“You’re so young though,” he says. “And please, don’t think I’m saying that as an insult. You’re doing an extraordinary job, but it’s a lot of responsibility to give someone in their twenties.”
I almost add, “I’m nearly thirty” but I don’t think that’ll help disprove his point.
“George, you’re exhausted, sleeping two hours a night, and you don’t have enough bodies because men keep dying. I’m a safe pair of hands, safe pair of female immune hands. And people trust me. I’m nice and people like working for me, working with me. I’m good at this, at leading people.” For a moment I think about how horrifying I find confrontation—the way that my mouth clams up and I can’t focus when I’m in the middle of an argument—but I dismiss it. I’m not a wallflower or a fifteen-year-old dork anymore. If I need to have difficult interactions, I can manage it. I left my entire life behind, for God’s sake, and moved to a different continent in the middle of a pandemic.
I give him a moment to think about it but can tell that he’s so tired it’s difficult for him to make any decision at the moment.
“How about this,” I say in an inarguable, cheery tone. “Let’s try it this way for a week. If it doesn’t work, we’ll find a different way to do it. If it works, you have a better management structure, together we figure out ways to run the labs efficiently and you have to process less raw data and do more of the strategic thinking.”
“Okay, you’re on.” George’s shoulders dip about an inch even just having this temporary plan in place, sparing some essential room in his brain.
And just like that, I’m deputy director of the United Kingdom’s Plague Vaccine Development Task Force. I can imagine my dad saying, “Not bad for a girl from Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Not bad at all.”
AMANDA
Glasgow, the Independent Republic of Scotland
Day 68
Job, news, research. Job, news, research. The three pillars of my life, the only things keeping me even vaguely functioning. In a blur I have a Skype call with scientists from around the world that is so discombobulating I have to work hard not to slam my laptop shut.
Every day I decompress by watching the news. In the depths of night or my days off when I can’t sleep or sit down without wanting to claw my eyes out, my brain returns to the darkest moments as though it can’t look away even though I’m begging it to think of anything else. Don’t think about the moments Charlie and Josh died. Don’t think about the way Will wept when they took our boys’ bodies away. Don’t think about the look of relief on Will’s face when he realized he had a high temperature and it was almost as if he wanted to die, as though only that would be sufficient penance. Don’t think about the way he kept saying, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” on his deathbed when all I wanted him to say was, “I love you.”
After a night of not sleeping, it’s time to go to work. Shockingly enough, Gartnavel Hospital was willing to take back an experienced senior A and E consultant without so much as a whimper. I need my job; I’ll go crazy without it. I’m a widow and a childless mother. The labels feel so unfamiliar I still jolt when I hear them and realize they also apply to me. At least I’m still a doctor. I have little else to fill my time. As utterly and completely miserable as it is, I have a purpose. Being a doctor has never been so important. We must preserve the lives of the roughly one in ten men who are still alive. The future of the human race depends on them. Not to mention that we need women to stay alive to keep the country running and in some semblance of order. I try to stay focused and blinkered when I’m at work. No thinking about anything outside of the hospital.
When I first got back, I was still completely disoriented by the sheer number of deaths. I’d think, “Oh, where’s Alex today?” or whatever and then I’d remember. If Alex isn’t here, he’s dead. I asked a few days ago where Linda was, one of my favorite night nurses who used to come and collect patients from A and E and get them settled on a ward. Matron looked at me with a stricken expression. One of the other nurses coughed. “She had three sons, four grandsons and she was married. They all . . .”