#Coronavirus

The Spanish Flu

Since my last novel spans the era including the year 1919, I would have been remiss not to include a reference to the Spanish flu epidemic.  As if my Slogans protagonists hadn't suffered enough with World War One, the Bolshevik Revolution, and the Russian Civil War, by Chapter Sixteen, I had thrust them into the midst of a global sickness.  The chapter started with a brief history of epidemic and a child's view of its effect.

* * *

    Local newspapers called it the Spanish Flu but it was as American as apple pie. The disease first appeared in a military camp in Kansas in the spring of 1918 and followed the soldiers on their voyage to Europe. It gained strength on the crowded troopships and in the bivouacs and trenches of France. It hopped trains and rode horse carts into the remotest towns and hamlets and by summer the virus had spread around the world. The strain made its second sweep across the United States in August and was still contagious and debilitating, but growing weaker. By fall the flu was considered no more than a nuisance and just as English children played ring-around-the-rosy to commemorate the passing of Black Death, young American girls skipped rope to the rhythm of:

“Mother had a little bird.

Enza was its name.

She opened up the window

And in flew Enza.”

 * * *

Makeshift Hospitals

The Flue Hits Unkurda

But unfortunately the virus was not gone.  Within a few months a new and more lethal strain appeared.  I scoured newspapers from that period and found several contemporary articles describing the sickness's resurgence

* * *

    On the twenty-third of September, the Joliet Herald Evening News' banner headline dared to state, “Influenza Has Been Checked.” Less than two weeks later another article confessed, “Doctors Find 2000 Cases of Spanish Flu.” The disease had resurfaced, mutated and was deadlier. Its march would continue unabated until the next year. In its wake it would leave nearly one hundred million dead.

* * *

Transporting Flu Patients

Akulina Boriskova is Unkurda's seer and healer.  Anticipating the yearly winter sickness, she gathers a supply of local plants which she employs as remedies.  Chief among them is an orange flower called zharok.  I'm not really sure if such a plant exists or it could cure flu, but one of the members of my writers' group was a pharmacist and said there was a similar plant with those qualities, but its medicinal qualities were doubtful.  I went with it anyway.  In the following scene, Akulina having caught the virus, attempts to cure herself. 

* * *

    Please, don't let me die.

    Akulina staggered to the samovar and steadied herself against the table. She took a deep breath, waited for the swaying to halt and filled her cup and scooped in the powdered zharok. She was about to drink the bright orange mix when another wave of nausea swept over her. Again she had to grasp the table. Once more after the feeling subsided, she fumbled with the honey pot and added a small portion to the drink and stirred.

    Hold it down, she commanded herself. Hold it and sweat out the poison.

    Akulina lifted the potion to her mouth and sipped. The scalding liquid flowed past her lips and throat and spread through her body.

* * *

Armed with the healing power of zharok, Akulina's body attacks the virus.  I likened her resistance to that of an army defending its homeland.

* * *

The weakness she felt was just one part of her body's response. The feeling drove her to lie down and conserve her energy. Her system also forced her temperature to rise to make her a less desirable host. Every response was designed to blunt the sickness' attack, even if it meant killing her. Akulina's immune system had deciphered the invader's latest code and created special cells to search out and destroy each. Millions of these cells now flooded her blood stream and sought out its foe in every organ and tissue. There were no flags or banners leading this campaign; no masses shouting slogans while they raced into combat, just a single-minded force bent on a sole objective―save Akulina.

* * *

  Nurses Ready for Action

 

Akulina's Cure

Of course Akulina survives, but she learns many did not.

* * *

    “I had to, Papa. I had to help.”

    “And you did. Thanks to you there were fewer deaths.”

    “How many?”

    “Sixteen. But most were because of Simon Petr. He told the Staroverok the sickness was a sign of the end times and forbade his people to take the zharok. He said to do so would be against God's will.”

    “Ultia Yauhoraka?”

    “She's gone.”

   Akulina gasped. “Dead?”

   Boris shook his head. “No, not dead. She moved out. Went to watch over Simon Petr.”

  “Will she be back?”

  “Who's to say? Maybe rain, maybe snow.”

* *  *

Future Virus

The events portrayed in my novel happened just over one hundred years ago.  I wonder if a century from now some would-be historical fiction writer will weave today's coronavirus into their novel.

Preparing for the Coronavirus 2020

 

 

 Assuming, of course, there still are people around a hundred years from now.  So wash your hands and hope for the best.