Chapter 203
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Over the month of November Eve did much dirty work for St Patrick's hospital. Seeing people die, taking them to the crematorium. That place left a stench in Eve's nose that she would never get out. Eve sometimes went to the smoking room, just to get the other stench off of herself. The work was long, no days off. She had some downtime, typically she either watched television or prayed at the hospital shift. Even then Eve, like the others, was on-call all the time. Oe time, Eve had to help build news beds. There were so many new patients they had to build bunk beds on top of each other. Learning this helped give Eve a new skill she could use later. The work was long and hard. But Eve realized it was better to collapse from exhaustion every night than to cry herself to sleep.
Thursday Novmber 23rd. Eve saw the children's tvs were playing old thanksgiving cartoons. It was only then that she realized that today was suppossed to be thanksgiving. There used to be beautiful televised parades on this day. But on this particular day, there was precious little to be thankful for. Eve and some of the other workers tried to make today special for the children. Nurse Montgomery said they should act like Bob Hope today. Bringing joy and laughter to those who needed it most. And like Bob Hope, they were not allowed to cry in front of their audience. Eve feared she wouldn't be ableto obey, but tried to keep her tears hidden. In the days leading up to this the kids had made thanksgiving cards and pictures. Eve put them on the wall, but it was hard to ignore that some of these kids had already passed on. Eve tried to lift their spirits, saying she wouldn't be arounf them without a Hazmat suit if they were really dying. That trick had worked in the first days of this outbreak. Today, even the little children weren't fooled. One thing that everyone remembered, 605 days until impact.
Working at the hospital Eve saw the news networs talking about the war. They were officially calling it World War III. But this wasn't two clearly defined groups fighting each other. Israel was fighting Pakistan, the Bawa and Askari were fighting in Sangala. Radical leftist and rightist groups fighting in Columbia. In Amrica, it was the United States fighting the Collective States. Texas still maintained its independance, but it was allied with the collective. Similar perhaps to the Navajo nation fighting in World War II, their main contribution had been as code-talkers. The war hawks had won majorities in both countries' congressional elections. Zoey Allen, despite having previously been a dove, was doing her part to entertain loyalist soldiers, participating in boxing exhibition matches on army bases. Eve admitted, Zoey was kind of hot in these matches. Pope Peter II offerred his services as diplomat, was trying to get nations to stop fighting. Some in this hospitl believed the war was orchestrated. Because there would't be eough resources in the Arks for everyoe, nations were decreasing their populations before impact. Smaller populations meant fewer people who could attack and/or damage the Arks. Eve had to admit, there was a certain cold logic to that idea.