symptomatic crewmembers. And that didn’t count the one who had died in the night.
* * *
—
THE SUBMARINE HAD FELT surprisingly commodious when he first boarded, but the sense of confinement quickly pressed upon him. He was not claustrophobic by nature, but the close quarters, combined with the eerie experience of being deep under water, charged him with apprehension, amplified by the fear that stalked the haunted crew. Henry quickly found a rhythm, working with Murphy in the pharmacy, doing what he could to allay the terror, parceling out the supply of Xanax and Valium to treat the most worrisome panic disorders, but there was no way to lift the pall of anxiety that shrouded the boat. The crew seemed drugged by despair. They all knew the odds. So far there was only a handful of symptomatic patients, but everyone was exposed. Most of those who fell ill would die.
On the second day, Henry was summoned to the captain’s stateroom. Captain Vernon Dixon was improbably large for a submariner, tall and muscular even in middle age. His voice was resonant and musical.
“We don’t normally have actual medical doctors aboard,” the captain was saying. “Sub crews are healthy crews. You can’t ship out if you have any underlying illness. And we try to be careful in port, as well. Not always possible.” While the captain talked, he fed a cage of colorful little birds nestled on the small desk next to the computer, using seed and broccoli florets. “Before we had this damned flu, we had to leave behind a couple knuckleheads who got themselves tattooed in Djibouti and picked up hepatitis. So we were already shorthanded when your predecessor came aboard with the flu. Man, you’re a hungry little sucker,” he said to one of the birds.
While Dixon refilled the water tray in the bird cage, Henry took in some of the photos pasted on the captain’s locker—a young black man and woman in graduation gowns, whom Henry took to be his grown children, but no wife evident; group shots of crews he had served with; and a picture of a young Vernon Dixon in his football uniform for the University of Southern California. “Oh, you’re that Vernon Dixon!” Henry interjected.
Dixon turned from his birds and stared at him evenly, seemingly annoyed at being interrupted, then burst into a deep laugh. “Man, you got a long memory on you,” he said.
“I certainly remember that run in the Rose Bowl.”
Dixon beamed in pleasure. “That was quite a day,” he said. “Of course, we nearly got our ass kicked by Ohio State anyway.”
The birds were exquisite, various and garish in their coloring, with green backs and either red or black heads, blue tail feathers, yellow bellies, and purple chests—as if they had been assembled from parts of other birds that didn’t match. “They’re Gouldian finches,” Dixon explained. “Picked ’em up in the souk in Doha. Brightens the place up, don’t you think?” He grasped one of the birds in his giant hand and tenderly trimmed its nails with a tiny pair of scissors. “This one is Chuckie. He’s the leader of the pack, I reckon.”
“They’re extravagantly beautiful.”
“Endangered, too, they tell me. I guess all birds are these days. I figure I’m doing them a favor. Like Noah’s ark.”
They watched as the chittering finches jumped from one perch to another or keened their beaks on a corn cob.
“Look, man. I got a sick crew. A scared crew,” Dixon said. “My head navigator died. We need a full complement to run this boat, and we’re already at reduced capacity. Our safety is at risk. I know you don’t have much to work with, but is there something—anything—you can do? I can’t afford to lose anyone else.”
“Nor can the crew afford to lose you,” Henry said.
“Every submariner aboard is indispensable,” Dixon said sternly.
“But nobody is at greater risk than you. I’ve seen the ibrutinib in the pharmaceuticals cabinet. I’ve read your charts. How long have you been on chemo?”
The shoulders of this mighty figure slumped a bit. “About a month,” he replied. “They tell me it’s leukemia.”
“Chronic lymphocytic leukemia,” Henry said. “As you must know, it’s slow to grow, but it comes with its own set of problems. Since it’s a disease of the white blood cells, it makes you much more vulnerable to contagion and less able to fight this disease.”
“Yeah, they told me all that. Normally, they wouldn’t let a sick man on a submarine, but it’s not contagious. They didn’t have an officer