Read Chapter 4: — A CITY HOLDING ITS BREATH

They should have left immediately.

Instead they sat in the hospital car park for twenty minutes.

Maya's fear arrived all at once. She coughed once from a dry throat and stared at Ethan in horror.

"Don't touch me."

"Maya—"

"What if Claire has it? What if Tom has it? We've had two strangers in the car. What if I take it to Mum?"

She was breathing too quickly.

Ethan switched off the engine.

"Look at me. One cough means nothing. You're frightened and your throat is dry."

"You don't know that."

"No. I don't. That's the point. We don't know. So we do the sensible things and stop inventing the rest."

He did not tell her that he was afraid too.

They drove to six chemists. Five had no masks. None had hand sanitiser. At the sixth, Ethan found one bottle of disinfectant concentrate behind a shelf of baby shampoo.

Maya called both families and told them to avoid crowds, buy basic supplies and prepare for the possibility that Christmas plans might change.

Her mother cried.

Ethan's father, a retired history lecturer, listened quietly.

"Come home if you can," he said. "But don't bring the city with you. If the public-health advice changes, follow it."

On the way towards the motorway, Ethan opened the ride-share app.

Dozens of unaccepted requests clustered around St Anne's Hospital.

Maya saw the screen.

"Absolutely not."

"I'm just looking."

"You have your volunteering face."

"I do not have a volunteering face."

"Your eyebrows change."

He tried to laugh. It did not work.

Near the ring road, an emergency alert appeared on both their phones: public transport reductions would begin that evening. People were advised to remain at home where possible.

Ethan looked again at the unaccepted rides.

Doctors finishing late shifts. Nurses beginning nights. Patients discharged without buses.

He thought about Claire standing in the cold with three suitcases.

"What if we don't go?" he said.

Maya turned slowly.

"Don't go where?"

"Home. What if we stay?"