Chapter 2
Twenty-five years later
Sophie Weber entered the waiting room and, like every day, stood still for a moment, hit by the strong, feral smell of too many people crammed in the same space.
Anxiety made her heart hammer in her chest.
She shook her umbrella and left it near the door, then did the same with her parka and her hat. A thin but persistent drizzle was falling, which would actually have been quite pleasant against her overheated face, if it wasnt for the slag danger that the news kept warning about.
She hastened to carefully wash her face and hands with a clay-based soap: it was said that it contrasted the accumulation of radiation, but she had the impression that it was only a palliative.
In any case, her morning routine was somehow reassuring.
She look in the mirror, tidying her dense, curly hair, then slipped on her coat and walked into the doctors office.
Youre late, Dr Solarin received her, without looking up from the patient whose back she was auscultating.
Sorry... A traffic block at the North door, she explained, then took a deep breath: An infected.
The doctor froze, but did not answer.
The patient, a man with very thick glasses, was startled: Really?
Sophie suppressed a shudder, thinking back about the ambulance, the police in riot gear and the yellow tape with the biohazard symbol.
The idea of ??an infected so close to them was disturbing.
The disease that twenty years earlier had decimated the population of the city was officially named DH16N10, but most people called it the "dragon plague".
It all started with a fever, a burning fever that devoured the body from the inside and that no drug was able to reduce. The patients gradually lost their sight, and later perhaps also the other senses, but they all raved too much to give a comprehensible report. Then the skin would begin to dry up, and the swellings start to emerge, wide, thick and dark, covering large areas of the body, particularly on the bones. When they burst, they revealed scales similar to those of a snake, but at that point, in most cases, the patient was dead.
However, compared to a few years ago, the disease was almost completely contained.
Safe areas had been established within the city, and every citizen was periodically tested to detect the incubation of the disease. That morning all who entered in the central city, including her, had been subjected to blood screening. She was clean, she had discovered; at least for now. If the virus had returned to the city...
What happened to him? Or her? Amanda Solarin asked, shaking her from her thoughts.
What?
The infected? Did they get him?
Sophie shrugged: I dont know. But if they havent caught them yet they will do it soon: there are blocking points all over the place. It will be fine, she said, more to convince herself than to anyone else.
Poor soul, the patient said, getting his clothes back on.
Sophie shrugged: Better not take risks, dont you think?
She had little compassion for those who risked spreading the disease.
Dr Solarin prescribed the man a syrup for coughs and dismissed him. With a little luck he would even be able to obtain it; medicines were increasingly scarce and difficult to find, and the waiting lists could drag for months, but his coughing seemed alarming enough to give him some priority.
Sophie has worked under Amanda Solarin for the past two years.
Before that, she attended a medicine course for three years, and for two years before that she did an internship in a large hospital in the fourth ring. She knew that once, before the plague, the future doctors studied for many more years, but times had changed: now the knowledge was gained mostly on the field.
Sophie considered herself lucky to be working under Amanda, who had been a doctor for many years, studied in a real university, and had a real higher education.
Amanda Solarin was forty-six years old; she was brown-skinned, tall and athletic-built and would have seemed much younger, if not for her short, greying hair.
Sure, she didnt have a very easy-going personality: on many occasions she was abrupt and despotic, and this was the reason why the previous three aspiring doctors left their place. The first day of work, Sophie came home in tears and by the end of the first week she was cultivating murderous fantasies.
However, she didnt want to give up her desire to become a doctor; she had worked so hard to get to that point and she certainly wouldnt give it all up because of some interpersonal difficulties.
After a couple of months she began to realize how to behave around Amanda, what made her angry and what mollified her; she had begun to appreciate her caustic sense of humour and, surprisingly, she found, that after all, she actually liked Amanda.
From then on, they began to get along; which, Sophie had to admit, was a relief.
After all, the two of them spent most of their day in the medical centre, and, at that time, a job was too precious to give it up lightly.
Not to mention that, for the first time in years, she had found a friend.