An Ordinary Epidemic

by Amanda Hickie

  Sean broke the trance by calling through the window. ‘Ella, sweetie, what are you doing here?’ Hannah hadn’t even heard him come into the room.

  Ella shook her head.

  ‘Are you cold? Where’s your dad?’

  She shook her head again.

  Sean looked to Hannah and shrugged. Hannah murmured so the boys wouldn’t hear, ‘Is she crying?’

  Sean called out to her again. ‘You have to go home, Ella, your dad will be worried.’

  Next door might be further afield than she was prepared for any of them to venture, but it was only at the other end of a copper wire. Hannah dialled.

  ‘We finished our game and she was there. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. We weren’t watching the garden. She might have been there for ages. I’m sorry. We didn’t see.’ Zac tripped over his words trying to explain.

  The line connected and Hannah willed Stuart to pick up. Simultaneously, she could hear the phone ringing in the house next door. ‘Ella, did you leave the back door open?’

  ‘Yes.’ At least she had said something.

  ‘Does Daddy know where you are? You should go home.’

  Sean touched her on the elbow and said softly, ‘She can’t climb the fence, there are no footholds on our side.’

  ‘You’re not going out there to give her a boost.’ She looked at Sean, at a loss as to how a grown-up would act in these circumstances.

  Sean called out in a reassuring tone, ‘Honey, I’m going to open the side gate and you can run round to your front door. Your dad will let you in.’

  ‘Daddy’s not home.’

  Hannah tried again. ‘Where’s Daddy gone?’

  ‘He went to Mummy.’

  Hannah hoped that meant to the hospital.

  ‘Stay there, honey, just for a tick.’ Sean sprinted, as much as his father-of-teenager’s frame would allow him, down the hall. Hannah tried to gain some insight into the boys’ thoughts through their faces. Faces that reminded her of the two boys that had died, who knew, before they died, that sometimes parents leave, sometimes you can’t rely on them when you need them. But her boys already knew that, they’d known for years, no matter how much she explained in a neutral tone what cancer was, no matter how much she told herself that Oscar was too young to understand, really understand the implications of what she told him, no matter how much she hoped that Zac was so used to the words that they were meaningless to him. They knew what Daniel had learnt in the last two weeks—that sometimes parents fail in the worst possible way.

  Sean jogged back in, puffing. ‘I think I can see the car in their garage.’

  ‘He could have walked.’

  ‘Maybe someone came for him, like an ambulance or Natalie,’ Zac piped up.

  ‘Yeah, maybe.’ Sean didn’t sound convinced. ‘What do we do?’

  Hannah took the phone into the living room for privacy. She dialled the hospital.

  ‘Hi, yes, I’m trying to find Dr Cope, Dr Natalie Cope. No, I don’t know the extension, she doesn’t normally work there but I know she’s volunteering.’ The receptionist transferred her to emergency, who transferred her to a ward and then another ward. Each of them was helpful but some things were clearly important—the status of the patients, how many beds were available, how much antibiotic they had on hand, the number of doctors they needed to staff the wards—keeping track of the names of the doctors who had turned up to help was not. Eventually, one woman transferred her to human resources. She hung on until it rang out.

  Back in the kitchen, everyone was still in the same place although now wet patches on Ella’s mask traced her tears sinking in.

  ‘Her mobile rings out, his rings out. The home phone rings out too. But we know that, we can hear that.’

  ‘Ella, do you know your Grandma’s phone number?’ A tiny shake of the head. ‘What’s her name, sweetie?’

  ‘Nanna?’

  ‘Does she have another name?’ Head shake. ‘What about Mummy and Daddy’s friends, what are they called?’

  ‘Sue?’

  ‘Sue who?’ The head shake again.

  There was no way out, there was no one to hand her to. If there was some way to make the little girl standing on their back lawn not their problem, they couldn’t find it.

  Oscar pushed at the back door but Zac took firm hold of his hand and called through the open crack. ‘Hey Ella, can you spell?’

  ‘She’s not even at school, Zac.’

  ‘Ella, do you know how to play I spy?’ Ella nodded. Oscar tucked himself into Zac’s side, watching. ‘Well, I spy with my little eye something beginning with, I mean, something that’s red.’

  Ella looked around the garden with big eyes. It was clear to Hannah that Zac was thinking of the bright red wind vane on the garage. Ella, her feet rooted to the spot, was never going to turn around to see it.

  ‘I know, I know what it is.’

  ‘Give her a minute, Oz.’

  ‘Umm,’ Ella looked around more frantically. ‘Ummm,’ she looked harder at Zac, ‘umm, your shirt?’

  ‘Cool, you got it.’ Hannah had to smile—Zac had learnt how to cheat like an adult. ‘Your turn.’ Sean leant into Hannah and murmured, ‘We need to talk where they can’t hear us.’

  She whispered back, ‘I’m not leaving them unsupervised.’

  ‘Zac’s got it under control.’

  They tiptoed to the other end of the kitchen, Hannah keeping her eyes on the boys, ready to jump if Oscar made a move.

  ‘So what do we do?’ Although Sean whispered, from his stillness she thought it likely that Daniel was eavesdropping.

  ‘She can’t come in. She’s probably seen Natalie and who knows what’s happened to Stuart. For all we know, she’s infectious. She’ll have to stay outside ’til we find someone to take her.’

  ‘There is no one.’ Sean was firm.

  ‘She can go to a shelter.’

  ‘Are you kidding me? You won’t let us walk around the block but a three year-old can go to a shelter?’

  ‘You can’t have forgotten, one and a half thousand,’ she noticed Daniel twitch and dropped her voice, ‘dead, yesterday. Nearly three times Monday.’

  ‘Out of five million. Less than a tenth of a percent. She’s one little girl out of five million and you want to send her into that.’

  ‘Her mum’s working at germ central and her dad ditched her. I guess Gwen could take her.’

  ‘Gwen’s a crazy lady, I’m not knocking on her door and I wouldn’t give Ella to her.’

  ‘So... what?’

  Hannah waited for Sean to say something. And waited. And then she cracked. ‘So, she has to stay here.’ Sean seemed relieved that she had said it. ‘She can sleep in the office for a couple of days. We’ll have to work out some way of keeping her in there when we’re delivering.’ Sean looked at her with horror and she felt she had to explain. ‘Like Gwen, we’ll have to take meals to her like Gwen.’ Sean was clearly struggling, trying to find the right words. ‘She’s three. She’s,’ his eyes slid away as he shook his head in disbelief, ‘three. You can’t seriously expect a three year-old, a three year-old, Ella for Christ’s sake, Ella, not some stranger, to sleep all alone, to be all alone for the next two days out in the office. Can you imagine how terrifying, how mind-fuckingly,’ Hannah glanced at the boys, ‘terrifying that would be. You can’t treat her like the cat. Even if she wasn’t someone we know, even then, she’s a human being, a little girl whose parents have disappeared and you think it would be appropriate to incarcerate her in the garage?’

  ‘Why do you think Stuart dumped her here? He’s not my favourite person but he wouldn’t ditch his own kid without a good reason. And why do you think he put a surgical mask on her? Because he was sick and she’s probably got it too. He’s gone off to hospital and he hasn’t taken her. Why would he? If there’s any chance she’s not sick, the hospital is more likely to kill her than save her. But we have three kids here, one of them not even ours, and we have a responsibility to them. To
keep them safe. We know she’s been exposed.’ Sean looked at her coldly. ‘I’m not going to apologise for putting my kids first. I can’t be responsible for everyone.’

  ‘Not even for the one toddler in your backyard.’

  ‘I’m not throwing her out in the street. I’m not going to starve her. She just has to sleep in the office for two days.’

  ‘And if she gets sick?’

  ‘Then I was fucking right, wasn’t I?’

  ‘And you’d leave her to die out there.’

  ‘No. I don’t know. But how does it help her if Oscar and Zac and Daniel get it too?’ The boys had stopped playing their game and were watching them in solemn silence.

  ‘So you won’t let her in?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She has to sleep out there alone.’

  ‘For two days.’

  ‘Fine.’ He strode out the door, shoving Zac and Oscar out of his way. Hannah saw Oscar on his toes, ready to follow. She sprinted over and slammed the door. The four of them huddled together at the glass, watching.

  Sean put his arm around Ella’s shoulders, talking to her quietly, gently, but they couldn’t make out what he was saying. Hannah felt an ache, a physical pain as he moved away. She was angry at him, angry for making her feel her actions were wrong, for making a decision that she wouldn’t have. For putting Ella ahead of his own family. He was right there but gone. Just to the end of the garden but maybe never to come back.

  ‘Right,’ she said loudly to the spot over the boys’ heads, ‘well, this is an adventure. Just us for two days.’

  ‘Yeah, some adventure.’ Zac turned his back and led the walk away from her.

  The TV went on in the living room, too loud. She didn’t care. She could go in and rouse on them but it would achieve nothing. Her aspirations had changed. She didn’t have to worry about whether they ate right or did their homework or played violent video games at their friend’s house. There was only one thing she had to achieve—to get the boys through this.

  By now it was done, even though she could see Sean, just across the lawn, even though he looked the same. By now he had the virus or he didn’t. And she had to decide, at this instant, that if he came back in two days she would celebrate and if he didn’t, then he was gone from this very moment.

  She was startled from her thought by a fist banging on the glass of the door. Sean, belligerent but slumped. ‘I need gloves. I need disinfectant, I need a facemask.’ He coloured slightly, they both knew he should have had thought of these things before he gambled his life on his principles. ‘And something to put water in, a bottle or a jug.’

  ‘How does she seem?’

  ‘Scared, sad.’

  He was going to make her ask. ‘Is she sick?’

  ‘She doesn’t look sick.’

  Sean had spent time in the office before and even though she couldn’t see him, she had still been aware of his presence. Now she was only aware of his absence. The kitchen drove her out, it was filled with her angry yearning for the other end of the garden, so she exiled herself to the isolated safety of their bedroom, curled up in the doona that smelt of them. The cold of the room crept in under its edges.

  The street was quiet, the room was quiet, there was no way to escape herself. The noise of the television lured her back to the living room.

  She caught Zac’s face contorting into a scowl as she walked in. Oscar had a contented, almost Mona Lisa smile as he cuddled into Zac. And Daniel, Daniel looked blank. Attentive, polite, amenable but blank.

  ‘Hey, Daniel,’ she winced at her own lameness, ‘how are things going?’

  ‘Fine, Hannah, it’s good.’

  ‘Watching something on TV?’

  Zac looked thunder at her.

  ‘Yeah, you know.’ Daniel gave her a polite smile and a half nod. ‘We’ve seen it before but there’s nothing new on. They keep looping the same couple of days’ programs.’

  She worried that he recognised himself in the way she had reacted to Ella.

  ‘You know, Daniel, I’m glad you’re here. I’m sorry about your mum but you’re always welcome here. Like one of the family.’

  ‘We’re watching TV, Mum, can’t you see?’ Zac snarled. ‘Like he doesn’t know. He knows, so if you don’t have anything important, can we get back to watching?’

  But what Daniel knew, and she knew, was that she wasn’t telling the truth. She would do everything humanly reasonable for Ella and Daniel. For Zac or Oscar she’d do the unreasonable. She would risk her life for them. Daniel and Ella weren’t her family.

  She made dinner by herself, cleaned up by herself. As she gazed down the garden to the office, she realised from now on, she was going to have to do everything by herself. She could see Ella perched on the office chair. Sean must have adjusted it to its highest to let her reach the computer.

  Sean came out of the garage with two sleeping bags and an almost new plush purple teddy bear that Oscar had never taken to, not once looking towards the house. They each stood in their own pool of light at the ends of the dark garden but he didn’t look towards hers.

  Zac was standing next to her, smacking two empty hot chocolate mugs on the counter.

  ‘You finished them quickly.’ She plunged them into the opaque washing up water. It was tepid now but it would be a waste to boil more just to heat it up.

  ‘Dad might die.’

  ‘We don’t know that Ella is sick.’

  ‘Why didn’t you stop him? You order us around enough.’

  ‘He’s a grown-up, I can’t make his decisions for him.’

  ‘Yes you can,’ Zac’s chin wobbled. What was endearing on Oscar was distressing on Zac. The possibility that he might lose control, her self-contained independent boy, unnerved her. She put her arm around him and he didn’t pull away. He opened his mouth twice and though she thought he was going to say something, she knew he wouldn’t let himself talk until he was sure he could do it with no signs of childishness. ‘He might die. He’s my dad and he might die. Don’t I count for anything? You keep saying you’re protecting us but he’s my dad and I want my dad to live.’

  She pulled the plug out of the sink. The rest could wait for tomorrow. She wiped her hands on a tea towel. ‘I don’t think he thought it through. You wanted us to take Daniel and I don’t regret that. It’s kind of the same.’

  ‘Daniel wasn’t going to kill anyone. Doesn’t Dad care enough about us not to die?’

  She ran her hand through his hair, he only twisted his head away slightly. ‘Some decisions are more complicated than that.’

  ‘Whatever.’ He twisted out of her arm. ‘It’s his life, right?’ But it wasn’t just his life. She knew it and Zac knew it and one day Oscar would know it. He owed them something, he had a duty to them, a terrible duty to stay alive. She’d been doing it for eight years. Blood tests and mammograms and drugs that made her tired, made her sweat, made her feel sick, even now. She did anything the doctors told her because it was her duty to Zac and Oscar. Sometimes it exhausted her, the process of living. How could Sean not realise, even now, the commitment he made when he took part in creating them, to do everything he could to stay alive?

  Keeping a happy face was wearing and the kids didn’t buy it. She was drained, she needed peace, she needed this to be over. Her mood sent a subliminal ripple of anxiety through the house. What she wanted was to send them all to bed so she didn’t have to present any kind of face to anyone. She hated that she was deceiving them with her fake enthusiasm and plastered-on smile, but she comforted herself that whatever she did with her face, it wasn’t really a lie. She needed them to believe that things were what you made them. This time could be miserable or it could be bearable, depending how they saw it. Right now, all she wanted was to fast-forward through this. Tomorrow she would look at it all in the new light of the morning. She would do her damnedest to be a good person tomorrow.

  The boys were draped over the sofas, interlocking like a barrel of monkeys, watching TV.


  ‘Okay, that’s it. Bedtime.’

  ‘Oh, what? It’s not even Oscar’s bedtime.’

  ‘Well, get ready for bed. I think everyone needs some quiet time.’ The resentful teenage eyes looked back at her again. ‘All right, you don’t have to sleep. You can stay up so long as you don’t bother me.’

  ‘Yay.’ Oscar was wide-eyed and too loud. ‘I don’t have to sleep.’

  ‘You have to sleep.’

  ‘Aaaawh.’ His protest ascended a scale.

  ‘Wash. Pyjamas. No arguments.’

  She boiled a jug and carried it, steaming, into the bathroom. Oscar jogged in front of her, forcing her to swerve to avoid tripping and spilling the water. She poured it into the sink and added some cold from the bucket on the floor, swishing it gingerly with her fingers.

  ‘That should be cool enough.’ She left him stripping off.

  In her corner of the sofa, in the hostile silence of teenage contempt, she hid behind her laptop, pretending she was working. She only opened emails with business-like subjects. They allowed her to escape, for a short time, from this small box. Somehow it made it better that out there other people were living their lives. She let her eyes slide over the other ones. She didn’t want to know the bad stuff. She didn’t have anything that would help them.

  A chat window opened in front of everything else.

  Hey babe.

  Kate. She’d left herself logged in. If she ignored it, Kate might go away.

  You there? I haven’t heard from you in a while.