by Sabina Green
I knew she was right. According to healthcare workers, nobody displaying any symptoms should be going out into the public. They’d kick us out of a taxi in less than two minutes.
She sat down and I felt a stab of anxiety, seeing how much effort it took. She looked me in the eye and for some reason, I got nervous.
“I’m sick, Dad,” she broke the silence.
My stomach clenched up in knots. It was obvious that she was sick, her voice being so hoarse, the way she coughed wildly day and night. But I knew for certain that she wasn’t talking about some flu now. She wouldn’t have needed to point out the obvious.
“Cancer,” I thought immediately. I didn’t want to say it out loud, but my body didn’t let me decide. “It came back?”
“It has nothing to do with cancer. Well, not really,” she shook her head. “It’s something else.”
I frowned, and just to be sure, asked: “You mean the flu then?”
“This isn’t any flu, Dad,” she said and started coughing. It took several minutes before she could take a breath again. “It’s a deadly virus. I… I’m dying.”
I decided to ignore that last word, even though it was ringing through my head, louder than anything I’d ever heard. “A deadly virus?”
“Pneumonic plague. Highly infectious and aggressive. I guess they call it the flu on the news because they don’t want to cause panic. Not that it’s working very much…”
“How can you know that what you have is this virus, and not just a regular flu? You haven’t been to the doctor, or had any tests done, nobody can confirm that.” I tried to stay calm and rational, but I guess I wasn’t doing so well, because my voice grew agitated.
She closed her eyes for a few seconds. “Nor can they deny it. I… I’ve got it right from the source.”
“What do you mean?”
She took a deep breath and the gurgling wheezy sound that came out of her throat made me shiver.
“I got infected in Perth,” she said. “I got the virus from a…. a confirmed case.”
I got up and made a few steps back without realising. Some sense of self-preservation must have kicked in. I couldn’t… no, I didn’t want to admit that what Connie was telling me could be true. But clearly I’d believed her enough to have two strong impulses fighting for dominance, be close to her and comfort her, and also protect myself and Ruby.
I immediately regretted the retreat, because Constance’s eyes filled with tears. There were so many questions screaming at me, fighting for attention.
“Did you know this when you flew over to us?”
She nodded and whispered, “I had to see you one more time.”
I froze with shock. Looking out of the window, I saw Ruby, my innocent, helpless granddaughter, happily playing in the sandpit.
“How could you do it to her, Connie?”
If I was in her shoes, would I be able to stay away from my family? I tried to convince myself that I would… while the doubt and the hesitation flowed through me.
“She won’t get it, Dad,” Constance said, and for the first time in this conversation, her voice wasn’t pleading, uncertain or broken.
“How can you know that?”
“She’s immune,” she said as firmly as her weak voice and unstable breath allowed. “Just like you.”
Tik tok tik tok. The clock on the wall kept ticking away in the quiet of the room while I tried to make sense of this information, feeling Connie’s eyes fixed on me.
“A moment ago you said that the virus is highly infectious and aggressive…” I didn’t want to argue, or try to persuade her that Ruby and I are just as vulnerable as she is, perhaps even more. Ruby was a child and I was approaching sixty. Weren’t those two of the most vulnerable categories? Small children with limited immunity and elderly citizens whose immunity wasn’t what it used to be?
“You were vaccinated.”
She must have been delirious from the flu. It was the only explanation I could think of.
“How could we be? The infection only started a few weeks ago, nobody knew what was coming. Vaccines for new illnesses always take time…”
I tried to gently contradict her without staring at her like she’d grown a second head. After that she started talking about some Collective and the Environmental Protection Association and I suddenly thought–not completely irrationally–crazy people don’t know they’re crazy. But then I was ashamed for thinking this way about my own daughter. But the longer she talked, the more I was starting to feel like the craziest person in the room was me.
Could I have been going mad?
Nothing she was saying was making any sense, it was ludicrous. I must have been the one who’s delirious, or maybe this whole crazy conversation was just a dream.
Connie
I couldn’t keep it all in anymore and told him everything. Words poured out of me like a waterfall and with every one of them my voice got higher and higher. I thought sharing the weight on my shoulders with another person would make me feel relieved, but that wasn’t the case. The weight only doubled, now that it was joined by Dad’s pain. It crushed my limbs, my chest, and my willingness to live. It wrapped itself around me, enveloping my body in a tight cocoon, robbing me of breath.
While I was frozen in place, completely incapable of any kind of movement, I watched Dad’s reactions. At first he looked like he wanted to run away, then his face paled as if he’d faint.
“How could you agree to this?” he whispered in a broken voice. The disappointment in his eyes nearly killed me.
“I had to make sure that you’ll be alright. That you’ll survive…”
“You could have survived too. There must have been a way!”
He was lying to himself and he knew it, he’d heard me talk about the rules about pairs of survivors, made up of a child and an adult. To stop him thinking that I could have suggested myself in his place, I laid out the last reason for my willingness to do whatever The Collective wanted.
“If the plague didn’t get me, it would be cancer anyway, Dad. It came back. The doctor gave me half a year to live, I wouldn’t make it to next summer. It’ll be better if you stay with Ruby…”
The dams broke and tears ran down our faces. How could our conversation last only forty five minutes when to me it felt like we’d been talking for days? Exhaustion and devastation gripped me in iron clamps. My throat was getting tighter and tighter and I was shedding tears while coughing violently.
And Dad… he was crying harder than I’d ever seen him. I wanted to hug him and comfort him, but I didn’t have the strength to. The virus was a prison and a thief, robbing me of precious time and the ability to comfort the one person who’d always, under all circumstances, been there to comfort me.
That moment, Ruby ran into the room, covered with sand, cold, but completely happy. “I’m hungry!”
Her cheerful words seemed almost morbid in the tense moment between Dad and I. He got up quickly and disappeared into his bedroom. I understood his need to be alone, pull himself together, take in the new information… but his departure still hurt me.
Which was ridiculous, because this had been happening for some time now. I just selfishly didn’t want the moment to ever come. Why had I even told him anything? I could have gone on pretending I got the plague like everyone else, that his and Ruby’s survival of the world-wide apocalypse is just a coincidence, pure good luck.
I shook my head. I wasn’t used to lying to him, not even when I was a moody teenager. It was a miracle I even made it this far without telling him about the cancer, being introduced to The Collective, and releasing the plague.
Sooner or later he would have found my letters and discovered the truth.
I wiped my face with a tissue, blew my nose and tried to look as normal as possible, when Ruby entered my sphere of vision.
“Your
dinner’s on the table, sweetie. Could you bring your plate over here?”
Walking with her all the way to the dining room was another impossible challenge for my weakening body. I was hoping that Darlene would forgive me for the sandy footsteps Ruby was leaving behind. But it wouldn’t take that long for Darlene to stop caring about the house being tidy.
“Where’s Grampa?” Ruby asked as soon as she sat down next to me, a plate of spaghetti Bolognese balanced on her knees.
“Lying down, he wasn’t feeling well. He’ll be ok tomorrow.”
“We named you Constance, because you’ve become the constant of our lives.”
I don’t know why Dad’s words came back to me. It could have been because soon I wouldn’t be anybody’s constant anymore. Dad would become the safe harbour and loyal companion to Ruby and to others. I envied them. I’d had him all to myself for almost twenty seven years, but it wasn’t enough. I wanted at least twice as much. More, even.
I focused on reading aloud Ruby’s favourite books. She was ecstatic that she didn’t have to take a bath even though she’d spent the day running around outside, and put a finger to her lips in a conspiratory gesture, promising to keep the secret from Grampa, who would have definitely chased her into the bathroom. Her laughter rang through the house like a bell and I laughed with her, not out of happiness, but to hide just how much I longed to succumb to the despair eating me from the inside.
By some miracle I crawled to the bed on all four and turned it into a game of sloths, which Ruby awarded with another round of laughter. She changed into her pyjamas while I drank an enormous dosage of cough syrup. Then she settled next to me and I was thanking the heavens that, despite being robbed of so many things, I was blessed with another evening when I could watch my daughter fall asleep.
I could have looked at the calm little face and two half-moons of long thick eye lashes until dawn, but sleep took me.
Frank
The door closed behind me, but I still couldn’t block out the voices coming from the living room. Connie was somehow keeping it together and talking to Ruby. I had to cover my ears to block their voices out, because listening to the two talking to each other was unbearably crushing.
The current nightmare was suddenly replaced by a twenty-three year old memory of picking up my inconsolable four year old daughter from the police after my wife had died. I could still remember the helplessness I felt, looking into Connie’s broken face. I couldn’t bear to see her suffering and wondered desperately how to explain to her that she wouldn’t see her Mum again.
I put together an explanation that only a small child would believe. Connie nodded, her eyes were huge and glinting with tears. She promised she understood what I was saying. And yet, every half an hour she would ask: Where’s Mummy? Evenings had been the worst. For months on end she would wake up in tears. I wasn’t any better. We’d started falling asleep in the same bed, and staying in it until morning, despite child psychologists’ advice not to. Didn’t they understand the need for another person’s presence, the solace it could bring when words simply weren’t enough?
Who could have known that I’d have to go through the same thing again with my granddaughter while my daughter was on her deathbed?
I couldn’t stay in the bedroom all by myself. Not after I’d just found out that my time with Connie is so limited. I took one of the various armchairs from the living room that fit through the door frame and pushed it all the way to my daughter’s bedroom. It creaked but neither of them woke up.
I sat with them the whole night, like a guardian watching over his wards. I was falling asleep just to be woken by my own dreams, Ruby shifting on the bed, or Connie coughing. The cough was getting weaker and weaker, turning into a quiet crackle.
How long would she be able to breathe effectively? What if she didn’t make it to the morning? The thought terrified me so much that I let out an involuntary howl.
Connie opened her eyes. “Dad?” she said, which I only knew because of her moving lips. There was no sound coming out of her besides a small hiss.
She coughed and I flinched, but not as much as she did. Even just listening to the sound, it was clear that this simple action caused her a lot of pain.
“Do you remember what it was like when your Mum died? How unhappy you were, crying all the time?”
She nodded.
“When you’re not here, your daughter will suffer just as much as you did. Is there a way to change it?” I pleaded. “Can’t you do something? Get these people to give you a vaccine?”
“I can’t, Dad,” she wheezed; her voice totally destroyed by the incessant coughing. “This was the only way… to save you both.”
I didn’t want to torture her anymore, I knew there was no point in rebuking her for anything. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and I wanted madly to find some tiny possibility amidst this catastrophe, anything to get Connie at least those few extra months she could spend with us, if it wasn’t for the plague. I couldn’t just give up on her. Christ, she was my daughter! My child, the only thing I had left after Penny.
I took Constance’s hand and patted it softly, the way I saw women show affection to their children. Why hadn’t I done it more? Every week, every day?
“I love you very much, Connie. You’re everything to me, you and Ruby. You know that.”
The corners of her mouth lifted into a smile that was all she had the strength to do. “I love you too, Dad.”
It was a farewell, and we both knew it. She blinked frantically and I put my head on our joined hands. I tried to get rid of the tightness in my throat, I didn’t want her to hear me cry again. Don’t go yet, I thought and squeezed her firmly. As if I could keep her by my side, protect her from the outside forces, by holding on to her tight.
The day hadn’t even started yet, it was just getting light, and I felt like I’d been there for a hundred years. I watched Connie go back to a deep, dreamless sleep, exhausted by our conversation. My granddaughter was breathing calmly, and I suddenly felt the need to take my mind off it all. I couldn’t just keep sitting still. I went to the kitchen to make coffee, and started sipping on it as soon as it was made, never mind the burnt tongue. I was willing to suffer any kind of physical pain, just to escape the hopelessness for a moment.
Without thinking, I reached for a remote and turned the TV on. I knew the morning news wouldn’t bring anything good, but I still couldn’t make myself look away. Like a masochist.
“Health Authorities have confirmed that the new disease targets the respiratory system, and once it reaches a certain stage,” the newsreader paused and coughed quietly into her hand, “it’s incurable. Hospitals across the country continue to report a rising number of deaths. So far, mainly among risk groups, the elderly and those suffering from asthma and other lung diseases. Unfortunately, cases have also been reported where the new virus caused the death of young, healthy people, and even children.
“The origin of the virus is still unknown, but the situation suggests it was deliberately released into the public. We are therefore asking all citizens to practice social distancing and remain in their homes as much as possible. If you notice you are displaying any symptoms…”
I shook off my stupor and quickly switched the TV off. I returned back to the armchair and watched my daughter’s chest, I needed to make sure it’s still falling and rising. Of course Connie was trying to save the world by helping the environment in any way possible. There was really nothing surprising about that. As a teenager, she joined protests while her peers hung around shopping centres and threw popcorn at each other in the cinema. But why did she now have to do all this at the expense of her health?
I had no idea how long I would have sat there, maybe all the way to the end, if Ruby didn’t wake up and demand attention, breakfast, and entertainment. She knew that Mum was sick, and I didn’t want to explain just how m
uch. So I acted like everything was fine, and looked after my granddaughter as usual. No rush.
Ruby had never been too keen on TV, and her modest collection of toys didn’t entertain her for long either. She demanded a walk around the farm, and although I would have much rather sat with my daughter, I gave in.
“Alright then, come on, Connie,” I said and took the girl’s hand. Only then did I realise my mistake. I was so absorbed in my memories that I sometimes struggled to separate the present from the past. “I mean Ruby.”
“You’re a bumbler, Grampa,” she giggled. She eagerly walked outside with me, and just like the day before, although this time without Darlene’s assistance, we walked around the farm, talking to the animals, petting the fallow deer and cuddled the farm dog.
I’d forgotten the dog’s name. I stared numbly into the black and white fur, but it didn’t come back to me. I looked up and scanned the farm, nobody was around. How was Darlene doing? Hugh must have been too ill to leave the bed. He’d already been so pale when we got here. Was Darlene now lying next to him, delirious and feverish?
A hundred percent infection and death rate. Connie’s words were coming back to me with an incredible intensity. Two to three weeks, that’s all she had after the virus injection. The day after tomorrow it would be three weeks, but could I be sure that, with her shallow breathing, she’ll make it through two more nights?
Connie
It had been months since I found out I would have to die soon. But now, staring death in the face, I wished I could go back in time and choose between the virus and the cancer. I could have borrowed another six months with my family. Sure, it might not have worked out, the vaccines were limited and trying to steal one would mean taking away either Ruby’s or Dad’s future. But I could have tried to survive some other way. Isolate, not go to any of the places where I could become infected.
I let that fantasy envelop me, it was the only way to hold back the despair, waiting by the side of my bed, ready to lunge at me. I imagined telling Dad about everything I’d learned from Mark, straight away. Taking the vaccines and then moving to New Zealand with my family before the plague was even released, living out the remaining three or four months of my life with them in a hermetically sealed bunker. Underground, far from anyone else, untouchable, uninfectable.