Read Chapter 3: — WEST WING

Lakeshore University Hospital had run out of respiratory beds before most of the city understood there was a problem.

The winter surge had filled the department with influenza, COPD exacerbations, asthma, pneumonia, bronchiectasis, and elderly patients who had nowhere else to go. Beds had appeared in corridors despite every policy that said they should not.

Dr Peter Quinn ended that practice the morning he heard about the family cluster.

“No corridor beds,” he told the charge nurse. “Not now.”

“We’re already full.”

“Then we discharge everyone safe enough to recover at home.”

“And the new admissions?”

“West wing.”

He converted twelve beds into an isolation area before administration formally approved the decision. Dedicated gowns. Dedicated coats. Respirators and eye protection for everyone entering. Doors shut. Movement restricted.

Someone accused him of overreacting.

Peter had worked through SARS in 2003.

“I sincerely hope I’m overreacting,” he said.

Lena returned from the conference before lunch and found the ward transformed.

Peter met her outside the isolation zone.

“You’re wearing an N95.”

“So are you.”

“I’m older and therefore wiser.”

“You’re older.”

“Disrespectful staff. Another sign of institutional decline.”

The joke lasted two seconds.

“What did you see in clinic?” he asked.

Lena described the family.

Peter’s face hardened.

“We’re reporting it again.”

The hospital called an emergency leadership meeting. Infection prevention wanted evidence. Emergency medicine wanted triage criteria. Administration wanted to know whether the term “outbreak” should appear in internal communications.

Peter slapped two CT printouts onto the table.

“I don’t care what word makes everyone comfortable. I care that unrelated hospitals are seeing the same bilateral viral pneumonias and we now have household spread.”

The medical director, Dr Susan Hale, studied the images.

“What do you want?”

“Respirator stock released now. A separate fever assessment area. Training for every department. No waiting for certainty before we protect staff.”

No one laughed after that.

That evening Peter phoned his wife, Rachel.

Rachel Quinn was an emergency physician with the Canadian Armed Forces. They had been married twenty-four years and lived together so infrequently that each had developed a complete domestic life in the other’s absence.

She had been scheduled to return for a week in February.

“I may not make it,” she told him.

“Deployment?”

“Standby. They’re watching the same respiratory reports.”

Peter leaned against the window of his office.

Their marriage had never collapsed. That was almost the problem. It had simply thinned into trust, logistics, and affection expressed through reminders to sleep.

“No children, no shared dog, no garden,” Rachel had joked once. “We built the lowest-maintenance marriage in Ontario.”

Peter had laughed then.

Tonight he did not.

“Be careful,” he said.

“So should you.”

“Rachel, this one feels wrong.”

She heard it in his voice.

“What are you seeing?”

He told her.

When he finished, neither spoke for several seconds.

“Protect your people early,” she said.

“I am.”

“Good.”

It was the closest thing to tenderness they managed that night.