The woman with appendicitis died twelve hours later. I gave her as much morphine as I could bear to but it was an awful death. That was a difficult day.
Now we’re fairly certain that the men who appear at A and E have either beaten the Plague or are immune. For a few months it was dire; we received strict instructions from the Health Department that the Plague was not to be treated. Those who arrived at any A and E Department in Scotland suffering from the Plague were not to be allowed in the building. They were to be sent home without ceremony. Telling a desperate mother of a dying baby or toddler, and—in one particularly awful case—of eighteen-month-old twins, that she wasn’t even allowed to enter the building made me question everything. What is the point of being doctors if we’re not even trying to help people? The response when we raised it with the Health Department was simple and strongly worded: “Valuable medicines and resources are not to be wasted on patients who have over 90 percent rate of mortality.” The chances of any men or boys in Glasgow managing to avoid exposure to the Plague is now so low that, as of two weeks ago, we treat all men. Hence the painful focus of my HPS role. Oh, how they’ve changed their tune.
As tempting as it was to tell the Scottish health authorities to go fuck themselves, I want as many people as possible to survive. And so every time I treat a patient and do a shift, I add to my document, which will shortly be circulated to all hospitals in Scotland as an A and E treatment protocol. Some things are obvious. Regardless of the sex of the patient, we only give antibiotics if absolutely necessary and at the lowest possible effective dose. Blood transfusions and fluids are restricted to life-and-death situations like extreme trauma. Others have been less obvious. I suggested a month ago that every member of hospital staff, health permitting, should be required to give blood every eight weeks on pain of social exclusion and embarrassment because why the fuck are you working in a hospital if you don’t want to help? There’s a donation room permanently set up just by the staff entrance. We post on the board by the entrance the names of people who have missed their slot. Most obvious of all, anyone who comes to the hospital but isn’t really ill is told in no uncertain terms to go home.
There’s still the occasional rumor that a vaccine is going to be found but none of us really believe it. It feels like this is normal life now.
A lot of people have forgotten just how vulnerable humans are. They’re amazed when I tell them how many people come to A and E every single day with a relatively common problem that could easily kill them without the resources we don’t have enough of. There’s a reason that the life expectancy hundreds of years ago was so low. Many things can kill a person. People are becoming painfully aware of that fact now.
So, we struggle on. There are rumors that the government is in talks to arrange the importation of some key drugs from France. Fun fact, five countries produce two-thirds of the world’s medicines—France, Germany and the UK are the three European countries on that list. Scottish independence doesn’t seem like such a brilliant idea now.
ELIZABETH
London, United Kingdom
Day 231
You need more friends,” George says over lunch, as Amaya determinedly looks into her sandwich.
“George! I have lots of friends,” I say, a bit defensively. This isn’t technically true. I have a lot of acquaintances here in London now. I like to smile at people and say hello, so sue me. The first time I went into the lab I think some of my colleagues thought I was deranged. I was determined to add some cheer into the office. The whole world has been burning, so I figured we should make our workplace a little less depressing. Over months and months I managed to chip away at the hardened, English, often grief-stricken exteriors of people in the lab. Small things like movie nights on Fridays that are well attended by people living alone. We rewatched a season of The Great British Bake Off together and each week someone re-created one of the recipes as best they could from the ingredients they could scrounge up.
“I’m friends with you two,” I say, almost accusingly daring George and Amaya to disagree.