Frank appealed to the nurses and paramedics for help. At one point when he was exploding in anger at an indifferent and unresponsive nurse, he was dragged away by two military policemen whose purpose was to maintain order in the hospital. In the end the best he could do was to see a nurse write down Seth’s name and location and tell him that Seth was “sixteenth on Mr. Umberly’s list.” Mr. Umberly, he gathered, was one of two paramedics.
On his way back to Seth he wandered by mistake into a room where the authorities apparently were putting patients who had been exposed to severe and presumably lethal doses of radiation. About ten people were lying against the walls or on the floor of what must normally have been a custodian’s room, some groaning, one screaming, and at least two of them already dead. The room reeked of vomit. All of those sprawled on the floor were badly burned, and one man who had no eyes and whose face was hideously burned, the skin dangling down one cheek, begged in a singsong chant for water. Frank fled.
When he finally returned to Seth, he found him flushed and breathing rapidly. He explained about the shortage of medical help but withheld the other horrors he had witnessed.
“Well, they warned us,” Seth said in his high-pitched, self-mocking tone.
“Who warned us about what?” Frank asked, kneeling down beside him.
“Books,” Seth said, bright-eyed with fever. “The marchers. The protestors. They all warned us that a nuclear war would be inconvenient. Too many sick and wounded, too few surviving doctors. I should have known better than to get involved in a nuclear war.”
Frank stared down at him where he lay on an inch-thick mechanic’s mat covered by the sailcloth they had used for the stretcher. He couldn’t tell if Seth was delirious or not.
“It wasn’t the Russians and their missiles that got you,” Frank said. “It was… an American.”
“I know,” said Seth. “They warned us about that too. Someone predicted the Russians would win a full-scale nuclear war because their citizens were unarmed and thus unable to wipe each other out.” He grinned up at Frank as if it were all a good joke.
“I… ah… I’d like to go to the refugee center and check on Jeanne,” Frank said. “You think you can… ah… handle yourself okay until the doctor comes?”
“Of course,” Seth replied, still smiling. “I have exactly those qualities that will guarantee my safety in this world.”
“What’s that?” asked Frank.
“I’m useless and destitute,” said Seth. “I’m even less likely to be visited by a pirate than by a doctor.”
“I… I’ve got to go,” Frank said.
For the first time Seth was silent, staring past Frank at the ceiling, his grin frozen and lifeless.
“Will you come back?” Seth asked in a low, totally different voice.
“I… Sure,” Frank answered. “I’ll come back this evening.”
“I’d like that,” said Seth, still looking past Frank at the garage ceiling.
“So I’ll be seeing you,” said Frank.
“Please come back, Frank,” Seth whispered desperately through gritted teeth, and Frank, somber, rose and left.
Jeanne had no illusions about the difficulties she would encounter as a refugee in a strange town, but as she had told Neil, the sea was no home for her; every moment she’d been aboard Vagabond her heart had been eyeing the horizon for land.
Although she had anticipated scarcity and crowding, when she entered the long, low, modern high school building, she knew that her expectations weren’t going to make it any easier. The hall she entered with Jim, Lisa, and Skip was crowded with people as wet and weary-looking as themselves. The hard floors were covered with mud and water. Some were shouting, a round man with a red nose and bloodshot eyes was trying to herd people into a line, and twenty-five or thirty confused refugees stood or sat against the walls, a few crying, many looking sick. Four or five had visible burns. Skippy was pulling at Jeanne’s belt and periodically asking her questions about nothing. She could feel a numbness creeping into her, as if her life were again being threatened. With all the sick people around she wondered whether Jim had brought her to the hospital by mistake rather than the refugee center, but on the walls were the familiar official graffiti of a schooclass="underline" “Seniors taking SATs report on Tuesday to Mr. Owens,” “Graduation rehearsal at 3:00 on Thursday,” and “Support your Tigercats!”
“Mother, let’s not stay here,” Lisa said, looking frightened.
“There’s no place else to go, honey,” Jeanne answered mechanically.
“We should have stayed on the boat,” Lisa insisted.
“We’ve got to try this,” Jeanne replied, fighting off the panic she could feel invading her as it had Lisa. The boat was a refuge of last resort—it had only a few days’ worth of food left. This was now how people lived on land: it was necessary to try.
It took more than an hour before they were “registered” and assigned to a room. Jim said an awkward good-bye to Lisa, leaving her stricken and silent, and left to sneak back to the boat. They hiked down the hall to find their room, where a large matronly woman welcomed them “to the third grade.”
Forcing a smile, Jeanne stood tentatively in the doorway and finally urged Skippy and Lisa ahead of her into the room, which was occupied by four other families, though there was only one adult male among them. Each group had carved out a little space for itself by arranging the desks into a low wall. Although no mattresses were available, most families seemed to have sleeping bags or blankets, as did Jeanne. The lights were off, and with the wind and rain slashing against the big windows, the interior of the room was dark and depressing. Skippy, however, seemed to relax in the presence of desks and toys and began to play by himself with some blocks not far from another child his age, who seemed reluctant to leave his family’s walled-off space. There were seven children in the room.
For the next few hours, Jeanne left Lisa to watch Skip so she could tour the building and talk with her fellow refugees. She began to realize how lucky she had been. Many had been a hundred miles from the nearest blast and had still been overtaken by radioactive fallout and radiation sickness. Whether they were sick or not, most of those she talked to seemed confused and numb rather than terrified, and manifested a debilitating passivity. They accepted instructions, food, friendship, and hostility with a numb equanimity that she knew was a symptom not of spiritual maturity but of surrender.
She was appalled when a young woman who was caring for those with radiation sickness told her that only one doctor was available to come to the center and then only for an hour each day. Most of the sick were too weak to go to the hospital and had been instructed to stay in the school, where conditions were, in fact, better.
“Are you an official here?” Jeanne asked the young woman, almost afraid to look at the line of ashen, slumped figures propped up against one wall of the large fifth-grade classroom.
“No,” the woman answered. “I’m just doing what I can to help. My name’s Katya.”
Katya was a petite, ashen-haired woman in her early twenties wearing jeans and a sexy peasant blouse with a deeply scooped neckline that seemed strangely inappropriate in a roomful of sick and dying people. She wore no makeup, and she was not so much pretty as she was striking, especially her dazzling green-blue eyes.
Although Jeanne was still a little shaky from the aftereffects of seasickness, she worked for almost two hours with Katya lugging buckets for potties, cleaning up vomit, relaying messages, bringing water and food, and answering questions. At first she was disturbed by Katya’s indifference to and even disobedience of the various officials who appeared sporadically throughout the afternoon—one even ordered them to leave the room because “you aren’t sick or dying”— but she soon came to feel that the only worthwhile things being done were being done spontaneously by volunteers rather than as a result of any official system.