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Levi was flipping through some notes, written on a motley assortment of paper. He didn’t look up immediately, and Coral knew it for a power game. She waited him out.
When he looked up, he met her eyes and looked concerned as he said, “I hear your patient had a set-back.”
There were no secrets in a community this small—certainly not from the man who ran it. “A touch of nausea. She’s healing well, now. I’ll have her off the antibiotics and discharge her soon.”
“Good,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about your very good idea to have a town hall meeting about medical care.”
He hadn’t seemed to think it was such a good idea before. But whatever.
“We really don’t have a room big enough for one meeting. Remember, there’s no way to project your voice over someplace like an empty library floor. So I thought I’d suggest this. We’ll have people come in slightly staggered shifts for an evening meal, and you can go from dining room to dining room and have the talk with each group.” He gave her a wintery smile. “It seems to me the best way to handle it.”
“Okay,” she said, then she remembered to say, “Thank you. What day?”
“How about the day after you release your patient? You’ll want to be well rested, and to have time to write your speech.”
“It won’t be much of a speech, but sure. Also, I had another thought. When Julie was feeling sick, a mint would have made her feel better. Items like that that were once luxury items, seen as candy, might have a medical application. Mints, horehound drops, a restaurant packet of two soda crackers sitting at the bottom of someone’s purse or briefcase. They might not even know they have them, but it would mean the difference between comfort and discomfort for a sick or injured person. It could even mean the difference between vomiting hard enough to tear stitches and not.”
“I doubt if there’s a lot of that thing around. When people were trapped underground, they went through their purses or briefcases a dozen times, looking for food.”
“Probably you’re right. But if I get two sticks of gum, an antacid, and a fuzzy half-roll of mints from it, that’s better than nothing.”
“I’m glad to see you’re so involved in the community, Coral. That’s what makes this place run, you know. People feeling engaged and as if they have an important job. Taking on responsibilities and problem-solving themselves.” He went on in this vein for a few minutes.
Coral substituted the words “rah, rah, rah,” for everything else he was saying and waited for him to wind down. While she did, she wondered what sorts of luxuries he might be hoarding in his over-heated apartment, what he wouldn’t be giving up that might help her patients. She knew better than to say anything, or when Benjamin got back, he’d get put on latrine duty until they left.
“So,” he said. “Two days from now? Or three?”
“Two,” she said. “At supper.” Get the job over before Benjamin was back. Julie would be on the mend, and she’d have a solution—she hoped—for Abigail’s unwanted pregnancy. She’d have improved their store of medicines and mined their collective wisdom about folk medicine. She could leave with a clear conscience.
“I don’t think you’ll get much, but I wish you luck. We don’t have hoarders.”
“Not hoarders. I’m not accusing anyone of a crime. They may not realize they have something important.”
“I understand.”
“Not that they have much. Or the city itself, really. I was noticing the storage in the kitchen.”
His brows drew together. “What were you doing in the kitchen?”
“Grabbing the evening’s meal for myself and Julie. But Chef took me into a pantry, and I couldn’t help but notice how low the stores are getting.”
His eyes had turned flat and angrier with every word she’d said. This man did not like people thinking and acting on their own. “We’ve got it covered.”
“Do you? I’m worried from a medical perspective, of course.”
“Taken care of,” he said. “Now is there anything else?”
“You asked me to come,” she pointed out. “Do you have anything else for me?”
“No. We’ll get your little home-remedy talks set up.”
Coral knew he meant he’d delegate it. She thought his use of the word “we” was particularly interesting. Sometimes, it seemed to mean him—but he wanted to spread the blame, so he implicated an imaginary group. Sometimes, it meant someone else was willing to do scut work, but he wanted to take credit for the results.
She said, “One last thing. Do you have anyone in mind yet for the book search? I’ve been able to do some reading myself while I’ve stayed up with Julie, but it’d be great to get a second person on it.”
“We’ll check who’s available.”
“Okay.” She left his office, looking forward to a nice, long sleep.
Victoria was waiting for her in her apartment building’s hallway.
Coral stifled a sigh. “Can I help you?”
“I don’t feel good about how we left things the other day. Can I speak with you about it?”
By all means. Let’s sit down while I give you therapy about your lack of closure. “Come on in,” Coral said, and led her into the living room.
Victoria took a few moments to arrange herself in a chair. She took off a hat and looked around. “Nice place.”
“It’s Doug’s and Abigail’s.”
“Yes. I know. It was Alec and Steph’s before too.”
“They left? Or died?” Coral had been told, but she had forgotten
“He died,” said Victoria.
“Right, and she moved out, I remember now. So anyway, you feel bad about something?”
“Levi told me to treat you. He said—and I agreed—that you’re having problems with PTSD. While it’s normal for people to think they’re over something when they’re not—”
“Let me stop you. Rest assured, I am not over anything. I’ve seen things, done things, and I’m not over them. I haven’t forgotten them. I don’t want to forget them. They’re part of my learning. They’re part of me, now. That’s all.”
“But they were traumatic incidents.”
Coral scrubbed her hand over her face. She felt as if she were talking to someone who only spoke a different language. Or an Alpha Centaurian, maybe, someone from a different solar system altogether. “Sure. But I don’t feel traumatized by them.”
“But you are.”
“Isn’t the very definition of emotional trauma that you feel it?” Coral didn’t wait for an answer. “All I feel is tired right now, and slightly impatient with you. I’m fine.”
“I’m sure you’ve been busy. But losing yourself in work isn’t the way to handle this.”
Coral took a deep breath while she formulated her answer. “I get it. You think I don’t get what you mean, but I do. You think I’m in some sort of denial, right?”
Victoria seemed pleased by this. “Exactly.”
“And I’m sure this surprises you, but I think you’re in a sort of denial. You haven’t a clue what it’s like out there. You can’t judge it. You can’t understand it.”
She said, “I know. But I can listen.”
“Sure, you could,” said Coral. “If I wanted or needed to talk about it, you could listen. I can tell you’re good at that, and I appreciate that you’re a nice person who wants to help people. But I don’t need or want to talk about it. And you’ll be listening for the wrong things anyway. What you should be taking from it—what would be smart of you to take from it—is a lesson for yourself. You’re listening with these filters from your training. You’d be listening for clues that I had this or that or the other mental health problem and wondering how to make me cry it all out.”
“I—”
Coral interrupted her. “When what you should be listening for is information about how to survive, for yourself. This town will not last forever. Believe me. My life the past six months? That’s your life in the future. You should be figuring out how to survive it.”
“I think you’re wrong. About that, about our town, and about yourself.”
“And I think you’re wrong. We’ll both have to live with that.” Coral stood, thinking, actually, I think you’re going to not live with it. I think, after this place falls to pieces in a month or two—or gets attacked by a stronger force before that—you’re going to die. You don’t have what it takes to last a week out there. Like so many of the people in this town, you’re too mired in the old ways. “Now I really need some rest. I was up with a patient yesterday, and if I’m going to be any good for her tonight, I need to get some sleep.”
Victoria sat for a moment, frowning, and Coral wondered if she was going to have to pick the woman up and physically toss her out. Coral could do it. And Victoria had no idea how to defend herself, unless there were hidden skills from martial arts classes or something in the woman. Coral doubted it, though. She didn’t seem the type. She was a nice person from a nice world, entirely unsuited to the world of today.
Finally, Victoria got up, frowning. “I’ll have to discuss this with Levi,” she said.
“Sure, I understand,” said Coral.
“I’ll get back to you.”
“Okay,” said Coral, hoping she wouldn’t live up to that promise.
After Victoria left, Coral went upstairs. As she fell asleep, she was inventorying all the people she’d met in Boise and deciding which of them had the skills or attitude to survive the life Coral had been living—the life they’d all have thrust upon them when the food and fuel ran out a month from now. She imagined very few of them would survive. The scavenger teams, probably they could, if they lucked into finding game or stored food.
But she could too easily imagine those few she had come to like—Doug and Abigail and Edith—not making it.
* * *
OVER THE NEXT TWO DAYS, Julie improved and Coral sent her home. Coral was able to switch from feeling anxious about Julie to worrying about Benjamin, who was due to return that day.
And then there was Abigail. She had been patient while Coral focused on her surgical patient, but lines of worry were etching themselves on her face, and before dinner the day she’d gotten Julie settled in bed two floors above the kitchen, Coral reassured Abigail that she was looking for a solution.
“I’m getting morning sickness now. I’m a hundred percent sure I’m pregnant.”
“I could give you a pelvic exam,” Coral said. “But I’ve never given one. If an experienced person could tell you’re a couple weeks pregnant from feel, I couldn’t. I have nothing to compare it to.”
Maybe something would happen that Abigail wouldn’t want to terminate her pregnancy. If a miraculous food find happened, something like a whole train, a hundred cars long, full of canned food, she could carry to term, and before she left Coral would recruit the most experienced mothers to be midwives, Abigail and her baby would be fine.
That was all fantasy, of course, beginning with the unlikely discovery of food. If Benjamin and Kathy’s scavenging party did find something—even a fully stocked Super Walmart—it would only delay the inevitable end. The world as it was could not sustain a town of three hundred for long. Eventually, they’d have to break into small bands, move out in different directions. A few of them with the right skills might find game or fish. Most of them would die of starvation.
It reminded her of another reason that she and Benjamin had to be gone well before that natural end occurred here. They needed to be the first searching out the new areas, and well ahead of the main exodus from the town. A twinge of guilt at her selfishness bothered her—but it would not bother her enough to forfeit her and Benjamin’s survival when the time came.
She wished he’d get back. As she held her series of dining-hall meetings that night about folk medicine, natural remedies, and donating any random pill or mint they might still have, her thoughts kept drifting to Benjamin.
She ate alone, at the end of a long evening, eating only because she knew she had to. It was some mystery meat stew, watery, with not enough salt, and with some dried herb floating in it she didn’t like the taste of. Coral ate it quickly and then took her bowl back to the last two people in the kitchen, who were putting away clean dishes.
She hadn’t ever seen the kitchen area this empty. She knew it was locked at night. If she and Benjamin were to leave soon, they would need food. She needed to keep a closer eye on the kitchen and figure out how to smuggle some MREs from the pantry. She wouldn’t take many—they couldn’t carry many—but enough to give the two of them a fair chance at finding fish or game or a small town grocery store that hadn’t yet been looted.
At home, she sat in the living room, hoping Benjamin would show up, but he didn’t. For the first part of the evening, she had company. Doug had a book with him, a Jane Austen novel. They hadn’t talked Levi into assigning him to the task of hunting for medical tidbits, but he was taking it on anyway in his spare time. From time to time, he’d read aloud a few paragraphs, none of it particularly useful. Gout wasn’t likely to appear in post-disaster Boise. And while Doug might well have an attack of the vapors if he learned of his wife’s pregnancy, Coral thought he’d recover quite easily from them without a whiff of vinegar.
The content of what he read was useless as medicine, but it helped in another way. It took her away, for a moment, to a different world, one were ash did not fill the air, where people could change their clothing every day after servants had washed and pressed it, and where people had time to worry about nonsense like ballroom etiquette rather than survival.
She stayed up alone in the dark though she knew the scavenging party would not be coming back. Then she slept restlessly, half-listening for the sound of Benjamin’s return.
The next morning, she woke to find herself still alone in bed. It was barely dawn too early for breakfast. She dressed and went out to walk the perimeter of town. Blake, a man who she had treated at the clinic for a cut her second day there, was on duty. She asked him if she should worry about the scavenging group being late.
“Stuff happens. If they found something, they could be moving slowly. Or if someone sprained an ankle, that’d slow them down.” He looked across the river into the distance where the ruins of the city faded away into the fog of ash particles. “Do you think that Army group is going to attack us?”
Coral had nearly forgotten about the brouhaha she’d started by mentioning the encounter at the train so long ago. “If they haven’t found you yet, I think not. Maybe they had an internal fight and killed each other. Or disease ran through them. Or they found enough food to settle in for the winter and don’t have to scavenge.”
“You saw them? I heard there were dozens of armed men.”
“Only two that I saw,” she said. “But they referred to others, and those two had some serious-looking guns.”
Blake’s hand slid along his own rifle, caressing it. “M-16s I hear. Man.”
“If Parnell isn’t worried, I wouldn’t be either. He seems to know his stuff.”
“Maybe we should be hidden, not standing out here like this.”
“But you have to patrol a pretty long stretch, right?”
“I guess.”
She couldn’t think of anything to say to reassure him. The border guard patrolled in two-person teams, each team covering a quarter to a half-mile. They were sometimes within sight of the next team, and usually in motion. Coral didn’t think a big group could sneak in, but enough temporary gaps were in the line to let her and Benjamin sneak out at night.
To get in unseen, an attacking force would have to creep up on a pair of sentries and kill them. Looking around at the bare area outside the perimeter, Coral didn’t see how that was possible during the day. At night? Maybe.
She said, “If you’re worried, why not take a couple others and talk to Parnell about it?”
“Huh,” he said, in a tone meaning he wouldn’t. “Well, anyway, I’m sure Kathy and them will be back soon—probably today.”
“I hope,” she said. If they weren’t back by tonight, she’d be up all night worrying. If they weren’t back by tomorrow morning, she’d load up her gear and follow them—if she could find out what direction they had gone.
