Affliction

by Daniels, Dottie

  Speaking of my brother, he is neither like my mother or my father. He may have my father’s engineering intelligence but he definitely tries to play himself to be cooler than he really is. I don’t blame him though, I blame MTV and all these reality shows that pressure young guys to act more established and mature than they really are. I swear that boy was probably nineteen before he lost his virginity because he did believe in love. It’s just unfortunate that his girlfriend didn’t––otherwise she loved quite a few people from my understanding. I met her once, Reyna, she was exotic looking––the dark, long-haired type that wore too much of the makeup that attempted to present someone to the world as a natural beauty––she didn’t fool me. I called her ‘the girl next door who invited over all the boys’ because I went to high school with a few of her type. Her kind are the ones assumed to be the good girls at first sight but they are the worst in the bunch––doing things a way that definitely requires experience. She could play guys several at time, therefore my brother’s kind heart and child-like spirit was no match even with his fairly decent looks. He played it cool when they broke up after a year but I’d say Reyna played him like fiddle. The bottom line was they were both sophomores in college and to expect the same thing to happen to two generations in a row is absurd. This is a different age than what our parents lived through in the dating world––not as many distractions and low expectations about long-term relationships. I explained this all to him, told him not to get mom and dad’s hopes up next time unless he was positive she was ‘the one’. In the meantime, I’m sure he went back to his Xbox 360.

  I myself, after a couple of mediocre dates, landed a relationship––after I put my foot in my mouth, declaring I was giving up on relationships and was going to go live in a monastery. Ronny laughed when he heard me say that during a shift two years ago. It was like the heavens waited until I hit my own version of a relationship rock bottom, at twenty-four, mind you. After one of my lengthy rants in the ambulance or “bus” as we call it, Ronny said I was a just a baby and had to give it time. We both were wrong because by the end of that week Rachel Rory, one of the second shift paramedics––whom I worked with just last night, invited me to a party thrown by some graduate students at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA. Although I didn’t want to go, I offered to drive so she could at least have a good time without worrying how to get back home, besides it’s just a short drive––less than ten miles. Once we arrived I spent the first hour after casual introductions hiding out in the corner, observing both the familiar and awkward conversations that took place among the dozen or so people in front of me. I swear, whereas some people try too hard, Rachel was a natural at picking her targets––getting what she wanted, which was a late night incursion with a decent male prospect without the necessity of a commitment, unless the night was remarkable. It wasn’t my most favorite quality about her but she had the courage I did not. I was just accepting the possibility that I might be driving back to Allentown by myself when I was approached by Graham––whom I had not met before. I remember our conversation being quite strange at first, something about the rules of the shared rental house being ‘no strangers allowed’––which was his cue to get to know me or else he’d have to boot me out. Corny, I know––but it was cute and unexpected and after looking into his attractive brownish green eyes and seeing the most perfect set of pearly whites in a long time, I couldn’t help but go along with the storyline. Long story short: Rachel and I did not go home that evening. Graham and I stayed up almost until the sun rose––talking, after which we both crashed on separate couches. Rachel on the other hand, did get lucky but as usual it was one of many firsts and lasts.

  Graham turned out to be just perfect for me. I kept thinking that dating him was too good to be true, which often made me nervous when I didn’t need to be. I’ve never been close to being called ugly, or chased men away, but Graham was good looking and friendly enough to where other female students at his school would inquire––but that was as far as it went. I had my doubts in the very beginning, but they were just the normal insecurities every woman has; that it would be possible for Graham to get closer to one of the other female PhD candidates because they might have more in common academically and maybe there was a better future with someone he was already able to spend more time with.

  I must’ve been in a daze thinking about them all and listening to all this stuff going on because Ronny interrupted me, “I had to come by and see if you were okay. I hadn’t heard from you since we worked yesterday and when you didn’t show up for the shift this morning I thought one of the… anyway, you should try your phone and see if you can get in touch with your family and Graham. The lines are going in and out right now. I don’t think they’ll be around much longer.”

  “What about cell…” I started to say but he cut me off, saying the reception was funny now especially after the switch to the emergency system. I grabbed my phone, checking for a dial tone. As soon as I heard one, I started dialing the two-one-five Philadelphia area code. More glass shattered outside followed by two gunshots. Instinctively I ducked behind the counter almost knocking over one of the barstool chairs while dialing the rest of the numbers. Ronny crouched next to me, as the phone rang five times before the answering machine picked up. I’ve called the number a thousand times with the message changing only once or twice, now being my parents’ enthusiastic message greeting me with, “Hello, you’ve reached the empty-nesters who are out on vacation or having a wild party of their own after all these years so please leave a message and we’ll get back to you!’

  It seemed like an eternity listening to it this time.

  “Hello… Mom… Dad… please, pick up. I’ve seen the news and I hear things are pretty bad everywhere. I don’t know for sure everything that’s going on… I’m okay… Ronny is here checking on me. God, I hope you all are safe… Please just stay inside and I’ll try and call you all again soon. I’m gonna call Junior and see if he’s okay too. I love you and I’ll call again soon. Bye.” I didn’t know what else to say.

  As I stood up from the safety of the floor, I looked at Ronny who now was also standing, checking his pager. “Nothing yet,” he said, answering my unspoken question.

  “It doesn’t mean your parents are in danger,” he added.

  “Okay, and it doesn’t mean Deanna and the kids are in danger either,” I shot right back, trying to sound as confident as possible about the situation. I picked up the phone again as I heard what sounded like an ambulance siren. My intent was to make as many calls as possible because I knew Ronny was right—I probably only had limited time before the phones would be gone. With the dial tone there again I started dialing for my brother’s cell phone number and it immediately went to voicemail, which meant that his phone was probably turned off. I didn’t leave a message figuring he’d see the missed call. I hung up immediately to dial Graham’s number and to my surprise there was an answer. His voice was everything I needed to hear to start crying. I turned into a mess in an instant.

  “Sea… baby I’m so glad to hear your voice. The phones are in and out. Are you okay? Listen, don’t go outside… I tried to call you this morning but our phones on campus were limited to emergency calls only, then they went out altogether. Some weird shit is going down, I mean, dead people walking around and attacking people, it’s unbelievable!” Graham always spoke calmly but his chatter revealed how upset he was. I was trying to picture people––dead but walking around, in the little quiet town of Bethlehem, Allentown and elsewhere.

  “Sea…Sea… Babe, can you hear me?” he asked when he heard silence on the phone.

  “Yes, are you alright? I need to get to you and see about my parents and Junior. It’s bad here too. I don’t want to stay here and I haven’t heard from anyone except Ronny who is here now. Philly is bad off according to the news; they are telling people to stay away. Ronny needs to get to his wife and kids. I’m scared, Graham,” I rushed through everything.

  �
�Bethlehem is not that far out of the way on the way home,” I said quickly. I could get there and head to Philly in no time.

  “You can’t drive out there, Sea. Darin got into it with one of those… infected people. He got some blood in his eyes and mouth and quite a few scratches. Before he was okay but now he can’t get out of bed and he’s not even able to talk anymore. He’s burning up, Sea. It causes some kind of fever.” Graham went silent.

  “Is Chad there too?” I asked of his other roommate. I didn’t want Graham to deal with that situation alone.

  “Yeah, he’s up there with him now. I don’t know what we’re going to do since the hospital is not an option anymore. If he dies…”

  “Okay, okay, don’t think about that just yet. The news said to call the number on the screen and make a report, I think,” I said, while trying to recall the broadcasted instructions.

  I was thinking of anything that could help but I was coming up short for advice. Paramedics rely on a well-designed network of communication resources and equipment along with other professionals for scenarios that we’ve been trained to handle. There was nothing in the books for this one.

  “I don’t think you should stay there,” I said boldly. “I want to see if my car is still in the lot. If it’s safe I can be there in twenty minutes. We can all get out of here and I can check on my family too,” I said. That sounded reasonable to me.

  “Sea, I-” He started but then there was a click and then silence. I looked at the phone receiver––the phones had gone out again as he described earlier.

  “I’ve got to get to him!” I said as I hung the phone up and hurried past Ronny to get to my bedroom to throw on clothes. I grabbed my large backpack from the corner, which I got from Graham as a one-month anniversary present. It would serve its purpose well today. I threw it on the bed and went to the dresser grabbing a few essential things, throwing them at the backpack. Socks, underwear, a few T-shirts, my not-for-yoga pants, deodorant and a few treasures I had on my dresser like the photo of me with my parents and brother taken a little over a year ago when we all went on vacation together to the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas, at the request of my brother for his twenty-first birthday. The other photo I took was of Graham and me, us facing the camera with him hugging me from behind. I remember the day Darin took the photo. The three of us were in downtown Allentown, at a bistro waiting for Chad and his girlfriend to show up for lunch. It was early last fall, the flowers in a garden space in between two buildings had almost finished blooming for the year and Darin was always quick to take advantage of photo opportunities with his iPhone. It turned out nicer than I’d thought it would be because I wasn’t close to photo ready; it took a five-minute bathroom pit stop for a makeup and clothing adjustment.

  I quickly changed out of the clothes I’d slept in and into what conveniently was my most comfortable pair of jeans and a cotton shirt that was folded in a chair nearby along with other laundry simply because I hadn’t gotten around to putting them away. I threw them on along with my socks and tennis shoes. Ronny appeared at the doorway just as I was finished dressing and shoving the rest of my stuff into the backpack, watching my frantic motions, my hesitations, and my brief reflection on the memories associated with the photos.

  “I’m not so sure you going to Bethlehem is a good idea, Seanna,” he said slowly. As I zipped up the backpack, I hoped the framed photos wouldn’t break.

  “Well what would you do, Ronny? You’re about to head off to catch up with your family and that risk is okay with you? I can’t just sit here,” I replied calmly without breaking my movements.

  I heard more screaming outside and another round of gunshots, this time there were about seven which made me pause. I knew looking out of the window would reveal another attack on someone else’s life and that was too much for me to handle right now. In my line of work, I’d seen a lot of bad things, damage done to the human body, mangled bones bent and broken under stress they were never meant to handle. I’ve seen the human body nearly emptied of its blood, bowels and other organic content, complete with the smells to go with it. I’ve seen some miracles too when individuals have been on the brink of death but in a final attempt to restart the heart—a shot of epinephrine after multiple uses of a defibrillator—the monitors declare signs of life. I’ve experienced drowning victims that were under water for twenty minutes or more brought back to consciousness. Everyone in my business understands though that without medical intervention in these circumstances, death is absolute and there is no reanimation. The stuff happening now was beyond any of our training.

  “I know it won’t make a difference but can I ask you to stop and think for a minute? What if your parents call back? Landlines are more dependable than cell phones––you know that. What if they’re on their way here? You’ve seen the TV––the bigger cities are worse than here. You’d be heading directly into trouble, Seanna.” He looked me square in the eyes. I caught his glance.

  I heard his point but I didn’t have time to debate this with him. I knew he was partially right but there was no partial way to go about staying alive. What if I got outside only to find that my poor little Ford Escape had been stolen or disabled? I doubted whether I would make it back upstairs into my apartment without being one of the next loud voices that we hear now every few minutes. What if I got as far as my parents’ house only to be overtaken by these infected dead? Do any of the methods that we’ve seen in movies and in books work for killing them (again) permanently? I really wished I had bought the Zombie Survival Guide I’d seen in the book section in Target. I bet there was something in it that could help us all out now.

  “Ronny, you know your advice is like gold to me but think about it––I haven’t heard either way about the safety of my parents or my brother. Graham is the only person aside from you that I’ve talked to, and I think it would be better if I got to him and we figure out a next step together—be it going into the city or farther away from it.”

  I couldn’t look into his eyes anymore because I knew it would trigger another round of tears. Every moment I didn’t hear from my family was a step further into painful uncertainty and I was not prepared to think about all the things that might have already happened to them. I grabbed my nearly full backpack and took a few steps around Ronny out of my bedroom and into the bathroom. Once there, I grabbed a fresh washcloth and other small toiletries. I then stepped back out into the tiny hallway where I opened my small hallway closet door where my first-aid kit was. It was a basic kit with gauze, compresses, bandages, and aspirin upgraded with a few supplies from some of the hospital vendors. It was in its own separate little bag and ready to go.

  I raised the first-aid bag, which Ronny had seen before, “Do you think the pharmacy is still open?” as I turned to walk into the living room and set the bags on the sofa. I didn’t expect it but he smirked and returned with, “I wish I’d thought about it while I was at the hospital earlier. It’s all messed up over there now––you couldn’t imagine the chaos when it all fell apart. The only thing I was thinking about was getting out of there. I can’t tell you how many couldn’t make it out of there. I’ve never abandoned a job before… not even during combat med-evacs.”

  I knew this would bother him for longer than he would ever admit but these were truly desperate times that did not have an end in sight.

  I turned to him to give some sort of sign that I was off my so-called justifiable defiance soapbox. The TV was still on the major news network and captions at the bottom were saying, “As many as hundreds of thousands may be affected.”

  Chapter Two

  I couldn’t move. It wasn’t my first day on the job; yet all I could do after arriving at the scene of an accident involving three cars, initially caused by a deer crossing the two-lane section of highway, was to stand there in awe. Two teens were ejected from the first car, which was subsequently hit by another car, which was then hit by a van in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid the mess. The fog was brutal that morning.
Those two teens were now twenty feet or so away from the rear-ended sedan whose make and model could now only be identified from the front portion of the car. Ronny and I were second to arrive on the scene, only minutes after the state patrol, lights and sirens in full, and it was immediately clear whom we could help and who was beyond our aid. The passenger of the second car was unable to move but the driver was able to call police from his cell phone. The third driver, a man in his thirties, stood next to his van overcome with shock. The two teens, both male, lay on the highway motionless with obvious impact wounds from the initial contact with the windshield and subsequent contact with the paved road. I knew after Ronny and the patrolman ran over to officially pronounce them dead that my job was to care for the next most critical, to stabilize them and alert dispatch of our estimated arrival time to Cedar Crest or a closer hospital based on the patient’s condition.

  “Seanna, let’s move!” Ronny said as he went around me to grab the stretcher with both hands and it sprang into motion. “Sir, are you okay? We are going to help the person still in the car over there but I want you to keep breathing and alert the patrolman there if anything changes. Another ambulance is a few minutes out…. Seanna, let’s go!”

  “Seanna… Seanna, you shouldn’t go out alone. You haven’t seen what’s out there like I have. It’s bad. You’ll never be able to make it by yourself.” Ronny stood in front of the front door now. If I didn’t know any better, it seemed like he was going to block me from leaving.

  I wasn’t much of an actress and I never signed up for the debate team in high school so it was going to take some pretty good word play in order to get Mr. Bowen here to agree with the actions I was about to take. If he was anything like my father whom I was never able to get anything past, I’d be staying right here until this thing blew over, even if it meant I would be the only one left with a pulse.