Krisis (After the Cure Book 3) (14 page)

But the Abbot just growled. The brothers were beginning to murmur behind him and Brother Matthew began to rise.

“Shh,” urged Father Preston in a shaky voice. He held the Abbot’s head still with his hands and kneeled over his chest, pinning his legs. The Abbot’s nails scratched at Father Preston’s face and arms. “Shh,” he urged again, but the Abbot’s chest rumbled with a deep and resonant roar. Father Preston glanced back at the others. They craned to see over each other and muttered amongst themselves. Brother Matthew took a step toward the Abbot. Father Preston whirled back again, desperate. Instead of the warm, noble guide he’d worshiped, Father Preston saw only a wild beast, a struggling animal cornered and vicious.

“Please,” Father Preston hissed, but the Abbot only continued to roar. So Father Preston slapped him.

He had lived in awe of the Abbot for so long, had such a dread of altering the hierarchy that he had expected the entire world to stand still, to teeter for a moment on that slap. But nobody stopped, time did not slow to a crawl and the guttural shout of the Abbot didn’t fade into the background. Nothing changed, except that now Brother Andrew’s blood was smeared over Father Preston’s palms too.

The lack of response, the permanence of the scream despite his best effort to stop it, sent an icy quake of fear through Father Preston. It quickly melted into anger. Father Preston raised his hand again. But Brother Matthew had reached them.

“Don’t, Brother Michael. He’s sick. He doesn’t understand. He— he can’t stop himself.”

Father Preston glared at him for a moment. “Sick? This isn’t sick, this is madness. This is possession,” Father Preston lowered his voice, “He
was eating
Brother Andrew. This is evil. Some demon has taken up residence in the Reverend Father’s mind—”

Brother Matthew shook his head. “You heard the doctor. This is what the Plague does. There’s nothing supernatural here. Just illness.”

“Then the Reverend Father has committed the gravest of sins. Brother Matthew, this is a man we’ve followed for decades. He cannot be a murderer— an— an abomination.”

“He’s
sick
. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. We don’t have time to argue this, Brother Michael. Our Abbot needs medical care and Brother Andrew lies unattended and exposed. Help me get the Abbot back to his room so I can call the doctor.”

The Abbot snapped his teeth together, trying to bite, as they lifted him to his feet. He struggled but they kept a tight grip. The circle of monks who had gathered around Brother Andrew parted for them, but no one spoke. Father Preston could feel their eyes on his back during the entire agonizing trip down the hall. He tried to be gentle, but the awkward writhing of the Abbot exhausted him and Brother Matthew both. They dropped him onto the narrow bed and fled out of the room quickly. Father Preston pressed his back against the door to prevent it opening as the old priest flung himself at it over and over, as if he were a small child having a tantrum.

One of the Afflicted banged into the cell door nearby, and Father Preston shook himself. It took him a second to realize he wasn’t in the dark abbey but standing in front of a sun drenched window in the only operating asylum in the world. His thumb ached and he looked down. His thumb still marked his place as the rest of his hand clenched the book until it nearly folded around the thick finger. He forced himself to relax. He looked around to make sure he hadn’t been seen, but Ruth was nowhere in sight.

Chapter 11

Ruth stood up from the bench as Father Preston walked away. She forced a smile for her friend. “Here I am, as requested. Just point me in the right direction,” she said.

Juliana gave her a hesitant smile. “I tried to keep him out of the office this morning. He must have slipped by me while I was serving breakfast. Sorry.”

Ruth shook her head. “You don’t have to worry, I’m an adult and still semi-civilized at least. I can handle Father Preston. So, what’s first?”

“I thought you could help me with bathing and rebandaging. I think I’ve got one with gangrene too.”

“I’m sorry, Juliana, I should have realized. I didn’t bring my kit.”

“I have what we’ll need.” Juliana began walking down the hallway.

“But all we have here are bandages and sedative,” Ruth called after her, “I’ll go back and get the tea tree ointment from the station. Do I need any instruments?”

Juliana turned around and shook her head. “No, it’s spread too far. He was picked up a few days ago, been living off rats in a garbage pile near the old garbage transfer station.”

Ruth shuddered. When the world stopped working, lots of survivors had piled their trash in vacant lots and near transfer stations for the first few months, thinking it would get picked up any day, when things got back to normal. As people died, the trash piles stopped growing, but there was no one left to clean them up. Ruth had treated several survivors who had been desperate enough to scavenge in the hills of plastic bags. The rats and the wild dogs were bad enough on their own, but she’d told everyone she could find to steer clear, the threat of rabies was one of her worst nightmares.

She’d never dreamed a human could survive for six years in one of those trash piles. As larger prey grew scarcer and more wary, the Infected must have moved to smaller, more dependable sources of food. She wondered how many Infected had burned to death in the massive tire fire a few years earlier.

“Is that why I’m here?” she asked, catching up to Juliana.

“I wouldn’t ask you to do something I refuse to,” said Juliana, “I asked for help because this has gotten too big for me. Or maybe I’ve found myself smaller of late, I don’t know,” she explained tiredly.

Ruth put a hand on her friend’s arm. “What are you talking about? You haven’t been yourself lately. Are you feeling all right?”

Juliana waved her away. “Yes, I’m fine, just tired and constantly playing catch up.” Ruth followed her to the kitchen, watching carefully. She couldn’t see anything alarming about the other woman, but she promised herself to persuade Juliana into a checkup when they finished for the day.

The sink was filled with breakfast dishes and Juliana looked utterly defeated when she saw them. “I asked Mrs. Baird to do these,” she said quietly.

“Don’t worry,” said Ruth, manning the hand pump with some vigor, “I’m no stranger to dishes. You get the bandages and then come sit down at the table and dry for me.”

Juliana disappeared into the pantry. “Who is Mrs. Baird?” Ruth yelled after her.

“Part of Father Preston’s Congregation. When I suggested that they were more interested in protesting outside the police station than in helping those they claimed to be defending, he made some of them volunteer.”

Ruth snorted. “Then they should all be here today. There’s nobody to protest today. I’m conveniently nearby.”

Juliana emerged from the pantry with a load of linen and bandages. She dumped it on the table and picked up a towel. Ruth placed a stack of dripping bowls on the table and pulled a chair out for her friend. “Oh, they’re here,” she sank into the chair and picked up a bowl. “Sorry,” she offered with a half-smile.

“Well, what are they doing?”

“It’s time for the morning reading.”

“The what?”

“Father Preston has decided that the patients need to hear the bible. So each of the Congregation goes and stands in front of each door and shouts a bible passage through it every morning.”

“They couldn’t think of a better way to demonstrate religion?” asked Ruth, scrubbing scratches into the plastic bowls in frustration, “like empathy or charity in caring for these people? Or mercy—” she fell silent for a moment, “sorry. I didn’t mean to say the last one. Does he think they can even hear it over their own screams?”

Juliana shrugged. “I don’t know. I think it gives him something to do. And it keeps him out of my hair for an hour a day. I use the Congregation for things around here when they are willing. I don’t trust them with the garden. The relatives of the people here do that. They have the most motivation to take care of it and help Bernard guard it when I’m not there.”

Ruth finished the dishes and piled them in front of Juliana. “How many patients do you have now?” she asked, her tone gentle.

“Seventy-nine. There’s hardly any on the street anymore, I’m not sure how they’d survive. That one from the transfer station is the first in years. But there are still people out there caring for their relatives. They trickle in. I don’t think it will ever stop.”

Ruth shook her head and turned back to the pump, filling buckets with water for bathing. “You can’t keep taking them. It’s too much. They’ll starve or you’ll drop dead from exhaustion.”

Juliana rubbed the last of the dripping bowls with her towel. “What if you stayed here?”

“You mean for good? With Father Preston and his ‘flock’ just down the hall?”

“I’ll ask them to leave.”

Ruth stopped pumping and the spout gurgled its last. She turned around. “You’ve never offered to make him leave before.”

“I need help. More than shouting bible verses through doorways.” She picked up the pile of clean diapers and bandages. “Just think about it, Ruth. I’m not asking you to stop— you know, your
services
. I’m just asking you to
help
me,” she lowered her voice, though there was no one around to hear. “If nothing changes, we’ll starve this winter. Or freeze. All of us in the hospital. I’m frightened. More scared than I’ve been since the first few weeks of the Plague. I don’t see another way.”

“I don’t know if I can do— all this again. I don’t know if I can relive this—” Ruth stammered, blushing.

Juliana stood up. “You don’t have to decide now. Just think about it a while. I’ll be grateful even if you only help today and never again. Just promise to consider it. Please.” She walked out of the kitchen into the noisy hallway. Ruth followed her with the buckets of water, trying to mask her panic.

The man from the transfer station was in the room at the end of the hall. The same one Father Preston had been in when Ruth had spent the night breathing for him through a blue bulb at the end of an ambu bag. The room was no different from the dozens of others on the ward, but the sight of it always made Ruth shudder. It was the death room to her. Even Juliana seemed to sense it, always putting the patients in the worst health in that room, without realizing it. Ruth could smell the man from outside the door. The rotting sewer smell clung to everything, like a sticky, invisible sweat. Ruth pulled up her face mask. “This is going to be really bad,” she muttered through it.

“I know,” said Juliana, “I don’t know what to do for him.”

Ruth opened the door. Her eyes teared up at the strength of the reek, even through the mask. She could hear Juliana retch behind her. She knew that she should tell her to go, but something hard inside of Ruth made her want to force Juliana to see the pain the man was being put through. To see the consequence of her decision. His eyes were dark craters in his face and his skin had turned a dull gray. Juliana scuttled past Ruth when she saw him lying in a puddle of his own filth.

“I swear, I just changed him. Not even an hour ago. He just keeps going. Sometimes it’s bloody. I don’t know what to do anymore.”

“That isn’t gangrene,” said Ruth. She helped Juliana turn him to his side to clean him. His lips curled back in a partial snarl but he was too weak to do more. She gently pinched a section of the skin on his arm. It didn’t sink back when she let go. The thrum of his pulse was too fast and too distant in his wrist. “It has to be dysentery. Or cholera maybe. But from what you told me, he’s been living in a garbage pile for years. For all I know, he may have the plague too. The bubonic one. He’s probably been bitten everywhere by the rats—” Ruth shuddered thinking of the rats trying to devour him, and him trying to devour the rats. “There’s nothing I can do for him. I have no antibiotics. And even if I did, he’s already dying from dehydration.”

“We can try an IV,” offered Juliana.

Ruth sighed. “Even if I could find a saline pack, I have no tubing and no catheters. Everything is gone, Juliana. Short of spoon feeding him liquids, I don’t know what we can try.”

“Let’s try, please,” said Juliana instead of answering.

“He’s eating food that could go to someone that might survive.”

“We aren’t starving yet.”

Ruth sighed and shook her head. “We can’t just give him water. We’d need sugar and salt to make the right solution. How many years has it been since you’ve seen either one?”

“Look at him, Ruth. Someone cared about him once.”

Ruth thought for a long moment. “I can’t give him what we don’t have,” she said, putting a hand on Juliana’s shoulder, “and if it’s dysentery it could spread to the others very quickly. It just takes one unwashed linen or us not disinfecting ourselves enough before doing something else. He’s dying. Whatever we do will only prolong it a few hours or days. This isn’t like the others. I don’t have to guess whether this man is actually in pain. The rat bites on his arms and legs are infected. He’s starving because everything is passing right through him. The dehydration is causing cramps throughout his body. It’s not just his mind that’s sick. He doesn’t have years of good health in front of him, so I don’t want you to think I’m saying this because he has the December Plague. I think the kindest thing for him and the safest thing for the others is to give him a sedative and let him rest.”