Read Chapter 11: — FEVER CLINIC

The fever clinic opened before it was ready because there was no longer such a thing as ready.

Lena arrived at six in the morning and found plastic barriers being taped into place while the first patients were already queuing outside. Portable heaters fought January air. Nurses marked clean and contaminated zones with coloured tape. A maintenance worker drilled a sign into the wall while a respiratory therapist rolled past him with oxygen cylinders.

Adrian stood beside the donning area reading the emergency protocol.

“You slept?” Lena asked.

“For almost three hours.”

“Show-off.”

“You?”

“Two and a half.”

“Dangerous amateur.”

It was ridiculous, but the old rhythm between them helped.

Their first patient was a taxi driver named Mr Alvarez. Fever for six days. Dry cough. Worsening breathlessness. He had continued working for the first three days because missing shifts meant missing rent.

“How many passengers?” Lena asked.

He closed his eyes.

“Maybe eighty.”

No accusation appeared in her face.

She had already learned that shame interfered with history-taking.

“We’ll take care of what is in front of us first,” she said.

By noon, every assessment bay was occupied.

The clinic developed its own language. Oxygen saturation. Exposure date. Household cluster. Worksite cluster. Travel. Fever day. CT pattern. Escalation threshold.

By evening, names blurred.

A schoolteacher.

A grocery clerk.

A university student.

A retired bus driver and his wife, married fifty-three years, who argued because he wanted her taken first.

“You’re sicker,” the wife insisted.

“I’m older.”

“That is not a medical qualification.”

Lena nearly smiled.

Later the woman deteriorated suddenly. Her husband sat in a wheelchair outside the resuscitation room and gripped Lena’s sleeve.

“We’ve never been apart,” he said. “Not properly. If she has it, then I probably do too. Put me wherever you put her.”

“We can’t admit people just to keep couples together.”

“I know. I’m not asking you to break rules.”

He looked through the glass door.

“I’m asking you not to let her think she’s alone.”

Lena promised someone would stay with her.

It was a small promise in a week full of impossible ones.

She kept it.