The City of Mirrors (8 page)

“Now is not the time for humankind to turn upon itself,” said U.N. Secretary-General Ahn Yoon-dae in a printed statement. “Our common humanity must be a guiding light in these dark days.”

Power outages throughout Europe continue to hamper relief efforts and add to the chaos. As of Tuesday night, darkness extended from as far north as Denmark to southern France and northern Italy. Similar failures have been reported throughout the Asian subcontinent, Japan, and Western Australia.

Landline and cellular communications networks have also been adversely affected, cutting many cities and towns off from the outside world. In Moscow, water shortages and high winds are being blamed for the unchecked fires that have left much of the city in ashes and killed thousands.

“The whole thing is gone,” said one eyewitness. “Moscow is no more.”

Also on the rise are reports of mass suicides and so-called “death cults.” Early Monday in Zurich, police officers, responding to reports of a suspicious smell, discovered a warehouse containing more than 2,500 bodies, including children and infants. According to police, the group had used secobarbital, a powerful barbituate, mixing it with a powdered fruit drink to make a lethal cocktail. Though the majority of victims appeared to have taken the drug voluntarily, some of the bodies had been bound at the ankles and wrists.

Speaking to the press, Zurich Chief of Police Franz Schatz described the scene as one of “unspeakable horror.”

“I cannot imagine the despair that led these people to end not only their own lives but those of their children,” Schatz said.

Around the globe, huge crowds have flocked to houses of worship and important religious sites to seek spiritual comfort during the unprecedented crisis. In Mecca, Islam’s holiest city, millions continue to gather despite food and water shortages that have added to the suffering. In Rome, Pope Cornelius II, whom many eyewitnesses claimed appeared ill, addressed the faithful Tuesday evening from the balcony of the papal residence, exhorting them to “place your lives in the hands of an almighty and merciful God.”

As bells tolled throughout the city, the pontiff said, “If it is God’s will that these should be the last days of humanity, let us meet our heavenly father with peace and acceptance in our hearts. Do not abandon yourselves to despair, for ours is a living and loving God, in whose hands of mercy his children have rested since time’s beginning and will rest until its end.”

As the death toll rises, health officials worry that the unburied remains of the deceased may be accelerating the spread of infection. Struggling to keep pace, officials in many European locales have employed open pit graves. Others have resorted to mass burials at sea, moving the bodies of the deceased by freight cars to coastal sites.

Yet despite the risks, many of the bereaved are taking matters into their own hands, using any available patch of ground to bury their loved ones. In a scene typical of cities around the world, Paris’s famed Bois de Boulogne, one of Europe’s most storied urban parks, is now the site of thousands of graves.

“It is the last thing I could do for my family,” said Gerard Bonnaire, 36, standing by the freshly dug grave of his wife and young son, who had succumbed within six hours of each other. After fruitless attempts to notify officials, Bonnaire, who identified himself as an executive with the World Bank, asked neighbors to help him move the bodies and dig a grave, which he had marked with family photographs and his son’s stuffed parrot, a beloved toy.

“All I can hope is to join them as soon as possible,” Bonnaire said. “What is left for any of us now? What can we do but die?”

It took Michael a moment to realize he had come to the end. His body felt numb, almost weightless. He raised his eyes from the paper and looked around the compartment, as if searching for someone to tell him that he was mistaken, that it was all a lie. But there was no one, only bodies, and the great, creaking weight of the
Bergensfjord.

Good God, he thought.

We’re alone.

5

The woman in bed 16 was making a ruckus. With each contraction, she released a volley of curses at her husband that would make an oiler blush. Worse, her cervix was barely dilated, just two centimeters.

“Try to keep calm, Marie,” Sara told her. “Yelling and screaming won’t make it any better.”

“Goddamnit,” Marie screeched at her husband, “you did this to me, you son of a bitch!”

“Is there anything you can do?” her husband asked.

Sara wasn’t sure if he meant to ease his wife’s pain or to shut her up. From the cowed look on his face, she guessed that her verbal abuse was nothing new. He worked in the fields; Sara could tell by the crescents of dirt under his fingernails.

“Just tell her to breathe.”

“What do you call
this
?” The woman puffed up her cheeks and blew out two sarcastic breaths.

I could hit her with a hammer,
Sara thought.
That would do the trick.

“For God’s sake, tell that woman to zip it!” The voice came from the next bed, occupied by an old man with pneumonia. He finished his plea with a spasm of wet coughing.

“Marie, I really need you to work with me here,” Sara said. “You’re upsetting the other patients. And there’s really nothing I can do at this point. We just have to let nature take its course.”

“Sara?” Jenny had come up behind her. Her brown hair was askew, lacquered to her forehead with sweat. “A woman’s come in. She’s pretty far along.”

“Just a second.” Sara gave Marie a firm look:
No more nonsense.
“Are we clear on this?”

“Fine,” the woman huffed. “Have it your way.”

Sara and followed Jenny to admissions, where the new woman lay on a gurney, her husband standing beside her, holding her hand. She was older than the patients Sara was used to seeing, maybe forty, with a drawn, hard face and crowded teeth. Shocks of gray ran through her long, damp hair. Sara quickly read her chart.

“Mrs. Jiménez, I’m Dr. Wilson. You’re thirty-six weeks along, is that correct?”

“I’m not sure. About that.”

“How long have you been bleeding?”

“A few days. Just spotting, but then this morning it got worse and I started to hurt.”

“I told her she should have come sooner,” her husband explained. He was a large man in dark blue coveralls; his hands were big as bear paws. “I was at work.”

Sara checked the woman’s heart rate and blood pressure, then drew up the gown and placed her hands on her belly, gently pressing. The woman winced in pain. Sara moved her hands lower, touching here and there, searching for the site of the abruption. That was when she noticed the two boys, young teenagers, sitting off to the side. She exchanged a look with the man but said nothing.

“We have a birthright certificate,” the man said nervously.

“Let’s not worry about that now.” From the pocket of her coat, Sara withdrew the fetoscope and pressed the silver disc against the woman’s abdomen, holding up a hand for silence. A strong, swishing click filled her ears. She recorded the baby’s heart rate on the chart, 118 bpm—a little low, but nothing too concerning yet.

“Okay, Jenny, let’s get her into the OR.” She turned to the woman’s husband. “Mr. Jiménez —”

“Carlos. That’s my first name.”

“Carlos, everything’s going to be fine. But you’ll want your children to wait here.”

The placenta had separated from the uterine wall; that’s where the blood was coming from. The tear might clot on its own, but the fact that the baby was in a breech position complicated matters for a vaginal delivery, and at thirty-six weeks, Sara saw no reason to wait. In the hall outside the OR, she explained what she intended to do.

“We could hold off,” she told the woman’s husband, “but I don’t think that’s wise. The baby might not be getting enough oxygen.”

“Can I stay with her?”

“Not for this.” She took the man by the arm and looked him in the eye. “I’ll take care of her. Trust me, there’ll be lots for you to do later.”

Sara called for the anesthetic and a warmer while she and Jenny washed up and put on their gowns. Jenny cleaned the woman’s belly and pubic area with iodine and bound her to the table. Sara rolled lights into place, snapped on her gloves, and poured the anesthetic into a small dish. Using forceps, she dipped a sponge into the brown liquid, then placed this into the compartment of the breathing mask.

“Okay, Mrs. Jiménez,” she said, “I’m going put this on your face now. It will smell a little strange.”

The woman looked at her with helpless terror. “Is this going to hurt?”

Sara smiled to reassure her. “Believe me, you won’t care. And when you wake up, your baby will be here.” She positioned the breather on the woman’s face. “Just take slow, even breaths.”

The woman was out like a light. Sara rolled the tray of instruments, still warm from the boiler, into place and drew up her mask. With a scalpel she cut a transverse incision at the top of the woman’s pubic bone, then a second to open the uterus. The baby appeared, coiled head-down in the amniotic sac, its fluid tinged pink with blood. Sara carefully punctured the sac and reached inside with forceps.

“Okay, get ready.”

Jenny moved beside her with a towel and a basin. Sara drew the baby through the incision, sliding her hand beneath its head as it emerged and hooking her thumb and pinkie beneath its shoulders.
Her
arms; the baby was a girl. One more slow pull and she came free. Holding her in the towel, Jenny suctioned her mouth and nose, rolled her onto her stomach, and rubbed her back; with a wet hiccup, the child began to breathe. Sara clamped the umbilicus, snipped it with a pair of shears, drew out the placenta, and dropped it into the basin. While Jenny put the baby in the warmer and checked her vitals, Sara sutured the woman’s incisions. Minimal blood, no complications, a healthy baby: not bad for ten minutes’ work.

Sara drew the mask off the woman’s face. “She’s here,” she whispered into her ear. “Everything’s fine. She’s a healthy baby girl.”

Her husband and sons were waiting outside. Sara gave everyone a moment together. Carlos kissed his wife, who had begun to come around, then lifted the baby from the warmer to hold her. Each of the sons took a turn.

“Do you have a name for her?” Sara asked.

The man nodded, his eyes shining with tears. Sara liked him for this; not all the fathers were so sentimental. Some seemed barely to care.

“Grace,” he said.

Mother and daughter were wheeled down the hall. The man sent his boys away, then reached into the pocket of his jumpsuit and nervously handed Sara the piece of paper she was expecting. Couples who were going to have a third baby were allowed to purchase the right to do so from a couple who had had fewer than their legal allotment. Sara disliked the practice; it seemed wrong to her, buying and selling the rights to making a person, and half the certificates she saw were forgeries, purchased on the trade.

She examined Carlos’s document. The paper was government-issue stock, but the ink wasn’t even close to the correct color, and the seal had been embossed on the wrong side.

“Whoever sold you this, you should get your money back.”

Carlos’s face collapsed. “Please, I’m just a hydro. I don’t have enough to pay the tax. It was totally my fault. She said it wasn’t the right day.”

“Good of you to admit, but I’m afraid that’s not the issue.”

“I’m begging you, Dr. Wilson. Don’t make us give her to the sisters. My sons are good boys, you can see that.”

Sara had no intention of sending baby Grace to the orphanage. On the other hand, the man’s certificate was so palpably false that somebody in the census office was bound to flag it.

“Do us both a favor and get rid of this. I’ll record the birth, and if the paperwork bounces back, I’ll make something up—tell them I lost it or something. With any luck, it’ll get misplaced in the shuffle.”

Carl made no move to accept the certificate; he seemed not to comprehend what Sara was telling him. She had no doubt that he had mentally rehearsed this moment a thousand times. Not once, in all that time, had he imagined that somebody would simply make his problem go away.

“Go on, take it.”

“You’d really do that? Won’t you get in trouble?”

She pushed the paper toward him. “Tear it up, burn it, shove it in a trash can somewhere. Just forget we had this conversation.”

The man returned the certificate to his pocket. For a second, he seemed about to hug her but stopped himself. “You’ll be in our prayers, Dr. Wilson. We’ll give her a good life, I swear.”

“I’m counting on it. Just do me a favor.”

“Anything.”

“When your wife tells you it’s not the right day, believe her, okay?”

At the checkpoint, Sara showed her pass and made her way home through darkened streets. Except for the hospital and other essential buildings, the electricity was shut off at 2200. Which was not to say that the city went to bed the minute the power was cut; in darkness, it acquired a different kind of life. Saloons, brothels, gaming halls—Hollis had told her plenty of stories, and after two years in the refugee camp, there wasn’t much that Sara hadn’t seen herself.

She let herself into the apartment. Kate had long since been put to bed, but Hollis was waiting up, reading a book by candlelight at the kitchen table.

“Anything good?” she asked.

With Sara working so many late hours at the hospital, Hollis had become quite a reader, checking out armfuls of books from the library and reading them from a stack he kept by his side of the bed.

“It’s a little heavy on the mumbo jumbo. Michael recommended it a while ago. It’s about a submarine.”

She hung her coat on the hook by the door. “What’s a submarine?”