The End of Men(7)
I vaguely know someone who works at Health Protection Scotland. We were at university together and now she’s a deputy director there. She’s always been a bit snippy but I don’t care. I need her to listen to me. I call her and try to sound calm as I speak to the switchboard. When I tell her everything in a rush she keeps making small noises as though she wants to get off the phone. She doesn’t sound worried but also, it seems like she thinks she’s seen this all before. She hasn’t been a doctor for more than ten years but somehow it sounds like she just doesn’t trust me. Maybe the urgency isn’t translating when I explain. It’s so clear to me but it sounds so minor—eight people are sick, okay, we’ll see what happens and we’ll look into it. I put everything down in an e-mail as well and say, at the very least, that they need to send someone to look into it, just in case. I sit down by one of the patients and check his pulse. It is 45 bpm. He will die soon. They all will. Breathe, Amanda. The cavalry will charge in soon. I won’t have to deal with all of this on my own. There will be someone I can hand the reins over to. Someone qualified who wears a hazmat suit for a living will come and make everything better and let me go home and forget that this ever happened.
The doors of the Minor Injury Unit swing open. It’s Matron.
“There’s four more just arrived in ambulances. Two were here two days ago, and the other two were here yesterday. I don’t know what to do.”
My worst nightmare is coming true.
E-mail from Amanda Maclean ([email protected]) to Leah Spicer ([email protected]) 6:42 p.m. on November 3, 2025
Leah,
Found your e-mail online. Realized that you forgot to give it to me on the phone after you said to e-mail you. I’ve just arrived home from my shift. When I left there were nineteen live patients in A and E all showing symptoms of what I think is a virus (antibiotics made no difference although obviously need pathology to confirm what’s going on. Is that easier for your lab to do over at HPS or is it quicker for us to just crack on here at Gartnavel?). Of the twenty-six I think we’ve seen so far, five died before I left the hospital. One man, the first I saw, from the Isle of Bute two days ago. Fraser McAlpine this afternoon. Three other men died quickly after coming in, including one of my junior doctors, Ross.
They’re all men. Too small a sample size so far obviously but I’ve never seen that before. Maybe men are more vulnerable to it? Can we have a call to discuss all of this please, also maybe loop someone more senior in? This is very bad, Leah. You need to understand how quickly the disease affects them. They go from having normal flu symptoms and feeling quite unwell to being dead with a temperature of over 109 degrees in a few hours.
Please get back to me as soon as you can.
Amanda
E-mail from Amanda Maclean ([email protected]) to Leah Spicer ([email protected]) 6:48 p.m. on November 3, 2025
Leah, there was a baby as well, I just realized. We thought it was sepsis. He was in before Fraser McAlpine. He was only two months old. I thought he was stable when we sent him up to the Pediatric ICU but I just called them and he died a few minutes after they wheeled him out of the lift. He was here a few days ago, being treated in A and E.
That makes twenty-seven I saw today. Six deaths. Oldest aged sixty-two. Youngest aged two months.
Amanda
FW: E-mail from Amanda Maclean ([email protected]) to Leah Spicer ([email protected]) 6:48 p.m. on November 3, 2025. FW to Raymond McNab ([email protected]) 10:30 a.m. on November 4, 2025
Ray,
See below two e-mails from a woman I went to uni with. She’s a consultant at Gartnavel. I think she’s mistaking a bad case of the flu (it’s November after all . . .) with ensuing sepsis/likely death from other, complicating factors for something more serious. There’s been no other reports of anything on the Category 1 list so I think we’re safe on the SARS/MRSA/Ebola front.
Between you and me, she had a breakdown at university. Completely cracked up and had to take a year off. I think one of her parents died or something? Anyway, she’s quite fragile. I intend to send a holding e-mail advising good infection control practice and to get in touch if anything further. Flag if you disagree.
Thanks,
Leah
E-mail from Raymond McNab (r.mcnab@healthprotectionscotland) to Leah Spicer ([email protected]) 10:42 a.m. on November 4, 2025
Thanks Leah.
By the sounds of it, a stark raving lunatic who’s trying to waste the limited resources and time of this institution. Not to mention my patience. Ignore please.
Ray
CATHERINE
London, United Kingdom
Day 5
I’ve never been good at the school pickup. I don’t like talking to groups of people I vaguely know. Strangers are fine, as are, obviously, friends. I just cannot form a clique to save my life. The nursery gates are rife with stressful opportunities for me to put my foot in my mouth or misinterpret a friendly hello as a “Come and talk to us!” wave when actually it was a “I’m busy talking to someone, nice to see you from a distance!” wave. I have a PhD in Social Anthropology and yet the difference between these two waves can easily be lost on me. The irony, by contrast, is most certainly not.
For the last few days pickup has been stressful in a different way. Everyone wants to talk, not because they think I’m a brilliant conversationalist (although I live in hope). No, they seem to want a verbal sounding board for their mounting anxieties. The Plague is all anybody can talk about even though we’re all assuring each other that it’s very far away, what is it up to Glasgow? Four hundred, five hundred miles? Perfectly safe. The authorities will have it all in hand soon. One of the other mums, a lawyer, has told me three days in a row, in the resolute, inarguable tone I’m sure she uses in court, that there is absolutely nothing to worry about. Absolutely. Nothing. If she’s trying to convince herself I hope she’s more successful than she’s been in convincing me because all she’s done is stoke the panic I’ve kept simmering away.