~ TEMA ~
At the end of their second day of quarantine, Tema went to visit the scientists. The young Ella had been furnished with more than her body weight in books from the hospital’s library, and was studiously engrossed in a huge volume. Dougray Stockton was glancing casually at another. It looked as though he was reading out of moral support for Ella rather than any actual interest. The third, the spectacled man whose name Tema hadn’t caught, was sat silently in the corner of the room.
“That’s your time,” she said, to the three scientists. “I just have to do a few quick tests, and then you’re free to go. It won’t take a moment.” Ella was watching her curiously. She’d been wearing only a cloth mask when the scientists had arrived, so she was probably the first person Ella had ever seen in one of the moulded ones. Hugging the mouth as they did, these masks were an unusual sight, at least a little scary to the uninitiated. But she was not about to take a risk until she was certain the infection hadn’t spread.
To be fair, it shouldn’t have done. The scientists hadn’t been exposed to anybody else during their time here. But there was nothing to be gained by taking chances— there were few enough doctors here as it was. Morale was tenuously balanced. If Tema fell ill, it would fall away altogether.
Stockton was gracious and pliable as Tema swabbed the roof of his mouth and drew a sample of blood, and waited patiently for the all-clear which he duly received. The other man, by contrast, scowled the whole time. “What a ridiculous rigmarole,” he scoffed, when Tema asked him to open his mouth. He’d said almost nothing on the subject of the powder, and in fact had spoken only to ask to see Caroline’s body. He was a friend of hers, apparently. Tema had allowed it, seeing as he would have to spend time in the quarantine ward anyway. He’d not said a word of thanks. Perhaps he’d have been better off not breaking the lockdown. Certainly he’d not been integral in conveying Stockton’s message.
“Don’t mind Mostyn,” Stockton whispered in her ear, as the man headed for the exit. “He gets a bit cranky sometimes. Truth be told, I’m surprised he volunteered to come. He’s not exactly the studious type—not like Ella.”
Ella’s proclivity for learning was obvious. She still had her nose in a book when Tema called her over. “I’d like to stay a little while longer,” she said, as Tema drew blood. “With your permission, of course.”
Tema syringed the blood into a sample tray. “You don’t need my permission to stay. You’d have to go through the quarantine again, of course, but if you really don’t want to leave I can’t force you. It’s not as if you haven’t already broken the lockdown.”
Ella glanced over to Master Stockton, who nodded reluctantly, and then she smiled. “I’ll stay then.”
“Open wide,” said Tema. She jammed a cotton swab into Ella’s mouth, tracing its contours. “Why would you want to stay? Don’t you want to go back to the fresh air?”
“What fresh air?” Ella laughed. “I never really leave the lab. Please, I want to help. I think I might know how we can use the powder.”
Tema looked at Stockton. If he’d known this was coming, he did a good job of looking surprised. “Ella, this isn’t another lab. You can’t just do test after test until it works.”
“I don’t need to,” said Ella, shaking her head. “Just the one. The powder mutilates the blood cells in the same way as the mawflux virus. I think it might be the key to a cure.”
Mawflux was an exotic ailment, the sort of disease few doctors would ever encounter. Driven to near extinction three centuries earlier, it lingered now only in the occasional outbreak on Kelsiern. Repeated efforts had not stopped it recurring. It was sinister, with a mortality rate in excess of ninety percent; it was only thanks to her own morbid curiosity as a depressive youth that Tema knew of the one possible cure. Emergency protocol. If the body’s temperature was reduced to freezing, and the patient immediately committed to a tevion, there was a chance. A slim chance. But tevions were highly illegal. Just one solitary tube existed, in an institute on Kelsiern designed specifically to accommodate mawflux patients. Without it, death was a certainty.
She certainly hoped Ella wasn’t about to suggest applying the mawflux protocol here.
“We don’t have a tevion,” she said, “and even if we did, there’s no way I’d sanction using it. They say being inside one is worse than torture.”
“Better than being dead,” the gangly Mostyn muttered, darkly.
“I wasn’t going to suggest a tevion,” Ella pouted. “The books don’t go into enough detail, but I can’t help but think that if you were to infect your patients with mawflux, one of the symptoms would be the elimination of this other disease.”
“If you think using mawflux as a cure is a solution, you’re more naïve than Master Stockton gave you credit for.” Tema was sure she was missing something. Stockton spoke highly of Ella. She couldn’t really be this stupid. “Even if it worked, they’d all have mawflux. And where would we even get hold of a sample?”
“The mawflux virus is deadly,” Stockton cautioned.
“More deadly than this,” Tema added.
Stockton put a hand on Ella’s shoulder. “Ella, I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“I do. At least I think so. Like I said, this powder seems to do the same thing to blood as the mawflux virus. Why, then, can’t it have the same curing effects? Well, surely there’s a chance, at any rate—and what choice do we have? What happens if we don’t do this?”
“We don’t know what that powder would do to somebody,” Tema protested.
Ella nodded. “I know. That’s why I’ll test it on myself, first, just to make sure it’s safe.”
“Ella,” said Stockton, setting a hand on her shoulder, but she knocked it aside.
“I know it’s dangerous. I’ll take the chance. I’m a grown woman. My mind is set.”
Stockton sighed. “Is there nothing that will convince you to rethink?”
Ella shook her head. “It’ll happen, whether or not you support me. Though obviously I’d prefer it if you had my back.”
“This is a foolish thing, Ella. You understand that? I ought to carry you from here myself, to save you from this folly.”
“I have to do it,” she said. “If I didn’t try everything I could, I don’t think I could ever live with myself. I’d only end up slipping back here as soon as your back was turned.”
“I don’t doubt that that’s true. You’re too wilful for your own good, I fear. Ella, if you’re to do this thing, you’ll do it alone. This is where I take my leave of you,” said Stockton. He leaned in close to Tema, whispered in her ear. “Take care of her, Doctor Caerlin. Don’t let her die.”
With the hospital’s patients confined to just two wards, there was no shortage of empty space. Ella set herself up in what was intended as an overflow examination room, but which still had sealed boxes full of gear and polythene covers over its taps and outlets. “Give me two days,” she said. “That’s all it’ll take.” The excitement was admirable. Tema was fairly sure it was misplaced confidence, but it was admirable.
Six days later, Ella had begun to accept the reality. Tema found her leaning against the wall across from her room, hands interlocked on her forehead, muttering a string of vaguely comprehensible curse-words. She watched for a few seconds then left before Ella noticed her. Better to let her get her frustrations out in private.
Oddly, when she popped back an hour afterward, Ella was in a radiant mood. She’d raised the mask off her face, which was red and imprinted the mask’s shape. But she was beaming. “What’s put a smile on your face?”
“It’s worked. I’ve actually done it.”
“Tell me from the beginning.”
Ella grabbed Tema’s arm and pulled her over to the workstation. “Look at this,” she said, pointing at a microscope she had set up. On the slide within was a blood sample, magnified a hundred times. It had a glossy tincture, but was otherwise unextraordinary. “It’s my own blood,” Ella explained. “From the sample I showed you the other day—the one with the powder.”
Tema moved her head away from the microscope. Ella was fiddling with a couple of other slides. She replaced the one in the viewer with a different one: “this one unexposed to the powder,” as Ella said. The difference was night and day. The first sample hadn’t looked unusual by itself, but in comparison to this one it was practically angel blood. To look at, this was healthy enough—but drab, without the warm glow of the other.
Her vision blurred as Ella removed that second slide, revealing the projection of the lamp on the underside of the glass tray. It was quickly replaced.
“This is the first one,” said Tema. “Why are you showing me this again?”
When she removed her head from the microscope this time, she saw Ella looming behind her with a shit-eating grin plastered on her face. “That’s a new sample,” she said.
“It’s identical to the first one.”
“That’s exactly my point,” said Ella. “It’s my blood again.”
Tema frowned. “Your blood, with some of that powder put in?”
“Not quite. The powdered blood spreads, you see. Just like how a vaccine affects the whole body, not just the point where it was introduced to the blood. I introduced some powder-touched blood into my bloodstream via my left arm, and took this sample from my right arm. I think we can use this as a vaccination. Maybe even a cure.”
A cure? Wouldn’t that be nice? “A cure is probably getting ahead of yourself, Ella.”
The girl shook her head. “It’ll work. I’m sure.”
Ella was still a student, little more than a teenager. Tema couldn’t question her intentions. Perhaps she was due a dose of realism. Diseases like this, with angry pockmarks and high death rates, sprang up periodically through history. They had thwarted generations of attempts to cure them. The best advice the books had to offer was still to isolate the affected, and let them die before they could pass on their sickness. This wouldn’t be the first epidemic to wither on the vine, starved of new blood, rather than being defeated by medicine. How many young and eager minds had thought they had the cure to one of these ailments, only to face disappointment? Only to die for their hubris?
But then again, what did they have to lose?
“Let’s at least do everything properly,” said Tema. “Take our time, double-check the findings.”
“Do you have time to take?” The question was blunt. “The people who are sick, how long do they have? A few days?”
In truth it was hard to say. The disease’s progression was erratic, and some were fighting it better than others. Doctor Maynard would be lucky to see the following morning, and Betsy Clanackan likely only had a day or two in her. Lucy Jaine, by contrast, had been impressively resolute. Even a fortnight after falling ill, she was still conscious and cognizant more often than not.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Tema made a decision in a split-second. It might get her fired, even expelled from the physicians’ guild, if she was wrong. Her gender would be weaponised. She would be outcast. Those who hated her for what she was, Harry Baldwin and Rupert Staniforth, Mother and Father, Tasha, they’d all be vindicated in their hatred. She had to be right. She had to be right, and she had to stick to her guns no matter what anybody said. “We’ll try it, then.” The rational, clear-thinking part of her brain hated her. But Ella had made a good point, and she wanted to believe that there was a way she could save some lives.
She’d promised not to let Caro die, and she’d fucked that one up.
Never again.
Maynard first. There was less to lose with her. Less to lose, and less time to waste.
Viola Watling was the one on bedside vigil when they arrived, fully kitted in protective gear as she sat beside the unconscious Maynard. She gave Tema a look of equal parts confusion and apprehension, then scarpered. The girl’s refusal to even talk was growing tiresome. Now wasn’t the time to chase her, but when this was all done Tema vowed to corner Viola, and not let her flee until the air was cleared.
Clipped to the foot of her bed, a sheet of paper recorded Doctor Maynard’s details. It was just two weeks ago that Tema had sat transcribing these facts and figures from Maynard’s medical file. It felt like a different age. Below the standard information, the twice-daily records of Maynard’s status, in a series of rough scribbles, told a sordid story. Once, if the best you could say for a patient was “responds to stimuli” then the prognosis was bleak indeed. The state Emmeline Maynard was in, that same grim sentence became a cause for optimism.
She turned to Ella. “What’s your blood type? Quickly.”
“Uh, ‘A’, I think. ‘A’ negative.”
“‘A’ negative?” She scanned Doctor Maynard’s chart for the same information; there, in black ink, was the selfsame letter. “Huh. It’s a match.” The Gods, it seemed, had decided to favour them. About time. She could have done with their favour back before good friends started dying.
Ella was suddenly at her side with a syringe full of blood. She reached towards Maynard, but Tema grabbed her wrist to stop her. “Let me.”
“I can do it,” Ella protested, but Tema shook her head.
“It’s my job.”
Ella relinquished her grip on the syringe. Tema clasped it tightly in her right hand, running her fingers along it as she turned her full attention to Doctor Maynard. The doctor’s breathing was down to a guttural death rattle, and her eyes sinking pools. She was on her final minutes.
It’s now or never. Inertia caught Tema for a second, two seconds, three. That was three seconds too long. She screwed her eyes tightly shut, took one last deep breath, then:
She found a vein at the first attempt. A tiny drop of Maynard’s blood bubbled to the skin, as Tema pushed the syringe down, forced the powdered blood in. When it was done, she removed the syringe and let it clatter to the floor.
Now we can but hope.
Her headache had returned. That wasn’t a welcome bit of news. It throbbed a drumbeat in syncopated time with her heartrate, leaving her brain languishing in arrhythmia. Half of her energy was spent on keeping focus.
“Who’s next?” said Ella.
Tema shook her head. “For you? Nobody. You need to stop.”
“I want to help.”
“You have helped.” Double-vision flashed for a second. When this was over, she’d have to look into that. “They won’t all be ‘A’ negative. Your blood’s the wrong blood. It has to be me. My blood. I’m type ‘O’.”
Ella frowned. “We don’t have a sample of your blood.”
“So we get one,” said Tema. “I’ve got plenty to spare.”
She drifted off as Ella ran back to her little set-up to retrieve some of the powder. Forcing herself to focus only made her dizzy, so she let the blur endure. Sometime later, Ella returned, announcing her presence by piercing Tema’s arm with a needle.
“Ow!” That brought everything back into focus.
Ella shrugged. “I need your blood.”
Tema looked away as her own crimson was drawn from her arm. Other people’s blood was fine; she could look at it all day long and it wouldn’t bother her in the slightest. The knowledge that it was her own made her somehow queasy.
It didn’t help that her stomach was turning anyway. Her throat was getting scratchy. Something on her thigh was starting to hurt like crazy, and Good Mother did it itch. She rose unsteadily. “How long before it’ll be ready?”
Ella was already adding tweezer-fulls of the black powder to the petri dish of blood on the bedside table in front of her. She didn’t look up at Tema. “Give me half an hour. It won’t be pretty, but it should work.”
Half an hour. “You’ll be okay if I go to grab some water?”
There was a fountain just down the corridor, she knew. In fact, there was an entire alcove, set back from the corridor—not just a water fountain, but half a dozen chairs, their fine upholstery never used. How much fun she could have with half a dozen chairs! Nobody need know she was there.
All the lights were off in the alcove, though, and indeed all along the corridor. It was ghostly quiet. Her stepping feet beat a rhythm, and only the muffled sound of Maynard’s monitor from the other room played along. By now her head was really aching. As soon as this is all over, she told herself, I am going to have the longest sleep that there ever was. Even the Lost Armies in all their might and fury would be helpless to wake her.
First, though, water. The cups beside the fountain were still in their plastic seal. Why they had to come in a seal to begin with was beyond Tema, but they had, and nobody had yet been along to unseal them. What had everyone been doing here for six months?
When she tried to break the plastic, she felt the strength in her arms had gone. Her fingers had no grip. The more she tried to put pressure on them, the more it sent a tingling up her all the way to her head. And all the while the cups remained tightly locked away from her in clear plastic.
Balls to them.
She threw the package away. It didn’t matter where they ended up, they’d only get picked up by somebody eventually. She just wanted to believe that cups could feel pain, and specifically that these cups in particular could feel it. They were smarmy dicks, mocking her facelessly from within the clear wrapper. Let them fly. Let them gain sentience for just long enough to know that the landing hurt.
She heard a cry of pain from behind her. It hadn’t come from the cups. Much as she might wish it, they would never feel a thing. It had come from a woman.
Tema wheeled around to see Janna Davis, holding the cups in one hand and rubbing her eye with the other. “You shouldn’t be throwing cups, Miss Tema,” she said. “You could have had my eye out.”
“I didn’t know there was anybody here, Janna. Did you come for water as well?”
“I came for you,” said Janna. “That scientist is wondering where you’ve got to. She said it’s been an hour, and you were supposed to be back by now.”
“I told her where I was—an hour?” How could she possibly have been gone an hour? She’d only walked down the hall. It was two minutes’ walk at most.
Unbidden, Janna ripped the packaging off the cups and pulled one out of the stack. She bustled over to the fountain and filled it, setting the rest down beside the machine. “I also came to tell you that Doctor Maynard’s improving,” she said. “She opened her eyes earlier. She’s asking for mango juice, though I don’t think there is any.”
Now that couldn’t be. Tema had only left Doctor Maynard’s bedside five minutes ago, and at that point Maynard had been comatose for well over a week. She snatched the cup from Janna’s hands and emptied it in one go. Even a pint of water did nothing to quench the thirst that had been brewing. She wanted more, but if she had another cup she’d be peeing in five-minute intervals for the rest of the day. She swayed where she stood. All of a sudden, gravity and her body had a falling-out. It was only for the briefest instant, but she all but fell over. She threw out an arm to save herself. In its flailing it did nothing but hit hard on the metal frame of the closest chair. The pain rattled her.
“Are you alright, Miss Tema?” Janna had run to her.
She nodded. “I’m fine.” It was just a fever or something, just tiredness. Once Ella’s cure had been spread around, she could rest. Then, and only then, would she have time to be sick.
Janna didn’t look convinced. “If you say so, Miss Tema,” she said, giving Tema a sideways look. “Let me help you back to the ward.”
Tema made no attempt to argue. Janna practically carried her down the hallway, and when they reached Doctor Maynard’s ward she just about fell into Ella’s arms. Only Ella wasn’t expecting her, so they both went tumbling down.
“Where’ve you been, Doctor Caerlin? Was there no way for you to get water short of synthesising the atoms?”
“I don’t think you can synthesise hydrogen,” said Tema.
“I’ve removed the powder from your blood sample,” said Ella. “So I can safely say that what happened with mine wasn’t a one-off. We should be ready to go.”
“Great,” said Tema. “Who’s next?”
Ella looked at her. “It’s your hospital, Doctor Caerlin. I don’t know who the patients are.”
Neither did Tema, in truth. Her head was too busy spinning for her to really pay much more attention to what was going on than the basics. The days cooped up in the hospital, making the same cycle between the same people, had imprinted the layout in her memory. Betsy Clanackan and Robin Canterall, she knew, were in adjacent beds in the same ward, just down the stairs from Doctor Maynard’s. The kitchen assistant who’d come in with a cut thumb at very much the wrong time was in a private room not far from the showers. Lucy Jaine wasn’t far from the reception. If they were lucky they could get them all.
Tema led Ella along this route, pausing every now and then to get her balance right and to squeeze tight her eyes to shut out the impossibly bright overhead lights—they were a normal brightness earlier, she could have sworn. Every now and then she had to scratch the unbearable itches that had consumed her legs. Those same legs were unsteady, wobbling every third step and threatening to collapse beneath her. She wasn’t ill. Just tired.
Janna tagged along partway. By the time they descended the main staircase with its waterfalls, she was no longer with them. Tema hadn’t noticed her going her own way.
Lucy Jaine was awake and sat upright when they reached her bed. The final one. “Doctor Caerlin, are you alright?”
There were few things that could make her feel less secure in herself than a patient supposedly on death’s door telling her she looked rough. Why was everybody asking if she was okay? It was only a headache.
“I’m going to need you to sit still for me, Lucy,” she said. “Can you roll up your sleeves?”
Lucy Jaine obliged. “What’s this for?”
“We’re going to try and fix you.”
“You have a cure?”
Tema tried to temper Lucy’s expectations. “We have a theory. We’re hopeful—and it’s better than the alternative, which is to wait and hope for the best. But I can’t make any promises. It might not work.”
A tiny speck of uncertainty washed over Lucy’s eyes.
“We don’t have to do this,” said Tema. “If you don’t want to.”
Lucy gripped her bedframe. “I’ll take the risk.”
Tema dragged a chair next to Lucy’s bed, and sat beside her while Ella fiddled with syringes and the bag she’d filled with Tema’s blood. When she was done, Tema took the needle and—prick—jabbed Lucy. The girl didn’t even wince.
Now they just had to wait for the blood to go in. It had taken twenty minutes with the rest of them, and right now Tema was certain that she’d fall asleep there and then if it took much longer. But she had to stay awake. She couldn’t rest until it was done.
“You’re sweating, Doctor Caerlin.”
“The heating system’s on too high, Lucy. That’s all.”
“The temperature’s fine,” said Ella, behind her.
She glanced at the blood bag. It was so slow to drain.
“Ten more minutes,” said Ella.
Lucy tilted her head to look Tema straight in the eyes. “Do you really think this’ll work?”
“I hope so,” said Tema.
Lucy smiled. “That’s good. I know I’m holding up better than everybody else, so I really shouldn’t complain, but this thing’s a bitch, you know. My head’s always hurting, and I’m always really thirsty. Every night when I go to sleep, I wonder if I’ll have taken a turn for the worse by the time I wake up.” She had every right to be worried. They’d all seen what happened to Olwen Kennady and Lily Day and the others. The speed with which they’d gone from healthy to dead was the most alarming thing.
And since then it had been a fight just to not be the next one.
All of a sudden, Tema felt a sharp pain on her thigh. It was worse than anything else she’d ever experienced. A hundred knives all had their own grinning way with her, and her feeling of them was magnified somehow. She could feel the nerves shredding. She tried not to scream, and it came out as a squeak.
She didn’t dare to look. It was better if she didn’t see what was causing the pain.
If she looked, she’d see the red mark she knew was there. As soon as she looked, it would become real. She’d lose her nerve, and she couldn’t lose her nerve. She had to keep calm for the sake of Lucy.
She took a deep breath. It helped, a little.
“Nearly there,” said Ella, at last, far more than ten minutes later. Why had she lied about how long it would take? And why had the clock on the wall lied as well? By now, Tema was gritting her teeth just so she wouldn’t scream. She wanted to cry. But how would it look if she cried? How could that reassure Lucy?
She heard the cue from Ella, and removed the needle from Lucy’s arm. She put it down on the side-table—hard to do, given that she could see two side-tables.
The cure had to work. Emmeline would be dead if it didn’t, Betsy too. The rest would follow in time. And Tema was sure to join them. She was under no illusions now—it had got her. Perhaps she’d not wake up again. Even if she did, there was no guaranteeing that anybody would be waiting beside her bed. Staniforth, if he had his chance, would probably try to deny her a cure even if Ella’s miracle worked. Let her die, clear the chaff, and then he can take over. A foolproof plan, for a man without a heart.
Tema was just about crying now, part from the pain and part from the growing fear. What if this was her last day among the living? Nothing had been achieved. She was thus far a failure. Tasha hated her, Viola hated her, she hated herself, and none of it had been fixed. Who died without fixing anything?
She vowed to wake up. She promised herself she’d get up. Maybe she didn’t have the disease at all. Maybe she really was just tired. Yes, that was more like it. How could she be ill, after all? She was Tema.
Her energy gone, she collapsed to the floor. It was cold, a soothing cold on her painful arms. I could stay here forever, she thought. Then she closed her eyes. Just to sleep.