by Mark Tufo
The front door opened and then squealed closed, and George tensed up even tighter. He hung up the telephone. "Shelley—in here!"
Shelley shuffled in, barefoot, covered in mud, her face puffy with tears. Her eyes went wide, and she collapsed down to Virginia's side. "Mom?"
"Help me get her to the bed," George said.
George got Virginia's upper body, while Shelley carried her legs. They slowly made their way to the bedroom, and then carefully laid her across the bed. She continued to sweat with her fever, and George opted to cover her only lightly.
"What happened?" Shelley asked.
George shook his head. "I don't know. She said there was a flu going around."
"Shouldn't she go to the hospital?" Shelley continued backing up until she got to the door.
"I tried. Everyone's busy."
"But this is an emergency!"
"It doesn't matter. No one's coming to help," George yelled. "And where the hell have you been?"
Shelley looked down. "I got lost."
George was in no mood to argue with her, so he simply nodded and turned away.
The thought occurred to him that he and Shelley together might be able to carry Virginia to the hospital, and then he considered that the medic shuttle would probably get there before they were able to reach the hospital on foot. He thought to call Emergency again, but thought better of it.
"Virginia?" he tried, giving her shoulder a gentle nudge. When she did not respond, grief swelled up in him and he couldn't help but cry aloud.
There was nothing he could do at that moment but lie next to her and hold her as tightly as he could. He wrapped his arms around her, helpless.
"Daddy, please come in here!" Kurt cried from his bedroom. "I'm scared! The monsters!"
Chapter 91
VIRGINIA WOKE to the frightening realization that she was not in her own bed. She opened her eyes and the room slowly came into focus. She was in the hospital. There was an intravenous needle in her arm, and fluids dripped from a bag hanging over her head. She lay in a tiny isolation room with layers of clear, split plastic walls between her and the locked door. A camera watched her.
She tried to sit up, but every muscle in her body burned and ached. She looked into the camera. "Hello! Somebody?"
She tried to think back to her last memory. Her head throbbed and her thoughts were fuzzy, but she was able to recall being in the bathroom. She had gotten sick. A black sheet had enveloped her, smothering out her thoughts, when she had tried to stand up from the toilet.
How long had she been unconscious?
She began to panic. She pulled the needle from her arm and forced her legs over the side of the bed. Ignoring the burning and weakness in her muscles, she willed herself to sit up. She slowly got to her shaky feet, fatigue tearing through her body as she struggled to hold her weight. A medical associate and his manager, both clad in biological protection suits, burst into the room.
"Calm down, Ma'am!" the manager said.
"Where am I?"
"Medical-Corp, District Hospital," the manager said. "Don't worry. You're going to be okay."
The men helped her back into the bed, and the associate recovered the intravenous needle hanging off the side. A small pool of saline collected on the linoleum, but both doctors ignored it. They seemed far too concerned with making sure Virginia stayed in bed and had the needle back in her arm.
"How long was I out?" she asked.
"A little over twelve hours," the associate said.
"Where's my family?"
"We'll need to keep you in isolation for a few days," the manager answered. "Whatever virus is going around, it's a nasty one, and we need to contain it."
"Can I get you some reading materials?" the associate asked. "Something to help pass the time?"
The room suddenly seemed even smaller. Virginia felt her body trickle with more sweat, the cold chills threatening to return. "There isn't any way I can just go home?"
The two men exchanged glances, and then the manager replied, "You'll only be here for a few days at the most, I'm sure. There's really nothing I can do about it. I'll voice your concerns to my manager, though, if you want me to."
"Don't bother," Virginia grumbled, knowing the system all too well.
"Here." The manager emptied a syringe that seemed to have come from nowhere into Virginia's arm. "A little something for the pain."
"But I don't want—" Everything became a blur, and suddenly Virginia didn't care that she was being held against her will under monitored confinement. She didn't care that most people who stayed in these small rooms only left after a date with the euthanasia machine. She didn't even care that the rest of her family could easily end up sharing her uncertain fate. Nothing mattered now but the numbing bliss that pulsed through her veins.
She didn't see the medical associate and manager leave the room. She was too busy watching little imaginary bugs scurrying across the ceiling. There were colors, too, yellows and violets moving in odd shapes and patterns, as if she were gazing through a kaleidoscope. The pain throughout her body vanished, and Virginia decided that the manager who injected it wasn't quite as terrible as she had first assessed.
She closed her eyes and watched the drug induced show, content enough for the time being. Everything slowly became dull, fading to black, and she lay in a mindless fog for longer than she could measure. Her mind took her to a field of wild poppies. The air was fragrant instead of wet and grey, and there wasn't a building or shuttle track in sight. Virginia smiled. There were no more walls. They had dissolved with her headache. There was no more hospital. There was just her and an endless field.
To her surprise, one of the poppies in front of her turned to the poppy beside it. "She'll be out for at least another hour," it began, speaking in the medical associate's voice.
"Go ahead and bring in the students," another poppy said in the manager's commanding voice.
All of the poppies surrounding Virginia turned to face her.
Virginia could hear the clicking of shoes on a hard floor, but the only movement she saw was the field of poppies rippling with the breeze.
"This patient has been kept in a sedated state for three days, and this morning she was listed non-contagious," the manager poppy said. "We've taken DNA samples, however, and unfortunately hers has turned out the same as all of the rest."
All of the poppies stared in on her as a bright light came from nowhere and shone straight into her face. She tried to turn away, her eyes watering from the light, and suddenly she realized that she was in the hospital room, surrounded by people in white coats and facemasks, with a pocket light shining directly into one of her eyes.
Virginia sat up with a gasp, and the group around her took a collective step back. Her gaze quickly shot over to those of the manager, and then she looked at the rest of the men pleadingly. "Please don't let him sedate me again! I want to know what's going on!"
"Calm down, Ma'am."
"I want to see my husband!"
"Let's worry about one thing at a time," the manager said.
"I know my rights! You said yourself I'm not contagious. I want my discharge papers now!" Virginia yelled.
"Your rights have changed," the manager said, letting the rest of the group know exactly where she now stood.
Virginia tried to get out of the bed. The manager gave a few of the others a subtle nod, and they swarmed in on her and pinned her down. The manager injected another potent sedative into her thigh, and she went limp almost immediately.
The medical manager turned to his senior associate. "Call Corporate and see if they've decided whether or not to declare the group dead."
The associate nodded then quickly left the room with meaning and importance to his gait.
Virginia could hear what the manager said, but she could barely keep from drooling on herself, let alone flee for her life. She stared up at the bugs and moving colors once more, praying that she might wake up to live another day, if just
long enough to know what exactly she would be dying over.
Chapter 92
MEDICAL-CORP SENT an associate to check the rest of the family for signs of infection. The associate gave George a small box of ashes. "Our condolences."
"They said it was some kind of virus?" George asked, pulling the box close to his body.
"A retrovirus deployed somehow by a deviant terrorist group," the associate said. "As far as we can tell, the virus isn't airborne. Still, your entire family could have been exposed to the same agent that infected her, so I'm going to need to examine all of you, search your home, and take a detailed history of the past week."
George shrugged. "A history of what? It was a week, just like any other week."
The medical associate gave George a sympathetic face. "I know this is hard for you, Mr. Irwin, but I need you to think. Did your wife go anywhere or do anything new or different?"
George shook his head, barely able to think. He clutched his arms tighter around the box, shaking his head.
"Did she bring home anything unusual? Any second-hand jewelry or make-up?"
George continued to shake his head.
"Nothing painted with a kind of messy, blue glitter?"
George froze, his mind rushing back to the previous morning. "Blue glitter?" he asked, his throat going uncomfortably tight.
The associate nodded.
George fought a disorienting moment of dissociation as he struggled to recall the details of the previous morning. "There was a card. I think she threw it in the trash." He moved toward the trash compactor, but the associate stopped him. The man donned gloves and a mask, then he picked though the trash until he found the glittery card. He bagged the compactor's full contents and carefully searched the rest of the apartment, finding nothing else of interest. He gave George, Shelley, and Kurt each a quick exam, even though none of them looked sick. After giving them clean bills of health, he ordered a seventy-two-hour in-home quarantine and left the three to grieve in peace.
No one took the news of Virginia's death well, but George took it the hardest. He couldn't help but feel guilty over not having gotten Virginia to a doctor sooner. He felt partially responsible, even though he knew there was nothing else he could have done for her. He struggled to remain composed as he told Shelley and Kurt the news.
Monday was usually egg- and vegetable-fried rice night.
No one else felt up to cooking, let alone eating, so the three simply sat at the table, trying to digest the bitter fact that the cornerstone of their family would never be returning home. The evening dragged by slowly, and when George finally turned off the lights, Kurt began to sob loudly.
"I don't want to go to bed tonight, Daddy!"
George picked up Kurt and sat him on his lap. "No one has to go to bed tonight, buddy."
Kurt continued to cry, and George cried with him. Maybe this evening was all just a bad nightmare, and they would all wake up to find that Monday hadn't yet come. George would have a tiresome day at work, Shelley would get into some kind of mischief with Charlotte, and Kurt would sit in an introverted little world of his own the entire school day, but they would get home to find that Virginia had returned and everything was actually okay.
George envisioned her face in his mind's eye. Her lips, her thin curves, that trill that came to her voice when she got really excited . . . now all reduced to an ashy box on the kitchen table. Why hadn't he said anything when he had the chance? Why had he been so selfish?
Kurt finally calmed down, although he still clung to George as if he might be going next. Shelley stared at a wall.
George was not sure how much more he was going to be able to take. His own grief was profound enough, but watching his children grieve was pure agony. The wall heater switched to low. George sat Kurt with Shelley and disappeared to get a few thick blankets, needing to be alone with his thoughts for a moment. He went to his bedroom and grabbed the blanket off the bed, and then sat down and smelled Virginia's pillow for a moment. She was still there. He knew she would fade, but for now, she was still there. He wanted to close his eyes and lose himself forever in her smell, but instead he set the pillow back in its spot and left to get blankets for Shelley and Kurt.
They huddled together by the wall heater.
He watched the two sleep, wishing that he might quiet his mind long enough to get some rest, himself. He was so tired that he felt almost numb, and yet his eyes would not stay closed. He turned to the clock and watched the night slowly pass . . . by the hour, by the minute, by the second. . . .
Wrapping a blanket around him, he got to his feet and slowly moved to his bedroom. He found Virginia's pillow once more and searched for her scent. Afraid he might soil the sweet memory of her essence with his own musky odor, he made sure not to rest his head against the pillow as he curled up beside it and allowed himself another good cry.
Chapter 93
VIRGINIA SAT among a dozen other subjects, all of whom had been held at the hospital anywhere between three days and three weeks. The small room in which all of their beds had been crammed had clean, white walls and no windows. The lights overhead were dim and gave them a rough indication of the time, turning on at dawn, and shutting off sharply at dusk. There was no way out of the room, save the one locked door by the bathroom. The bathroom, a small, white tiled room, had multiple showerheads on one side, a half-wall barrier, and two toilets on the other side. A moderately-sized sink sat along the wall across from the toilets. There were no mirrors. A single camera swept its eye back and forth over the main room.
Virginia first suspected something was amiss when it occurred to her that everyone else in the room was a deviant. Then, a shocking revelation came to her when one of the others stood, spread his arms, stared up at the camera, and yelled, "Why am I locked in here with a bunch of deviants? What are you trying to prove?"
Everyone in the room turned to the man, and his eyes went wide at the unwanted attention.
"Nothing against any of you," he said, his voice suddenly low and uncertain.
"I'm not a deviant," said a young woman sitting nearby.
Everyone else watched in silence as the two stared at one another's eyes, the impossible answer suddenly becoming painfully clear: Each had entered the hospital a common human, but would be leaving as a deviant. Would Corporate even let them leave, or would the establishment keep them all for research purposes? Medical-Corp Management gave them no indication as to how the virus had been spread, but it was clear that they were being held for Corporate research.
Most of the people there became too bitter about their situation even to converse among one another. Although they were all victims of the same crime, animosity ran thick throughout the room. They were lab rats in an overcrowded cage, and already a few of them were ready to slit throats for the sake of just a little more space.
There were two people Virginia felt she could trust, a young woman named Emily and a middle-aged man named Olaf. Emily had a pretty figure, a sweet smile, and dark, straight hair. She was a cashier associate for Food-Mart's Grocery Division, and she was engaged to be married. Olaf had short salt-and-pepper hair and a long, grey beard. He worked as a manager for Housing-Corp, had a wife of almost thirty years, and had a son who worked for Transportation-Corp. Emily and Olaf both had insight enough to realize they were in this together, and with Virginia, they discussed possible escape strategies at night, huddled behind the short wall in the bathroom.
It was morning, as they had been fed breakfast already but they had not yet been fed lunch. Virginia sat on the floor facing Emily, and the two played rummy with a flimsy, worn deck of cards. Olaf walked up and down the room, feeling out the rest of the group for potential co-conspirators. Most of them ignored him, but a couple of them grew hostile at his presence. Another older man screamed obscenities and shoved Olaf aside, while a young man threatened to knock out his teeth if he didn't stick to his side of the room.
Olaf sat down on the bed beside Virginia, his face str
ained. "Let the rest of them rot here," he muttered.
"I can't believe that guy threatened to punch you!" Emily said, making sure she was loud enough for the young man to hear her across the room.
"And I'll knock out your pretty little teeth, too, sweetheart!" the young man angrily yelled back.
Emily rolled her eyes, returning to her cards.
Everyone looked up as the locks on the door clicked open. A medical manager walked in carrying a briefcase, an armed security associate on either side of him. The door shut behind them, and he took a few steps toward the beds. Everyone went silent as they waited to hear what he had to say.
"We understand your situation is unfortunate, and we are doing what we can to keep all of you as comfortable as possible," the medical manager began. "There is a good possibility that we will not be able to reverse the virus' effects, I'm afraid. I hope you can understand that we can't just return you to your families . . . given the circumstances." The blank expression that suddenly took over his face was chilling as he continued. "Corporate has approved free euthanasia for any in here who request it." He opened his briefcase and removed a sign-up sheet. "I'll just need your signatures."
"Why can't we just go home?" a young woman cried from her bed. "I'm still me! I don't feel any different!"
"I'm sorry," the medical manager said. "Corporate has the final say on this, unfortunately, and Corporate still hasn't decided what we're going to do with all of you."
The young woman sprang from her bed and made a dash for the door.
The security associates blocked the young woman as if they were linebackers working against a three hundred-pound foe. They sent her flying, and her body hit the floor with a loud smack. She stayed down, crying, unable to move from the awkward position in which the throw had landed her. She fell silent after only a moment, going limp and still.
Emily moved to get up, but Olaf put a hand on her shoulder and held her back. "Choose your battles."
