resents the atomic bomb. He went around blasting people so he had to be neutralized. “ I guess Reeves is saying the skunk has come back contaminating everything again. Well, Peter, they say the radioactive winds haven’t reached Seattle yet. But I wouldn’t count on it. What about the groundwater? Once that’s contaminated, you can write off the whole region.” “ I know what you mean. Have you decided where to go?” “ I don’t know, but I’ve got relatives down in San Diego. Headin’ there and then south—Central America, South America, who knows? Some country that doesn’t have so many of those dang plants. Had enough radiation for one lifetime. Keep a cool head, Doc—you deserve it!” As Peter got back to the ward, the local TV reporter droned: “ In agricultural news today, milk in Ann Arbor, Michigan has been taken off the markets due to detection of unacceptable levels of radioactive iodine-131. Farmers in Napa Valley, California have discarded crops of summer vegetables containing high levels of cesium-137. People in Cincinnati, Ohio have been advised today not to conceive babies for several weeks due to potential health risks to the unborn.” He wanted Maria and their child to be all right. He felt that Seattle was no longer safe, certainly not from long-term effects. But where would they go? No one could predict where the long-term effects would be the worst. D M y the fifth day he began to lose sense of how many days had passed. Each day was an eternity involving decisions about people’s lives. He had never confronted so many hopeless cases at once. When he wrote in the patients’ charts, he made treatment recommendations and kept asking for transfers for patients. Other doctors had managed to get home to rest. Most of them had put in requests for transfer as he had, but his chances of being transferred should be better. He had worked with Dr. Cheng who was in charge of the Marrow Transplant Team in Seattle. But so far only a dozen patients had been transferred and none of the doctors. He had never doubted his commitment to the medical profession. But he was no martyr. He decided to try and make it home. He hadn’t taken a break and others told him he should. He left his phone number at the ward desk and told the nurse he was going to try and get some sleep. This time there was no traffic. Papers and garbage flew around the curbs in circles. The door of a phone booth flapped loosely in the wind. He had often noticed the heavy winds around Hanford. The Yakimas had said that Hanford was the home of battle between the north wind and the south wind. Now there were almost no signs of dust on the ground. But the air was radioactive—how radioactive he didn’t know. He began to jog past the closed stores, the streetlights, telephone poles, neon signs—all meaningless now. A police car drove in the other direction a block away. He felt himself begin to hit his stride, building up his pulse, sending the oxygen to his blood, through his body, filling all his blood vessels, his brain, flushing his face, warming his head. He had delivered many babies when he was in family practice—always checking for the heartbeat through the mother’s stomach and feeling the pulsebeat mounting. Some he delivered in people’s homes. The labors were all different. But the force in the infants was the same. When the babies came through, he felt the determination, the first breaths out in the world, the agelessness of a newborn. He had given that all up for research, for the evenness of 9-to-5, the regular nights of sleep. And look where it had taken him—studying the worst kind of industrial illnesses he could imagine, and doing it so close to the situation that he increased his own chances of cancer tremendously. What was he trying to do—commit suicide? Here he was on the other side of the mountains from Maria when he could be sharing the pregnancy—and helping her protect the baby as much as possible. He was looking forward to delivering their child. Every time he talked with Maria on the phone, he realized she was the one with the courage—waiting for him instead of escaping to someplace possibly safer. Who was he kidding? The more he was outside, the more he realized how changeable the winds were. When he got to his apartment building, it appeared to be totally empty. The shades of the manager’s apartment were pulled. Peter’s refrigerator was filled with leftovers that had gone stale. He had eaten so little at the hospital that his whole body felt weak and his stomach felt queasy. He heated up some canned soup and drank some tonic water. As he relaxed on the couch in front of the TV there was more news. “A Portland grain distributor has rejected all grains from Washington, Oregon, Northern California, Idaho, and Montana. The Soviets have cancelled all American grain orders and future purchases due to high radiation concentrations in U.S. grain. President Reagan has authorized a task force to study the impact of the Hanford incident on U.S. grains nationwide. “ In other news, farmers in New England are harvesting vegetable crops early in anticipation of radioactive dust clouds moving farther east, and farmers in parts of West Germany and Scandinavia are considering measures to harvest food ea r ly -to avoid to ta l econom ic disaster.” The next thing he heard was the telephone. Groggily, he picked it up, checking his watch to find he had slept almost four hours. “ Hello?” “ Dr. Stewart, this is Ruth Collins in Internal Medicine. Dr. Cheng from the Marrow Transplant Team in Seattle is coordinating our first group of doctors to be transferred and I’m happy to tell you that you’re one of them. We’ ll be sending out three doctors tonight.” “And how many patients?” “We’ll be starting with twelve.” “A drop in the bucket, don’t you think, Dr. Collins?” “ Well, we’ re working on it, Doctor. Would you like to ride in a hospital van?” “At least as far as my car. If I could get a ride there and maybe some gas, I should be all right.” “ I’ ll do my best, Doctor. And thank you for all of your help. You’ve been tremendous. We’ ll have the van at your building by 6:00 tonight.” He packed a few things along with Maria’s painting. As he waited outside the building, he noticed the shade in the manager’s apartment was pulled up. Old Mrs. Jeffries, the manager, sat in front of the television with an embroidery hoop in her hand. A stay-put, basically locked in her apartment. How long could she last? He rapped loudly on her door. “ Mrs. Jeffries?” She opened the door a couple of inches. “Come in, quickly.” “ I’m driving to Seattle, Don’t you want to come with me? You’re just going to die here.” “Well I’ve always known that son,” she said with her wrinkled smile. Her face looked more serene than he had remembered it. “ I’m staying. But you go ahead now.” “ Mrs. Jeffries, hold on a second.” He went upsta irs and co llec ted all his canned goods, canisters of beans and rice, and the frozen dinners, put them in bags and took them down to her. “ I wish I had more bottled water.” “ Don’t worry, I’ ll be all right.” Then she winked. “ I’ve got the whole building if I need it.” L a t e r on that night as he approached White Pass, he saw Mt. Rainier completely covered with snow, cloaked with a mist as if it were floating above the fog, above the earth. He pulled over to a viewpoint and got out of the car. Here he could study the mountain for paths to the summit, special rows of timber that might outline a skier’s route, anything that might give him a second to forget what day this was, what year, what had happened, and that there was no turning back. As he passed the mountain and the highway began to slope downhill, he entered into an envelope of mist and moist greenness, surrounded on each side by tall cool stands of pine, fir, and cedar, such a contrast to the desert that he felt a sudden illusion of protection. All he knew was that he was cprning back in what felt like one piece. He opened the right front window to let in a bit of cross-ventilation. As he drove west, there was an odd odor on the highway—the lingering scent of a skunk shooting its spray at some unsuspecting bystander. Writer Melissa Laird lives in Seattle. Her award-winning story “Radiation on the Rocks,” which appeared in theWinter, 1984 CSQ, examined the proposed nuclear waste repository at Hanford. She is currently working on a novel about Hanford called North Wind, South Wind. Artist Claudia Cave lives in Salem, Oregon. 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