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fredbassettTitle : Death and the Maiden, Part 2
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 15
Characters : Claudia/Nick, Stephen/Ryan, Lester, OCs
Disclaimer : Not mine (except the OCs), no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Word Count : 21,221, divided into in 8 parts.
Summary : Dinosaurs are not the only things to come through the anomalies.
A/N : This series is early in my main ‘verse, not long after the events of The Devil’s Crowll. It arose nearly three years ago out of a chat with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
steamshovelmama. I owe an absolutely huge debt of gratitude to aelfgyfu_mead as her assistance with Middle English made this story possible. I am also grateful to talliw for information on clothing and shoes. And as ever, thanks are due to lukadreaming for her beta help.
The sound of a helicopter setting down in the grounds of the Mitchells’ hotel, the team’s base of operations in the Forest of Dean, was loud enough to make itself heard even over the noise of the water in the shower cubicle. It almost certainly heralded the arrival of Lester and more soldiers to reinforce those already combing the Forest of Dean for yet another anomaly.
An anomaly that appeared to lead to a much more recent period of time, one that had already disgorged four people from the past into the present.
Claudia suppressed a shudder. She’d come close to being raped today. If it hadn’t have been for the intervention of one of Captain Ryan’s men, she had no illusions at all about what would have happened next. Her attacker’s intentions had been quite clear. She’d been trying not to think about it, but her imagination was not being very cooperative, and simply refused to allow itself to be shut down. A shower, hot enough to sting, had helped slightly, and she had correctly interpreted her feeling of extreme lethargy as being the product of adrenaline fatigue. She’d hung around with soldiers long enough to recognise the signs.
She shut off the flow of hot water, and briskly towelled herself dry. A hair dryer dealt with the worst of the moisture, then a change of clothes, followed by the application of a small amount of make-up, made her feel somewhat more human. She was now as ready as she ever would be to face the world.
A knock on the door of her room made her jump. Cursing her own reactions, she asked, “Who is it?”
“Mary.”
Claudia let out a pent-up breath and opened the door.
Mary Mitchell, one of the owners of the hotel, stood in the corridor holding a mug of steaming tea. “How are you feeling?” she asked, coming straight to the point in her usual way.
The other woman was no stranger to the kind of shocks that came with residence in the anomaly-prone Forest and Claudia knew her well enough to be comfortable letting her guard down with Mary.
“Jumpy,” she admitted, wrapping her hands around the mug and stepping back to allow Mary into the room.
“Hardly surprising, after what happened,” Mary said, quietly. “Nick’s got a bump on his head the size of an egg, but at least his arm is only bruised, not broken. Ditzy’s refusing to let him go careering around the woods with the search parties and Nick’s starting to sound even more Scottish than usual.”
Claudia smiled. “He won’t like being told what to do. How’s Blade?”
“Still at the hospital, along with the man with the knife wound and the one that Finn knocked out cold, but Ditzy says Blade will be fine. So will the other two, but I imagine you’re not too concerned about their health. We’ve got them held here in one of the barns.” She laid her hand lightly on Claudia’s arm. “Do you want Ditzy to take a look at you?”
“The man didn’t get that far, Mary. I’m fine, honestly, just a bit shaken up. Would you tell James I’ll be down in five minutes?”
Mary nodded, failing to disguise the concern in her dark eyes, but said nothing more.
True to her word, Claudia presented herself downstairs in exactly five minutes. She wasn’t surprised to find Lester already embroiled in what looked like a heated argument with Nick.
“Cutter, for the tenth time, no!” Lester was saying with obvious exasperation as she entered the small living room the team used as an office. “There’s nothing you can do out there that Ryan’s men and Stephen can’t manage perfectly well without you. I suppose it was too much to hope for that a bang on the head might have knocked some sense into you.”
Nick opened his mouth to continue the argument then closed it abruptly when he saw Claudia in the doorway. His expression softened and he held a hand out towards her, tentatively. “Claudia.”
She smiled and gave the proffered hand a quick squeeze. “I’m fine, Nick. Thanks for the loan of your shirt.”
Lester heaved a theatrical sigh. “Talk some sense into the idiot, will you?”
“What makes you think he’ll listen to me?” she said. “I take it there’s no sign of another anomaly at the moment?”
Nick shook his head. “But it has to be there somewhere. They certainly didn’t come from the Permian.”
“It may already have closed,” Claudia commented. “They could have been living rough in the forest for weeks, Nick. It’s a big place.”
Lester winced. “So we could have even more refugees from the past on our hands? Bloody marvellous. Are you absolutely sure they aren’t Welsh?”
Claudia’s glare left her boss looking wholly unrepentant.
“I’ve just had some news from the hospital, sir,” said a voice from the doorway. “We’ve got a bigger problem than refugees from the past on our hands.”
Three heads swivelled at once to greet the arrival of the team’s medic, Second Lieutenant Dave ‘Ditzy’ Owen. The sharp smell of alcohol gel entered the room with him.
Lester raised his eyebrows questioningly. “Go on.”
“There’s a strong possibility that the men we sent to the hospital are infected with the plague.”
Claudia took a deep, shaky breath, numerous questions warring for precedence in her mind.
Before any of them had an opportunity to fill the sudden silence that had greeted the medic’s words, Ditzy held his hand up placatingly. “It’s not quite as bad as it sounds. Modern antibiotics are an effective treatment, but it’s essential we find out whether these men have had contact with anyone else. And we’d also better hope that no rats came through with them.”
“What about the men we have in custody here?” Lester asked, his expression guarded but somewhat more strained than usual.
Ditzy shrugged. “I haven’t examined them yet, but there’s a good chance they’ll be infected as well. I was presuming the professor would want us to keep contact with them to a minimum, but they’re not going to be able to stay here, sir. We need to get all of them into an isolation unit.”
Nick nodded absently. Watching him floundering for once, as he clearly struggled to take in the implications of the soldier’s words, actually helped to shake Claudia out of her own shock.
“Well, we all knew this might happen some day,” she said, briskly. “We have disease containment procedures that can be brought into force. Obviously our first priority is to return the men to their own time, but we also have to be aware of the possibility that other people may have had contact with them, as well. Lieutenant Owen, I shall need you to brief me on the symptoms of the disease. After that we need to ensure all local GPs and hospitals are on the lookout for any other suspected cases.”
“Without mentioning the words ‘black’ and ‘death’ in the same sentence, I hope?” said Lester, looking pained.
“I think you can rely on me to be a little more tactful than that, James,” Claudia said with a glacial smile.
“And how we are going to explain this one away?”
“I shall play the illegal immigrant card. That provides the perfect excuse for our involvement.”
“Plague is a notifiable disease, ma’am,” Ditzy said. “Dr Fielding at the hospital will already have had to follow the procedures and notify the Consultant in Communicable Disease Control. Fielding’s a good guy, but even he can’t cover this one up.”
“Then the sooner I talk to him, the better,” Claudia said, briskly.
“What about those who have had contact with the men, Owen? Are they at risk?” Irritation and concern were warring for precedence in Lester’s eyes, and it appeared that concern was currently taking the lead.
“Unfortunately one of the buggers we’re got locked up here has been coughing fit to bust, so we can’t rule out the possibility of airborne infection. There’s also the matter of fleas.”
“Today just gets better and better,” Lester commented. “This is the 21st century, Owen. Isn’t there a vaccine, or something? The press will have a bloody field day if they get wind of this one.”
Ditzy shook his head. “There’s no vaccine, sir, but we can give preventive antibiotic treatment.”
“We can’t go around stuffing people from the past full of modern antibiotics!” exclaimed Nick.
“We send animals back stuffed full of modern tranquillisers, Professor,” Ditzy countered uncompromisingly.
Nick opened his mouth to protest, but Claudia jumped in before the argument could escalate. “They’re human beings, Nick,” she said firmly. “We have to treat them appropriately. I’m going to the hospital to talk to Dr Fielding. Lieutenant, will you come with me?”
“What about other two men?” Lester demanded.
“They’re in the secure animal holding pens in Jim’s barn, sir,” said Ditzy. “I’ve placed guards, with orders to keep their distance. The men have been given food and drink. It’s the best we can do for now.”
The idea of human beings locked up in pens designed to hold animals stranded out of their own time gave Claudia some qualms, in spite of her feelings towards her attackers, but it was very definitely a case of needs must. If they were lucky, Stephen and Ryan would locate the relevant anomaly quickly and the men could be returned to their own time. If not – well, that would pose a set of problems that Claudia really didn’t want to consider right now.
The drive to Dilke Memorial Hospital was accomplished mainly in silence. As Ditzy drove, Claudia did her best to suppress her own fears. She’d become no stranger to this hospital in the time the team had spent in the Forest of Dean. The facility was old, and nearing the end of its useful life, but the staff were cheerful, competent and, above all, discreet. Like so many of the inhabitants of areas that appeared to have beset by anomalies for quite some considerable period, they had no wish to bring curious thrill-seekers and the world’s media down around their ears and they had become very good at not questioning too deeply what went on around them. They accepted the presence of the soldiers and the scientists with an equanimity that never failed to impress Claudia.
Dr Simon Fielding was no exception when it came to calm acceptance of a variety of different problems, but it was obvious from the look in his troubled blue eyes that plague wasn’t exactly an every day occurrence, even in the Forest of Dean.
“Niall’s fine,” the young doctor began, answering Ditzy’s unspoken question. “I had to cut both points out. The bastard things were barbed. He needs to keep the weight off that leg until the stitches are out, but there’s no permanent damage, just another couple of scars to add to his collection. You can take him back with you to the hotel.”
Ditzy nodded his thanks and Claudia smiled with relief. “What about the other men?” she asked coming straight to the point. “Do you have a confirmed diagnosis?”
Dr Fielding shook his head. “I’ve sent some samples off to the lab. We probably won’t have the results back until tomorrow.”
“And until then?”
“Until then we proceed on the basis that they have plague. I have a responsibility to notify the Health Protection Unit on the basis of clinical suspicion, Claudia, not confirmation of diagnosis. I’m sorry, but that’s not a procedure I can ignore, not even for the Home Office.”
“Do you really think they have the plague?” she asked, conscious of the fact that she was clutching at straws.
Fielding nodded. “One of them has a raised temperature, a number of suppurating ulcers on his body, diarrhoea and, which is something of a clincher, enlarged lymph nodes in his armpit and groin. The symptoms are less pronounced in the other, but I still think he has the disease.”
“The one who attached me wasn’t acting very sick,” she riposted, unable to stop herself grimacing at the memories of the man pawing at her body.
“He’s still in the early stages of the disease,” said the doctor. “It can take two to three days from this point, without treatment, to become fatal. I worked in Kenya for a while. There was a plague outbreak there so it isn’t the first time I’ve seen these symptoms.” Fielding held Claudia’s gaze for a long moment, then asked, his voice studiously neutral. “I need to know where they’ve come from, Claudia. Questions are going to be asked.”
“They’re illegal immigrants, Simon. We’ve been on the track of a gang bringing people into the country for a while. These two and a group of other men got away before we raided the place where they were being held. We’ve rounded up two more of them, but we believe more may be loose in the Forest. We have men combing the area now.”
Fielding nodded slowly, knowing he was being fed a lie, but not challenging her. “So where have these men been brought in from?”
“Where do you think is most likely?” she asked, her eyes pleading ‘help me out here’.
Simon Fielding sighed. “Algeria. They had an outbreak there a couple of years ago.”
Claudia raised her eyebrows. “Do they look or sound Algerian?”
“No, but I don’t plan to let anybody get that well acquainted with them. We’ll need to have the other two in here as well; you do know that, don’t you?”
Claudia hesitated and glanced at Ditzy for help.
“We need to keep them under guard, Simon, and we have to be ready to move them out quickly,” said the medic.
Fielding looked uneasy. “I should ship them all over to Cheltenham General. St Luke’s has got full isolation facilities, we haven’t. I can’t keep four patients in isolation here, Claudia. The Health Protection guys will have my nuts if I try.”
“Buy time for me, Simon,” she pleaded. “Don’t mention the other two, please. Treat them over at the hotel. You can keep two men here with you until you get a confirmation of the diagnosis, can’t you? Forget I mentioned the others.”
“Claudia, you’re out of your mind. You can’t keep suspected plague cases at Jim Mitchell’s hotel!”
“And I can’t let you ship them over to Cheltenham. I need them ready to move at a moment’s notice.”
“So you haven’t found it yet?” Fielding said heavily. “What if you don’t?”
“I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it,” Claudia said, sincerely hoping she wouldn’t have to. “Can I rely on your discretion?”
The doctor sighed and gave a helpless shrug. “I was born not two miles from here and brought up in the Forest. You know bloody well you can. But it’s getting worse around here and we all know it. You can’t keep the lid on this forever, Claudia. You know that as well I do.”
“We’ll just have to do our best,” she said, as brightly as she could manage. “Thanks, Simon.”
“I’ll add it to your slate,” said the dark-haired young doctor. “Just make sure you’ve got some convincing answers if we need them.”
Claudia nodded reassuringly. Convincing answers she could manage.
Or, at least, she hoped she could.
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 15
Characters : Claudia/Nick, Stephen/Ryan, Lester, OCs
Disclaimer : Not mine (except the OCs), no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Word Count : 21,221, divided into in 8 parts.
Summary : Dinosaurs are not the only things to come through the anomalies.
A/N : This series is early in my main ‘verse, not long after the events of The Devil’s Crowll. It arose nearly three years ago out of a chat with
steamshovelmama. I owe an absolutely huge debt of gratitude to aelfgyfu_mead as her assistance with Middle English made this story possible. I am also grateful to talliw for information on clothing and shoes. And as ever, thanks are due to lukadreaming for her beta help. The sound of a helicopter setting down in the grounds of the Mitchells’ hotel, the team’s base of operations in the Forest of Dean, was loud enough to make itself heard even over the noise of the water in the shower cubicle. It almost certainly heralded the arrival of Lester and more soldiers to reinforce those already combing the Forest of Dean for yet another anomaly.
An anomaly that appeared to lead to a much more recent period of time, one that had already disgorged four people from the past into the present.
Claudia suppressed a shudder. She’d come close to being raped today. If it hadn’t have been for the intervention of one of Captain Ryan’s men, she had no illusions at all about what would have happened next. Her attacker’s intentions had been quite clear. She’d been trying not to think about it, but her imagination was not being very cooperative, and simply refused to allow itself to be shut down. A shower, hot enough to sting, had helped slightly, and she had correctly interpreted her feeling of extreme lethargy as being the product of adrenaline fatigue. She’d hung around with soldiers long enough to recognise the signs.
She shut off the flow of hot water, and briskly towelled herself dry. A hair dryer dealt with the worst of the moisture, then a change of clothes, followed by the application of a small amount of make-up, made her feel somewhat more human. She was now as ready as she ever would be to face the world.
A knock on the door of her room made her jump. Cursing her own reactions, she asked, “Who is it?”
“Mary.”
Claudia let out a pent-up breath and opened the door.
Mary Mitchell, one of the owners of the hotel, stood in the corridor holding a mug of steaming tea. “How are you feeling?” she asked, coming straight to the point in her usual way.
The other woman was no stranger to the kind of shocks that came with residence in the anomaly-prone Forest and Claudia knew her well enough to be comfortable letting her guard down with Mary.
“Jumpy,” she admitted, wrapping her hands around the mug and stepping back to allow Mary into the room.
“Hardly surprising, after what happened,” Mary said, quietly. “Nick’s got a bump on his head the size of an egg, but at least his arm is only bruised, not broken. Ditzy’s refusing to let him go careering around the woods with the search parties and Nick’s starting to sound even more Scottish than usual.”
Claudia smiled. “He won’t like being told what to do. How’s Blade?”
“Still at the hospital, along with the man with the knife wound and the one that Finn knocked out cold, but Ditzy says Blade will be fine. So will the other two, but I imagine you’re not too concerned about their health. We’ve got them held here in one of the barns.” She laid her hand lightly on Claudia’s arm. “Do you want Ditzy to take a look at you?”
“The man didn’t get that far, Mary. I’m fine, honestly, just a bit shaken up. Would you tell James I’ll be down in five minutes?”
Mary nodded, failing to disguise the concern in her dark eyes, but said nothing more.
True to her word, Claudia presented herself downstairs in exactly five minutes. She wasn’t surprised to find Lester already embroiled in what looked like a heated argument with Nick.
“Cutter, for the tenth time, no!” Lester was saying with obvious exasperation as she entered the small living room the team used as an office. “There’s nothing you can do out there that Ryan’s men and Stephen can’t manage perfectly well without you. I suppose it was too much to hope for that a bang on the head might have knocked some sense into you.”
Nick opened his mouth to continue the argument then closed it abruptly when he saw Claudia in the doorway. His expression softened and he held a hand out towards her, tentatively. “Claudia.”
She smiled and gave the proffered hand a quick squeeze. “I’m fine, Nick. Thanks for the loan of your shirt.”
Lester heaved a theatrical sigh. “Talk some sense into the idiot, will you?”
“What makes you think he’ll listen to me?” she said. “I take it there’s no sign of another anomaly at the moment?”
Nick shook his head. “But it has to be there somewhere. They certainly didn’t come from the Permian.”
“It may already have closed,” Claudia commented. “They could have been living rough in the forest for weeks, Nick. It’s a big place.”
Lester winced. “So we could have even more refugees from the past on our hands? Bloody marvellous. Are you absolutely sure they aren’t Welsh?”
Claudia’s glare left her boss looking wholly unrepentant.
“I’ve just had some news from the hospital, sir,” said a voice from the doorway. “We’ve got a bigger problem than refugees from the past on our hands.”
Three heads swivelled at once to greet the arrival of the team’s medic, Second Lieutenant Dave ‘Ditzy’ Owen. The sharp smell of alcohol gel entered the room with him.
Lester raised his eyebrows questioningly. “Go on.”
“There’s a strong possibility that the men we sent to the hospital are infected with the plague.”
Claudia took a deep, shaky breath, numerous questions warring for precedence in her mind.
Before any of them had an opportunity to fill the sudden silence that had greeted the medic’s words, Ditzy held his hand up placatingly. “It’s not quite as bad as it sounds. Modern antibiotics are an effective treatment, but it’s essential we find out whether these men have had contact with anyone else. And we’d also better hope that no rats came through with them.”
“What about the men we have in custody here?” Lester asked, his expression guarded but somewhat more strained than usual.
Ditzy shrugged. “I haven’t examined them yet, but there’s a good chance they’ll be infected as well. I was presuming the professor would want us to keep contact with them to a minimum, but they’re not going to be able to stay here, sir. We need to get all of them into an isolation unit.”
Nick nodded absently. Watching him floundering for once, as he clearly struggled to take in the implications of the soldier’s words, actually helped to shake Claudia out of her own shock.
“Well, we all knew this might happen some day,” she said, briskly. “We have disease containment procedures that can be brought into force. Obviously our first priority is to return the men to their own time, but we also have to be aware of the possibility that other people may have had contact with them, as well. Lieutenant Owen, I shall need you to brief me on the symptoms of the disease. After that we need to ensure all local GPs and hospitals are on the lookout for any other suspected cases.”
“Without mentioning the words ‘black’ and ‘death’ in the same sentence, I hope?” said Lester, looking pained.
“I think you can rely on me to be a little more tactful than that, James,” Claudia said with a glacial smile.
“And how we are going to explain this one away?”
“I shall play the illegal immigrant card. That provides the perfect excuse for our involvement.”
“Plague is a notifiable disease, ma’am,” Ditzy said. “Dr Fielding at the hospital will already have had to follow the procedures and notify the Consultant in Communicable Disease Control. Fielding’s a good guy, but even he can’t cover this one up.”
“Then the sooner I talk to him, the better,” Claudia said, briskly.
“What about those who have had contact with the men, Owen? Are they at risk?” Irritation and concern were warring for precedence in Lester’s eyes, and it appeared that concern was currently taking the lead.
“Unfortunately one of the buggers we’re got locked up here has been coughing fit to bust, so we can’t rule out the possibility of airborne infection. There’s also the matter of fleas.”
“Today just gets better and better,” Lester commented. “This is the 21st century, Owen. Isn’t there a vaccine, or something? The press will have a bloody field day if they get wind of this one.”
Ditzy shook his head. “There’s no vaccine, sir, but we can give preventive antibiotic treatment.”
“We can’t go around stuffing people from the past full of modern antibiotics!” exclaimed Nick.
“We send animals back stuffed full of modern tranquillisers, Professor,” Ditzy countered uncompromisingly.
Nick opened his mouth to protest, but Claudia jumped in before the argument could escalate. “They’re human beings, Nick,” she said firmly. “We have to treat them appropriately. I’m going to the hospital to talk to Dr Fielding. Lieutenant, will you come with me?”
“What about other two men?” Lester demanded.
“They’re in the secure animal holding pens in Jim’s barn, sir,” said Ditzy. “I’ve placed guards, with orders to keep their distance. The men have been given food and drink. It’s the best we can do for now.”
The idea of human beings locked up in pens designed to hold animals stranded out of their own time gave Claudia some qualms, in spite of her feelings towards her attackers, but it was very definitely a case of needs must. If they were lucky, Stephen and Ryan would locate the relevant anomaly quickly and the men could be returned to their own time. If not – well, that would pose a set of problems that Claudia really didn’t want to consider right now.
The drive to Dilke Memorial Hospital was accomplished mainly in silence. As Ditzy drove, Claudia did her best to suppress her own fears. She’d become no stranger to this hospital in the time the team had spent in the Forest of Dean. The facility was old, and nearing the end of its useful life, but the staff were cheerful, competent and, above all, discreet. Like so many of the inhabitants of areas that appeared to have beset by anomalies for quite some considerable period, they had no wish to bring curious thrill-seekers and the world’s media down around their ears and they had become very good at not questioning too deeply what went on around them. They accepted the presence of the soldiers and the scientists with an equanimity that never failed to impress Claudia.
Dr Simon Fielding was no exception when it came to calm acceptance of a variety of different problems, but it was obvious from the look in his troubled blue eyes that plague wasn’t exactly an every day occurrence, even in the Forest of Dean.
“Niall’s fine,” the young doctor began, answering Ditzy’s unspoken question. “I had to cut both points out. The bastard things were barbed. He needs to keep the weight off that leg until the stitches are out, but there’s no permanent damage, just another couple of scars to add to his collection. You can take him back with you to the hotel.”
Ditzy nodded his thanks and Claudia smiled with relief. “What about the other men?” she asked coming straight to the point. “Do you have a confirmed diagnosis?”
Dr Fielding shook his head. “I’ve sent some samples off to the lab. We probably won’t have the results back until tomorrow.”
“And until then?”
“Until then we proceed on the basis that they have plague. I have a responsibility to notify the Health Protection Unit on the basis of clinical suspicion, Claudia, not confirmation of diagnosis. I’m sorry, but that’s not a procedure I can ignore, not even for the Home Office.”
“Do you really think they have the plague?” she asked, conscious of the fact that she was clutching at straws.
Fielding nodded. “One of them has a raised temperature, a number of suppurating ulcers on his body, diarrhoea and, which is something of a clincher, enlarged lymph nodes in his armpit and groin. The symptoms are less pronounced in the other, but I still think he has the disease.”
“The one who attached me wasn’t acting very sick,” she riposted, unable to stop herself grimacing at the memories of the man pawing at her body.
“He’s still in the early stages of the disease,” said the doctor. “It can take two to three days from this point, without treatment, to become fatal. I worked in Kenya for a while. There was a plague outbreak there so it isn’t the first time I’ve seen these symptoms.” Fielding held Claudia’s gaze for a long moment, then asked, his voice studiously neutral. “I need to know where they’ve come from, Claudia. Questions are going to be asked.”
“They’re illegal immigrants, Simon. We’ve been on the track of a gang bringing people into the country for a while. These two and a group of other men got away before we raided the place where they were being held. We’ve rounded up two more of them, but we believe more may be loose in the Forest. We have men combing the area now.”
Fielding nodded slowly, knowing he was being fed a lie, but not challenging her. “So where have these men been brought in from?”
“Where do you think is most likely?” she asked, her eyes pleading ‘help me out here’.
Simon Fielding sighed. “Algeria. They had an outbreak there a couple of years ago.”
Claudia raised her eyebrows. “Do they look or sound Algerian?”
“No, but I don’t plan to let anybody get that well acquainted with them. We’ll need to have the other two in here as well; you do know that, don’t you?”
Claudia hesitated and glanced at Ditzy for help.
“We need to keep them under guard, Simon, and we have to be ready to move them out quickly,” said the medic.
Fielding looked uneasy. “I should ship them all over to Cheltenham General. St Luke’s has got full isolation facilities, we haven’t. I can’t keep four patients in isolation here, Claudia. The Health Protection guys will have my nuts if I try.”
“Buy time for me, Simon,” she pleaded. “Don’t mention the other two, please. Treat them over at the hotel. You can keep two men here with you until you get a confirmation of the diagnosis, can’t you? Forget I mentioned the others.”
“Claudia, you’re out of your mind. You can’t keep suspected plague cases at Jim Mitchell’s hotel!”
“And I can’t let you ship them over to Cheltenham. I need them ready to move at a moment’s notice.”
“So you haven’t found it yet?” Fielding said heavily. “What if you don’t?”
“I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it,” Claudia said, sincerely hoping she wouldn’t have to. “Can I rely on your discretion?”
The doctor sighed and gave a helpless shrug. “I was born not two miles from here and brought up in the Forest. You know bloody well you can. But it’s getting worse around here and we all know it. You can’t keep the lid on this forever, Claudia. You know that as well I do.”
“We’ll just have to do our best,” she said, as brightly as she could manage. “Thanks, Simon.”
“I’ll add it to your slate,” said the dark-haired young doctor. “Just make sure you’ve got some convincing answers if we need them.”
Claudia nodded reassuringly. Convincing answers she could manage.
Or, at least, she hoped she could.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-09-08 02:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-08 09:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-08 03:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-08 09:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-08 03:52 pm (UTC)Yay for tough-as-nails Claudia. :)
no subject
Date: 2011-09-08 09:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-08 05:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-08 09:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-08 05:08 pm (UTC)Fielding is splendid. And I love in-control Claudia in this.
And LOL at Lester's Welsh comment *g*.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-08 09:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-08 06:24 pm (UTC)Poor Claudia is jolly shaken up. *hugs her* And she's still kickass and awesome.
Are you absolutely sure they aren’t Welsh?
I died laughing :D
no subject
Date: 2011-09-08 09:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-08 06:35 pm (UTC)And I love the idea of plague coming through, I always wanted them to do something like that in the show. I'm surprised they didn't take more precautions with Emily when they took her into hospital as for all they knew she could have been infected with something.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-08 09:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-08 07:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-08 09:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-08 09:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-08 09:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-09 07:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-09 02:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-09 08:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-09 02:58 pm (UTC)And poor Feilding - I'd say his day/week/month is looking on the sketchy side too! Although he should be glad he only had to deal with Claudia, not Lester, lol.
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Date: 2011-09-09 03:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-09 02:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-09 03:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-09 03:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-09 03:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-10 01:25 am (UTC)I meant to say after Part 1 that the title sounded ominous *G*
Great and scary scenario - what a thing to try to keep a lid on, in many ways...
Love Ditzy's retort to Nick about the modern tranqs, hee
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Date: 2011-09-10 09:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-10 07:18 am (UTC)Good point, doc. Although Cutter is right too. Treating this people with antibiotics and then send them back might cause an immunity against modern antibiotics in their descendants.
I like the idea that people in the area know about the secret of the Forest of Dean and keep quiet about it.
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Date: 2011-09-10 09:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-10 12:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-10 12:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-11 05:18 pm (UTC)I like this Dr Fielding.
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Date: 2011-09-11 06:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-12 04:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-12 05:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-16 06:52 am (UTC)Yey for Claudia being efficient and organised, even if she is still slightly freaked out.
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Date: 2011-09-16 09:46 am (UTC)