Belize

Chapter Seven

Rebecca got to work about fifteen minutes early, as she usually did. The morning shift started at 9:00, and she always left the apartment at eight sharp for the roughly forty-five-minute walk. One nice thing about living in the tropical zone was that she never had to worry about walking to work in two feet of snow in the winter, like she would have had to do back where she grew up. Honestly, she didn’t think she and Billy would ever bother to buy a car. The weather here was so nice all the time that having a car wasn’t even necessary.

She worked at the La Costa Medical Services Office, which was a doctor’s clinic attached to La Costa Hospital. The office handled simple ailments and minor injuries, and other non-life-threatening problems that weren’t serious enough for the hospital’s emergency room. Mostly, they diagnosed things like colds and sore throats, or stitched up minor cuts and other small injuries. Rebecca worked there as an assistant nurse.

She knew she was incredibly lucky to have found the job. If they had come to Belize just a few weeks later, the position might have already been filled. Rebecca might have wound up working as a waitress or at some other service job, which still would be okay, but they might not have been able to afford even the small apartment they lived in now. Cheaper places to live were farther from the coast, which meant a much longer walk to work. Rebecca finding a job at the clinic was really a huge stroke of luck.

She didn’t tell anyone about Raccoon City, even though it would have garnered sympathy and maybe made people treat her more kindly. But if she told them she was from Raccoon City, they might ask questions about her or Billy that she wasn’t able to answer convincingly. The last thing she wanted was for anyone to be curious about her background. So she told her coworkers she was from Ohio, which was partially true, since she’d grown up there. When they inevitably asked why she and Billy decided to emigrate to Belize, she told them she thought the American government was corrupt and that she had always wanted to live in Central America. Rather than start a potential argument about the relative merits of American political system, people usually just accepted her answer and changed the subject. Native Belizeans nodded thoughtfully and probably thought she was crazy.

When she got to work, she greeted the clerks at the front desk and went through a doorway marked “Employees Only” and made her way to the locker room. She needed a few minutes to change out of her street clothes and put on her scrubs. Once she was dressed, she used a plain black plastic headband to keep her hair away from her face, and walked to the sink to wash her hands.

Her duties at the clinic were fairly straightforward. She greeted the patients who came in and directed them to one of the exam rooms where the doctor on call would see them. She took basic vital signs and helped them fill out simple questionnaires about their medical history. She stocked the exam rooms with various supplies and did whatever other minor errands she could. The other nurses usually asked her fill out their paperwork as well as her own, as long as she wasn’t busy, and she did so without complaint. Keeping her job was the important thing. Once she and Billy were settled and more opportunities opened up, she might think about her long-term career goals. For the time being, she was more concerned about dealing with day-to-day problems.

She went into the office to sign in to her shift. A white board on the wall listed everyone’s job duties for the day. The appointment schedule was also posted, so the nurses on duty could get a better idea of the busiest times of the day and how best to prepare for the coming patients. Of course, the clinic also took walk-ins, so there might be a unscheduled rush at almost any time.

Rebecca greeted one of her coworkers, a heavy-set woman named Elizabeth, who usually worked the main desk.

“How are you today, honey?” Elizabeth asked. Like most of the people Rebecca worked with, she spoke English with a Belizean accent. Rebecca was hardly an expert on accents and dialects, but to her it sounded more like a Jamaican accent than a Spanish one.

Before Rebecca ever thought about coming to Belize, she had assumed most people in Central America spoke Spanish, but obviously that wasn’t true and she felt foolish for believing it now. Many Belizeans spoke Creole or Spanish, but most spoke English as well.

“I’m fine, how are you?” she replied, picking up a folder of medical forms and idly flipping through them.

“Oh, pretty good. Did I tell you my nephew got accepted to college? We’re all very excited about it.”

“That’s wonderful,” Rebecca said. “Congratulations to him. Where did he get accepted?”

“Galen University. He’s going to major in Environmental Science. He wants to be a marine biologist.”

Rebecca flipped over another sheet and paused, pursing her lips. “That’s great. I’m excited for him. I hope it works out.”

The bottom sheet of the folder was a notification form for some of the drugs they had on hand in the clinic. There were hundreds of different drugs at the clinic, of course, and even more at the hospital next door, and all of them manufactured by different companies. This particular drug was a treatment for common skin conditions like eczema. At the bottom corner of the form was a tiny symbol for the manufacturer, a red and white octagon.

The Umbrella Corporation. Even thousands of miles away from Raccoon City, she couldn’t seem to escape them. Working in the medical industry made it impossible to get away from their constant influence, since they sold a huge number of drugs across the entire spectrum of the health care field. Umbrella manufactured everything from painkillers to cancer treatments. In fact, Rebecca had never noticed just how many of the products she used on a daily basis had some sort of connection to Umbrella. They were the biggest pharmaceutical company in the world, and even products like skin lotion, tampons, and contact lenses were produced by them or one of their subsidiary companies.

She sighed and set down the folder. Every time she saw their logo or heard their name in the news, it brought back a flood of insane memories from her time in the Arklay Mountains. It was hard to believe that she’d only been there for a day and a half. Looking back, it felt like she’d spent weeks in the abandoned medical lab, fighting her way from room to room with Billy by her side. She’d aged five years in those two days. Everything that she’d done since that time was directly tied to what she’d experienced with Billy.

And the company responsible for all of it was still in business, still selling their drugs and medical services, still making money. In many ways, Umbrella had barely even acknowledged the public relations aftermath of the events in Raccoon City. They dominated such a huge percentage of the medical field worldwide that it would take a long time for them to really begin to see significant financial losses. Even if they faced a complete boycott in America as a result of the catastrophe, they still had markets in other countries all over the world.

Umbrella would remain in business in many countries for the foreseeable future, but Rebecca was certain that they would eventually be forced to shut down. But it would take time. Years, maybe. It might take a decade or more, but the destruction of Raccoon City signaled the end of the Umbrella Corporation. It would be a long slow decline into bankruptcy, Rebecca was sure of it.

But the thing that really bothered her was that the individual people responsible – the actual scientists and managers and administrators that created the virus and experimented with it – would never be punished for their actions or face any kind of justice at all. Most of the scientists in Raccoon City were already dead, of course. They were killed during the initial outbreak in the Arklay laboratory complex, or died in the epidemic in Raccoon City itself. But some of them probably got away. The people in charge, the upper management of the Arklay and Raccoon labs, almost certainly got away, and they would never be punished for any of it. Rebecca doubted that anyone would be given so much as a fine. The company would pay, but not the individual people responsible.

“Rebecca?” Elizabeth asked, seeing the look on her face.

“Sorry,” she said quickly, shaking her head. “I, um, I saw the Umbrella logo on one of those sheets, and I was thinking about what happened.”

Elizabeth looked pained. “Oh, yes. That must be an older form. The new forms don’t even have their company name on it anymore. I heard they’ve started releasing products under the names of other companies, so people don’t connect them with the disaster.”

“Yeah, well ...” she shrugged. “Hopefully they get some new forms, then. I don’t like being reminded of it. The whole thing was so terrible.”

“Did you … did you know anyone who lived there?”

“No,” Rebecca said.

“Okay,” Elizabeth said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t want to be nosy. But I know you moved here right after it happened. I thought maybe that had something do it with it.”

Rebecca shook her head. “No, it was just a coincidence. My boyfriend and I had been planning for months to move here.”

“How are you two doing?” Elizabeth asked, glad to have a change of subject. “Still settling in to your apartment? You live near the supermarket on Dusal, right?”

“In that area, yeah. The apartment is okay, but obviously we’d like to move someplace a little bit bigger.”

“You two must be pretty serious if you came all the way here together. Are you going to get married? I know young people don’t get married as often anymore.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Rebecca said with a smile. “Right now we don’t have any plans. Maybe in a year or two, we might think about it. It’s a big step, after all.”

Elizabeth laughed and shook her head. “You moved all the way to another country with him, but you think getting married is a big step. Sometimes I just don’t understand young people.”

“Well, we can always go back to America if things don’t work out,” Rebecca joked. “But if we get married, then that’s harder to change our minds about.”

She left Elizabeth at the desk and went to speak with the other nurses on duty. The first few people of the day were already filtering into the waiting area for appointments, which meant it was time to start work.

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