“Hello, sir. Can I help you?”
“I…I need to see someone.”
The doctor looked past Houser, at the chairs behind him. No one else seemed to be waiting for the moment, so she nodded. “Okay. Is that your information?”
Houser handed over the clipboard.
“Come this way.” Dr Clark led Houser into a nearby examination room. She pointed to a treatment table in the centre. It was lined with recycled paper from a roller at one end. “Hop on up,” she said. “Let’s take a look at you.”
Houser failed to get himself up the few inches onto the table and it took him a second attempt to climb up onto its surface.
So weak.
The doctor headed over to a cluttered desk in the corner of the room and examined the clipboard he had given to her. After a few moments of checking his information, she turned to face him and tutted. “We are feeling quite under the weather, aren’t we?”
Houser nodded. “I’ve never felt this bad in my life. I feel rough as hell.”
“Well, my name is Dr Clark. Let me see what I can do for you.” She pulled the stethoscope from around her neck and placed the receiver against his chest by going up under his t-shirt. “Hmm,” she said. “Your heart rate is a little fast. Have you taken any drugs or alcohol in the last twenty-four hours?”
“I…smoked a bit of weed to take the edge of my headache.”
She nodded. The admission of guilt was obviously uninteresting in her line of work. “That could explain it,” she said. “When did you start feeling ill?”
“Couple days ago. Some of the guys I work with started feeling bad, too. We assumed it was a bug going round. You get sick a lot living on a boat.”
The doctor raised an eyebrow at him. “You live on a boat?”
Houser nodded. “I’m a merchant sailor. We just docked in Southampton after a salvage operation in the Med.”
“You…you weren’t involved with that cruise liner, were you?”
Houser nodded. “Yeah, we were one of the boats involved in the rescue attempts. There was no one to be saved, though. We spent a day running nets and picking up debris, but eventually we were ordered back to the mainland. It was all a bit strange, if you ask me.”
Dr Clark was shaking her head and pursing her lips. “It’s terrible what happened there. More than a thousand dead, I heard.”
Houser nodded. “Nobody has any idea what happened. They’re saying it could have been a terrorist attack. A suicide bomber in the engine compartment or something.”
“I don’t understand this world sometimes,” said the doctor. Then she seemed to refocus on what she was doing. “So, you say you and your colleagues started feeling ill back on the boat, in the Mediterranean Sea? Were you docked anywhere prior to that?”
Houser shook his head. “We made a drop off in Civitavecchia the day before, but no one left the boat. We just dropped off some shipping containers with the crane and then set off again. I suppose one of the officers could have stepped off briefly to fill out some paperwork.”
Dr Clark nodded her head and seemed to run a few things through her mind. “Well, there hasn’t been any health warnings. It’s probably safe to assume that you just have a nasty case of flu. Not a lot I can do for you, unfortunately. I’ll give you something to help the headaches, but you just need to get a lot of rest. You’ll feel better in a day or two.”
Houser nodded weakly. “I really hope so. I can’t take much more of this.”
The doctor patted him on the back. “Just get some sleep and try your best to battle through it. I’ll be back in a minute with your prescription.”
“Thank you, Dr Clark.”
Houser waited on the table while the doctor headed out of the room. He was relieved to hear he just had the flu. He’d suspected as much, but had also been supressing a gloomy concern that it could be something worse. He knew flu was bad, but he didn’t know it could be this bad.