The flight from Heathrow departed at 7:35 a.m., on time surprisingly enough, and arrived in Monrovia just after six p.m. Peering out the right side of the plane as we made our final approach, there lay beneath us the usual tropical scenery—verdant mahogany trees and low growth shrubbery, poorly-kept dirt roads, low cinder-block houses with corrugated metal roofs, and, in the distance, beneath a deepening blue sky, anvil clouds that looked to be within an hour of delivering heavy rain. It could have been any third-world destination. No sign of anything unusual, save perhaps for the notable lack of people milling about. Plenty of dogs and cattle, but very few people. I had made trips to this part of the continent several times in the past decade, generally as a volunteer physician, helping out my former colleague and medical school mentor, Miles Fenton. Now five years retired from full-time practice, his wife deceased and children grown, Miles had relocated down here more or less permanently, shuttling about West Africa as the crises—both natural and man-made—arose and abated. A week in Sierra Leone tending to butchered child soldiers, a month in Senegal during the annual spring malaria outbreak. Offered a high-level administrative position with Médicins Sans Frontières over a year ago, he had, instead, opted to eschew management and stick with simply providing medical care where and when it was needed. When Ebola had swept in nine months earlier, he had packed his bag (it had become a point of honor with him that he could live out of just one) and headed for Monrovia. Between visits, I had kept in touch with Miles by email. Now, with all the grim news being broadcast in recent days, I had decided to surprise my old friend with an unannounced arrival and a couple weeks of gratis medical assistance.
It was an odd sensation flying on an aircraft that could accommodate over three hundred passengers, but which was, in this instance, carrying no more than a dozen, and I found myself wondering how much longer these flights would continue to take place. Sit wherever you like, they’d said when we boarded. It was eleven hours to Monrovia by way of Brussels and Casablanca, plenty of time to reflect on the coming two weeks. And with no time difference between the two cities, there was no jet lag to worry about, so I could get straight to work doing what I could to help out Miles. I had only limited first-hand experience with the disease, though I’d done a fair bit of research once I’d made the decision to come three weeks prior. The news coverage was by now nearly incessant, with over a hundred thousand confirmed cases and nearly seventy thousand reported fatalities. There was still no cure or effective vaccine available, and so I expected that my role, as in past visits, would be limited to doing what I could to tend to the infected, who would, for reasons that remained mysterious, either overcome the virus or succumb, the latter outcome still expected in far more than half of all cases.
By all accounts, medical staff remained in critically short supply, as were drugs and other medical necessities. Government leaders and international aid organizations had, for months, been demanding greater commitment, faster results, but all you heard through the news outlets was that things were getting worse faster than help was arriving. Words like ‘exponential’ and ‘geometric’ were bandied about, without anyone ever taking the time to explain what the terms actually implied. Ebola was a quite contagious disease (though less so than other strains like influenza and TB), but with a very high mortality rate. No big surprise then that volunteers were in short supply, particularly given the high number of healthcare workers who had succumbed to date, their cases widely publicized, particularly when they were expats. Still, here I was. No wife, grown children, two weeks of accrued vacation from my position at the hospital, and no firmer plan than the desire to surprise and help out an old friend.
Descending the aircraft stairs onto the searing tarmac of Roberts International Airport provided stark reminder of the difference between first- and third-world life. It was only my second trip here since the scourge had begun nearly one year earlier (that earlier trip having been limited to a single week), and I was struck, as on prior visits, by the stoicism I saw as I looked about the airfield. Despite what, to all accounts, was an epic catastrophe befalling their country, porters continued to remove bags, ground crews fueled and tended to the aircraft, all carrying on as though life was as ordinary a thing today as it had always been—business as usual. The nation, barely one hundred seventy years old, had been created as a dumping ground for former American slaves, and yet the people seemed to embrace the place, bristling with a pride their imperialist nineteenth-century masters can scarcely have imagined. I was pleased to see that, despite my two connections, my bag had arrived none the worse for its travels. I’d brought just the one, as I had come for only two weeks and did not expect to spend much time away from the hospital. And, based on what I’d read and seen on TV, I imagined I’d be spending a fair bit of that time sealed inside a hazmat suit.
The drive into the capital was surreal and far faster than on any previous occasion. The city comprises nearly a quarter of the country’s population, and yet there was almost no one in view and virtually no vehicles save for an inexplicably large number of dump trucks trundling about (construction projects proceeding apace—more west African stoicism in the face of upheaval), as our van negotiated the tight city streets. The rare person we did see wore the cheap contractor’s paper facemask typically used to keep out dust, a device that has no effect whatever on viruses. Still, I supposed, it made them feel as though they were doing something. My driver made no attempt at conversation, only glanced occasionally in his rear view with what seemed to me fearful eyes. He drove with purpose through the city, pulling up beneath the carport at St. Philip’s Hospital. As with the city, there was a surprising lack of activity outside the hospital entrance. No one appeared to greet me, and as I stepped from the vehicle my feeling was one of abandonment, an unfair assessment, perhaps, given that I’d arrived totally unannounced. I turned to thank my driver, but he simply engaged the engine and pulled away without a backward glance. A stiff breeze sprang up from the direction of the clouds I’d seen earlier, bending for a moment the nearby trees. My shirt was soaked through with sweat from the summer heat and I looked down uncertainly at my single bag.
There were a few staff members walking about in the large waiting area just inside the hospital’s front door, all of them wearing facemasks as well, though of a somewhat higher quality than those I had seen on the street. I accosted a nurse, introduced myself, and inquired as to the whereabouts of Doctor Fenton, chief epidemiologist for Médicins Sans Frontières.
“Ah, Doctor Childers, Doctor Fenton has spoken of you in the past,” she replied with a wan smile, her voice muted by the mask, her smile discernible only by the raising of her eyebrows. It was the smile of exhaustion, mixed perhaps with a small dose of resignation.
“I’m afraid Doctor Fenton is … indisposed at the moment. But Doctor Dukuly is in his office. It’s right through those doors,” she said, pointing. “Welcome to Monrovia, Doctor,” she said, turning without further remark and walking away.
Dukuly greeted me warmly as I entered his office. “We are … surprised … and pleased of course … to see you, Doctor Childers. I trust you traveled well.” There was a tone to his voice that I could not put a word to in that moment, but it was something other than reassuring.
I returned his greeting and took a seat before his desk. “I understand you are all stretched extremely thin here, and so I’ve come to offer whatever assistance I can. When might I have a chat with Doctor Fenton?” I asked. “I’m keen to catch up with him. We’re old med school colleagues, but I haven’t spoken with him in some months.”
“Doctor Fenton is on the ward, I’m afraid,” he replied.
“Tending to patients, no doubt,” I said.
“Would that that were true, Doctor Childers,” he said. “No, I’m afraid Doctor Fenton is himself now one of our patients.”
I had known Miles Fenton since medical school and had kept in regular touch with him since he had joined MSF. That he too had now contracted the virus, while perhaps inevitable, given the length of time and diligence with which he had been working in Monrovia, nevertheless hit me like a punch to the gut.
“But … I heard nothing of this,” I replied. “When did it take place?”
“Best we can determine, it has been five days since his exposure,” Dukuly replied. “He showed his first symptoms only yesterday morning. A quick blood test confirmed the worst.”
Dukuly rose from his seat and strode to a corner of the room. “Doctor, things have … changed here, I’m afraid, and I regret to be the one to tell you that much has been kept from you—you and the world. You will, no doubt, have reason to revisit your decision to come here. Indeed, I find it disturbing that you were even allowed in by the authorities. But now that you are here, it is only fair that you be aware of the full ramifications of the situation you are now part of. Doctor Fenton, no doubt, would have shared this information with you, had he known you meant to come.”
Dukuly stood now gazing out the window of his office, speaking in inauspiciously somber tones, but without looking in my direction.
“Doctor Childers, what was the latest total casualty count reported on British television before your departure?”
“The last news I saw was BBC at around nine last night. They quoted nearly one hundred thousand confirmed cases with seventy-odd thousand fatalities.”
“And did your news speak of the continuing global effort to provide us with desperately needed medical expertise and supplies?”
“Of course,” I replied. “They speak of it every day now. There are calls of support from the UN, WHO, MSF, every NGO on this planet is focused on Liberia’s plight. Every nation has pledged funds. Many have sent troops and medical support.”
“And did you see any of these troops during your drive here? Any military aircraft at the airport? Any UN or NGO vehicles?” I pondered his question for a moment, as the first rumble of thunder vibrated the panes of Dukuly’s office window.
“Doctor Childers, it causes me great pain to admit this to you, but you have been grievously lied to—you and the entire world, I’m afraid.” He turned from the window and retook his seat at the desk.
“Do you know the population of Liberia, Doctor?” he asked.
“Around four million, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Four point two as of the 2013 census.”
“With a quarter or so here in the capital,” I said.
“Quite so, quite so,” he said. “And what is your understanding of the current state of the virus?”
“The last WHO report I saw—one week ago—indicated that it was stable, with a mortality rate, as I said, in the high sixty percent range.”
He wiped his mouth hard with the palm of his hand and looked directly and inescapably at me for the first time since I had arrived. More thunder, closer now, and the first large raindrops now pelting his window.
“Doctor Childers, approximately one month ago the Ebola strain morphed into a variant that is extraordinarily contagious in aerosol form. All past variants, as you know, dating as far back as the original Congo outbreak in 1974, have required direct contact with bodily fluids. But twenty-nine days ago we received our first symptomatic patients who had not only not been directly exposed to bodily fluids, but who, in fact, had not been within fifty feet of anyone infected. In order to contract the virus now, Doctor, all that is required is that you breath the same air as the afflicted. You need not even be exposed to a cough or sneeze. Simply the exhalations of the sick.”
Despite my medical training, the implications of what Dukuly was saying did not fully register in my mind.
“But how … how can this be? How can you contain such a thing?”
“The simple truth of the matter, Doctor Childers, is that we cannot. We can neither treat the disease nor control its spread. Even quarantine is pointless without air filtering and recirculation equipment, of which we have none. The tragic reality, Doctor, is that, despite all the exhortations to the contrary that you have seen on your television, the world officially gave up on Liberia three weeks ago. Your flight, Doctor, was the last aircraft that will land in our country. And no aircraft, military or civilian, have departed from here in over ten days. Every border is closed, including the coast. We are surrounded by soldiers with orders to shoot to kill anyone who approaches any border or endeavors to escape by sea.”
“What you describe, Doctor Dukuly, is not possible. Word of such a calamity would surely have gotten out.”
“You are not understanding what I say to you, Doctor Childers. Did you not see the wall construction as you flew across the border? No, I suppose you would have still been too high. Eight-meter reinforced concrete panels are being installed around our entire border. They will completely surround our country—the entire sixteen hundred kilometers—a wall exactly like the one the Israelis have employed to such good effect to keep out the Palestinians. Construction began two weeks ago and it is already nearly a quarter complete. It’s remarkable how rapidly men can work when suitably motivated. Each piece is ten meters wide. That works out to one hundred sixty thousand panels in total. The world’s leaders are terrified this thing will escape our country, that it will run amuck throughout civilization. I’m afraid there is every likelihood that you have visited upon yourself a death sentence by voluntarily coming to our country, Doctor Childers.” He raised his arm in a sweeping gesture intended to encompass the entire room. “Even now the very air we breath contains the virus in its pure form. The only hope we have—any of us—is the one-in-a-thousand chance of natural immunity.”
I suddenly became very conscious of my breathing and my heart rate, both of which had increased significantly since entering Dukuly’s office. I rose from my seat, but could conceive of nothing to do beyond that. My overpowering instinct was to run from the office, from the hospital, to escape. But where?
“And yet you take no precautions—suits, masks,” I said, making no effort to now disguise the quaver in my voice.
“There are few to be taken, Doctor Childers. We have plenty of suits but we haven’t had a fresh consignment of air filters in over a month. We wear the suits when we’re on the ward and to move the bodies, but even that precaution is futile at this point. Some of the staff wear face masks, but they may as well be holding rags over their mouths for all the good it is doing.”
“And they are, of course, aware of this,” I replied.
“Of course, Doctor, but it is important to the human psyche to feel as though your fate is in your own hands, even if it’s only yourself you’re fooling.”
I sat again, suddenly very aware of the warmth of the room and the bead of sweat on my forehead.
“How many casualties have there been, Doctor Dukuly? How many truly?”
“We stopped counting two weeks ago, my friend. By that point we were losing fifty thousand a day nationwide. There can be no more than a few thousand left alive, perhaps a hundred thousand nationwide.”
“But … but what of the hospital? What about those on the ward? Are they not treated?”
“There are only a couple of dozen or so remaining on the ward, Doctor Childers. There is space there for three hundred, but we no longer need it. We have received no new patients in nearly two weeks. The handful who remain alive in the city no longer bother seeking medical help. The staff you see working outside remain because they have no one to go home to. We have had no new drugs or medical supplies for nearly three weeks. Supplies are occasionally airdropped into the country by well-meaning governments, but these are absconded with by locals before we can get anywhere near them. The only thing we have in our ward are beds and blankets, more of them than we need at this point frankly. The sick, like Doctor Fenton, go in one end. Two or three weeks later, depending on stamina and luck, whatever is left of their bodies emerges from the other end and is immediately burned.”
“But surely some survive,” I replied, doing my best to maintain a modicum of composure in my voice.
“Only very rarely, Doctor. I’m afraid that when the virus mutated into its new, more communicable form, its morbidity rose as well … to nearly one hundred percent. It has become an almost perfect killing machine.”
“And yet you appear fine, Doctor,” I couldn’t help but observe.
“Luck of the draw, Doctor,” he replied smiling. “Luck or genetics. Who can say? I am the last functional doctor in the hospital. I have not thus far had so much as a sniffle, and yet I can do nothing for these people. Nothing whatever. And neither, I’m afraid, can you.”
He smiled at this last remark, with a look that might have been resignation, or perhaps the onset of madness. I did not yet know him well enough to perceive the difference.
“But surely you must be outraged to have been abandoned by the rest of humanity,” I said. “Are you prepared to simply stand by and watch your country die around you?”
“It is already dead, Doctor. We are merely cleaning up. The rest of humanity did what they had to do, I’m afraid. Though you and I find ourselves on the short end of the decision, in the complete absence of any cure or vaccine, there was truly no choice.”
His point was valid, indisputable perhaps, except that it was surpassingly difficult to accept it in the objective when I, through no fault of my own, was apparently now on the wrong side of the outcome.
“Where is Doctor Fenton?” I asked, absent anything more positive to discuss. “I would very much like to see him.”
“Of course, Doctor. Of course. Come with me,” Dukuly replied. “He’s still barely symptomatic at this point, but he’s in an isolation room nonetheless. One never knows.”
He rose and gestured for me to follow. We passed through the main lobby by which I’d entered the hospital upon first arriving. Dukuly then directed me to the ward’s staging room, where there hung dozens of bright yellow hazmat suits.
“It’s worth the effort in your case, Doctor,” he said, “although, as I said, you will still be breathing infected air, as we have no means of filtering it. At least the suit will protect you from anything you might touch.”
“And you?” I asked as he helped me into a suit.
“I wash my hands and avoid touching my face,” he said. “Little else seems to matter in my case. I’m tested every day, but so far nothing.”
Dukuly pushed his way through a set of double doors, the rush of air from the negative pressurization flowing briefly around us. Inside, I saw a very long room, illuminated in sickly fluorescent green, with a row of floor-to-ceiling glass cubicles lining each side. They all appeared empty until we had made our way to within eighty feet or so of the far end where the final few rooms contained occupants. In the first occupied room on my right lay a man dressed only in turquoise medical scrubs, apparently asleep on a narrow bed. It was Fenton. He awoke at the sound of our footsteps and sat up on the edge of the bed. He must have been deeply asleep for he did not at first appear to recognize me. And then he did.
“Childers!” he shouted, with a refreshing burst of enthusiasm that lasted perhaps five seconds. “My God, man. It’s good to see you. What on earth are doing in this …?” He raised his hands upward and effected a look of confusion, as if unable to put into words the nature of the place and his current situation.
“I’ll leave you to it,” Dukuly said, turning to return in the direction from which we’d come.
“Jesus, Benjamin,” Fenton said, sitting heavily back down on the edge of the bed. I was obliged to maintain the conversation from my side of the glass wall, though, in truth, based on what Dukuly had divulged, I wondered what was really the point.
“What in God’s name has brought you here?” Fenton asked, turning to look forlornly at me. “I assume Dukuly has apprised you on our state of affairs.”
“Oh, he has, Miles. Indeed he has. Rather than be content to thrash about drowning in the ocean, it appears I have elected to climb aboard the Titanic at the last moment.”
“You, of course, came to help,” Fenton observed peremptorily.
“Seems I’m a bit late to the party,” I replied.
“Well, they’ll need some help moving the last few bodies,” he observed sardonically, “including this one, it appears.” He gestured to himself in a resigned manner that sent a chill through me. “Oh, and, of course, they’ll need someone to turn out the lights.”
“Now look, Miles. No need to be maudlin. People do survive this thing you know.” My eyes were becoming glassy and he did me the favor of turning away.
“Indeed they do, Benjamin. About one in a thousand at last analysis. I, on the other hand, have never so much as purchased a winning lottery ticket.”
“But … Dukuly,” was all I could manage in response.
“Dukuly is apparently made of stone,” he said, “whereas the remainder of us are a bit more … porous. By all appearances he will be the last man standing.”
Neither of us spoke for several inexorably long seconds.
“I’m here, Miles. For the love of God, tell me what I can do,” I said. “For you. For anyone. Surely I can contribute something meaningful before I catch the blasted thing myself.”
“You can find me a pistol, my friend,” he replied without irony.
“For FUCK’s sake, Miles,” I shouted through the glass. “Will you bloody stop with that?!”
He rose from the bed and stepped to the glass. There were but six inches separating us—six inches and a quarter-inch piece of plate glass.
“Benjamin, do me a favor, will you,” he said.
“Anything … anything at all.”
“Walk down to the end of the aisle. Have a quick look in the other cubicles.”
It was the longest walk of my life. Fenton had twenty-one ward-mates, each in an isolation cubicle identical to his, the healthiest of whom was lying in bed, endeavoring to read a book as sweat poured from his head in rivulets so profound that his pillow was soaked through. Beside his bed on the floor stood a container at the bottom of which was a liquid that looked to my eye like crude oil. I chose not to speculate on its source. It seemed as though the patients had been organized in descending order of health as one approached the rear door, the more efficiently, I imagined, to move them straight to the furnaces. The final four cubicles contained beds on which lay beings scarcely recognizable as humans, more quivering collections of blood, sweat, and assorted other fluids that must certainly have been within minutes of expiration. Beneath each of them on the beds were spread what appeared to be cocoons of black plastic. It took a moment, but then I realized they were lying on body bags, the more easily to transport them once the inevitable had occurred. By the time I made my way back to Fenton, I was as drenched in sweat as he was, despite the hospital’s properly functioning air conditioning.
“Barring a miracle from God Almighty,” he said as I stood shaking by the glass, “there lies my future.” He gestured expansively in the direction from which I had just come.
“And me likely just a few days behind,” I replied.
“You know what the real bitch of this situation is, Benjamin? Despite all the work and the research and the death, we’ve accomplished virtually nothing in understanding this thing. We’re no better able to contain or treat it today than we were when it started a year ago. Mankind’s best and brightest brought low by the most primitive organism ever to populate this earth.”
By this point, I could hear distinctly the drumming of heavy rain on the hospital roof, punctuated by occasional thunder, now quite close.
“Is it true, what Dukuly says?” I asked, locating a chair and drawing it close to where Fenton stood by the glass. “The very air we breath conveys the virus.”
“For the purposes of what it means to the future of this country, and to you and I, yes, I’m afraid it’s true. Of course, as with any gaseous substance, the farther from the source one gets, the more dispersed is the pathogen.”
“Meaning it won’t make its way on the winds across the border and into adjoining countries.”
“Consensus is no, but who can say for certain. Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Cote d’Ivoire each had their own scares last year, around the same time things began going south here. Once all the borders were closed, they were each delivered in their own way. Sierra Leone was worst hit in the early going—perhaps a hundred thousand dead. But none of them received Satan’s touch in quite the way we have here. By the time we realized how the strain was evolving, the borders had long been closed, outgoing commercial flights long cancelled. We were left to sort it out for ourselves. Apparently we have been chosen to serve as an example.”
“And there are no drugs in the country. Nothing anywhere,” I asked, knowing by now the terrible answer. “Dukuly said something about periodic drops of supplies.”
“It is the world pissing on a forest fire, my friend. The last supplies that reached this hospital came on a helicopter whose pilot was brave—or stupid—enough to attempt a landing on the hospital helipad. The helicopter was swarmed by the desperate who had waited on the rooftop. The crew barely made it off with their lives. That was three weeks ago. Since then it has been only parachute drops of dubious accuracy. Who knows what’s in the supplies or who’s ended up with them. God willing, they have helped someone.”
I stared hard through the glass into Fenton’s eyes for a long moment. Aside from beads of perspiration that appeared no worse than my own, he seemed so far to be in fair shape. I imagined the twenty or so days that stood between him and the pathetic beings drawing their final breaths near the back door.
“Miles,” I said, choking back an emotion difficult to name, but balanced delicately on the knife-edge between terror and sadness. “This cannot stand. You need to get out of this place. You and I both.”
“And do what?” he replied.
“Jesus, I don’t know,” I said. “Something other than lie here with the dead and nearly dead, waiting to join them. I cannot speak for you, but if I have only a few days left on this earth, I’d damned well rather spend them beneath the sun and the moon than …” I raised my arms and turned my gaze up and down the long corridor.
“Dukuly will not be pleased,” Fenton replied.
“Dukuly can piss off,” I said. “It’s not as though he can stop us from leaving.”
“No, I suppose not. And anyway, it’s one less body to carry out to the furnace,” he said with a wry smile.
“Good old Fenton,” I said, mustering my first genuine smile since arriving. “Always keen to see the positive side of things.”
I stepped around to the door of his cubicle. It was not locked and opened with the slight hiss of equalizing pressure. I drew it open and stood to one side, gesturing theatrically to Fenton, who offered a slight bow and stepped past me and into the corridor. He stood for a moment gazing down the corridor toward the worst cases. As he did so, I peeled off my hazmat suit and deposited it unceremoniously on the ward floor.
“Feels almost like a prison break of sorts,” he said as we made our way up the corridor and toward the main ward door.
“Except there’s no one here with the inclination or the ability to stop us leaving,” I replied.
We walked straight through the lobby and past a pair of astonished nurses as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Continuing out the main doors of the hospital, we stepped from beneath the portico roof just as the showers ceased and the last rolls of thunder echoed off to the east of the city. The rainclouds were rapidly dispersing and Fenton stopped for a moment, turning his gaze upward as though seeing the sky for the first time.
“Damn it, Childers, this was a first-rate idea,” he said smiling more broadly than a dying man had any right to.
“Good chance you’ll come to hate me for it,” I replied. “Where to then?”
“We’re only a few blocks from the beach,” he said, walking briskly across the hospital’s front lawn.
And so we walked for fifteen minutes westward, the late afternoon sun shining full in our faces. We crossed several city streets but encountered few people. On several occasions we were passed by the dump trucks I’d seen on the drive in, and while we couldn’t see their contents, the odor that attended their passing made me keen to maintain my ignorance. Of the few people we did encounter, nearly all wore facemasks of one sort or another, testament to that human desire of which Dukuly had spoken, the need to feel in control of one’s fate, even if the gesture was entirely futile.
We reached the beach just as the setting sun emerged from beneath a large cloud. Staring out over the calm, golden waters of the south Atlantic, we could see several small gunboats patrolling a couple hundred meters out, as well as at least two large cargo vessels much farther away, but clearly making their way toward the harbor to our north.
“Our executioners, ever diligent in their work,” Fenton said. He crossed his arms and exhaled heavily, continuing to look across the water. I did not respond to this observation and Fenton correctly inferred that I had not gotten the gist of his statement. “The ships come bearing more concrete sections for our wall. The nations of the world have been far more enthusiastic about contributing to this undertaking than they ever were in solving the epidemic to begin with.”
I could not conjure an appropriate response to Fenton’s sardonic assertion, so we just stood in silence, watching the vessels move slowly, majestically toward the harbor.
“You know,” he said. “I expect the ships that came here with all those freed slaves aboard must have looked a bit like that. The world was looking for a convenient way to make an uncomfortable problem go away. It took a hundred and fifty years, but, by God, they finally finished the job.”
This seemed to me a harsh judgment on the situation. But then, I had been comfortably ensconced in London these many years, while he had been here. After a moment of further reflection, I said, “I only came to help, you know.”
“Using up those hard-won vacation days, no doubt,” he replied.
“Indeed.”
“You’ll want to ring them at some point and explain your situation. The phones here still work fine,” he said.
“Oh, I expect they’ll get on well enough without an obsolete old sot like me milling about, getting in the way.”
“You do know that if you’d called in advance to say you were coming, I might have saved you the trouble of all this.”
“But where’s the surprise in that?” I replied. He only grunted quietly in response. “You know, I wouldn’t feel quite so grim about it all if only I’d been able to at least help out a bit. You’ve been slogging away down here for nearly a decade, saving God knows how many lives, while I’ve been locked away in a dingy lab in the London suburbs doing research. In the end, what the hell difference did that make?” I said, bending down to pick up a stone, watching a small crab scuttle away as I lifted it.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Childers,” he said. “We all do our bit.”
“But, Miles, I don’t really feel as though I’ve saved anyone,” I said, turning the stone in my hand. I considered it for one more moment and then tossed it casually out into the water.
“Not true, Benjamin. Not true at all.” He spread his arms wide and smiled, his face aglow in the setting sun. “Why, you’ve saved me.”