Jody Shields - The Winter Station

The massive front doors were unlocked. Nothing to protect. He began to hope that Messonier’s information had been wrong and the temple was simply abandoned.

He walked cautiously through the first small empty room, his breath a playful wisp of fog. The next hall was a larger open space and he watched his boots, as the stones were in cracked disrepair. He imagined gray-robed monks cross-legged on the floor, listening to a priest in a five-faced crown, the yellow silk flag of the Buddhist trinity billowing over the carved doors.

Standing in the doorway of the next room, he smelled the chemical odor even before his eyes had adjusted to the lack of light. Gradually he distinguished lanterns sagging on wires over two bare tables in a windowless space. Ignoring protocol, he silenced the voice in his head that urged caution, convinced bacilli couldn’t survive below zero, and snugged his scarf over his nose. His bare hand fumbled in his pocket, and he heard the familiar rattle of matches. He drew a lantern down to eye level, released it when the flame inside blazed. It bobbed crazily on the wire, its jerky pattern of light a violent disturbance in the room.

A row of dirty aprons hung on pegs against the wall. Whatever had been spilled on them, soiled them, had frozen the fabric stiff. A clue to the presence of doctors. A place of work. Glass-fronted enamel cabinets held a spiked collection of knives, scalpels, blades, scissors, and thin-handled saws on their shelves. An arsenal of tools for a single task, the taking apart of a body. There were no records, no identifying evidence in the drawers. He didn’t touch the large covered metal bins, guessing they contained refuse from the autopsies. There was no odor of rot. It was too cold.

Under the lanterns, the two long tables gleamed with cloudy streaked ice. Small holes had been crudely hacked into their tops for drainage near a block of wood for the cadaver’s neck. The edges of the tables were overlapped with lumpy ice and jagged icicles, black in the dim light. Puzzled, he snapped off an icicle and held it up to the lantern as if studying the translucent hidden pattern of a shell. Then he recognized the blackish thing as frozen blood. The overflow of a dissection.

He used another match to light a stick of incense, walked the smoke around the space, then left it propped up on the table.

Outside the front door on the stair landing, the Baron threw a handful of loose snow over the footprints he’d made entering the temple. Then he scraped the Russian Orthodox cross in the snow with the heel of his boot. Next to it, he made the Chinese character for qi, breath, just as he’d been taught.

After he was finished, he realized he’d gone over to the side of the dead against the living.

The Baron was alone in the hospital corridor, fumbling with his gloves. He was cold to his bones. He sensed a growing disconnect, dully surprised that the sickness came to him like this. To escape, he must accept that he was sick. He was infected. Carried his own death sentence. His heart pounded through a vise that imprisoned his chest, and the same pulse beat in his head. He stood still, trying to focus. He wanted only to fall into his wife’s embrace, so ordinary.

Touch nothing. Speak to no one . He was terrified that a doctor, nurse, guard would recognize his symptoms. Take his temperature and throw him in quarantine. The doctors and medical staff constantly monitored one another. Scrutiny was self-protection. He must hide.

Praying that he wouldn’t attract attention, he moved unsteadily along the corridors, angling his face away from others so as not to infect them or betray his sickness and panic. Medics and nurses passed him without stopping. Cautiously, as if his body were leaking, he slowly opened doors, covering the knob with his sleeve.

The Baron ducked into the supply closet, ransacked the shelves for disinfectants, filled his coat pockets. He jerked open a drawer, and the brown vials of morphine rolled around, escaping the chase of his clumsy fingers. A box held ampoules of Haffkine’s serum. He broke the seal, filled a hypodermic. He rolled up his sleeve, secured a tourniquet, and when the vein inside his elbow popped, he twice tried to inject the needle with numb, shaking hands. He dropped the hypodermic, ground it with his boot. Haffkine won’t save me .

The corridor was empty. The jars of disinfectant rattled softly with his steps, clear as the movement of a clock. A figure turned the corner and moved briskly toward him.

Dr. Wu looked up from a clipboard, checked the Baron’s face, and half turned as if to avoid him. Surrounded by a haze, the Baron was unable to move away. His ghastly smile to the other doctor, lips pulled over a dry mouth.

“Why are you wearing a coat?” Wu’s face was creased with concern.

His sympathy was more unbearable than criticism or anger. The Baron started to tremble. The two doctors stared at each other.

“You seem tired. You should be examined.”

“Yes.” He would surrender. The Baron’s voice a croak. “The infirmary.”

“Good.”

Dr. Iasienski interrupted them. An urgent communication from the American consul.

The Baron was forgotten. He was a smuggler, leaving with his life. He fled. On the back staircase, trying to quiet his boots on the steps, he became dizzy, gripped the handrail, stopped to catch his breath.

He struggled with the side door, forcing it half open against wind pushing back like a live thing, and a fury of snow burst into the corridor, strange as fire in daylight. His arm braced the door, keeping it ajar, then he slid past it into blinding whiteness. Ten steps outside the building, he lost all sense of direction in the humming whirlwind, his eyes stinging, arms flailing in emptiness. His father once had a paperweight filled with suspended white dots, a blizzard inside a globe. He was walking into this glass stone now, snowflakes circling him, suffocating. He didn’t have strength to turn back. He fell and was pivoted up as someone seized his arm. He stood shaking, peering into the snow at a man’s dark silhouette.

“Lucky I caught you.” A shouting voice.

“Home.” Wind forced the word back in his throat. He pushed Andreev away, afraid to let him get close, but the man clutched his arm. Their bodies bent together against the snow, they moved slowly forward.

Andreev hoisted him into the droshky, gave the driver directions. The Baron fell asleep and then recognized the shape of the gate outside his house. An indistinct figure waved at him.

He stumbled over the threshold. “Get away.”

Confused, the servant mumbled an apology, trailed anxiously behind as the Baron staggered, dribbling disinfectant over his melting footprints on the floor, cleaning all traces of his presence. He collapsed on the bed.

He isolated himself in the bedroom. No one could enter his quarantine. Food, water, kindling to heat the samovar was to be left on a tray outside. Soiled dishes must be cleaned in boiling water. He whispered that the servants should wear gloves, a mask. Never tell anyone that I’m sick.

Li Ju didn’t weep but refused to obey some of his orders. “If I sense you’re leaving me, if you’re silent, I’ll force the door and come to your bed. You won’t stop me. I won’t leave you alone if you’re dying.”

He was helpless against her threats. Others had crept to death alone to protect their families. But he feared dying alone and came home. The illness obliterated his sense of failure and shame.

The plague would show itself within hours or a day. He had only to wait for symptoms to unfold like a familiar piece of music. His mind raced through his body like a telescope, checking the lungs, the tough bronchial tubes that would become inflamed, expel a froth of blood. If a traditional Chinese doctor had treated him, the man’s knowledge would follow the mo at the Baron’s wrist through his entire body, the net of blood and nerves, the places where liquid threaded through muscle and the soft firmness of the organs. Monitoring the body’s temperature with a thermometer was primitive in comparison.