فصل 5

FIVE

In the Fishers’ concrete apartment block overlooking the River Thames, the boy Nat lies shivering in bed, curled up, clasping his hot-water bottle, growing gradually warm. He sleeps a little.

Then he grows warmer, hotter, his fever rising; he tosses off the bedclothes, muttering, sweating, no longer knowing who or where he is. Mrs. Fisher comes back to check him. Flushed and damp-skinned, he is barely recognizable. Alarmed, she tries to wake him, but the fever is galloping, edging on delirium. She has never seen anything like this. His skin is on fire, his hair wet with perspiration; there are strange swellings in his neck. She calls her husband, and in sudden fear they telephone their doctor.

The doctor is not at home. They call for an ambulance. It takes the boy to Guy’s Hospital: a short swift ride through the dark midnight streets. In the emergency ward, nurses receive the boy in puzzled alarm; they start sponging down the fevered body, they peer at the red swollen glands. Meningitis? The doctor on duty comes, frowns, orders an intravenous line, blood tests, antibiotics. Surprising the nurses, he orders the boy to be moved to an isolation ward. Intent, unsmiling, he goes to an office where there is a telephone with a direct outside line, and he closes the door. He calls, even at this hour of 3 A.M., a colleague who is a specialist in tropical medicine.

He says, “You aren’t going to believe this, but I think we have a case of bubonic plague.”