by Glenn Cooper
Brian’s balled-up fists relaxed at the sight of his brother.
“Hey, man. We want you to go into Ma and Pa’s room tonight? Will you do that?”
“Brian. Brian.”
“That’s right, bro. You’re Brian and I’m Joe. It’s all good, man. Let’s get you set up with the others, okay?”
Brian seemed to be concentrating hard before saying, “Joe.”
“You nailed it. I’m Joe. That’s Pa behind that stupid towel.”
Joe took Brian’s hand and led him to the bedroom where he became agitated at the sight of the others and began shouting things that didn’t make sense.
“Put the TV on,” Edison suggested, and Joe did, switching channels until he found one that didn’t say, Channel Not Available. It was a fishing show and a wriggling bass on a line calmed Brian down like a charm.
They locked the door from the hall with an old brass key and had a brief discussion about feeding them.
“Wait till I get back,” Joe said. “No one’s going to die of hunger in the next couple of hours.”
It was first light when Joe arrived at the hospital. The ER doors were still locked, but this time, no amount of banging was drawing any attention. He went around the building, trying all the entrances before returning to the ER. While he was fogging the glass sliding doors with his breath, a side door opened and a nurse in scrubs and a surgical mask ran out toward the parking lot.
“Hey,” he called to her. “I can’t get in.”
“Hospital’s closed to new patients,” she said.
“What about the old patients?”
“There’s some staff staying to take care of them.”
He thought fast and lied. “My wife’s in there. She’s supposed to get out today.”
“You’ve got to wait for her to call you later on.”
“She did call me. Last night. She’s ready for discharge. If you let me in I can run up and get her. We’ve got a baby and I’m at my wit’s end.”
She shook her head until she made a decision. “Okay, but you can’t go in there without a mask.”
She took a fresh one from her purse, put it onto the grass, and backed away from him until he picked it up and put it on. He followed her to the side door, and she let him in with her key card.
He wandered into the ER, which was quiet and empty, and found a directory. The patient rooms were on the second floor. The elevator left him off in between two wings. He flipped a mental coin and chose the blue ward. Fewer than a quarter of the patient rooms were occupied—the hospital had been discharging as many patients as possible. He stopped at one door where a small, dark-skinned man with a stethoscope was bent over an elderly patient.
“Excuse me, are you a doctor?”
The man straightened himself and said, “Yes, can I help you?”
“Yeah, you can. Could we talk?”
The badge on his scrub shirt said, Dr. Sanjay Pai. He too wore a mask.
In the hall, Joe told him he needed help with his family. “I’ve got four of them with the sickness,” he said.
“Where are they?” the doctor asked.
“They’re at home in Dillingham.”
“That’s probably as good a place for them as anywhere. There’s nothing we could do for them here even if we were accepting patients. The public health department closed us, you know.”
“Yeah, but they need medicine or something. They’re real confused.”
“As far as I know, there’s no medicine for the syndrome. If the state public health department or the CDC gives us a recommendation on treatment, then we will certainly implement it.”
Joe’s frustration boiled over. “Still, you’re a doctor. You see, I’m no doctor. My pa’s no doctor. I want you to take a look at them and see what you can do.”
“You want me to go to Dillingham?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s impossible. It’s completely out of the question.”
The doctor stared at the big chrome-plated pistol that appeared in Joe’s hand from thin air, as if the young man was a magician.
“No, it’s possible. I want you to fill a bag with medicines and come with me. And don’t make a fuss.”
Halfway to Dillingham, the doctor finally spoke through his mask.
“From the information we’ve been given, this is a viral infection caused by a type of virus for which there is no therapy. The drugs we have won’t do any good.”
Joe kept his eyes on the road, the pistol stuck between his thighs. “Well, you’re just going to have to try.”
Edison was waiting on the porch.
“I brought a doctor,” Joe said.
Edison saw the gun in his son’s hand, but didn’t say anything about it.
Joe looked at Edison quizzically. The way his father held himself, the crookedness of his mouth—there was something terribly wrong.
“What happened?” Joe asked.
“There was an incident.”
Edison demanded that Brittany stay behind in the living room. Upstairs, the subject of the incident was lying motionless on the hallway runner.
“Jesus Christ!” Joe shouted, running to Brian’s side. “Doc, you’ve got to help him!”
Dr. Pai knelt beside Brian, pulling gloves from his pocket before gently parting blood-matted hair to palpate his skull. He shone a pen light. He placed a stethoscope.
Under the circumstances, he seemed disinclined to exude compassion and simply said, “This man is dead.”
“What the hell happened, Pa?” Joe said.
Every part of Edison from the neck down was shaking. “I was downstairs when I heard Delia screaming. I ran up. I found—”
Joe pressed him. “Found what?”
“I found Brian on top of her on the bed, for fuck’s sake.”
“What do you mean on top of her?”
“He was raping her, okay? Your brother was raping your own mother.”
Joe put his hand to his forehead and began breathing hard.
“I couldn’t get him off of her. He was grabbing on to her too tight. I couldn’t roll him off and he wouldn’t stop what he was doing. And she was screaming—oh man, she was screaming, and that got Seth and Benjie screaming too. I didn’t know what to do. I just wanted him to stop. So, I got your old Little League bat I keep under the bed. I hit him on the shoulder and that didn’t stop him, so I hit him again and dragged him out.”
“In fact, that stopped him,” the doctor said. “His skull is crushed. Let me see the ones who are alive, so I can go.”
Delia and the two boys in the bedroom were all in their own orbits, not interacting with one another.
“Hello, I’m Dr. Pai,” the doctor said, entering the room.
At the doorway, Joe was crying, shifting glances between his dead brother and his mother on the bed. She was disheveled, her nightdress almost to her waist. There was a glistening, red stain on the bed, the size of a pie plate.
“You couldn’t pull her dress back on?” Joe said to Edison.
“She wouldn’t let me near.”
Benjamin—spooked at the new, masked presence—ran into the bathroom, his sanctuary space. Seth was rocking himself, wedged on the floor between a corner and a dresser. The doctor approached Delia and asked if he could have a chat. Her response was a high-pitched whimper.
“Mrs. Edison, could you tell me where you are?”
Edison piped up irritably, “She don’t know that.”
“Pa, would you let the man do what he does?”
“Where are you?” the doctor repeated. When there was no response he pointed at Edison and asked, “That man. Who is he?” He tried again with a pen. “What is this?” Suddenly he clapped his hands and she flinched at the noise. “Well, she can hear me.” He took the stethoscope from around his neck and asked her if he could listen to her chest. When he got a step closer to the bed she began to scream. “I don’t think I’ll be able. Did she have a fever or cough?”
“Maybe a
little,” Edison said.
“Let me try this one,” the doctor said, turning to Seth.
He too failed to give answers to rudimentary questions, but he allowed him to lay his stethoscope on his chest.
“He’s got a pneumonia.”
“Is that part of it?” Edison asked.
“As I understand it. These are the first patients I’ve seen with the syndrome.”
“How come? I thought it’s all around us?” Edison asked.
“I’m a hospitalist. I only see in-patients and we closed the facility after the first reports from the CDC.”
Joe was taking Brian’s death hard. He managed to speak through the secretions filling his mouth and nose. “How come we’re not sick?”
“I’ve no idea. Perhaps you, your sister, your father, have some natural immunity to this virus. Perhaps you’ll be sick soon. This is a new disease. There are no answers. Do you want me to bother looking at the boy in the bathroom?”
“Check him out too,” Joe said. “Then give them all the antibiotics you brought with you.”
“As I told you, they will do no good, but I am happy to give them pills to prevent you from shooting me. You’re not going to shoot me, are you?”
“I’m not shooting you,” Joe said. “When you’re done here you can go ahead and drive my truck back to the hospital and leave the keys on the visor.”
The doctor disappeared into the bathroom. They could hear him asking Benjamin the same questions as the others, then heard him say, “Let me have a look at your mouth, young man.”
He returned to the bedroom and inspected the stained bedspread.
“What?” Edison said.
“The boy in there. He’s got blood on his mouth. However, there is no injury to the area.” He gestured toward the bed. “You see this smear here, arising from the puddle of your dead son’s blood?”
Joe and Edison had a look.
“I believe the boy in the bathroom was licking the blood. Have you fed him and the others recently?”
A stone-faced Edison said he had not.
“Well you might want to do that. I believe he is hungry.”
18
Mandy felt as if she was being led to her own execution. A week ago, if asked to help end someone’s life, she would have looked around for the hidden camera because obviously, she was being pranked in a sick way. But now, Rosenberg’s request didn’t seem out of order. A virus—her virus—had softened the ground under her feet and she felt herself sinking.
Since Camila’s home health aide stopped coming, it had been left to Rosenberg to care for all the biological needs of a woman in a vegetative state who was paralyzed and largely non-communicative even before the virus. No one else was coming to help. Not now. He couldn’t bear the thought of her suffering through dehydration and starvation if he too got sick.
When Mandy crossed the threshold into the darkened bedroom, she saw what he was up against. The room had a strong, sickly odor despite his best efforts to keep her clean. She wondered if he kept the lights low so that he would only see her in shadows. Her twisted contour under a thin blanket told the story of muscle contractures following the stroke. Her face too was misshapen. One cheek was hollow and deep as a coffee cup. Her eyes were closed, the lids glued by secretions. It was impossible to know what she had looked like before her stroke, but from the framed photos in the living room and Rosenberg’s paintings, Mandy knew she had been beautiful once with an easy grace.
It wasn’t murder, she told herself. It was mercy.
“I’m going to use a pillow,” Rosenberg said. “Obviously I’ve given it some thought. If I had narcotics, I’d use them. You don’t have any, do you?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Oh well. There’s no other way I could stand doing it. With a pillow, I won’t have to look at her.”
“Why do you need me for this, Stanley?” she said in a tiny voice.
“Well, I’ll tell you. The idea of doing it alone seems barbaric. Doing it in the presence of another person, a good person—I think it makes a difference. Having a witness makes it feel like it’s a more reasoned and rational act. Does that make sense?”
“I think it does. Do you want me to just stand here?”
“Yes, there is fine. And afterwards I’ll need your help getting her down the stairs. Do you mind if I say a prayer first?”
“I thought you said you don’t pray.”
“I said I normally don’t pray. This isn’t normal.”
He clasped his hands at his waist and lowered his head and, standing over the bed, said in Hebrew, “El malei rachamim, shochayn bam’romim, ham-tzay m’nucha n’chona al kanfay Hash’china, b’ma-alot k’doshim ut-horim k’zo-har haraki-a mazhirim, et nishmat Camila, she-halcha l-olamah.” Turning to Mandy, he said, “It means: ‘Exalted, compassionate God, grant perfect peace in Your sheltering presence, among the holy and the pure who shine with the splendor of the firmament, to the soul of our dear Camila, who has gone to her eternal home.’ The tense is wrong because she hasn’t gone yet, but to my knowledge, there’s no prayer for what I’m about to do, and I can’t exactly consult a rabbi, can I?”
He finished the prayer for the soul of the departed and picked a pillow off a chair.
“Are you ready?”
Mandy wasn’t sure if the question was for her or his wife, but she said she was.
“Camila,” he said, “you know I cherish you. We had a wonderful life together, a heck of a good run at the tables. I’m sorry it’s come to this, but I hope you forgive me, and I hope I’m doing the right thing. I love you.”
With that, he pressed the pillow against her emaciated face.
The struggle was briefer and feebler than Mandy expected. The woman could only fight back with one non-paralyzed arm and one non-paralyzed leg, and those limbs were withered. Rosenberg was strong, and he pushed down hard, and his arms shook from the exertion. While he pressed, he kept his eyes closed, but Mandy knew he could hear her weak, primal attempts to live. He kept the pressure up for a full minute after her body went still and only then did he look up at Mandy.
“I think it’s over, Stanley.”
He sat on the chair with the murder weapon on his lap.
His eyes were dry, and he spoke with no apparent emotion. “Could you check?”
“I’m not a medical doctor.”
“You’re more of one than me. I don’t want to bury her alive.”
She palpated for a pulse at a limp wrist, and feeling none, she tried her neck at several places.
“I think she’s gone.”
“Think or know?”
“I think I know.”
One small huff of a laugh escaped his diaphragm, cutting the tension for a moment. Although Camila weighed about eight-five pounds, it was an epic struggle getting her down the stairs with a semblance of dignity. Rosenberg took her arms, Mandy, her legs and they laid her out on the backyard grass where Mandy saw that he had already dug a grave, identical to the specifications of Derek’s. It was only when Rosenberg finished the back-filling, patting and shaping the low mound of fresh earth with his hands, the hands of an artist, that he wept. Mandy stood vigil over his labors and knelt beside him, rubbing his back through his sweat-soaked shirt.
“Thank you.”
“I didn’t do much, Stanley.”
“You did a lot, believe me.”
“Now what?” she said.
He worked a handkerchief over his eyes. “I have no idea.”
*
Jamie made a firm decision that this would be the day he returned to his lab, but before he did, he spent an hour tutoring Emma. Although he taught medical students and house staff on clinical rounds a few weeks out of the year, he never really considered himself a teacher. The kind of teaching he was doing with Emma was, he imagined, was what special educators did with post-stroke or brain-trauma patients, or children with severe learning disabilities. Linda didn’t seem to have the patience for it, so it ha
d fallen on him to take on Kyra as well.
He was looking for objects to use in naming when he found an unopened tube of tennis balls in Emma’s closet.
He cracked the lid, releasing the vacuum seal and took out a fresh, fragrant ball.
“What is this?” he asked Emma.
She took it out of his hand, sniffed it, and then sampled it with her tongue.
He repeated the question with Kyra, who, once she smelled it, seemed to brighten considerably.
The olfactory center of the brain was in the limbic center, separate from the memory tracts blocked by the virus.
“You remember the smell of a tennis ball, don’t you, Kyra?” he said. “It’s a ball. Say ball. Ball.”
“Ball,” she said.
“Good! Good girl! It’s a ball.” He rolled another one out of the tube and handed it to Emma who showed no curiosity whatsoever. She let it fall from her palm onto the floor where it bounced only once before a hand snatched it out of the air.
Kyra now had a ball in each hand, and after registering apparent surprise at what she had done, she burst out laughing.
“Kyra caught the ball!” Jamie said. “Wow. Throw it to Emma. Like this.”
He took the third ball and gently tossed it onto the bed where it landed near Emma’s legs.
“Ball,” Kyra said, and aping Jamie, she under-handed the ball in her right hand toward Emma. This time, Emma reached with cupped hands and caught it. Now she laughed too, and threw the ball back at Kyra, much harder. It headed toward the left side of Kyra’s body and the girl’s athletic instincts appeared to kick in, because in a split second, she dropped the ball in her left hand and snagged the other. That threw both of them into hysterics so raucous, that Linda ran up the stairs, thinking something was wrong.
“Look at this?” Jamie told her. “Kyra, what is this?”
“Ball.”
He made a throwing motion and said, “Throw the ball to Emma.”
She did, Emma caught it, and Linda burst out crying, which had the effect of sobering the girls. Kyra began to cry too.
“No, honey,” Linda said. “Momma’s happy, not sad.”
*
On the drive to the lab, Jamie noticed there was more garbage on the streets. Much more. Overflowing wheelie bins lined the curbs, ready for trash pickups that might never come, and plastic trash bags were everywhere—at curbs, in the passageways between houses and apartment buildings, and in driveways, many ripped open by animals, or perhaps, people. There were few pedestrians or motorists out and about. Most houses had their blinds closed and curtains pulled. He wondered what was going on inside.
