“You told grandpa that you were sorry that you couldn’t do it. What did you mean?”
Jackson eyed the GoPro strapped to Jax’s chest and contemplated the candidness of his response.
He should know. He should know everything.
Jackson thought back to the day in the doctor’s office and began to chronicle what happened there, his face hard, rigid like granite.
“The doctor was sitting with his hands folded in front of him on his desk. No emotion at all.”
Jax could see his father become lost in the painful story he was telling, strangely monotone.
“He said it couldn’t be diagnosed with certainty without an autopsy of the brain. But he said grandpa already had all the symptoms. ‘Stanley,’ he said to grandpa,” Jackson said now with rising emotion. ‘Can you understand what I’m telling you?’”
“What is it?” Jax asked, feeling an energy seeping from his father’s pores, though just as fast as it appeared, it began to fade away.
“Have you heard of dementia?”
“Yeah. Old people get it, right? Like Alzheimer’s?”
“Yeah.”
“Is that what grandpa has?”
“Kind of. What he has is a little different.”
“How?”
Jackson thought about how much his father has changed since that day in that doctor’s office.
“You saw how he is now?” Jackson asked.
Jax nodded.
“He looks really sick now. No control over his own body, he can barely move. Can’t talk. When he was first diagnosed, he was still really strong. He did all kinds of crazy things. He could talk and we thought he was losing his mind.”
“What did he do?”
“For starters, he spent all of his and Grandma’s savings behind her back. Gambled it away. He wouldn’t have ever done that before he got sick.”
“Oh.”
“I think the stress she felt taking care of him contributed to… Grandpa was a handful.”
“Yeah?”
Jackson nodded. “He accosted strangers, always confusing them for people he knew. He scared the hell out of this one lady who was coming out of the bathroom at a restaurant where we were eating. He thought she was his cousin who lives out of state.”
“I think I remember that.”
“You were pretty young. He was so smart before. A walking, talking encyclopedia.”
“I remember he was always doing the puzzles. He solved them fast.”
“Yeah. He loved those. He could talk about anything, with anyone. As he got sicker, no food was safe around him.”
“I remember he ate all my warm chocolate pudding that one time. And he didn’t use a spoon.”
“I remember that. He stuffed everything he could find in his mouth and then would choke on it. The pantry and fridge had to be locked. He couldn’t be taken out in public after he started grabbing the breasts of any woman near him.”
“Whoa. That’s awkward.”
“You think? So was the first time I had to change his diaper.”
Jax didn’t say a word, but the look on his face spoke volumes as he pictured the imaginable.
“So was the first time I helped Grandma clean the poop he had pulled out of his diaper and wiped all over the wall. He got it all over himself. I had to put him in the shower and clean him up. It was the first time I saw Grandpa without any clothes, but it wasn’t the last. I spent hours trying to clean the wall. It had to be repainted.”
“Man. That’s so gross.”
Jackson nodded. “He did a lot of gross things. He couldn’t help it. He was sick.”
“What about what you said to him today? What couldn’t you do? You kept saying it.”
Jackson travelled even deeper into his memories of the past.
“The day we were all told what Grandpa has, in that doctor’s office, he didn’t believe it. ‘There ain’t a damn thing wrong with me you expletive quack,’ he said and stormed out of the doctor’s office. I had to talk to him outside for a few minutes and practically drag him back in there.”
“We all tried to get him to understand what he was facing, but he wouldn’t hear any of it. After a while, it wasn’t possible to communicate with him at all. He wasn’t able to form a single complete word. The decline was tough. You have to remember we are talking about a man who spoke before the legislature about one of his many noble causes for over two hours a decade earlier. Now he couldn’t say anything.”
“What are you sorry for?”
Jackson deliberated for a moment. “Your Grandpa was stubborn.”
“Like you?”
Jackson grinned a little.
“Sure. Runs in the family I suppose. Before he lost his ability to communicate, Grandpa told me he wanted me to put him in the ground before that ever happened.”
“Huh?”
“End his suffering.”
“Grandpa wanted you to kill him?”
“Yeah. He said it right in front of the neurologist, and Grandma, and your mom. The sad thing is, his doctor suggested that wasn’t a bad option given the nature of the illness. He said it would be a slow, awful transformation, otherwise. Until death. He later backtracked and said he was kidding.”
“Is Grandpa suffering?”
“I don’t know. I don’t see how he couldn’t be.”
“You feel bad because you didn’t do it? You didn’t kill Grandpa?”
“Yes,” Jackson replied without any hesitation as he rubbed the scar on his right shoulder. “He begged me one night while I was keeping an eye on him while Grandma went to the store.”
“What happened?” Jax asked, watching his father rub his shoulder repeatedly, for no apparent reason that Jax knew.
“‘I need you to kill me,’ he said as he stomped into the kitchen. ‘End this before it’s too late.’ He drew a steak knife from the block. ‘Take it. Open your hand and take it’. He kept saying it, demanding it while he tried to put in my hand, but I refused to take it. ‘Take it, God damn you!’ he yelled, just before he lost it and stabbed me in the shoulder.”
“Oh God!” Jax exclaimed as his father continued to rub the spot with his left hand while he drove on with his right hand gripping the top of steering wheel. Jax lifted his dad’s sleeve to expose the scar. “That’s where he stabbed you?”
“Yes,” Jackson replied as he put both hands on the wheel and stared straight ahead, remembering. “He had this wild look in his eyes, like a rabid dog. I didn’t even recognize him for a second. I pulled the knife out of my shoulder and wrestled him to the ground. I had him pinned down and thought about plunging that steak knife right into his forehead. I swear I was just about to do it when blood dripped all over his face. My blood.
“He looked so scared. So confused. I yelled at him, kept screaming at him to ask why he did that. I don’t think he even remembers doing it. His brain was already turning to mush.”
“What did you do?”
“I dropped the knife and broke down crying with my face buried in his chest.”
Just like at the nursing home, Jax thought.
“‘What? What is it, Jackie?’ he asked me. I couldn’t hurt him. He was still my dad. I could still see him in there as he kept asking me what was wrong, oblivious it seemed to what he just did to me. I looked into his brown eyes. Could see his soul. I held his hand. His wedding ring still shined on his finger.”
“It wasn’t his fault.”
“I know.”
“He didn’t know what he was doing.”
“I know. You are wise, young padawan.”
Jax smiled.
“I remember the first time I really realized that. The first time I realized I couldn’t blame him.”
“When?”
“I walked into Grandma and Grandpa’s house one morning after a couple busy days at the university. I hadn’t been able to call or come by in a few days. I called out to them as I opened the front door, but there was no answer.
“I found Grandpa swing
ing away in his favorite rocking chair in the living room. He loved that rocking chair so much. He looked like he had transformed since the last time I saw him just a few days earlier. He had broken some of his teeth. His hair wasn’t combed, and it seemed longer than he ever wore it, curling up in the back. He wouldn’t ever stay still long enough back then to get a haircut.
“He looked like a wild animal, not human anymore, especially when he smiled that big smile for no reason at all, with all his broken teeth showing. All but a few of them are gone. He didn’t realize his wife of thirty years was lying dead on the kitchen floor.”
Jax grimaced, stunned. “You found Grandma?”
Jackson nodded. “I should have ended his life that day. All I had to do was shove enough pills down his throat to make him sleep forever. No one would have questioned it. I couldn’t do it.
“I didn’t even know how to handle Grandma’s death. I put him in the nursing home that night, and then buried Grandma two days later. The strangest feeling came over me at the funeral. Grandpa wasn’t there. He couldn’t be. Not the way he was. I felt like I was standing outside of myself. I should have taken his life before it came to that.”
“Isn’t that murder?” Jax looked truly confused.
“I guess that depends on individual perspective. Like most things in life.”
“Do you think about doing it now? Helping Grandpa die?”
“Yes, but it’s too late now. He’s going to keep wasting away and die in that damn, piss-smelling nursing home. And there’s nothing I can do about it.”
Jackson focused on the GoPro.
“Is that thing still recording?”
“Yeah. It has been.”
“Good. I want what I’m about to tell you to be on record. Listen close to me, son.”
“Okay.”
Jax was taken off guard by his father’s tone. He sounded different, like someone he didn’t know. A juggernaut.
“If something ever happens to me, like what has happened to Grandpa. I want you to do what I couldn’t do.”
Jackson looked back at the old rifle and back at his son.
“I want you to put one in my heart,” he said has he put his hand over his chest. “And one in my head,” he continued as he pushed his index finger into his forehead and moved his thumb down as he made a shooting sound.
Before either of them could say another word, the sight of a large dear running across the highway caught their attention. The red Gremlin twenty yards ahead of them swerved to miss it, but failed, smashing into the back half of the picturesque animal, launching it into the middle of the highway where it laid motionless.
The Gremlin veered off the highway and turned side over side down the steep embankment.
“Hold on!” Jackson yelled as he smashed the brakes and slowed the fishtailing Chevy into to the emergency lane while the deer stood and walked wobbly back towards the woods, leaving a bloody trail behind.
Chapter 11
“Wow,” Jamie said to Franco in the conference room, with her blue eyes opened wider than he had ever seen them. They finally disconnected from the emotionally draining series of conference calls, one after the other, consuming their entire day thus far. She stared at the long, redwood conference table in disbelief. “This is crazy, Franco,” she continued. Stunned.
Franco looked and was tired, more tired than Jamie had ever seen him since her office shared a wall with his.
“I know.” He sounded defeated. “You see now why I needed you here today. I hated to make you come. I hope Jackson…”
“I know,” she interrupted. “It’s fine.”
“I had no choice.” He looked so sad. Jamie could hear the somberness growing richer in his voice.
“I know, Franco. It’s okay.” She put her arms around him. “I got to see him this morning.”
They hugged each other for a moment. After they released, Franco hung his head as if he felt shameful.
“Are you okay, Franco?”
“No.”
“What is it? Talk to me.”
“It’s all of this! What the hell is this thing, Jamie?”
His frustration bounced off the conference room walls.
“I’m not sure, as much as I hate saying that. I think I should to drive over to the CDC and see these affected patients myself.”
Jamie read the entire dossier repeatedly and still had no idea what the illness was, though she conjured up plenty of grandiose ideas, as did the people on all the calls she and Franco had after the first one. Even the non-response federal agencies that had people on the calls, folks who had no idea that anything called CFv1 existed, conjectured the invasion of every monster famed by Hollywood.
“Why the hell else would you be asking for the entire country to be sprayed with commercial bug juice over the next 24 hours?” one contractor had asked in his pronounced New Yorker accent. “By the way, we don’t have nearly enough in stock right now to cover Manhattan, let alone the entire state of New York. We’ll have to order it, which will take time and money because the volume you're suggesting would have to be made-to-order.”
She wanted desperately to disprove them all, as well as herself.
“What do you hope to gain from that?” Franco asked.
“I need to see exactly what their condition is and the results of all the tests that the CDC has conducted, whatever they are. Something isn’t making sense to me. In fact, a lot isn’t making sense to me.”
“I think that’s a great idea. None of this is making any sense to me either.”
“Okay. I’ll head over there now.” She stood from the table.
Franco did the same. “You need to be careful with this Bigsby character.”
Jamie paused, standing at the table. “Why do you say that?”
“I don’t know. I don’t like him. I know that.”
“Why not?” Jamie asked curiously, sounding as if she felt the same way, which she did.
“I don’t know. Just got a bad feeling about him. I don’t trust him.”
“Feels like he’s holding something back, doesn’t it?”
Franco nodded. “I planned on asking you to go to the CDC to check things out for that very reason. This whole thing has had me on edge since last night. I wouldn’t admit this to anyone else, but Christ, I’m scared, Jamie. Really scared.”
“I get it, Franco. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a little scared too. Bigsby and the CDC report suggest this contagion could wipe out the entire human race from existence.”
“That’s what I’ve been hearing since last night. What do you think, Jamie? Do you agree?”
“Based on this report, I believe that it certainly could become that serious, as any easily transmissible disease could be if not properly contained. We’ve come close to that outcome enough times already in human history. We can’t ignore the threat.”
“We have? Come close to extinction?”
“Sure.”
“When? How?”
“The Spanish Flu killed around one hundred million people by 1919, many of which were young, healthy adults. Historians believe it ended World War I and could have killed everyone on the planet but for a random mutation that severely weakened the virus.”
“Really? I had no idea.”
“Most people don’t. Another example: as long as we have rats on the planet, we will still have cases of bubonic plague year after year. Then there’s SARS, which is making a comeback that no one ever discusses. These things never disappear, Franco. They just hide and evolve.”
“Old Darwin’s theories again.”
Jamie chuckled. “Evolution is no joke. Life and death. White cheetahs don’t survive in the wild, no matter how much faster they run.”
“Could this CFv1 be SARS then? An evolution of SARS?”
“It certainly could be, but there are so many unknowns here. We need to get more answers before we jump to those kinds of conclusions. The report is very interesting, but the number of known infecte
d individuals hasn’t even reached fifty yet. That’s a far cry from one hundred million. There’s 7.4 billion people on Earth, Franco. I don’t think we need to worry about the end of the human race just yet. Let’s just take our time and be methodical for a minute.”
Franco exhaled as if the weight of the world just fell off his shoulders. “You always make sense. You know I trust you more than anyone in the world, don’t you?”
Jamie halfheartedly nodded. “That means a lot to me. Let’s just take this one step at a time. Deal?
“Deal.”
“Good. What do you plan to do next?”
Franco looked at his watch.
“Until POTUS officially declares a national state of emergency, I guess we can’t publicly announce the mobilization of aid, or turn all the hotels and schools into quarantined safe zones.”
“Too many questions.”
“Right.”
“We can’t answer them yet.”
Franco nodded exhaustingly. “I’m really hoping you can change that after your visit.”
“I’ll try my best.”
“I know you will. We really need to know what type of assistance is essential. Mobile care units are already standing by in New York City and Los Angeles. And here in Atlanta.”
“Here? Why? There are at least fifty more populated cities than Atlanta. What about Houston or Chicago?”
“I don’t have any family in Houston or Chicago. And neither do you as far as I know.”
Jamie frowned as she sat back down, though she understood.
Franco followed. “The CDC is so focused on identification of infected subjects and containment right now that they are leaving people at risk. What about meds for those who are sick? Vaccines for loved ones of those exposed? Can doxy or Cipro cure it like they do for Anthrax? I’ll feel better after your visit. I’m not taking any chances with the people I care the most about in this world in the meantime.”
“I understand.” Jamie rose again from the table and moved towards the door. “I’m leaving after a quick stop at my desk.”
Franco stood up as Jamie stepped towards the conference room door.
“Call me as soon as you have some answers. Please. I won’t feel right until we do something besides talk about this thing. We need action.”
And We All Fall (Book 1) Page 10
