For subscribers
On My Mind
Reading pandemic fiction in the time of Covid-19
Though hard to swallow, such stories can help us understand what we have gone through
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Early on in the new HBO television series Station Eleven, a doctor calls her brother to warn him about the mysterious virus tearing through her hospital. She tells him to get to their other brother's apartment and go into lockdown at once.
In a corridor, she takes off her mask and coughs. Later, she and her colleague step outside for a break, only to be confronted by a carpark flooded with sick people crying for help. You see in her eyes the moment when she realises that nobody in this hospital is going to survive the night.
