“Thank you, and sorry, we were in an automobile accident.” Ramola shakes her head but not because she says anything wrong. It’s an impatient tic of hers, one that was more prevalent when she was a stressed-out medical student. Ramola and Natalie are not yet on the black-and-purple bus. They are still standing in the street, looking up at the woman stationed between the bus’s folding doors.
She asks, “Are you injured?”
Police officers shout, “Let’s get rolling” and “Time to go,” and punctuate with car-door slams.
Ramola says, “No, we’re fine.”
“Have either of you been exposed to the virus? We cannot risk—”
Ramola places a foot on the bus’s first step and says, “We have not. May we come aboard? The officers are telling us we have to go.” She climbs onto the second step, sure that the woman knows she is lying. How can she not? Ramola’s voice is a reedy screech and she overcompensates with a crumbling smile and a tractor-beam stare. Lying might be the wrong decision; perhaps if she tells the truth they’ll still be allowed on this or the other bus (gray, its doors already closed), or a police officer would take them to another hospital still open to the general public. With the memories of Norwood and how long it took to wade through the throngs and eventually get treatment cobwebbing her head, Ramola is determined to get on this bus by any means, medical-school oaths—and herself—be damned. Still, there’s a part of her that wants to be caught in the lie now, because being caught later is inevitable.
The clinician backs up, almost into the lap of the bus driver, to allow Ramola and Natalie passage. She complains they don’t have time to store Ramola’s bags under the bus and they’ll have to be placed in the overheads, if they fit.
Ramola positions herself so that she or her bags block her view of Natalie as she climbs onto the bus. As the clinician peers over her shoulder, Ramola asks, “What is your name again?”
“Dr. Gwen Kolodny.”
“Thank you, Doctor. And where are the buses taking us?” The police officer who led them to the bus already told her where it was going. The question is to keep Kolodny talking and not focused on Natalie shuffling into the aisle. Ramola tries to catch Natalie’s eye but her head is down, hair hanging loosely over her face.
Dr. Kolodny sputters a distracted answer, a fully secured hospital, transferring unexposed maternity patients and newborns, near the border of Rhode Island, and she mentions the town of North Attleboro as the bus driver’s two-way radio spews static and coded chatter. She turns to talk to the driver. The doors swing closed and the bus rolls forward before Ramola finds her seat next to Natalie.
Natalie is turned and facing out the window. Ramola assumes she’s doing so purposefully, to avoid being seen by other clinicians in white coats flittering up and down the aisle like hummingbirds. Perhaps it is time for Ramola to stop assuming fully rational decision-making in regard to Natalie’s behavior. She’s going to begin to suffer from cognitive deficiencies and delusions soon, if it isn’t happening already.
Ramola asks, “Are you all right?”
“I’m peach,” Natalie says. Not “peachy.”
The bus rocks from side to side as it crests the elevated lip of the lot exit. It turns left, goes straight through the Five Corners intersection, following one police car, blue lights flashing. A low murmur ripples through the bus’s passengers now that they are moving. Across the aisle from Ramola are two young pregnant women. They are both staring ahead, faces frozen in worried expressions, hands folded on top of their swollen bellies. The one by the window mutters something that makes the other woman laugh nervously.
Ramola has put these women and all the others sitting in front of and behind them at risk by getting Natalie onto the bus. She has compromised her pledged medical ethics and knowingly broken federal and state quarantine protocols and laws. She’s sick with worry, fear, grief, and disappointment at how easy it was to lie and to actively endanger the well-being of others. And for what, ultimately? Natalie cannot be cured, and they are at least twenty-five minutes away from an operating table, assuming this next hospital will even admit them. Ramola takes out her phone to send a text to Dr. Awolesi. She writes, “Per your instruction we arrived at the Ames Clinic.” Ramola rescans the text, says it in her head so it reads as Look at what you made me do, should someone else get hurt it’ll be your fault too. She erases the text and starts again. “Arrived at the Ames Clinic. All patients being transferred via bus to North Attleboro. Natalie has not been seen by OB/GYN yet.” She hits Send, then types, “I don’t know what else I can do for her.” She erases that one too.
“Hey, Rams?”
“Yes, I’m right here.”
“I’m scared.”
“I know.”
“Thank you for knowing.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Everyone in here knows about me.”
“No, they don’t.”
“They do. And they’re not going to bring us where they’re supposed to. I can almost hear them thinking about what they’re really going to do. They think in small voices. They hide their small voices behind smaller hands. Baby hands, but not hands that belong to babies. But I stopped listening hard enough. I don’t want to hear them.”
“Natalie—”
“Sorry. Can you say yes again? I need to hear it.”
“Yes?”
“No, a real one.”
“What am I saying yes to?”
“I need to hear the yes you gave me back on the road. It has to be the same exact one, or it won’t work. I’m worried I’ll forget it and I need it to get me through to the end. Right, remember? When you said yes, I said I’d go all the way to the end. I need to hear it one more time.”
“Yes.”
“Please. Again.”
“Yes.”
The driver shouts and the bus slows. Not quite a slamming of the brakes and tire-screeching halt, but the rapid deceleration is enough to propel everyone forward, hands grasping the seatbacks in front of them. Passengers gasp and the pneumatic brakes hiss. Once the bus comes to a full stop, Dr. Kolodny and another person wearing a white coat rush up the aisle to the front. The bus idles in a residential, wooded area. A large white house is directly across from Natalie’s window. Ramola looks at her watch. They’ve been riding for about five minutes.
Ramola and Natalie are four rows back from the driver. The clinicians obscure most of Ramola’s view through the windshield, but the police-escort car has stopped perpendicular to another vehicle, a mammoth white SUV, parked across the middle of the road.
The chatter up front is clipped, agitated, and sets off a chorus of “What’s going on?” and “Why did we stop?” throughout the bus.
Ramola stands, one foot in the aisle. It does not improve her vantage. She asks Natalie, “Can you see what’s going on?”
“The Tree’s buddies are here. Whole bunch of trees.”
Ramola leans across and over Natalie. From her angle she can’t see the police car or the SUV in front of the bus, nor does she see any people initially. Then a crouched man runs out from behind the white house’s garage. There are gunshots, rapid small-caliber pops mixing with loud, singular explosions. Ramola dives back, away from the window. Screams and shouts fill the bus, along with shrieks from newborns. Ramola almost forgot there are babies on the bus too. Everyone leans away from the windows, tries to make themselves smaller in their seats, everyone except Natalie. She sits tall and has her hands and face against the glass. Ramola grabs her right arm and pulls her away. Natalie’s complaint is subverbal, a growl.
It’s unclear if the driver is given an order from Kolodny, from police on the two-way radio, or acts on his own. The engine revs and the bus lurches forward, titling left as its passenger-side wheels climb the elevated shoulder. There’s more yelling, more gunshots, and stomach-dropping moments of weightlessness as the bus leans farther left, and Ramola is sure they’re going to tip onto their side, Natalie and her window mashed into th
e pavement. The police car and SUV roadblock roll by Natalie’s window, the scene dreamlike, as though contained within a terrarium, and the odd, elevated and angled view vertiginous as they float by. Men wearing dark or camouflage clothing hide behind another SUV stashed in a driveway. Others are positioned behind trees or flat on their bellies at the stone walls. They fire at the policemen huddled behind their car and they fire at the buses. Bullets thud into the side panel but none hit the windows. Another moment of weightlessness, lifting Ramola out of her seat as the bus comes off the shoulder, then all tires are back in contact with the pavement. The cabin shakes like a wet dog, straightening as the bus accelerates. People in the back rows yell about the gray bus left behind, not moving, windshield shattered. Clinicians run up and down the aisle checking with patients, reassuring them. The bus driver speaks over the intercom but the babies are crying and other patients are shouting, talking over him; no one is listening. Ramola attempts to slow her breathing and still her shaking hands. She watches out Natalie’s window and through the windshield for more roadblocks and men with guns.
This initial firefight lasts only five minutes, but a standoff with the Norton police and eventually the National Guard will go on for five hours, further ensnaring lines of communication and consuming most of the local emergency resources. Nine members of the Patriot Percenters militia will die, along with four policemen, the driver of the gray bus, and one of its passengers, a woman who gave birth less than ten hours prior to having a bullet punch through a window and into her neck. Right-wing conspiracy devotees will insist the civilian and policemen deaths are fakes and the entire event a false-flag operation. Like the Tree, the Patriot Percenters believe the deep state is purposefully spreading their lab-created virus to push vaccination agendas, attempt a coup as America is distracted and succumbing to the health crisis, and then decree a permanent state of martial law. The Percenters are convinced Phase 2 has begun: exporting the virus to surrounding New England and Mid-Atlantic states via busloads of infectious patients and deep state–controlled medical personnel, most of whom are foreigners, as reported on the most notorious and popular hate-fueled conspiracy website.
Ramola counts the seconds as they tick. She measures the expanding distance from the attack. She smiles at every staff member and clinician who walks by to ensure they focus on her and not Natalie. She looks out the window, waiting for the next calamity to show itself. She watches and listens to Natalie, losing count when she thinks she sees a quiver and curl of her lip. She starts over at one and begins counting again. Five minutes pass in this manner.
As their bus powers down the quiet wooded road, no vehicles follow. Frenzied chatter within the cabin has receded in volume, but it remains an insistent murmur, waves lapping shores at low tide.
Natalie shudders into a coughing fit; a dry, throaty blast of three barks lasting four cycles. When she finishes, the bus goes quiet and still. Ramola can’t and won’t look into the aisle or at people in other seats, afraid of what she’ll see and afraid others will see a confession on her face.
Natalie wipes her mouth on the back of a sleeve. Is she shedding the virus now? Natalie mutters to herself, twists to more easily look out the window, her head tilted, eyes wide and blinking.
The new silence lingers, and Ramola has to break the spell, to make their presence on the bus seem normal and nonthreatening. She taps Natalie’s shoulder, whisper-repeats her name, and asks how she’s feeling, how she’s doing.
Natalie shrugs and she shakes her head. Her right hand spelunks into one of the yellow sweatshirt pockets and returns with her cell phone.
Nats
(muted, low voices and the hum of an engine)
“Excuse me, I haven’t had a chance to check in with you yet, Natalie. How are you feeling?”
Sassafras and lullabies.
“Oh, we’re doing quite well over here. Thank you.”
Rams
Natalie flips through app screens, presses a purple rounded square, a capital cursive V in its middle. A home screen opens with the script heading Voyager. Natalie thumbs through menu options until the screen is a blank purple color, red Record button at the bottom. She presses that, too, bringing up a horizontal, quivering white line. She leans left, her head and shoulder resting against the bus window.
Ramola twists, her back to the aisle and facing Natalie. Her view of the phone screen is blocked.
Natalie’s right hand alternates between tucking hair behind her ear and hovering over the phone, index finger extended. A trace of a smile on her face, though upon closer inspection, it’s not really a smile. There’s no upturn in her lips, no exposure of teeth, but instead a softening of expression, facial muscles relaxed, eyes half-lidded, almost sleepy, eyebrows slightly elevated, unguarded. It’s the ghost of a look of contentment.
Ramola has stopped counting, even though time stubbornly goes on without her marking it. She continues closely observing her friend, afraid of witnessing the point-of-no-return transformation, afraid she missed it already. In the tinted window glass, there is a near mirror-quality reflection of Natalie’s face. In this reflection there are no tear and dirt stains, no puffy circles under her eyes, no feverish red splotches on her cheeks. Trapped in the glass’s amber is Natalie’s younger face: Ramola sees the Natalie she first met in college and the one she shared an apartment with and the one from those nights sitting on the kitchen floor and the one she secretly cried over when she moved out and the one in that bachelorette-party photo, her favorite photo; the Natalie she’ll always remember until she cannot remember anything anymore. This reflection of younger selves rest their heads against the Natalie of now, the one who showed up bloodied at Ramola’s townhouse, the one who fought and is fighting valiantly, the one who is dying despite her defiance. The split images are representatives of the past and present, and together, the horrible future. Both sets of faces are only inches away from each other and they are in sync, staring and blinking at the phone screen, opening their mouths to say something, but they do not speak.
If Natalie looks up now, what will she see? What will Ramola see?
“Excuse me, I haven’t had a chance to check in with you yet, Natalie. How are you feeling?” asks Dr. Kolodny. She’s a sentinel in the aisle wearing rubber gloves (was she wearing them earlier?), and she only has eyes for Natalie. Her professional veneer, already haggard and worn at the edges, collapses.
Ramola jumps out of her seat and stands between Dr. Kolodny and Natalie. She turns forward and back, opens and closes her white coat, wipes her face, and glances at her watch, desperate to somehow keep the Natalie-is-healthy lie alive until they get to the hospital in another fifteen minutes. Is that all the time they will need? Is that all the time they have?
Natalie says, “Sassafras and lullabies.” Her voice is low-pitched and airless. She sits up from the window, breaking away from her reflection.
Ramola says, “Oh, we’re doing quite well over here. Thank you.”
Natalie hits a button on the phone and puts it back into her pocket. She says, “I’m tired. A tired peach.” She lowers her chin into her chest and runs one hand through her hair, which falls out from behind her ears and blankets most of her face. The gesture is purposeful; she’s hiding from the awful world.
Dr. Kolodny speaks sternly, a teacher trying to shame a churlish student sleeping in the back row. “Natalie, I need to take your temperature. We were supposed to screen you prior to leaving the clinic, or right after leaving, and I was on my way to do so but then everything—is it okay if I slide by, Dr. Sherman? Thank you.” Dr. Kolodny shimmies into their row, nudging and edging Ramola into the aisle with her hips.
Ramola says, “Of course. But I could—is there anything I can help with?” She folds her hands together, unsure of what to do beyond snatching the thermometer from Kolodny’s hands and throwing it off the bus.
Natalie says, “Is that the right thermometer? It doesn’t look right. It’s small. That’s a baby one. What are you t
rying to do?”
Dr. Kolodny inserts the temperature wand into the rear of the device, covering it with a disposable sleeve. “This is not an infant thermometer.”
Natalie says, “The baby ones don’t work on adults. They run hot. Hot, hot, hot. Right? You do know I’m pregnant too. Pregnant women run hot.”
Ramola adds, “I can attest her body temperature is normally in the low-to-mid ninety-nine degrees.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Open your mouth, please, and keep this under your tongue.”
Natalie tilts her head back, her brown hair parts, a sly smirk flashes, and she opens her mouth as wide as she can. Once the thermometer makes contact with her tongue, she snaps her jaws shut as though a trap is triggered. Dr. Kolodny flinches and Natalie giggles.
“Please keep your mouth closed.”
Natalie mutters around the mouthful of thermometer. “Sorry. Me laughing is stress. I’m stressed, so stressed. And I run hot. Wicked hot. Scalding hot iron shoes.”
The thermometer beeps and Dr. Kolodny doesn’t look at the reading. “Your mouth must remain closed, please. Just for a few seconds.”
Before the thermometer goes back in her mouth, Natalie grabs Dr. Kolodny’s hand and pushes it toward her belly. “Feel her moving around in there. Feel her. I want you to. Do you want a living creature or all the treasure in the world?”
Ramola intervenes, calls out Natalie’s name, separates their hands, and coos lies to Natalie (instead of Kolodny), “Let go. It’ll be okay.” Natalie gives a watery-eyed look of betrayal and slumps in her seat. Ramola’s heart splinters and cracks. Tears sting her eyes. The first tears always sting the most.
Survivor Song Page 20