Survivor Song(17)
“I won’t.”
Ramola has given up on approaching a police officer or security guard for help, and she does not want to waste precious time in chasing down one of the frazzled medical staff, all of whom have seemingly disappeared. She walks directly into the crowd, sternly projecting in her best schoolmarm voice, an impressive one both in tone and volume. It is a voice Natalie has only been exposed to once, back during their sophomore year when Ramola accepted a late-night bribe (free pizza) to excoriate, anonymously via the telephone, a too-noisy-for-finals-week room on the dormitory floor above theirs.
“Excuse us! Let us through, please. Doctor coming through. I’m here to help but we must be let through. Let us by. Doctor coming through. Thank you. Let us through, please . . .” Ramola steps between people if they aren’t paying attention. She taps arms and shoulders of others and if they turn to face her, she doesn’t break eye contact until after they step aside. She leverages the bags slung over her shoulders to force a wider opening for Natalie. Stink-eyes and annoyed looks from the crowd soften, some turning to fear, at the sight of clearly pregnant Natalie gamely trailing behind, wounded and wrapped arm held against her chest like a bird might hold a broken wing. There are murmurs and complaints but those come from behind, from people who are not directly in their path.
Navigating becomes more difficult the closer they get to the tents, and some people attempt to engage Ramola, detailing symptoms, pleading with her to examine a loved one. Ramola apologizes and tells them they will be helped soon, and she does so without lingering but not without twinges of guilt. She and Natalie continue to push their way through until they come up against another set of the waist-high, steel crowd barriers that cordon off the tents.
A young police officer, as tall as a folktale, stands over an entry gap between steel barriers. Instead of asking for permission or instruction, Ramola points at the officer, then points at her badge. She shouts, not to him but at him, “We’re coming through.” The officer shrinks under her glare and dutifully drags one end of a barrier back, opening a gap for their passage.
Pausing briefly beneath the wide arch of the tent’s entrance, Ramola looks at her watch. It’s 12:17 P.M. If one hour post-exposure is indeed how long it takes this virus to travel up the nervous system and pass through the brain barrier, they don’t have much time left.
Natalie is breathing heavily and looking back at the boiling pot of people behind them. “Are they going to be able to help everyone?”
Ramola says, “Yes,” although she doesn’t believe it.
They step into the tent’s spacious interior. The whir of heated air blowers drone; the air itself oscillates between warm and cold. A lane splitting the tent down the middle is being kept clear for passage and foot traffic. Eight white, square-shaped nylon curtains hang from ceiling beams and partition spaces along both side walls, creating ten patient triage/screening cubicles. Each space has an overhead lamp clipped to a wall joist, a small medical treatment table, and a rolling cart with two shelves loaded with assorted supplies. All the cubicles, as far as Ramola can see, appear to be occupied with patients. Ramola doesn’t recognize any of the medical staff in the tent, as she and her coworkers from the pediatric clinic aren’t supposed to report for duty until tomorrow.
A skinny, middle-aged white woman with thinning hair, wearing yoga pants and a light, high-end jogger’s jacket, emerges from a screening area with her foppish husband in tow. An orderly herds them out of the rear of the tent and toward the hospital proper. Judging by his puffiness, he’s gowned to within an inch of his life (a joke from her residency days Ramola can’t help but recall, though it was clearly more endearing and humorous in non-outbreak circumstances), sporting at least two sets of scrubs and coats.
The woman’s right hand is wrapped in gauze and her face covered in a white mask. She yells to her husband, but purposefully loud enough to be heard by anyone within earshot. “We have to wait three days for the next shot? Can you believe that shit? Three days. Three drops of blood. No room service. Bedpans and lookie-loos, my ass hanging out of a johnny. I don’t want to go in there. I want to go home and die.” The rhythm of her sentences is off, landing somewhere in an aural uncanny valley populated by the first iterations of computer text-to-speech programs.
A police officer emerges to aid the orderly in escorting the couple into the hospital.
A short, stocky woman pulling on new gloves steps out from the same screening area and walks toward them. She squints at Ramola’s ID badge and says, “Hello, Doctor? Are you just getting here? Have you checked in with the Command Center yet? It’s inside, check in at the emergency waiting area—”
“My friend needs help first.”
As Natalie walks into the recently vacated cubicle and sits at the edge of the lowered treatment table, Ramola quickly introduces herself to Dr. Laurie Bilezerian (her name is written in script directly on her lab coat as well as the phrase “family medicine”), and the doctor introduces herself to Natalie, insisting she call her Laurie.
Ramola explains that Natalie was bitten by an infected man approximately fifty minutes ago and she’s thirty-eight weeks pregnant.
“Okay. Dr. Sherman, can you glove up and unwrap Natalie’s arm?” Dr. Bilezerian places the long, tapered temperature probe, which is tethered to her hand-sized electronic thermometer, in Natalie’s mouth. “Please hold this under your tongue and keep your mouth closed.”