Ken McClure - Wildcard

At the reception office, he found two tired-looking nurses sitting drinking tea, with an open packet of Jaffa Cakes on the table in front of them. He said who he was, then asked if Caroline Anderson was on the premises.

The older nurse looked at her watch and said, ‘She’s due for a break in ten minutes. Would you like to wait?’

Steven said he would, but declined her offer of tea. ‘How are you coping?’ he asked.

‘We’re running just to stand still,’ replied the younger nurse. ‘It’s a rotten feeling.’

‘I can imagine. What about the building itself?’

‘Every time I go through there,’ said the first nurse, nodding towards the nave of the church, ‘I feel like I’m stepping into a scene from Dante’s Inferno. It’s an absolute nightmare.’

The other nurse checked her watch and said to her colleague, ‘We’d best get ready.’ She turned to Steven and said, ‘It takes us a good five minutes to get into these suits. Just wait here, and Caroline will be with you when she’s had her shower.’

The older nurse popped a last Jaffa Cake into her mouth and said, ‘Once more into the breach…’

‘Good luck,’ said Steven.

Five minutes later Caroline Anderson came through the door accompanied by a woman in her late thirties, whom she introduced as Sister Kate Lineham. Their hair was wet and they were wearing fresh white uniform jackets and trousers. Their faces glowed from the shower.

‘What on earth are you doing here?’ exclaimed Caroline.

‘I came to see you and find out what you’re doing here,’ said Steven with a smile.

‘I volunteered,’ replied Caroline. ‘They stopped me doing what I do best, but they couldn’t stop me doing this. I understand all about cross-infection and I can mop up blood with the best of them, so why not?’

‘I take my hat off to you,’ said Steven.

‘You could always take your coat off as well and give us a hand,’ said Caroline. ‘We’re short on staff around here.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘You’re a qualified doctor?’

‘Sure.’

‘Well, throw your degree in the bucket. These people don’t need your medical skills, just simple nursing care and good aseptic technique. Think you could manage that?’

‘I can try,’ said Steven. ‘Where do you want me to start?’

It was the turn of the two women to be surprised. ‘Really?’ exclaimed Caroline. ‘I was only joking.’

‘I wasn’t,’ Steven assured her.

‘I’ll get you a suit. Oh, and we may both be doctors, but in this “hospital” we do what Kate here tells us. She’s a specialist nurse in infectious diseases. Comfortable with that?’

‘No problem,’ replied Steven.

‘We’re back on in fifteen minutes. We’ll show you the ropes.’

Caroline found a Racal suit for Steven and briefed him on the respirator function. ‘We’re using a portable entry/exit system the Swedes developed for dealing with just such a situation,’ she said. ‘Basically it’s just a clean-side/dirty-side system with a shower interface. Anything you take through there you don’t bring back out again. Okay?’

Steven nodded.

‘It’s just a matter of trying to keep the patients as clean and as comfortable as possible,’ said Kate. ‘The only medical procedure we carry out is the replacement of lost fluids, and that’s the most dangerous thing of all. Many of them are delirious, so we tend to do it with one of us holding the patient and the other inserting the needle. We’ve had to resort to tying some of them down to make sure the shunt stays in.’

‘The human rights people won’t like that,’ said Steven wryly.

‘Well, they can come and do it their way, and we can all go home and watch the telly,’ said Kate.

Steven made a final adjustment to his respirator and checked for gaps between his cuffs and gloves. Satisfied that all the seals were in place, he followed Caroline and Kate through the improvised air-locked entry port into the nave of the church. He found that the nurse who had likened it to a vision of hell wasn’t far wrong. In spite of the nursing staff’s best efforts there was still lot of blood around. He had to remind himself that this was Britain in the twenty-first century and not the bloody aftermath of some medieval battle whose fatally wounded had been gathered in a church for the last rites.

Kate showed him where the supplies of swabs and saline and the safe-disposal bins were; many bins were already full to overflowing. She then led him over to the first group of four beds in a line that stretched the length of the church. They were occupied by two young men, a middle-aged man with a salt-and-pepper beard and a man in his seventies. All of them were seriously ill and none was fully conscious, although one was restless and threw his head from side to side as if in the throes of a nightmare. Kate signalled that Steven should start by tending to the elderly man, which he did.

He worked his way along the line of patients, doing his best to make them as comfortable as possible but also finding himself, reluctantly, on a voyage of discovery. The cries of the sick, although muted to a certain extent by his helmet and visor, were still clearly audible and they echoed up to the roof beams and off the old stone walls. They competed with the laboured sound of his own breathing to provide a soundtrack of hell inside his plastic bubble.

He found himself feeling relief that most of the patients were either comatose or only semi-conscious, because he suspected that reassurance and comforting words might well be beyond him. He felt pity and compassion, but revulsion, too. This was a revelation, because it was a gut-wrenching revulsion that threatened to overwhelm him. He wanted to throw up and make a run for it.

Such feelings brought guilt into the equation. He’d always known that he was no Mother Teresa but this… this was something else. He switched to autopilot, which he reckoned was the only way he was going to get through the shift. He cleaned up the blood and the vomit, he changed urine- and faeces-soiled bedding and clothing, and all without allowing himself to think too much about it. A job needed doing so he was doing it, period.

Occasionally he sneaked a look at Kate and the other nurses, and felt that they were showing much more care and compassion. Caroline, who was as unused to this kind of work as he was, looked to be doing a thoroughly professional job. He was probably being every bit as gentle, but what was going on in his head worried him. He had an awful suspicion that the nurses weren’t thinking the things he was. He was simply operating as a robot that had been programmed to handle eggs without cracking them. He suspected that they felt true compassion.

Steven worked for five hours with only one break of twenty minutes before the night shift came on duty. He was the last to leave the area, as he was the only male worker on the shift and there were no separate showers. When it at last came to his turn, he lingered in the plastic shower cubicle for a long time, leaning on the front panel, head bowed as he sought comfort from the clean, warm water that tumbled over his skin. He fought to come to terms with all that he had seen and with all that he felt.

‘You did well,’ said Kate when he finally emerged on the clean side of the barrier. ‘You too, Caroline, but you’re getting to be an old hand round here.’

‘Thanks,’ said Caroline. She looked exhausted, having worked ten hours that day.

‘Well, I’m off home to see my old friends, G amp;T,’ said Kate with a smile as she slipped on her coat and gathered her belongings together. ‘Will I see you tomorrow, Caroline?’

‘I’ll be here.’

‘Nice meeting you, Steven. Thanks for your help.’