Sea Sick: A Horror Novel(18)
“Just trying to help,” Jack said absentmindedly. He was already thinking about other things. The first was that Conner had gotten sick once onboard the ship, not before. The second was that there was a doctor onboard. Jack was irritated at himself because he had known that already – it said so on the ship’s newsletter that came every day. There was a chance that the doctor could make some sense of whatever was infecting the passengers. Perhaps the ship’s doctor would already know something about what was happening. The question Jack now had to answer was whether to spend the afternoon looking for the brunette waitress or seeking out the ship’s medical centre.
Jack eventually made the decision to visit the lower decks and check out the infirmary. The reasoning being that he had no idea where to find the waitress anyway, so there was just as much chance that she would be there as anywhere else.
The main lifts in the foyer of the Mariner Deck(where High Spirits was located) took Jack all the way down to C Deck and opened up right outside the medical bay. It was a grim, green painted corridor with a couple of offices and consulting rooms on either side. There were no members of staff present and Jack went and took a seat on a green-cushioned bench running along one side of the corridor.
There were voices coming from somewhere nearby. It seemed to be coming from one of the rooms up ahead. Most likely the doctor was already with a patient and would pop back out into the corridor once he was done. Jack would have expected the waiting bench to be lined with coughing passengers, like a scene from a horror movie, but it was just him sitting there alone. Alone and waiting. Hoping to speak to someone that can make sense of all this. He didn’t hold up much hope for answers, but at least there was a sliver of potential.
Jack checked his watch and was surprised to see that twenty minutes had gone by whilst he’d been waiting. For the last several months every minute had seemed like an hour. Each day that repeated seemed longer than the last. But the last twenty minutes had flown by in what seemed like seconds, the anticipation of learning something new making time abstract and inconsequential.
Eventually someone came out of a consultation room up ahead. It was the two parents and their pigtailed daughter. Jack knew that the little girl was one of the first to turn savage in High Spirits. Whatever was wrong with her, the doctor obviously didn’t offer anything to help her, because every night her illness was the same. Jack could only assume that every day this same family would be in this exact place, following their routine like everyone else onboard.
Except the waitress.
Jack was still eager to talk to the brunette, but right now he had other things to concentrate on. The doctor had just entered the corridor.
The towering medic was dark-skinned and heavily bearded, obviously from African descent. When he asked Jack to follow him into the consulting room he spoke English very well, but with a French twang.
“Are you the doctor?” Jack asked as he entered the confines of the small office. There was a padded examination table in the centre of the room and several cabinets lined the walls.
“Yes, I am Doctor Fortuné. What is it I can do for you, sir?”
“I need to know what was wrong with the little girl just in here.”
“I’m sorry? Are you ill, yourself?”
“No,” Jack replied. “But lots of other people on this ship are. I need to know what is wrong with them. I want to know what you know.”
The doctor seemed irritated. “I’m afraid I cannot discuss these things with you, sir. If you are not ill then you will have to leave.”
Jack sighed. He respected the confidentiality of the Hippocratic Oath – as a police officer he abided by similar virtues himself – but this wasn’t the time for convention. “Okay,” Jack relented, deciding to try a different tactic. “But there’s definitely something nasty going around the passengers on this ship. In the interest of my own health, can you tell me what I should look out for? You have a duty to inform me if I am at risk.”
The doctor let out a long breath and relaxed. “Okay, sir. What I can tell you is that there seems to be some sort of highly contagious cold virus aboard the ship. There have been several cases, but none are at all serious. It is just a cold, my friend. Nothing to worry about, okay? Wash your hands regularly and avoid touching your face. You will be fine.”
“It can’t just be a cold,” Jack protested.“People don’t turn into psycho killers because of the sniffles.”
The doctor looked confused. “I’m sorry?”
“Oh yeah,” said Jack. “That doesn’t make a lot of sense to you, does it?”
The doctor just looked at him.
“Look,” said Jack. “Is there anything…unusual…about this cold going around? You said it’s highly contagious. Is that normal?”
“No, it isn’t. Cold viruses are often highly infectious, but the numbers of cases I’ve seen today is unusual. Still no reason to be concerned though.”
Jack sighed. This was going nowhere. “Okay, Doctor. Thank you for your help.”
Jack was almost out the door when the doctor spoke again. “Actually, there is one thing that I found a little strange.”
Jack spun back around. “What?”
The doctor seemed to quickly change his mind about divulging his information. “Who are you, exactly? Why are you so interested in this?”