Chapter 7
SEVEN
BEE
The rise and fall of Tesni’s chest is a lullaby threatening to lure me to sleep.
My temple is rested on my folded arms tucked on the edge of the mattress. Exhaustion wears me down, but I fight the lull.
Gaze glued to her face, I watch for any slight change. So far, none.
No colour has returned to her washed-out complexion.
But Tesni is always so pale.
I sometimes teased her that she’s a glass of almond milk, that watered down effect to her, a translucence of sorts.
I don’t exactly wear a warm hue on my own flesh, not without the aid of summers in Spain, but there’s something hollow about her complexion—just like her eyes that echo with a hundred-mile stare, and even the shade of her hair that seemed to want to be strawberry, but only ever had enough pigmentation to become a burnt-ish sort of blonde.
I look up the length of her blanket-draped form to her face, sweaty and pasty, and I see the friend, the soul sister, that will take a part of me with her if the plague wins this battle.
And it is battling.
My blood did something.
Whether it strengthened her or prolonged her suffering, I don’t know. But in the hours since, there have been no more nose bleeds, and her serrated breaths have softened.
I loosen a breath of my own.
Peeling myself from the edge of the bed, I reach for the cold cup of stale coffee on the small trolley.
Each time my lashes drift too low over my sight, threatening to steal me away from consciousness, I gulp down more coffee.
It’s black, no sugar, utterly flavourless besides the burnt undertones. Coffee from a pot. Nasty stuff. But unless the kitchen has stores of energy drinks yet to be found, this is what I rely on for now.
Can’t risk sleep.
If I drift off, even for a few minutes, that could be the moment Tesni takes a turn.
“Good,” Louise’s familiar murmur reaches me across the basketball court. “That’s good. Don’t rush—take it easy.”
I set down the mug and lean out of my seat. My bottom is practically lifted off the leather cushion of the chair as I tilt aside and peer around the plastic curtain.
And I can do nothing but blink.
The plastic curtains around the patient bed are pulled back, all the way, to reveal crumpled sheets and twenty-something Emily sagged on the edge of the mattress.
She glistens with the same sweat that sogs her sheets, but she’s awake, sitting upright, with Louise’s arm looped around her middle to support her, she’s… recovering.
I watch, my face slack with blatant disbelief.
Louise firms her arm around Emily’s middle, then tugs her to slide gently off the bed.
My lashes flutter—my gaze drops to the floor as her bare feet pad down…
I wait for her to fall, to crumple, to pass out, to bleed from the nose and mouth and eyes.
But Emily stands.
Shaky, trembling, leaning into Louise.
Yet, she’s standing all the same.
I blink again, as though it’ll somehow make sense of what I’m seeing, that it will ease the flare of rage building in me.
The breath that shudders out between my lips is nothing short of ugliness, of envy and rage.
I shove out of the chair and advance on them.
The urgency in my flaring gaze is mirrored in my hushed shout, “How are you doing that? How are you better?”
Last time I saw Emily through the parted curtains, she was in the fever sleep.
Now she’s up?
Standing?
I shake my head under the glare Louise shoots at me.
“No,” I point at her, a cold washcloth in my grip.
“Don’t you fucking start with me.” I turn that urgent look on Emily, her clammy face, the weight of her lashes over brown eyes, like it costs her too much to just meet my gaze. “What did you do that she didn’t?”
Why are you well, and Tesni isn’t?
How are you recovering, while Tesni dies?
It isn’t fair.
It isn’t fair.
“Help her!” My voice breaks. “Tell me what you did—and I can help her!”
The tears murk my sight.
But Emily, I am not even sure is hearing me. She is slow, so delayed in the gradual lift of her gaze to mine. Her breaths are grated.
Louise throws me a cross glare, the corners of her mouth tucking into her round cheeks. “Tess isn’t the only sick person here. If you could at least pretend to give a shit about anyone else, that would be great.”
My brows raise, and I feel darkness spreading through me. My fingers clench around the washcloth, so tight that my bones ache.
“Ruby and Ramona are sick too,” Louise hisses.
“They are your friends, Bee. You could do anything to help them, change their fucking bedpans, cook them something, change their IV bags—but you are glued to that fucking chair, and I am doing everything…” Her huff delates her chest. “And you’re pissed that someone is getting better? ”
My lips part around words that don’t come.
I should shout, scream, run at her. I should shake Emily until she spills her secrets of recovery to me.
Yet…
A niggle in my mind tells me I’m wrong. It tells me Louise speaks nothing but facts.
The truth is, I love Tesni most.
The truth is, Tesni is more than a friend, she is a sister of the soul—and I would sacrifice everyone in here for her to have just another day.
I don’t say that.
I don’t say anything.
Because, before I can even land on a decision, on a reaction, a deep groan shudders through the basketball court.
My head whips to the side, my glare landing on the doors—just as they are being shoved open from the other side.
The first thing I notice are the masks.
Then, I blink, and it’s like all my vision clears—my mind clears, and I have a sudden writhing in my chest.
Masked people are pouring in through the door, guns in their grips, boots thudding on the glossy floor.
Intruders.
A hollow sensation carves through me; cold dread trailing down my insides.
These people piling in through the doors are not here for our help. They are not here to drop off a sick loved one. They are not here for quarantine.
If they were, they wouldn’t have loaded guns tucked to their chests, lifted, chins down, ready to aim and shoot.
I am utterly still, frozen in place, and I can only watch as these masked invaders barrel into our quarantine.
Just over my shoulder, movement rustles.
I flick my wide glare aside at Louise. But she’s only setting Emily down on the bed.
That movement alone ripples through the group of invaders coming to a stop by the entrance.
I count five of them, three guys, two women, all with severe, narrowed eyes. But most of their faces are covered by those paper-like masks, the kind worn in hospitals.
Those masks muffle the shout, “Medicine. Where do you keep ‘em?”
I trace the question to the man in front, the one I guess is leading the charge, the one with a scarf pulled up around his chin.
I might not be able to see their faces behind the masks, but I can see the worry, the panic… danger, the desperation. It’s all in the eyes.
Louise takes a step forward, her hands lifting. “We don’t have anything—”
The man adjusts the aim of the gun—at her.
Louise stills.
My voice is soft, quiet, “Louise, don’t…”
The outrage of her glare swerves to me.
I keep my cheek to her.
If she looks at me long enough, she might see the thrumming of my pulse in my throat, the sudden stiffness in my shoulders, the pallor of my complexion—she might see that my hands are fists at my sides.
Because this…
This isn’t good.
These people are too fraught, too panicked. There’s no negotiating with them. And it takes one fright for a trigger to be pulled in their state.
So I speak slowly, “She’s right—we don’t have much left. But everything we do have is over there.”
The man traces my pointed finger to the metal cupboard. He jerks his chin, and two of the group splinter off from the doors.
I don’t watch as they pile all of our medical supplies into duffel bags. Instead, I turn my panicked attention on the swing doors down the court as they creak and clatter—the exit that leads out to the car lot of bodies, and the kitchen.
Nurse Smith comes through the doors, pushing a trolley stacked with bowls of soup and cutlery.
“Stop where you are!”
I cringe against the shout.
The screech of the trolley wheels is sudden.
Nurse Smith’s wide eyes are lifted, and she freezes under the shift of the guns aiming at her.
A masked woman steps forward, her gloves a soft reddish hue, and a slender frame that moves in front of the man with the scarf.
The woman considers Smith, the stethoscope around her neck, the foamy shoes on her feet, the fresh scrubs she must have just changed into, which explains why she took so long out there, she was washing.
“You’re a doctor?” the woman asks.
Smith shakes her head.
Slowly, she peels her hands off the trolley and lifts them in surrender. “Nurse. Registered.”
“Where’s the doctor?”
“We don’t have one.”
The woman’s eyebrow lifts. “You don’t have a doctor in quarantine?”
“She was one of the first to get sick,” she says, and her voice doesn’t break, it holds firm, steady.
That doesn’t soothe me.
My heart is hammering in my chest, pounding and pounding, like a fist trying to break free.
The breath that shudders me is quiet, jagged, and, slowly, I turn my gaze down to the underside of a bed.
Layers of plastic drapes hide it from view.
But the curtains are caught on a stack of empty, clean bedpans.
It creates a wedge, a gap, large enough to squeeze myself through.
But that will only hide me from view.
And if I make any sudden movements, I don’t trust that bullets won’t start flying through the quarantine.
The woman steps forward, gun aimed at Smith. Her gaze cuts to the trolley, the bowls of tomato soup, then back up again. “You’ve got food?”
The nurse doesn’t respond for a beat. Her mouth turns inwards, thinning, before she relents, “Back there, in the kitchen. It’s no more than some tinned soups and spam.”