Connie Willis - Doomsday Book

He handed the list to Dunworthy, who handed it to Finch. "We'll also need med support for Kivrin," Dunworthy said, "and I want a telephone installed in this room."

Finch was frowning at the list.

"And don't tell me we're out of any of these," Dunworthy said before he could protest. "Beg, borrow, or steal them." He turned back to Badri. "Will you need anything else?"

"To be discharged," Badri said, "which, I'm afraid will be the greatest obstacle."

"He's right," Colin said. "Sister will never let him out. I had to sneak him in here."

"Who's your doctor?" Dunworthy asked.

"Dr. Gates," Badri said, "but — "

"Surely we can explain the situation," Dunworthy inter- rupted, "explain that it's an emergency."

Badri shook his head. "The last thing we can do is tell him the circumstances. I persuaded him to discharge me to open the net while you were ill. He didn't think I was well enough, but he allowed it, and then when I had the relapse…"

Dunworthy looked anxiously at him. "Are you certain you're capable of running the net? Perhaps I can get Andrews now that the epidemic's under control."

"There isn't time," Badri said. "And it was my fault. I want to run the net. Perhaps Mr. Finch can find another doctor."

"Yes," Dunworthy said. "And tell mine I need to speak with him." He reached for Colin's book.

"I'll need a costume." He flipped through the pages, looking for an illustration of mediaeval clothing. "No strips, no zippers, no buttons." He found a picture of Boccaccio and showed it to Finch. "I doubt we'll have anything in Twentieth Century. Telephone the Dramatic Society and see if they've got something."

"I'll do my best, sir," Finch said, frowning doubtfully at the illustration.

The door crashed open, and the sister rattled in, enraged. "Mr. Dunworthy, this is utterly irresponsible," she said in a tone that had no doubt caused casualties from the Second Falklands War terrors. "If you will not take care of your own health, you might at the least not endanger that of the other patients." She fixed her gaze on Finch. "Mr. Dunworthy is to have no more visitors."

She glared at Colin and then snatched the wheelchair handles from him. "What can you have been thinking of, Mr. Chaudhuri?" she said, whipping the wheelchair round so smartly Badri's head snapped back. "You have already had one relapse. I have no intention of allowing you to have another." She pushed him out.

"I told you we'd never get him out," Colin said.

She flung the door open again. " No visitors," she said to Colin.

"I'll be back," Colin whispered and ducked past her.

She fixed him with her ancient eye. "Not if I have anything to say about it."

She apparently had something to say about it. Colin didn't return till after she'd gone off-duty, and then only to bring the remote hookup to Badri and report to Dunworthy on plague inoculations. Finch had telephoned the NHS. It took two weeks for the inoculation to confer full immunity, and seven days before partial. "And Mr. Finch wants to know if you shouldn't also be inoculated against cholera and typhoid."

"There isn't time," he said. There wasn't time for a plague inoculation either. Kivrin had already been there over three weeks, and every day lowered her chances of survival. And he was no closer to being discharged.

As soon as Colin left, he rang William's nurse and told her he wanted to see his doctor. "I'm ready to be discharged," he said.

She laughed.

"I'm completely recovered," he said. "I did ten laps in the corridor this morning."

She shook her head. "The incidence of relapse in this virus has been extremely high. I simply can't take the risk." She smiled at him. "Where is it you're so determined to go? Surely whatever it is can survive another week without you."

"It's the start of term," he said, and realized that was true. "Please tell my doctor I wish to see him."

"Dr. Warden will only tell you what I've told you," she said, but she apparently relayed the message because he tottered in after tea.

He had obviously been hauled out of a senile retirement to help with the epidemic. He told a long and pointless story about medical conditions during the Pandemic and then pronounced creakily, "In my day we kept people in hospital till they were fully recovered."

Dunworthy didn't try to argue with him. He waited until he and the sister had hobbled down the corridor, sharing reminiscences from the Hundred Years' War, and then strapped on his portable drip and walked to the public phone near Casualties to get a progress report from Finch.

"The sister won't allow a phone in your room," Finch said, "but I've good news about the plague. A course of streptomycin injections along with gamma globulin and T-cell enhancement will confer temporary immunity and can be started as little as twelve hours before exposure."

"Good," Dunworthy said, "Find me a doctor who'll give them and authorize my discharge. A young doctor. And send Colin over. Is the net ready?"

"Very nearly, sir. I've obtained the necessary drop and pickup authorizations and I've located a remote hookup. I was just going to fetch it now."

He rang off, and Dunworthy walked back to the room. He hadn't lied to the nurse. He was feeling stronger with each passing moment, though there was a tightness around his lower ribs by the time he made it back to his room. Mrs. Gaddson was there, searching eagerly through her Bible for murrains and agues and emerods.

"Read me Luke 11:9," Dunworthy said.

She looked it up. "'And I say unto you, "Ask and it shall be given you,"'" she read, glaring at him suspiciously. "'"Seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you."'"

Ms. Taylor came at the very end of visiting hours, carrying a measuring tape. "Colin sent me to get your measurements," she said. "The old crone out there won't let him on the floor." She draped the tape around his waist. "I had to tell her I was visiting Ms. Piantini. Hold your arm out straight." She stretched the tape along his arm. "She's feeling a lot better. She may even get to ring Rimbaud's 'When At Last My Savior Cometh' with us on the fifteenth. We're doing it for Holy Re- Formed, you know, but the NHS has taken over their church so Mr. Finch has very kindly let us use Balliol's chapel. What size shoe do you wear?"

She jotted down his various measurements, told him Colin would be in the next day and not to worry, the net was nearly ready. She went out, presumably to visit Ms. Piantini, and came back a few minutes later with a message from Badri.

"Mr. Dunworthy, I've run 24 parameter checks," it read. "All 24 show minimal slippage, 11 — slippage of less than an hour, 5- slippage of less than five minutes. I'm running divergence checks and DAR's to try to find out what it is."

I know what it is, Dunworthy thought. It's the Black Death. The function of the slippage was to prevent interactions which might affect history. Five minutes' slippage meant there were no anachronisms, no critical meetings the continuum must keep from happening. It meant the drop was to an uninhabited area. It meant the plague had been there. And all the contemps were dead.

Colin didn't come in the morning, and after lunch Dunworthy walked to the public phone again and rang Finch. "I haven't been able to find a doctor willing to take on new cases," Finch said. "I've telephoned every doctor and medic within the perimeter. A good many of them are still down with flu," he apologized, "and several of them — "

He stopped, but Dunworthy knew what he had intended to say. Several of them had died, including the one who would certainly have helped, who would have given him the inoculations and discharged Badri.

"Great-Aunt Mary wouldn't have given up," Colin had said. She wouldn't have, he thought, in spite of the sister and Mrs. Gaddson and a band of pain below the ribs. If she were here, she would have helped him however she could.