by Eve Smith
‘They claim they’ve got some revolutionary new procedure,’ she continues. ‘That might neutralise the toxicity. And they’re willing to share.’ I don’t mask a snort. ‘You should be pleased, Mary.’ Her tongue sharpens. ‘A lot of money was invested in that plant. It was your baby, after all.’
My jaw clenches. In the most delicate of movements the dog finds its way onto my lap. I sink my fingers into its fur. ‘So what does this make me? The surrogate mother?’
‘Don’t be dramatic.’ She sniffs. ‘Think about the possibilities.’
I don’t want to think about possibilities. She’s opened a page of history I’ve tried very hard to close.
She changes tack. ‘You know how bad things are over there. Eighty percent of South Africans are infected. Over seven hundred thousand new cases a year. And as for the MDR strains … the estimates are off the scale.’
I don’t need telling, I know the stats off by heart. Thank God the majority don’t go on to develop the active form of the disease. Even so, TB remains the leading cause of death in South Africa. And now it’s back here. Could this be our destiny, too?
‘On your head be it,’ I say, well aware that the deal’s already been done. Before she can think of a snide reply I wish her a merry Christmas and hang up.
The dog snores gently, the heat from its body warming my thighs. Fairy lights blink in silhouetted branches. As the bus inches past queuing traffic, my mind veers to Pharmaplanta. And Piet.
Twenty-five years. I’ve worked hard at forgetting. But the scars are still there, albeit faded, like the ones you see on X-rays of TB patients’ lungs. And I recall what a radiologist once told me about those X-rays. Assuming the infection isn’t active, there are two potential avenues to explore:
Do the scars indicate a past infection that has since been cured?
Or are they an aggressive latent infection that, given the right conditions, might activate at any time?
My fingers curl a little deeper into the dog’s fur.
Until I see him, there’s no way to be sure.
CHAPTER 35
LILY
‘Morning, Lily!’
I keep my eyes screwed shut. I can just see her tiny hands stretching towards me, feel the warmth of her on my breast. I try to hold on to her, but she eludes me, fading with the light.
There’s a ripping noise. ‘Looks like it’s going to be a nice day.’
It’s only Natalie, drawing the curtains. I roll over and face the wall. Start counting. Common daisy, English lavender, wood forget-me-not…
‘Bad night?’ she asks as the bed whines its way upright. I don’t answer. I’m consumed by memories: so desperate to see her and so afraid that I won’t. What if my pursuer knows about Kate? Is it just coincidence that her letter should arrive now? No one knew, apart from Graham, I made sure of that. I kept my side of the bargain. The question is, did Graham keep his?
Natalie pulls back the covers. ‘Here. Let me help.’ With some effort we get my legs over the side. ‘One, two, three.’ She hauls me up. I slot my wrists into the clamps and shuffle to the bathroom.
‘We’ve got a couple of extras this morning,’ she says, clinking the bottles. ‘On account of your birthday.’
As if I need reminding. Five days until cut-off. I wonder how I’m going to get through them. Since Kate’s letter, the hours trudge by even slower, as if they’re fearful of moving on. Sunday. She’s fixed it for Sunday. I just have to make it till then.
Natalie helps me onto the toilet. ‘The good news is, you’ve had most of your boosters. So it’s just the bloods and the flu shot today.’ She steps behind the door and waits. ‘Let’s have a little peek at your EET…’
EET: eyes, ears and teeth. As cut-off approaches they give you the full works, while they still can. From cataracts to cavities, each body part is assessed to ward off likely candidates for infection.
‘Eyes all good,’ she mutters. ‘Ears syringed … What about the dental review?’ She pops her head round. ‘No extractions?’
Pre cut-off, the majority of residents have any teeth they’ve still got removed. Another blessing of age: your mouth, like everything else, starts drying up, so your teeth become even more prone to decay. Most people would prefer not to die from an abscess.
I flash Natalie a wide grin. ‘I’m a stickler for oral hygiene. I refuse to hack out the few bits of me left that still function.’
She gives me a wry smile and closes her screen. ‘Lily, you’re as tough as they come.’
That’s where you’re wrong, I think. I’m a sitting duck.
Natalie tips the urine into the specimen pot. I wash my hands, drying each finger in turn. She eyes me in the mirror. ‘Actually, Lily, there’s something I need to tell you.’ Her lips tighten. ‘I wanted to give you a heads-up. Before the rumour mill kicks in.’
I keep my eyes on my hands.
‘It’s George.’ She pauses and my heart thumps. ‘He was doing a little better, but then … I’m sorry, Lily. There was nothing they could do.’
I blink at her. So. They must have taken him. To the Waiting Rooms.
‘Now, please don’t upset yourself. The infection advanced so quickly, by the time they came he didn’t know a thing about it.’ She sighs. ‘He’ll soon be at peace, God rest his soul.’
I think of George, making that final journey: packaged and processed like a slab of meat. And his daughter, speeding along those Cornish roads, preparing herself for her father’s farewell.
‘First your friend. Now this.’ Natalie sighs. ‘Troubles have a way of coming all together, don’t they?’
A heavy despair sinks through me. Despite all our vigilance, things still happen. Like George’s legs and Vivienne’s teacup. And my shadow. No amount of procedures are going to save me from that. I rub the disinfectant gel into my skin and try to think about anything else.
‘Do you have children?’ The question comes out of nowhere, takes even me by surprise.
Shut up, you fool.
A cloud passes over her face, just for a second. ‘Me? No.’ She screws the cap on the pot and busies herself with the trolley. ‘We wanted them, but you know … how difficult things became.’ She pulls off her gloves and drops them in the bin. ‘Especially for women like me.’ Her mouth puckers. ‘I had PID.’
I feel the blood rush into my cheeks. PID: pelvic inflammatory disease. Often caused by resistant STDs like Chlamydia. ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ I stammer. ‘I shouldn’t have asked.’
‘It’s OK. I made peace with it a long time ago.’
I fumble for something to say. But I’m caught in that ridiculous tussle between empathy and fear of saying the wrong thing. Chlamydia never used to be considered a big deal: nothing a few tablets couldn’t clear up. Once the Crisis hit, all that changed. Resistant to treatment, the infection spread, scarring the uterus and fallopian tubes. Even if women did manage to get pregnant, they were much more likely to miscarry or have stillbirths.
It’s Natalie who breaks the silence. ‘You’re right-handed, aren’t you, Lily?’ She helps me into the chair.
‘Yes.’
She picks up a blue tourniquet. ‘In that case, I’ll take the bloods from the right arm, and do the flu shot in the left.’ She rolls up my sleeve. ‘Sometimes it can feel a little sore.’
I watch her face, furrowed in concentration. She tightens the strap around my arm and dabs it with an antiseptic swab. ‘I need to take three of them, I’m afraid.’ She unwraps the needle and attaches it to the tube. ‘Ready?’ I nod and look away. I hardly feel the prick.
‘How about you?’ she says.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Children. Do you have any?’
The heat burns in my face. ‘No,’ I say, like Judas. But it’s true. I sacrificed the right to call her daughter. She doesn’t belong to me.
‘You know, this may sound strange,’ Natalie continues, swapping over bottles, ‘but in a way I’m glad. Imagine bringing a child into the world b
ack then.’ She shakes her head. ‘You used to hear some real horror stories. Like our next-door neighbour, Jeanette: lovely girl. Only twenty-five.’ She sighs. ‘She picked up a vicious RTI. They couldn’t do a thing for her.’
I keep my eyes on the tube. RTI: reproductive tract infection. Pre-Crisis, most mothers in the West had never even heard of such a thing. Why would they? Antibiotics saw off any hint of an infection before it took hold. But that was before.
Natalie inhales. ‘I remember popping in to take her some shopping, and there she was, on her knees. Clawing the wall.’ Her mouth stiffens. ‘They delivered her baby two months early. Poor thing survived but it was totally blind.’ She deftly removes the needle. ‘Jeanette wasn’t so lucky.’ She looks away for a second and presses a cotton wool pad over my skin. ‘There we are. Just hold that a moment, will you?’
I think of all those women, like Natalie, desperate to conceive. The many others who died during pregnancy or labour. And those poor babies, saddled with infection from the womb.
I gave birth to a perfectly healthy baby who enjoyed all the perks that medicine had to offer.
And I gave her away.
‘Whoa, steady on, Lily.’ Natalie frowns. ‘You’re making it bleed.’
I look down. A dark red circle has spread out from the centre of the pad like a flower.
She gives my arm a quick clean and tapes on a plaster. ‘Right then, on to the next one. One more jab and we’ll be done.’ She slips my dressing gown off my shoulder and unwraps another needle. She draws in the vaccine. This time I feel it, just a scrape. ‘There we are.’ She rubs my skin with a wipe and sticks on a small brown plaster. ‘How are you feeling? A bit light-headed? I can fetch you a biscuit, if you like.’
I shake my head. ‘I’m fine.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Sure.’
She rips off her gloves and drops them in the yellow bin. I think how I can extend our conversation. I feel a need to talk. To do something, anything, to fill this void.
‘Natalie?’
‘Yes?’
I fiddle with the tie on my dressing gown. ‘Did you ever … consider trying again? You know, after … after they’d found a cure?’
She squirts more gel onto her fingers. I watch her knead it into her skin. ‘We talked about it. Although I was badly scarred. But, in the end, it wasn’t to be.’ A slight furrow appears on her forehead. ‘I lost my husband, you see. Just months before they discovered that new drug.’
‘Oh, Natalie. I’m so sorry.’ I think again how little we know of people. Even those we see every day. ‘Forgive me. I’m really putting my foot in it today.’
‘It’s OK.’ Her mouth twitches. ‘He was a furniture restorer. People used to bring him things from all over the county.’ She looks down at her hands. ‘I always used to nag him about wearing his gloves, but he never did.’ I catch the ghost of a smile. ‘Said he couldn’t feel the wood.’
I sigh. So many tales of loss start this way. Our habits couldn’t catch up fast enough with the new reality.
She draws a breath. ‘He was working on this antique chair. Beautiful old thing, it was: rosewood, inlaid with mother of pearl.’ She swallows. ‘He snagged his palm on a nail. It was only a little cut, but…’ Her jaw quivers. ‘He got MRSA. In three weeks, he was dead.’
Her grief fills the space between us and, like a chain reaction, unlocks something in me. ‘I lost someone too,’ I blurt.
She nods, as if it’s only to be expected. ‘Someone close?’
My memories billow up inside. ‘We were, once.’ Kate has shattered my defences; I’m fearful of what might escape next.
Natalie’s voice lowers. ‘What took them?’
I swallow. ‘TB.’
‘Ah.’ Her breath comes out in a sigh. ‘The white plague.’
My chest tightens. I remember Piet using those words. They called it that because of the anaemia it brought on.
‘We all have our stories, don’t we?’ says Natalie. ‘Our share of pain.’ She wipes her eyes. ‘Goodness, look at us.’ She smiles. ‘No good crying about the past, is it? Look to the future. That’s what I tell myself.’
She’s right: we should look to the future. But sometimes the past won’t let you go.
She grips the trolley and walks to the door. ‘Now, you rest up, Lily. Don’t want you keeling over. If that flu jab starts bothering you, I can bring you some paracetamol. Breakfast shouldn’t be long.’
As the door shuts, I see an image of the two of us, dancing beneath the mopane tree. How tender he was, then. It changes to the sharp silhouette of his face in the gully. That terrible look. The same look he gave me all those years later.
I solemnly and sincerely declare…
I glare at my lumpy hands. The hands that signed the statement. That took those fruit and cultivated their seeds. I remember the ranger stripping the creeper’s leaves, its purple flowers dropping to the ground around his feet like a wreath. Pounding those leaves in a bowl while the poor creature lay there, making that awful gurgling noise. The plant couldn’t save her either.
I squeeze my fingers until they burn. Kate doesn’t deserve such a mother. I should never have agreed to see her. I’ve put her in danger too.
I pull out an old, tattered dictionary from the back of my drawer. I press my thumb into the crease, and an envelope sails out onto the carpet. I think of the words I must write, although every inch of my body screams not to.
But as I bend to pick it up, my eyes widen.
The envelope is empty.
Kate’s letter has disappeared.
CHAPTER 36
Crisis
Worse To Come, Warns CMO
As the TB death toll tops twenty thousand, the prime minister urges people to obey curfews and remain in their homes.
With increasing numbers of hospitals across the UK being forced to shut their doors, the PM has made a plea for people to remain calm. ‘We have some of the best people from industry, academia and the NHS working night and day to find a vaccine and a cure,’ he assured reporters yesterday.
But at a press conference, the CMO was less optimistic. ‘This is a highly evolved strain. The reality is we’re playing catch-up in an arms race that started decades ago and we’re barely over the starting line.’
MARY
The buzzer punctures the silence. I’m expecting him but my heart still leaps.
Take a breath.
I curl my hair behind my ears. Smooth my skirt. Brace, as if I’m about to launch myself out of a plane.
I open the door.
‘Hello, Mary.’
My chest pounds, a pathetic reminder of what used to be.
He takes off his mask and smiles. Reckless: he isn’t yet inside.
‘You’d better come in.’
His hair’s a little thinner than I remember. A few more lines. But still … skin, lips, fingers. Each part of me has its own memory.
He shrugs off his coat. The room tilts on its axis, shrinks just a little. This is the first time we’ve been alone together for twenty-five years. But he hasn’t come here to sleep with me. He’s come because something’s wrong.
I concentrate on the wrinkles around his eyes. ‘You managed to get through the curfew alright, then.’
He nods. ‘Flashed my card. Dropped a couple of names.’
My, how you’ve gone up in the world, Dr Bekker. WHO Emergency Committee, no less. They only pulled me in because he asked them to.
‘Thanks for letting me come, Mary.’ He rests one hand on the teak cabinet. His eyes scurry around the room like a restless dog. ‘I know it’s late.’
I notice the scar on his cheek has faded. Like so many things. A memory ambushes me, and I slam it back.
‘Nine bodies, on the way here. Just lying in the street. Two of them looked like they’d been there some time.’ His fingers tap the wood as if he is playing the piano: up and down, up and down. ‘Why don’t they obey the curfew? The army are working shifts
but even so…’
‘They’re desperate, Piet. Can you blame them? It doesn’t matter how many alerts are broadcast, how many notices they’re sent, they still think if they can make it to a hospital they might stand a chance.’
‘If only,’ he sighs. ‘If the TB doesn’t get them then something else will. The crematoriums can’t keep up. There’s talk of requisitioning more incinerators. But with all the farm stock to get through, they’re overrun too.’
Strange, how normal these conversations have become. At least this disaster saves me and Piet from having to contemplate our own.
‘You know about the fires, I take it,’ I say.
‘Which ones?’
‘At the detention centres.’
A prominent scientist’s tweets about the supposed origins of the pandemic have ignited a racial war. I’m not a racist, he wrote, but it’s a fact that the majority of UK immigrants come from high-incidence TB countries such as India, Pakistan, China and Nigeria. Many of them carry a latent form of TB that immigration screening fails to detect. The disease can activate at any time.
Piet shakes his head. ‘As if we don’t have enough to worry about. Why do people always need a scapegoat? We’re getting it from all sides. Some idiot in the Commons is talking about nationalising the manufacture of antibiotics. For good. As if drug development were as simple as running trains. The industry needs R&D investment and tax incentives, not state ownership. You’d think they’d have learned their lesson from the coal mines.’
I’ve heard the arguments and I have sympathy with them, even if they aren’t practical.
He sighs. ‘If they gave it to the NHS, they’d blow what little reserves they have left in under a year.’
I grip the chair. ‘Maybe nationalisation isn’t the answer. But, as you were always fond of pointing out, putting shareholders’ interests over patients’ doesn’t exactly turn out well.’