Love in a Time of Plague
By: Elle Fredine
Tags: Short Fiction, Lovestory, 201, The Weekly Knob, Fiction

Tap, tap, tap… something moved in the empty, echoing corridors.

Tap, tap — a rubber-tipped cane struck well-polished flooring.

A faint scuff of slipper-clad feet. None too steady, but pushing on.

A mouse-breath of sound drifted down the silent hallway. A husking whisper. “Hello? Nurse? Is anybody there?”

The footsteps faltered, paused.

A door creaked open. A questing head poked in.

The head found no-one and withdrew. The door creaked shut. The shuffling feet resumed their uneven progress.

A low mutter issued from the shrunken form tottering down the deserted corridor. Short, white wisps stuck out round its head in a mad, Einsteinian halo. “I’m hungry, dammit.”

The voice strengthened. “I said, ‘I’m hungry, dammit.’ Where’s my supper?”

There’d been two harried-looking nurses yesterday. And a pasty-faced ward aid who’d brought round the trays. Looked ill, all three.

Today there’d been nobody since breakfast.

Lukewarm tea. Dry toast. Lumpy oatmeal. The old woman had pushed her food away in disgust, only to succumb to hunger pangs a few hours later and scarf down the lot.

Good thing, too, as no lunch had been forthcoming. Followed by no supper, and no meds. Not even juice and a biscuit.

No bath, no nurses. No-one to help her to the washroom or back into bed. Thank God for ‘Depends’, though she’d have to find a new stash soon.

Her slippered foot struck something. It rolled away to bounce off the wall with a metallic tinkle.

The old woman snared the object with her cane and dragged it closer.

“A thermometer. Hmph! Fat lot of good you did anyone.”

She leaned down carefully so’s not to overbalance. Struggling upright, she peered closely at the metal tube. “One of those new digital ones.”

She swiped the rubber tip across her forehead as she’d seen the nurses do and checked the readout. “Ninety-seven. Good-oh.”

Satisfied, she tucked it in her bathrobe pocket. “Never know when a thing might come in handy,” she told herself.

She’d been wandering the hallways for hours, or so it felt. So far, she’d found a lot of empty rooms. The cancer wing was next, two floors down. Mercifully, the power was on and the elevators still worked.

Half-way across the elevated pedway to the cancer wing, the old woman stopped to catch her breath. She stared out the window at a young-ish woman in the courtyard near the main loading dock.

“That’s our ward nurse, Jane.” She banged on the window, but the nurse kept going, staggering toward one of the refrigerator trailers lining the courtyard.

“Janie, what are you doing?”

The old woman pulled out the thermometer and rapped on the window, the clatter of metal on glass loud in the silence.

The nurse stopped and stared up at the old woman. Even from the pedway, the old woman could see lines of strain etched into the nurse’s pale, sweat-drenched face. The dark stains under her bloodshot eyes.

She turned and opened the door of the nearest trailer. For a moment, she faltered. Then, as clouds of frigid air swirled around her, she looked up again and raised her hand in farewell.

Then she stepped inside and closed the door.

Tears rolled, unnoticed, down the old woman’s seamed cheeks. “Oh, Janie. Oh, dear girl,” she whispered. Kinder to die of cold, though, than be taken by that damned plague.

Her mouth set in a hard, angry line, the old woman moved on. Hours later, it seemed, she’d located a half-dozen more clinging to life. Cancer patients all, in various stages of treatment.

And nine infants in the children’s wing.

“Oh, my.” She turned to one of the women patients. “Well, don’t just stand there. Go find clean nappies. Must be stacks of ’em somewhere.”

“You. What’s your name?” She grabbed a young man by the arm.

“John.”

“Well, John, you can help me take their temperatures. Make sure none of ’em are sick.” Though, God knows what we’ll do if they are.

John removed the nappie from the first infant in the line of cribs and rolled the shrieking child onto it’s tummy.

The old woman grabbed his hand just as he was about to insert the thermometer in the baby’s rectum.

“Lord love a duck, you want to give the poor thing hemorrhoids for life? The forehead, man, the forehead.”

She showed John how to use the thermometer, then began a thorough ransack of nearby drawers and cupboards for more supplies.

The rest pitched in, changing diapers and bathing the squirming, squalling bundles. Mixing formula. Feeding and burping the hungry mites.

Most were glad of the distraction from their own troubles. Some were smiling and chatting, bright-eyed, happier than they’d been in a long time.

The old woman beamed at her charges.

She picked up one of the newly fed and dry infants and strolled out into the garden beside Admissions.

“Look at you,” she cooed. The baby waved tiny fists and yawned. “Just look at you.” She chucked the baby under its chin. “What a cute little dimples, you have. Yes, you do.”

The baby sneezed. The old woman froze. Then she laughed. “Wonder how long before we get over that?”

“Might be a while, Ginny.”

She spun about so fast she almost dropped the baby.

There he was, sitting on a stone bench by the fountain, fashionable as ever in his hospital-issue pajamas and bathrobe.

“Freddy. Oh, Freddy.” Tears, this time of joy, streamed down her cheeks. She clasped Fred’s long skinny fingers with her free hand. “Oh, Fred. I thought you were a goner when they took you off that respirator.”

“So did I, my girl. Chap they gave it to didn’t last the night, though. Just a young fella, too.”

“Well, you’re a lot tougher than you look.” She perched beside him.

“Where’d you find your little friend? You take up baby-napping in your dotage?”

The old woman wasted no time bringing him up to date on what she’d found. “They’re all gone, Freddy. All the young ones, the strong ones. We’re all that’s left to raise ‘em.”

Freddy stared. Took a deep breath. “I’m eighty-three. And you’re no spring chicken, either, Ginny. How are we gonna look after nine kids? We’ll be dead before they’re teenagers.”

“I know, Fred, I know. But there’s more ‘n just you ’n’ me.”

“Who? A few cancer patients who probably won’t live as long we will? Not long enough to teach those kids anythin’ useful. Good God, woman, haven’t you ever read ‘Lord of the Flies’? They’ll grow up a bunch of wild-ass hooligans.”

She pressed her lips to baby’s forehead. “Well, at least we can teach them how to take a temperature the old fashioned way, when the batteries in these die.”

She held up her digital thermometer. No, her talisman… a sign all would be right again, in time. A sign that life would go on.

“We’re all those kids have right now, and dammit, Freddy, we know stuff. We’re not just a pair of used-up, old, has-beens with nothin’ left to give.

Fred snorted.

She drew her friend to his feet and led him back into the hospital. Their footsteps echoed in the vast, empty reception area. The faint smell of disinfectant lingered in the still air.

The late afternoon sun beat through tall windows, warm on their faces. A light breeze sighed through the open doorway and tugged at their matching, pale green bathrobes.

Fred stopped walking and pulled the old woman around to face him. “Ginny,” he began.

She smiled up at him.

She’d almost forgotten how blue his eyes were. Like a clear mountain stream glinting in the sunlight.

“Freddy, we can do this. I know we can. And, I’m sure we’ll find more people, eventually. But we have to start somewhere.”

Freddy couldn’t help himself. He smiled back. Smoothed the wild nimbus of hair off her forehead and tucked a stray wisp behind her ear. “You always were set on having your own way.”

He wrapped one arm around her shoulders. It was comforting to feel another person next to him after so long.

The baby, snuggled safe between them, kicked and gurgled.

Then it screwed up its tiny face and let out a series of tiny grunts. And a huge, terrible smell.

Freddy flapped his free hand to ward off the stench. “Well, we don’t need your thermometer to know there’s nothing wrong with the business end of this one.”

The old woman laughed.“Alright, Ginny,” Fred chuckled. “Let’s go see these orphans of yours. Been a while since I changed a diaper, but I guess you never really forget how.”