David Moody - Them or Us

“Jesus, what the fuck are you doing?” I shout, forgetting myself.

Rona Scott leans back and looks at me disapprovingly. “Looks like someone’s been spending too much time around these things.”

“It’s not that. I just—”

Scott’s not interested. She runs toward the girl again, grabs her shoulders, and yells into her face. The child screams back at the top of her voice, tied tight but still straining to get away. “That’s better,” Scott says, taunting the kid, slapping her cheek. “Now that’s more like it.” She turns her back on the still-screaming child and looks at me. “Right this way.”

She shoves me out of the room and locks the door, muffling the little girl’s cries but not blocking them out completely. She stops in the middle of the corridor, preventing me from going any farther, waiting expectantly. I realize what she’s waiting for and reach into my inside pocket and pull out a half-full packet of cigarettes I’ve been holding on to for a while. She studies the packet for a moment, checks how many smokes are inside, then grunts her approval and heads for the staircase.

We climb another flight of steps up to the third floor, which looks identical in layout to the second. She takes me into the room at the far end of the corridor, double the size of the others. There’s a wide window on one wall that gives Scott a virtually uninterrupted view out across Hinchcliffe’s compound. On the opposite wall, a smaller window overlooks the sea. Driving rain clatters constantly against the glass. There’s more light in here than in any other part of the building I’ve been in so far, but that’s not a good thing. This is Rona Scott’s clinic–cum–living-quarters, and I’d have preferred not to be able to see anything.

“Over there,” she grunts at me, pointing across the room. I walk across the cluttered space, picking my way through the rubbish that covers the floor. There are unpleasant stains and used swabs and dressings everywhere, crusted hard and brown. Discarded strips of bandage lie around the place like gruesome, blood-soaked paper-chain decorations. This place makes me realize just how much the role of a doctor (if Rona Scott ever really was a doctor) has changed. No longer concerned with the ongoing well-being and general health of their patients, they’re now here just to patch people up and keep them fighting as hard as possible for as long as they can. As with any war, countless numbers of people have suffered horrific injuries over the last year. Fortunately for them, most died quickly on the battlefield or later as a result of radiation sickness, infection, or malnutrition. Doctors like Rona Scott are rarely bothered by people like me, and it shows. This room, although still having the faintest smell of antiseptic, now has all the dignity and class of a back-street vehicle repair shop.

Scott walks over to where I’m standing, drops her cigarette, and stubs it out on the carpet. I’ve never been this close to her before, and I pray I never am again. She looks even worse than I do, as if she’s been personally collecting samples of all the diseases and conditions she might still have to treat. Her breath is foul. The bottom of one of her earlobes is missing and has been patched up with adhesive tape that’s covered with blood. I hope that little girl downstairs did it.

“Okay, make it quick. What’s wrong with you?”

“Where do I start?”

“What hurts most?”

“Everything hurts,” I answer honestly. “No appetite, lost a load of weight, fucking awful cough, sometimes there’s blood when I piss…”

“You look bad.”

“Thanks.”

She picks up a flashlight and shines it into my eyes, sighing with effort every time she moves. I don’t know whether she’s as unfit as I feel or whether she just resents every second of time she’s wasting on me. Is she like this with everyone? Is it because I’m not a battle-scarred soldier or one of Hinchcliffe’s precious fighters?

“Strip to the waist,” she orders, and I immediately do as I’m told, starting to shiver even before I’m done. I catch a brief glimpse of myself in a full-length mirror in the corner, and I have to look twice to be sure it’s really me. I stare at my skeletal reflection. Christ, I can see every individual rib. I’m hollow chested. My chest goes in instead of out like it used to …

“Stand still,” she says but I can’t stop shaking. She peels off her grubby fingerless woolen gloves and starts touching me. I recoil from her unforgiving, icelike fingers. She roughly pushes and prods at my skin, working her way around my kidneys and belly with the bedside manner of a butcher working in an abattoir. I wince when she jabs her fingers into me, just below my rib cage, then wince again when she pinches my gut. Is she actually doing anything or just using me for stress relief? Finally she unearths a stethoscope from under a pile of papers and used dressings on a window ledge and presses it against various different parts of my back and front. Examination over, she tells me to get dressed.

“Well?” I ask as I quickly pull my clothes back on again.

“Not a lot to say, really.”

“So what’s wrong with me?”

She groans and plumps her heavy frame down into a chair, which creaks with surprise under her sudden weight. She rummages around on top of a desk and fishes out a half-smoked cigarette, then spends a few seconds picking dirt off the filter and flicking ash off the end before lighting up. Bitch is doing this on purpose, I’m sure of it. She’s tormenting me, dragging this out unnecessarily. She’s probably enjoying the feeling of power. She’s probably heard what I can do with the Hate, and now she’s showing me who’s in charge.

“Were you close to any of the bombs?” she eventually asks.

“Which bombs?” I answer stupidly.

“The bombs. Remember? Great big friggin’ explosions? Bright light? Mushroom clouds?”

“I was about ten miles from one of them. Might have been farther. Why?”

“Don’t suppose it matters really, but it probably didn’t help. We’ve probably all had enough of a dose by now. How long were you exposed for?”

“Exposed?”

“How long were you out there?”

“I don’t know. I passed out for a while. I was picked up on the highway, but I don’t know how long.”

“Wouldn’t have made much difference anyway,” she says, drawing on her cigarette and looking past me at the rain running down the window. “No doubt we’ll all end up going the same way in the end. Christ, they threw enough of that shit up into the atmosphere to do us all in.”

“So what’s wrong with me?” I ask again, although I think I already know the answer. I think I knew it before I came here. I’ve suspected for a while, but I didn’t want to accept it.

“Cancer,” she finally says, before adding a disclaimer, “probably.”

For a second all I can think about is the way she said “probably,” as if we’re still in the old world and she’s covering her back in case she’s made a misdiagnosis and I sue. The fact she’s just confirmed my worst fear goes almost unnoticed at first, but then it slowly starts to sink in. Cancer.

“Where?”

“What?”

“The cancer, where is it?”

“I’d do an MRI scan, but the power’s down,” she says sarcastically. “Hard to say for certain,” she finally answers. “You’ve got something big in your gut, probably in your stomach, too, but there are bound to be more. Those are secondaries, I think, but I’m no expert. Truth is you’re probably riddled with it by now.”

I stare at her, my mouth hanging open, knowing what I want to ask next but not knowing if I can. She looks up at me, makes fleeting eye contact, then looks away again, anticipating the question that’s inevitably coming.