Kate through the improvised air-locked entry port into the nave of the church. He found that the nurse who had likened it to a vision of hell wasn’t far wrong. In spite of the nursing staff’s best efforts there was still lot of blood around. He had to remind himself that this was Britain in the twenty-first century and not the bloody aftermath of some medieval battle whose fatally wounded had been gathered in a church for the last rites.

  Kate showed him where the supplies of swabs and saline and the safe-disposal bins were; many bins were already full to overflowing. She then led him over to the first group of four beds in a line that stretched the length of the church. They were occupied by two young men, a middle-aged man with a salt-and-pepper beard and a man in his seventies. All of them were seriously ill and none was fully conscious, although one was restless and threw his head from side to side as if in the throes of a nightmare. Kate signalled that Steven should start by tending to the elderly man, which he did.

  He worked his way along the line of patients, doing his best to make them as comfortable as possible but also finding himself, reluctantly, on a voyage of discovery. The cries of the sick, although muted to a certain extent by his helmet and visor, were still clearly audible and they echoed up to the roof beams and off the old stone walls. They competed with the laboured sound of his own breathing to provide a soundtrack of hell inside his plastic bubble.

  He found himself feeling relief that most of the patients were either comatose or only semi-conscious, because he suspected that reassurance and comforting words might well be beyond him. He felt pity and compassion, but revulsion, too. This was a revelation, because it was a gut-wrenching revulsion that threatened to overwhelm him. He wanted to throw up and make a run for it.

  Such feelings brought guilt into the equation. He’d always known that he was no Mother Teresa but this… this was something else. He switched to autopilot, which he reckoned was the only way he was going to get through the shift. He cleaned up the blood and the vomit, he changed urine- and faeces-soiled bedding and clothing, and all without allowing himself to think too much about it. A job needed doing so he was doing it, period.

  Occasionally he sneaked a look at Kate and the other nurses, and felt that they were showing much more care and compassion. Caroline, who was as unused to this kind of work as he was, looked to be doing a thoroughly professional job. He was probably being every bit as gentle, but what was going on in his head worried him. He had an awful suspicion that the nurses weren’t thinking the things he was. He was simply operating as a robot that had been programmed to handle eggs without cracking them. He suspected that they felt true compassion.

  Steven worked for five hours with only one break of twenty minutes before the night shift came on duty. He was the last to leave the area, as he was the only male worker on the shift and there were no separate showers. When it at last came to his turn, he lingered in the plastic shower cubicle for a long time, leaning on the front panel, head bowed as he sought comfort from the clean, warm water that tumbled over his skin. He fought to come to terms with all that he had seen and with all that he felt.

  ‘You did well,’ said Kate when he finally emerged on the clean side of the barrier. ‘You too, Caroline, but you’re getting to be an old hand round here.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Caroline. She looked exhausted, having worked ten hours that day.

  ‘Well, I’m off home to see my old friends, G amp;T,’ said Kate with a smile as she slipped on her coat and gathered her belongings together. ‘Will I see you tomorrow, Caroline?’

  ‘I’ll be here.’

  ‘Nice meeting you, Steven. Thanks for your help.’

  ‘It was little enough,’ said Steven. ‘Nice meeting you, too.’ They shook hands and Kate left without a backward glance.

  ‘She’s nice,’ said Caroline.

  Steven nodded.

  An ambulance drew up outside with a new patient and Steven and
Caroline stood to one side to allow the spacesuit-clad attendants to bring the stretcher inside. Caroline made sure the night nurses were aware of the new arrival before following Steven out into the cool night air. ‘Where are you going to eat?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ll get something at the hotel,’ said Steven. ‘I’m not really that hungry.’

  ‘I felt that way too after my first shift. You have to eat something. I could do us both an omelette. What d’you say?’

  Steven nodded. ‘Sounds good,’ he said, but the truth was that he was more interested in the company than in food; he wasn’t ready to be alone with his thoughts. He followed Caroline’s car through the city streets to the terrace where she had a modern detached house on a newish housing estate. It backed on to the railway, a fact that made itself apparent when a commuter train passed by on an embankment some ten metres above street level.

  ‘My own train set,’ said Caroline as she fumbled for her keys. ‘Come on in.’

  Steven stepped into a warm house where the central heating hummed comfortingly and the living room was quickly transformed into a cosy refuge from the outside world with the switching-on of lights and the closing of curtains. ‘Drink?’ Caroline asked.

  ‘Gin would be good,’ said Steven.

  ‘For me, too. Why don’t you fix the drinks and I’ll make a start in the kitchen,’ said Caroline. She pointed to the drinks cabinet and Steven got to work.

  ‘You live alone, then?’ said Steven when he took Caroline’s drink through to her.

  ‘I do now,’ replied Caroline. ‘Mark and I parted when he found out I couldn’t have children. We’ve been divorced two years now. He re-married last month. She’s an air stewardess.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ replied Steven quietly, slightly taken aback at Caroline’s frankness and not knowing quite what to say.

  Caroline took the matter out of his hands. She turned and said, ‘So what’s bugging you?’

  He automatically went on the defensive. ‘Nothing,’ he replied evasively. ‘I guess I was just a bit shocked by what I saw down at the church.’