She swallowed, and said, “The van blew up. It must have been loaded with lots of extra gas. You were thrown clear.”
His gaze traveled around the ambulance, snow drifting around the interior like the white flakes in a snow globe. Plainly, he had noted no other passengers, and Nika didn’t think she needed to say anything more. He put his head back down, staring at the roof of the cabin, and she studied the road again. In a good sign, the surface seemed smoother and more recently plowed, which meant she was getting closer to the city.
Even with the heat on high, she was shivering in her coat, and had to bend forward over the wheel when another bout of coughing hit her.
“How long has that been going on?” Slater asked, as if suddenly on alert again.
Nika waved it off, loosening her face mask to catch some fresh air; fear was making her hyperventilate. Despite the whirling snow and ice, she could see lights up ahead. Not many, but enough. With both gloves, she gripped the wheel like a captain determined to go down with the ship and steered for the lights.
A roadhouse was dimly discernible on her left, and the sign above the seawall on Gold Beach. She was driving along the Norton Sound, the wind thumping at the sides of the ambulance like paddles. The new hospital wasn’t too far off. On a clear night, she might have been able to see it by now; only four stories high, it was nonetheless the tallest structure in town. The mariners, who had once used the church steeples as their beacons, now looked for the lighted antennae atop the hospital.
When she finally entered the concentrated network of streets that comprised downtown Nome, she felt like a marathoner running on shaky legs toward the finish line. As if to bring the point home, she saw off to her left the wooden archway that marked the end of the Iditarod race … and then the wooden sign festooned with placards showing the distance to places like Miami and Rio. The streetlamps swayed and bobbed, casting a wild yellow glow on the bingo parlors and bars, but not a soul was out on the windy, snow-choked streets.
At the corner of West Fifth Avenue, she turned too sharply, and the ambulance nearly slid into a hydrant before she could straighten it out again.
Take it easy, she told herself, you’re almost there.
Just ahead she could see the lighted sign that read NORTON SOUND REGIONAL HEALTHCARE: EMERGENCY ENTRANCE, and blowing the horn the whole way, she piloted the car down the ramp, under the covered portico, and into the heated garage.
Several members of the hospital staff came charging out through the sliding glass doors—all duly warned, and garbed in hazmat suits—and while two of them jumped into the back of the old ambulance and started trundling Frank, still on the gurney, into the receiving area, a third yanked open the driver’s side door. Melted snow and slush slopped out, and Nika felt as if she was about to slide out onto the floor, too. A burly male nurse grabbed her, and escorted her inside, a strong arm wrapped around her waist.
“Quarantine,” she said, through her mask. “He needs to be quarantined.”
“They know,” he said, through a plastic face mask of his own. “The Alaska Highway Patrol called ahead.”
She was guided onto the nearest chair, but when she glanced down at her mask, she could see that there was a pink stain on the gauze. “Me, too,” she said, in a muffled voice.
But she wasn’t sure he’d heard her.
When her gloves were taken off to check for frostbite, she saw in the center of her palm, where the needle had pricked her on St. Peter’s island, a cluster of tiny red lines, radiating outwards like the rays of the sun in a child’s drawing.
“Me, too,” she repeated, drawing away from him and doubling over as a fit of coughing overwhelmed her. “Quarantine.”
The nurse instinctively jumped back, and when Nika’s breath finally returned, she gasped, “Stay away,” before sliding down out of the chair, limp as a rag doll, and onto the gleaming linoleum floor.
Chapter 60
“Let me at least take the tiller!” Anastasia had begged Sergei, more than once, but he had refused every time. His teeth were clenched in determination, his eyes were fixed on the distant prospect of St. Peter’s Island, but Ana feared for his life. He had guarded her, cared for her, loved her, for thousands of miles, and now, just as they were within sight of their destination, his skin was turning blue, and his cough had become rough and constant and alarming.