Pandemic

"We call it Li's Disease for two perfectly good reasons," Dr. Wendy Kramer said. "Li Wenliang discovered it--and he was the first doctor to die of it." Kramer fumbled fruitlessly through the pockets of her lab coat. "Now where the devil did I put those matches?"

"Are these what you're looking for?" he asked as he picked a small box of wooden safety matches from the littered lab table beside him and handed them to her.

"Ah," Kramer said. "Thanks. Things have a habit of getting lost around here."

"I can believe that," he said as he eyed the frenzied disorder around him. His boss wasn't much better than her laboratory, he decided as he watched her strike a match against the side of the box and apply the flame to the charred bowl of her pipe. Her long dark face became half obscured behind a cloud of purple smoke as she puffed furiously. She looked like an untidy bisan with her thin brows, viridescent eyes and lank black hair highlighted intermittently by the leaping flame of the match. She certainly didn't look like a pathologist. He wondered if he was going to like working with her, and shook his head imperceptibly. Possibly, but not probably. It might be difficult being cooped up here with her day after day. Well, he could always quit if things got too tough. At least there was that consolation.

She draped her body across a lab stool and rested her elbows on its back. There was a faint smile on her face as she eyed him quizzically. "You're new," she said. "Not just to this lab but to the Institute."

He nodded. "I am, but how did you know?"

"Li's Disease. Everyone in the Institute knows that name for the infection, but few outsiders do." She smiled sardonically. "Novel coronavirus-infected pneumonia--that's a better term for public use. In the field, it does good to advertise a doctor's bravery."

"De mortuis?" he asked.

She nodded. "That's about it. 'Of the dead, say nothing but good.' We should venerate our own, as much as we like laymen doing it. And besides, Li had good intentions. He never dreamed this would happen."

"At first, he was blamed for disrupting social order."

"Undoubtedly," Kramer said dryly. "Incidentally, did you apply for this job or were you assigned?"

"I applied, although I was told to avoid it like the plague."

"Someone should have warned you I dislike clichés," she said. She paused a moment and eyed him curiously. "Just why did you apply?" she asked. "Why are you imprisoning yourself in a sealed laboratory which you won't leave as long as you work here. You know, of course, what the conditions are. Unless you resign or are carried out feet first you will remain here ... Have you considered what such an imprisonment means?"

"I considered it," he said, "and it doesn't make any difference. I have no ties outside and I thought I could help. I've had training. I was a nurse before I was married."

"Divorced?"

"Widowed."

Kramer nodded. There were plenty of widows and widowers outside. Too many. But it wasn't much worse than in the Institute where, despite precautions, Li's Disease took its toll of life.

"Did they tell you this place is called the suicide section?" she asked.

He nodded.

"Weren't you frightened?"

"Of dying? Hardly. Too many people are doing it nowadays."

She grimaced, looking more kittle than ever. "You have a point," she admitted, "but it isn't a good one. Young people should be afraid of dying."

"You're not."

"I'm not young. I'm nearly forty, and besides, this is my business. I've been looking at death for ten years. I'm immune."

"I haven't your experience," he admitted, "but I have your attitude."

"What's your name?" Kramer said.

"Barton, Mark Barton."

"Hm-m-m. Well, Mark--I can't turn you down. I need you. But I wish you'd taken some other job."

"I'll survive."

She looked at him with faint admiration through eyes now more russet than green. "Perhaps you will," she said. "All right. As to your duties--you will be my assistant, which means you'll be a dishwasher, laboratory technician, secretary, junior pathologist, masseur, bartender and coffee maker. I'll help you with all the jobs except the last one. I make lousy coffee." Kramer grinned alluringly, her teeth a white flash across the darkness of her face. "You'll be on call twenty-four hours a day, underpaid, overworked, and in constant danger until we lick this virus. You'll be expected to handle the jobs of three people unless I can get more help--and I doubt that I can. People stay away from here in droves. There's no future in it."

Mark smiled wryly. "Literally or figuratively?" he asked.

She chuckled. "You have a nice sense of black humor," she said. "It'll help. But don't get careless. Assistants are hard to find."

He shook his head. "I won't. While I'm not afraid of dying I don't want to do it. And I have no illusions about the danger. I was briefed quite thoroughly."

"They wanted you to work upstairs?"

"Yes. In the critical ward."

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