Survivor Song Read online

  Ramola was born in South Shields, a large port town on the northeast coast of England where the River Tyne meets the chilly North Sea. Her mother, Ananya, emigrated from Bombay (now Mumbai) with her parents to England in 1965, when she was six years old. Ananya teaches engineering courses at South Tyneside and is a polyglot. She mistrusts most people, but if you manage to earn her trust, her loyalty knows no bounds. She doesn’t waste words and hasn’t lost an argument in decades. She is shorter than her daughter’s five-two but in the eyes of Ramola, her mother projects a much larger figure. Ramola’s father, Mark, is a white man, nebbish-looking with his wire-rimmed glasses, face often shielded with one of his three daily newspapers, yet he is an intimidating physical presence with thick arms and broad shoulders befitting his lifelong career in masonry. Generally soft-spoken, he is equally quick with a joke as well as a placation. Hopelessly parochial, he has left the UK only five times in his life, including three trips to the United States: once for Ramola’s graduation from Brown University, a second time five years later when she graduated from Brown’s medical school, and a third time this most recent summer to spend a week with Ramola. The unrelenting humidity of greater Boston in July left him grumbling about how mad the climate was, as though the good citizens of New England had chosen the temperature and dew point. Ananya and Mark’s infamous and quite possibly apocryphal first date featured a distracted viewing of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a trip to a notorious pub, and the first match in what would become a playful if only occasionally contentious decades-spanning pool competition between the two. Both parents steadfastly claim to have won that first match.

  It’s late morning. Ramola finishes eating cold, leftover white pizza that has been in the fridge for four days, before video chatting on Skype with her mother. Ananya’s image jumps all over Ramola’s laptop screen, as Mum can’t help but gesticulate with her hands, including the one holding her phone. Mum is concerned, obviously, but thankfully calm, and listens more than she talks. Ramola tells her the morning has been relatively quiet. She hasn’t left her townhouse in two days. She’s done nothing but sit on the couch, watch news, drink hot chocolate, and check emails and texts for updates regarding her role in the emergency-response plan. Tomorrow morning at six A.M., the second tertiary medical personnel from Metro South are to report to Norwood Hospital. Thirty-six hours ago all first tertiary were called in and assigned by Emergency Command Center unit managers. Now they already need the second wave of emergency help. Her being called in relatively soon after the first tertiary is not a good sign.

  Ananya places a free hand above her heart and shakes her head. Ramola is afraid tears might be coming from one or both of them.

  Ramola says she should go and read through the training protocols (she has already done so, twice) and so she can pack. She’ll be working sixteen-hour shifts for the foreseeable future, and likely sleeping at the hospital. It’s an excuse; her overnight bag is already packed and on the floor next to the front door.

  Mum clucks her tongue and whispers a one-line prayer. She makes Ramola promise to be safe and to send updates whenever she can. Mum turns the phone away from her and points it at Mark. He’s been there the whole time, off-screen and listening, sitting at their little breakfast nook, his elbows on the table, his meaty mitts covering his mouth, glasses perched on top of his head. His eyes always look so small when he isn’t wearing his glasses. He’s already been crying and Ramola tears up at the sight. Before she closes out the chat window, Dad waves, clears his throat, and in a voice coming from thousands of miles away, he says, “A right mess, innit?”

  “The rightest.”

  “Be safe, love.”

  Ramola is thirty-four years old and lives by herself in a two-bedroom, 1,500-square-foot townhouse, one of four row units in a small complex called River Bend in Canton, Massachusetts, which is fifteen miles southwest of Boston. Her well-meaning parents encouraged her to buy the townhouse, telling her she was a well-paid professional and “of an age” (Ramola’s “Thanks for that, Mum” did nothing to deter her from banging on with the hard sell) and therefore she should own property and not insist upon throwing money away on renting flats. Ramola regrets buying the place and feels foolish for allowing her parents, ultimately, to sway her when she knew better. Functionally, the townhouse has more space than she needs, or wants. The dining area of the large common room goes unused, as she eats her meals at the granite-topped kitchen island or on the couch in front of the TV. The spare bedroom/office has become the dusty storage/dumping ground for stacks of textbooks she can’t bring herself to sell or let rot in a basement. The monthly association fees in conjunction with the high municipal taxes are more of a burden than she anticipated. With all the open space—the high cathedral ceilings, the second-floor loft overlooking the common area—the heating and cooling utility bills are twice as much as what she paid in her one-bedroom flat in Quincy. If that weren’t daunting enough, Ramola faces twelve more years of suffocating medical school loan payments. She has confided in Jacquie and Bobby, two nurses at her office, that she doesn’t feel clinically depressed when she goes home, she feels financially depressed. Jacquie and Bobby are her closest work friends despite their only having gone out together socially on a handful of occasions, usually to celebrate a birthday or impending time off due to the winter holidays.

  The laptop is closed, the television turned off, her phone in her pocket. She knows she should leave one of the devices on, stay connected, but she also needs a break—even for just a few deep-breath-sized moments—from the news onslaught and its cat’s cradle of conflicting information. The house is eerily quiet, making her too-large home feel downright cavernous as though the digital media light and noise fills physical, exterior space.

  Should she check in with her neighbors? She doesn’t know them well. On her right is Frank Keating, the recently divorced town selectman—the only things more relentless than his conspiracy-leaden political proselytizing are his four male cats who spray everything in sight. In the unit to her left is a late-middle-aged couple, the Piacenzas; empty-nesters with one adult son who frequently visits and referees their loud arguments. The first unit houses Lisa and Ron Daniels and their infant daughter, Dakota. Lisa is friendly enough, but always harried. Ramola has yet to have a conversation with her that didn’t involve new-parent worries about the health of their daughter. Her husband Ron is subverbal, barely capable of a head-nod acknowledgment in the parking lot.

  Ramola parts the curtains from her bay window and peers out at the small parking lot walled off from busy Neponset Street by a row of trees and evergreen shrub hedges. A breeze sends dead leaves skittering like mice across the pavement. She watches intently for other movement, any kind of movement. She hopes Frank followed the Wildlife Service’s first recommendation (Bloody hell, how long ago was that? Seven days? Ten?) to keep all cats indoors. She doesn’t realize she’s holding her breath until she exhales and fogs up the window.

  Ramola returns to the kitchen and wakes her laptop from sleep mode. No new emails. She enlarges the web browser with three open tabs. She refreshes the CDC’s website along with mass.gov and CNN.com. The government sites have nothing new on their pages. CNN’s panicked headlines and live-stream updates (including bloody images from overnight riots and looting of a shopping plaza in the affluent suburb of Wellesley) are alarming, overwhelming, and she closes her laptop again.

  She thinks about what tomorrow will be like at the hospital and her head spins through worst-case scenarios. She closes her eyes and focuses on breathing deeply. She visualizes getting in her car, driving to either Logan or T. F. Green Airport and somehow boarding.

  Returning to England has been Ramola’s oh-I-give-up plan for as long as she’s lived in the United States. She daydreamed about going home when she was stressed about her classes as an undergraduate and medical student, when she was a resident working eighty-hour weeks and came home too tired to even cry, during the fourteen months of her ill-fated coh
abitation (his word) with Cedric and their tepid but never cantankerous relationship not so much falling apart as eroding under calm but relentless waves and tides, and whenever she was made to feel like an outsider, a foreigner. Ramola has always fought to persevere, to show herself and to show everyone else she can do it, and she has always fought to win (as her mum puts it). However, there is a small but undeniable part of herself that takes comfort in imagining the detailed journey home: landing in Gatwick, a train to Victoria Station, the tube to King’s Cross, another train that rolls through the countryside, small towns, and swelling cities, and eventually to Newcastle, then a forty-minute Metro to South Shields, a two-mile walk (her rolling luggage listing consistently to her left), and it’s warm and sunny even though it is never warm and sunny often enough in northern England, and finally she’s standing before their semidetached home with the brick walls and a white trellis, and she walks through the small garden and through the back door, then to the kitchen to sit with Mum and Dad at their ridiculous little table with the ugly yellow vinyl tablecloth and they both glance over the frames of their reading glasses and smile that wan I-see-you-dear smile. The final scene is so vivid that, as a younger woman, she luxuriated in the idea of her return truly having occurred in an alternate reality. As safe and as reassuring as the returning-home daydream is, it fills her with melancholy; a fear of the inevitability of mortality, as though if she allows the daydream to continue, it will speed into the future too quickly, one in which she and her parents remain rooted at the table, and it’s there they will molder until the three chairs at the table go empty, one by one by one. All of which is why she has resolved to never move back home, financial stresses and everything and anything else be damned.

  Ramola clucks her tongue at herself and says, “Now, that’s enough of that,” and picks up her phone. She texts Jacquie and Bobby in an attempt to rally their spirits and hers. It backfires dreadfully.

  Text message

  Oct 21, 2019, 11:37 A.M.

  Ramola Sherman

  Go team second tertiary tomorrow morning? I think someone should have t-shirts made. A sporting shade of grey, or a lovely shade of blue perhaps.

  Jacquie Joyce

  Yeah right. Sorry to spread hysteria but this is legit. Just watched the “Personal Protective Equipment Super-Rabies” 15 minutes training vid. Clicked through power point (a fucking power point!!!) This is trained personnel? We need legit Hazmat suits, right Ramola? Plain gowns & boot covers will not protect us.

  Ramola Sherman

  I’m not comfortable with the level of training either and I’m not comfortable with the conflicting info. Rabies mutation, increased virulence yet still spread via saliva is official word. But saw news speculating a new neurotropic virus? I realise it’s an emergency but we should have proper PPE regardless as a safeguard.

  Bobby Pickett

  Boston’s 5 major trauma centers struggling to handle it all but we will at shitty little Norwood hospital??? Yeah, right. I’m going to quit. My life is not worth that place. Especially as they don’t even have a plan for us if we get infected.

  Jacquie Joyce

  I’m with u. feel horrible for two Beverly nurses attacked and infected and the fucking CDC press release saying it’s their fault for not following protocol. Those nurses probably had our shit training! They were cardiac care nurses for fuck sake. Not trained for this.

  Bobby Pickett

  Always blame the nurse. So typical!!!! They didn’t blame the doctors (no offense Ramola) in Boston who caught it. They were heroes! Are you all going into Norwood H tomorrow?

  Jacquie Joyce

  Yeah, I’m going. So fucking scared tho. Heard Good Samaritan in Brockton isn’t taking any more patients.

  Bobby Pickett

  Shit. Norwood will be a zoo. Probably one already.

  Jacquie Joyce

  We really have cause to not take care of infected pt, we need appropriate gear and training and protection. The sickest ones get violent too right? Jesus fuck. Inf pts should be sent to Emory or Nebraska.

  Ramola Sherman

  No offense taken, B. Jacquie, you’re right but rather sounds like it’s too late and there are too many pts to transport.

  Bobby Pickett

  Even your texts have a brit accent, doc!;) I wonder how scared the ICU nurses are. I hope they at least got better training and PPE than us.

  Jacquie Joyce

  Friend Lisa at Norwood got a call around 9:30 From MICU. “R u trained for super rabies?” Lisa “no why?” MICU “just taking a poll”

  Bobby Pickett

  Bullshit! I should’ve stayed in New York. Where is our raise, btw? You can get infected but we will die before we get a raise! Ha!

  Jacquie Joyce

  You should’ve stayed in NY. Maybe we need to refuse as a group until we get right PPE.

  Bobby Pickett

  I’m on board. What has hosp ntwrk or the state or feds done to show they care about any of us?

  Jacquie Joyce

  We need to leak our “training” to the media and mention lack of PPE.

  Bobby Pickett

  It’s ridiculous. We aren’t equipped like CDC in Atlanta etc.

  Jacquie Joyce

  Lisa told me one pt of hers is one hour post exposure, fever and aches already. She said CCU is staff tonight, assigned by do-nothing Erin. You remember when she “consulted” at our office?

  Ramola Sherman

  I do. I would hope Erin is doing more than simply assigning.

  Jacquie Joyce

  We need to tell everyone that we have no clue how to handle this. That friggin news conference in Boston was all lies! Homeland security guy said area hosps all have appropriate staff and equipment. Jackass president tweeting same.

  Bobby Pickett

  Yeah we had 30 min “training” and then they made us sign a waiver. Good job in protecting their ass!!!

  Ramola Sherman

  You signed waivers? Oh dear.

  Bobby Pickett

  Mary couldn’t explain to rest of us if even an observer should be gowned or not. Complete bs. Should let it be known we don’t know what to do. It takes about 20 min to gown up. The cuffs on the jackets are permeable. We need serious support and equipment.

  Jacquie Joyce

  Waiver/sign sheet that u got “trained.” She made sure we all signed them. Is Claire still in Cali? (I hope she is). Where’s Mags? We ALL need a plan. We should not accept this. I am serious. Fucking assholes . . . Do not let ur kids see these texts, Bobby!

  Bobby Pickett

  Even though I have a mortgage to pay, my life is worth more. But I’ll still go in tomorrow. Fuck. Us.

  Jacquie Joyce

  Yes it is. (And I know. You know I will too.) Mags doesn’t need this shit. She has $

  Ramola Sherman

  Haha! I elect Jacquie as our team/office rep.

  Jacquie Joyce

  I elect Bobby as team cap. I swear too much.

  Ramola Sherman

  Bobby: You mean instead of “hurry up and finish training so we can go to lunch on time”?

  I thought I knew you.;)

  Bobby Pickett

  Normally I’d be okay with that.

  Ramola Sherman

  Not to worry, Erin will properly assign you.

  Jacquie Joyce

  Hazmat suit wouldn’t fit over her big dome anyway!

  Ramola Sherman

  That’s just wrong, but brilliant.

  Bobby Pickett

  Bahahahahaha!!!!

  An incoming call kicks Ramola out from the group text screen. Her phone fills with an image of herself alongside her dear friend Natalie. The photo is from Natalie’s bachelorette party, which was six years ago. They are leaning on a wooden railing at a sun-splashed outdoor bar, their drinks raised and mouths wide with laughter. They are wearing white T-shirts with a cartoon caricature of Natalie’s face above the ridiculous slogan “Nats Is Plightin’ All the Troths.” Ramola was v
olunteered by the group to explain what the shirt meant to inquisitive passersby, not solely because she is British, but because she is a doctor, which was part of her increasingly elaborate, drunken explanations.

  At the sight of Natalie’s face on her phone, there’s a brief spark of guilt. Aside from a few stray texts, Ramola hasn’t talked to Natalie since the baby shower two months ago. Ramola, ever practical, chose from a rather elaborate registry to gift a month’s supply of baby diapers and wipes. Post-party, on her way out the door, she also gave Natalie a stuffed Paddington Bear along with a stack of books, joking the extra present was necessary for her to remain on brand.

  “Hello, Natalie?”

  “Oh thank Christ, Rams.” The nickname is a holdover from their college days, and Natalie is the only person who continues using it. “I kept calling 911 and it wasn’t going through. I—” She pauses and cries quietly. “Are you home? I need your help. I don’t know what to do.”