The Virus

by Janelle Diller

She slipped her cardigan off her left arm and carefully pulled up the sleeve of her shirt underneath. Her smallpox vaccination had a bandage over it.

  I wasn’t exactly sure what we were seeing, but Eddy nodded his head. “You removed it.”

  “Removed the vaccine?” I asked.

  “I removed the capsule,” she said. “I’m not sure there was ever a vaccine.”

  “The capsule.” I looked at Eddy, who nodded very slightly at me. “What do you mean, you’re not sure there was ever a vaccine?”

  Tina got up and went to her purse. She took out two small envelopes, the size that’s sometimes used for one or two pills. She opened one and dropped the contents into her hand for us to see. All I could see in her palm was an opaque soft plastic bead, about the size of a small flat pinto bean.

  “That’s the vaccine?”

  She nodded.

  “How do you know it’s not some kind of time release?”

  “Could be, but I’m pretty sure it’s not. Take a look at this.” She dumped the contents from the other envelope into her hand. In contrast, it looked like it, too, had once been an opaque plastic bead, but it had been cut open. The cut had mangled the insides somewhat, but I still recognized the tiny mass and copper tendrils that wound neatly around the center.

  “You know what you have there.” It wasn’t a question.

  Tina nodded. “An RFID. I finally figured it out from Eddy’s website.” She tilted her head toward him. He toasted her with his wine glass.

  “The whole thing just seemed off-kilter somehow,” she said. “All the questions, the fingerprinting, the DNA samples—that’s not something we’d ever do for any reason, and certainly not for a vaccine. The whole idea of a vaccine is to get the patient in and get him out so you can get the next patient in. The information inquisition was just too weird. I mean, who cares what your citizenship is?”

  Eddy leaned back in his chair, his fingers entwined behind his head. “Well, now. Isn’t that an interesting question?”

  I felt grim. “You’re right. I hadn’t thought about it from that angle yet, but I’m sure it’s coming.” I looked at Tina, “But that’s a whole other discussion. Tell us how you ended up with that capsule cut open like that.”

  “Those of us who were trained to do the inoculations were given an entire day of training—you’d have thought this was some kind of brain surgery the way they talked to us. But a lot of it wasn’t even about how to insert the capsule. It was about all the other stuff like how important it was to fill out the forms, what to do if we had people with needle phobias or got anxious—that was their word: ‘anxious’—and how to handle the capsules, especially if they spontaneously festered out.”

  She’d sat down while talking and now she poured herself another glass of wine; her hands had a tiny tremor. “They spent almost as long on how to handle the rejected capsule as they did on how to insert it, even though they claimed the rejection rate was supposed to be somewhere around two in ten thousand vaccinations. We were supposed to put it in special packaging and FedEx it to the CDC. Before the patient left, we were supposed to insert a new capsule some other place on the body, preferably the same arm, but if not, then insert it on the other arm or a hip and then re-enter the number of the new capsule into the health cards. Under no circumstances were we to touch the capsule after it had been rejected. They emphasized that we would be putting ourselves at risk with the exposure.”

  Tina made a little harrumphing noise. “We’re doctors, for God’s sake. We deal with high-risk health situations all the time. We can’t wear plastic gloves and a mask and hold the thing with a tweezers?”

  “Or wear plastic gloves and a mask and hold the thing with a tweezers while you cut it open and find out what the big mystery is,” Pete said. He raised his eyebrows slightly and shook his head, like he couldn’t believe what his wife had done.

  “That’s right. That’s exactly what I did, too. Last week this guy came in to the office with his inoculation oozing with pus, and my first thought was that the vaccine had triggered the virus. So we isolated him and I got all garbed up before I got a good look at it and realized it was just an ordinary infection from a guy who didn’t have very good hygiene and hadn’t taken care of the incision very well.” She huffed a little about that. “You can bet that’s going to start happening more and more. This isn’t just a shot. You have to keep the incisions sterile just like any other minor surgery.” She rolled her eyes.

  “Anyway, I removed the old capsule and inserted a new one into his other arm. Then the receptionist updated the card with the new capsule number. After he left, I cleaned up the capsule and was actually going to put it in the canister and send it like we were instructed to do when it struck me that this thing hadn’t dissolved one iota. It didn’t look anything like the pictures they’d shown us during training.”

  “So the good doctor did what any good doctor would do. She examined it,” Pete said.

  “I did. I cut it open and then was clueless about what it was. I knew Eddy had some kind of a website because we’d talked about it at Christmas. So I did my research.” She smiled a little shyly.

  “And you figured out that it was an RFID,” I said.

  She nodded. “Forget the health risks of walking around with that thing transmitting from inside your body, I was just plain offended that the government did that and called it in my best interest. I’d bet our house that there’s nothing at all in that capsule that prevents smallpox.”

  Pete nodded, “That’s the ultimate insult. We’re still not protected if there’s a true terrorist outbreak.”

  “So you removed your own capsule?” Eddy asked. “How did you do that?”

  I know he was picturing what I was picturing—empty bottle of whiskey, bullet with teeth marks, hunting knife with lots of blood on it.

  “My sister’s in medical school at CU. She came down last weekend and I talked her through it.”

  Eddy and I both blanched anyway.

  “She’ll make a good doctor.”

  “What did you do with the one you removed from that guy? Don’t you have to send it back and document everything?” Eddy asked.

  “I do. I just haven’t quite figured out what my story is yet. But I will by Monday.”

  CHAPTER

  22

  BY THE TIME WE LEFT PETE AND TINA’S, I’d gathered my resolve to have my “vaccination” removed. I didn’t say anything to Eddy, though, until we were nestled like two spoons in bed, Eddy’s arm draped over me.

  “I’m going to have it removed,” I said.

  Same skin. He knew what I meant.

  “Don’t do it for me,” he said.

  “I’m not. It’s for me. It’s for my own integrity.”

  He pulled me a little tighter. Eddy, ever the pessimist, said, “Maybe you should wait to see what happens to Tina.”

  I, ever the optimist, said, “Nothing’s happened so far. I need to do it now.”

  Or I’d lose my nerve.

  “We’ll figure it out.” He kissed the back of my head. “I love you.”

  “You too, Eddio. Forever and ever.”

  I called Tina on Saturday morning. She sounded sleepy but said she’d been up for a while. She agreed to meet me at her office and told me what to do, say, and wear. Saturdays were for emergencies. Although she wasn’t scheduled to work, it wouldn’t be unusual for her to be around the office. Tina hadn’t told anyone about removing her own capsule and didn’t think it would be good to get the word started around town that she was in the business of doing it. She would remove mine because she knew she could trust me since Pete and Eddy were good friends and Eddy was so active in his dissent over the whole thing.

  It had snowed overnight while the temperature hovered between just above freezing and just below, so the roads were shiny and slick. I crept through the empty streets, wondering, debating whether this was smart or stupid.

  I mentally followed the twisting paths for all the possibiliti
es. I had my health card and had made it through security uneventfully multiple times with it. Maybe down the road, there would be some kind of passive or—God forbid—active receiver that would require I had the RFID implant to, I don’t know, use my charge card or get approved for a job or file my income taxes or—

  But why would I want to live in that kind of a world?

  That’s what I always came back to.

  Why would I choose to live in a country that required me to be tracked?

  I asked for Tina at the reception desk and told them I was an old friend of hers and just in town. Her husband, Pete, said I’d find her here.

  Tina showed up at the front desk a minute later. She acted sufficiently surprised to see me and I acted sufficiently pleased to see her. Neither of us could have majored in theater, but we passed the test. She motioned me back to her office, shut the door, and sat me down. After all, this was a medical consultation.

  “Are you sure you want to do this, Maggie?”

  “Is there a reason not to?”

  Tina shrugged her shoulder and shook her head slightly. “I don’t know what the ramifications might be. From a medical perspective, I’m not convinced it’ll change your level of immunity. These aren’t time-release inoculations. If they have any power to immunize you, it’s in the coating itself. But the two that I’ve seen haven’t changed color or texture, so that tells me that there’s probably nothing there.”

  “Are you sorry you removed yours?”

  She lowered her voice to a whisper, even though it was just the two of us. “What I’m sorry about is that I implanted so many of them.”

  “No apparent repercussions, though?”

  “None that I know of. You’re the traveler, though. Maybe you’ll bump up against something.”

  I shook my head. “The only thing they’ve done so far is checked the information on my health card.”

  “The only thing you’re aware of,” Tina corrected me.

  I conceded that.

  She set to work swabbing the skin, giving me a local anesthetic, and locating the alien bump in my arm. As she worked, she talked.

  “I got an email this morning saying that we should begin implanting the capsules in the hip. I think it’s because it’ll be easier to bury it deeper and so it’ll be harder to do exactly what we’re doing.”

  “You think they’re doing that because people are already removing them?”

  She stopped what she was doing and looked at me funny. “Don’t you read all the stuff on Eddy’s site?”

  “I haven’t been on it for a while. I guess I never read it thoroughly. I figure he tells me the earth-shattering things.” Had Eddy set me up for this?

  Tina didn’t say anything except, “You might not want to watch for the next minute or so.”

  She was absolutely right. I didn’t.

  Where was a good bottle of whiskey and a bullet when you needed one?

  “What did you do with the capsule?” Eddy asked the minute I stepped in the door.

  “I brought it home with me. I thought I’d check your website to see what you’re advising.”

  He blushed, but just barely.

  “Did you set the whole thing up with Pete and Tina?”

  “No. I found out when you did on Friday night that she’d had her capsule removed.”

  “But you knew that people were starting to remove them.”

  He paused, then nodded. “There are a few accounts. But very few.”

  “If I hadn’t decided to remove mine, what would you have done to get me to?”

  He chewed on his lower lip and lightly tapped his pen on his desk. “Don’t know,” he finally said.

  “But you would have done something, right?”

  He shook his head. “We would have figured something out. Eventually.”

  You don’t stay married for fifteen years unless you get progressively smarter about which battles to pick. Eddy wasn’t ever a manipulator, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt on this one. After all, it’s not like it surprised me that he wanted me to remove the vaccine capsule. He hadn’t wanted me to get it in the first place. Still, I let myself be a little cool all day, which I regretted later.

  CHAPTER

  23

  DEPRESSED AS I WAS ABOUT ALL THE TIME I SPENT IN AIRPORTS, giving up yet another thirty minutes made me teary all Sunday evening. But with Monday being Martin Luther King, Jr’s, birthday and the last day to fly before the health card enforcement, I knew the security line would be the stuff of business traveler legends. I considered flying out Sunday evening, but the only thing I would have gained would have been the expectation that I’d be at Baja Breeze at nine o’clock on Monday morning instead of noon. And I’d lose Sunday evening on top of it.

  So I got up at three and headed to the airport at four for a six thirty flight. There was something very wrong with this picture.

  Usually, I’d take a cab for a flight that early, but Eddy insisted the night before that he wanted to take me, so I let him. He pulled up to the United door, hopped out, and unloaded my suitcase. He kissed me firmly on the lips and patted my rear as if to say, “Go get ‘em, Tiger.” I never felt like a tiger, and never, ever at four thirty in the morning.

  True to my worries, the security line had already grown beyond the escalator. I did the self-service check-in and then began my wait in line. I had a good book going on my Kindle, so I kind of read, but reading, tending a suitcase and computer bag, and shuffling a foot or two every couple of minutes didn’t lend itself to retention, so I finally put my Kindle away and concentrated on how miserable my life had become. It was much easier.

  I people-watched, too. It was simple to spot the business travelers. In this line, they were the ones who had to be multi-tasking, even at that early hour. I wondered how many cell phone batteries would die just from the minutes in the security line, although I couldn’t figure out whom they’d be calling at that hour. Probably other colleagues they knew were traveling. I certainly hoped not relatives. There was something slightly repulsive about watching them carry on, business as usual. These had been my silent, anonymous colleagues. We understood each other’s looks as the casual travelers slowed down our routines. We shared the common code of people who knew too much detail about which hotels in which hotel chains had the best shampoo, coffee, and pillows. To see them stand in line so passively, absorbing yet one more layer of inconvenience and privacy intrusion all to chase some business made me feel empty.

  I watched; I shuffled forward. I watched some more; I shuffled forward some more. Jasmine, who was at her usual spot, seemed as unhappy to be there as most of the travelers. I tried to see if she had some kind of a pattern to who got banished to where. Maybe the ones to the right were truly a little ruder. They were certainly more animated. Another lesson: stay docile. I watched the clock in security, which was set five minutes fast and had been as long as I’d been a regular traveler, in spite of daylight savings changes twice a year. It always seemed a little mean to me. As if standing in line wasn’t stressful enough, the clock pretended to take five precious extra minutes away. If the airport personnel could coordinate nearly a million passengers a year, couldn’t they set the right time on the clock?

  I inched closer to Jasmine. Even as slowly as the line moved, I was pretty sure I’d make it to my gate before they started boarding. That was good. But it was bad to have to block out even more travel time from this day forward. I could see they had all of the metal detectors going and a full staff, so even if it took me longer than other mornings to get to Jasmine, the TSA pre-check line looked like it was going at normal speed.

  I finally reached Jasmine. We did our ritual. She swiped, checked, rechecked, compared, and released me. I stayed friendly, yet passive, careful not to appear obsequious in case she had already grown tired of people who pretended to be friends with her. I thought about all the ways my life was good and why I could endure this. The first was easy, the second continued to grow harder an
d harder.

  Surprisingly, the line slowed now. I kept checking my pace against the other lines. We were still moving faster, so I was definitely in the correct line, but my math wasn’t working like it usually did. I kept looking at the clock and subtracting five minutes. I could still probably get to the gate before boarding, even if this took me another twenty minutes.

  A man two people ahead of me kept making phone calls. It was close to eight o’clock on the East Coast, so there’d be no stopping him now. He kept grumbling to the people on the other end about the “Godawful TSA hicks” delaying everything. He’d already missed his flight and rearranged a new one—that call was now thirty minutes old. I preferred to stay invisible, but his voice kept drawing looks from the other lines. He had a phone, a computer bag, and manicured nails. And he clearly had the TSA pre-check clearance. What was it that he didn’t understand about staying below the radar?

  By the time he made it to the table with the tubs, he was a marked man. The security people let him go through the metal detector and then immediately escorted him off away from the main security area. Even then, he was too loud and honest. What an idiot. I knew for a fact he had at least two extra hours to wait for his next flight.

  The TSA agent asked for my boarding pass and health card. He swiped the card, compared it to my boarding pass, and waved me through the metal detector. The TSA on the other side watched the reader at the top of the detector, and then he glanced at my face. He was new.

  “Ma’am, please go through again.”

  “Me?” I said, although it was a stupid question. Obviously, there wasn’t anyone behind me yet. But I had no metal on me, not even a bra with an underwire. Surely the machine wasn’t picking up on the fillings in my teeth, which, come to think of it, were porcelain anyway.

  He nodded and motioned with his hands.

  I stepped on the other side, waited for his nod, and walked through again. His eyes stayed on the top of the detector.

  “May I see your health card, please?”

  Oh shit.