by Jodi McIsaac
“Okay. Thank you. I’ll head over right now.”
I left the funeral home without even noticing whether Carol and Alvin were still there. In the car, I sent Rob a text, saying I’d be late. I didn’t want him to worry or try to come see me.
In town, hardly anyone seemed to be taking the government’s advice to stay at home. There were long lines at the gas stations, and every grocery and convenience store was overrun. I kept running through the symptoms in my mind: Was I having paranoid thoughts? Had I done or said anything bizarre? Would I even recognize it if it happened?
I pulled into the hospital parking lot. A large sign had been erected that read “Gaspereau Triage.” An arrow pointed toward the front of the hospital, where a school bus sat blocking the entrance. I got out of my car and walked toward the bus. It was hard to believe what I was seeing. Military vehicles surrounded the bus, and armed soldiers stood in clusters on either side. I stopped walking. The doctor’s note Kenneth had given me was burning a hole in my purse. I could go; I could get out of here, get back to Seattle and hunker down in my apartment. No one would know, except Kenneth.
As I stood there, a car pulled up near the bus. The back door opened, and a woman fell out, landing hard on the pavement. Then the car drove away, its door still open. A nurse wearing head-to-toe protective gear ran toward the woman, accompanied by a soldier. He was holding what looked like a snare pole used to catch wild animals.
“That is really not necessary!” the nurse snapped at the soldier. He took a step back, but his eyes were glued to the nurse as she helped the woman to her feet. The woman seemed disoriented, unsure of where she was. The nurse led her into the bus.
I couldn’t go. Not yet. If I had Gaspereau, I couldn’t risk spreading it to the rest of the world. I’m here, I texted Kenneth. Please tell me I don’t have to go into that bus.
Stay where you are—I’ll come get you, he replied.
I stood rooted to the spot, half expecting one of the soldiers to strong-arm me into the bus if I moved any closer. After a minute, a figure covered in head-to-toe blue protective gear emerged from the hospital and waved at me. I assumed it was Kenneth, but he was unrecognizable under the suit, face mask, and respirator. When I got close enough to hear him, he said in a muffled voice, “It’s going to be okay, Clare.”
I couldn’t answer, so I just followed him inside. The hospital looked different this time. Even though I knew the white walls and linoleum floor were the same, it felt as though I was entering another world. And I didn’t know if I would be coming out.
I kept my head lowered as I followed Kenneth down a corridor. No one stopped us; apparently no one wanted to get too close to anyone wearing a hazmat suit.
We entered an examination room, and Kenneth shut the door behind him. I must have been staring, because he said, “The suit’s overkill. Especially since Gaspereau’s not airborne. But it’s protocol now. Don’t let it worry you.”
I nodded and sat down on the examination table. “Please, can you test me? I need to know.” I bit my bottom lip and blinked furiously. “Have you been tested?”
The face mask and respirator bobbed up and down. “We all were. I’m fine.” He pulled some swabs and empty vials out of a cupboard.
“Is there really no cure?” I asked. “I mean, if you can test for it, why can’t you cure it?”
He stared down at the vial in his hand. “We can identify cancer pretty quickly, too. Maybe whatever the CDC is doing with Wes will result in a treatment. I can only hope. But I’ll make sure you know one way or another as soon as possible.”
“Have you seen Wes? Do you know where he is?”
He shook his head. “How are you with needles?”
“Fine.”
“Then this should be over quickly,” he said. He tied a piece of elastic band around my upper arm, swabbed a patch on the crook of my arm, and stuck the needle in me without ceremony. I winced and watched the vial fill with dark red liquid. After a moment, it was over. Kenneth clutched the vial in his hand. “I’ll give this to the lab now, and we should have your results within a couple of hours.”
“A couple of hours? What about my flight?”
“That’s the best I can do,” he said. “And my buddy is fast-tracking you. With the backlog we have on our hands, it would normally take a couple of days, maybe a week. If you’re all clear, you can catch another flight tomorrow.”
“If there are any seats left.” I put my head in my hands. “A couple of hours, and then we’ll know if I’m going to turn into a monster or not.”
Kenneth placed a gloved hand on my arm. “We’ll keep you safe, Clare, no matter what happens.”
“What if you can’t control it? What if too many people become infected?”
“If everyone follows the right procedures, it won’t come to that.” His eyes told me he believed what he was saying, but I wasn’t that trusting anymore.
“Is that what those soldiers out front are here to do? Make sure everyone follows ‘the right procedures’?”
“Partially,” he said. “A lot of the nurses and doctors are spooked. They appreciate the extra security. Gaspereau symptoms are so unpredictable. That’s why they moved triage to the bus outside. Easier to contain.”
“But they’ll find a cure soon, right? Then everyone will be okay. They said it’s not fatal.”
Even behind the suit and the face mask, I could see the sadness in his eyes. At the funeral home he had been warm and comforting, but here . . . he was on the front lines of a losing battle.
“A cure could take months, maybe even years,” he said. “We have a long road ahead of us.” Then he shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’m not helping things by being maudlin.”
“You’re just telling the truth. And Kenneth . . . if I have it, can you tell Wes I’m sorry? I . . . I might not be able to do it myself.”
He didn’t ask what I was sorry for. He just nodded. “I’ll let you know as soon as I do,” he said.
Then he went out, and I was left to ponder my fate. And the fate of the world.
I paced around the small room. I imagined a world of Terrys and Mr. Sweeneys and Emmas—everyone seeing things that weren’t there, hearing voices, believing their loved ones were now their enemies. A world of Weses at his worst.
I sank down in a chair against the wall. If I were infected, would I see Wes again? Would he come and visit me? When I’d visited him, years ago, in this psych hospital, I’d wanted nothing more than to leave. Had he seen it in my eyes? Would he feel the same way?
I tried to think of other things—of Latasha and Amy, of Kenneth and Maisie, of Rob . . . but my mind kept returning to Wes. Had he felt this scared, this trapped, while he was waiting for his results?
For the first time in my life, I saw my brother in a new light. I’d been living in terror of Gaspereau for just over an hour. Did he live with this same fear every day? Was he afraid his schizophrenia could take over—would take over—were it not for his daily medication regime? Did he wonder what it might make him do next? Did he second-guess every thought, wondering if it was a creation of his own mind—or a lie told to him by the disease?
I hadn’t prayed in years, but I was desperate. “Please don’t let me be infected, please don’t let me be infected,” I muttered, just on the off chance that I had gotten it all wrong—that there was a God after all, and he would choose to answer my prayers. Had Wes prayed this same prayer when he was in the psych hospital for the first time, awaiting diagnosis? How, then, did he still believe in God? What kind of God would let this happen?
And what kind of sister would leave her brother to this fate?
The thought came unbidden into my mind, driving in the truth with the force of a sledgehammer. I knew he’d been right, back in our parents’ kitchen. He had been the only one to defend me. And I had left him to rot.
It had happened ten years ago, but it wasn’t the kind of thing a person could forget.
I was as shy and socially
awkward as ever, weighed down with the crazy brother and the house full of rules, when I met Myles. He was everything I was not: popular, outgoing, and attractive. He was the mayor’s son and the captain of the college track and field team. To me, he seemed perfect. And then he somehow noticed me, sitting beside Latasha in a corner at a house party. We danced, and I felt like I was flying. He asked me out to the theater—the theater—that weekend. We went for dinner, saw a show, and drank a bottle of the most excellent wine I’d ever tasted. And then we walked.
We ended up in Cranston Park, a beautiful sprawling park with huge leafy maples and oaks and an expansive, manicured lawn. Flowers grew in orderly groupings beside decorative stones, and a white gazebo stood on the edge of a grove of elm trees, where weddings were often held. In the center of the park, a large wading pool attracted scores of toddlers in the summertime, and a nearby playground rang with the laughter and screams of schoolchildren during the day. It was a delightful place.
We sat for what felt like hours on the swings, just talking, trading stories—his were better—and taking drags off his clove-scented Indonesian cigarillos. He hung upside down from the monkey bars to make me laugh and won me over by singing “I am sixteen, going on seventeen” while dancing around the gazebo. It was the most perfect date I’d ever had.
And then, his cheeks dimpling irresistibly, Myles asked if I wanted to take a swim. It had been a hot day, and the water in the wading pool was warm. We ran and splashed and laughed, and the wine and the cigarillos went to my head and I felt faint with life and love. Then he kissed me, and at first it was so tender, so slow, I felt I might melt into him. He laid me down in the shallow water and put his arm underneath my head to hold it just enough out of the water so I could breathe between kisses.
And then he raped me.
He started out gentle, but the water had cleared my head, and it was only our first date, and I had rules about such things. I said “No,” lightly at first, not wanting to offend or upset him after such a perfect evening. But he persisted, and so I said “No” louder and more forcefully. And when I tried to get up, he became angry, ugly, and petulant. He let my head drop so that it cracked against the concrete bottom of the wading pool and I saw stars and struggled to lift my head out of water, gasping for breath. “C’mon, Clare, you owe me this. Stay still—and quiet—or I’ll hold you under until I’m done,” he grunted into my ear, and I panicked and swallowed a mouthful of water. I coughed and choked in his face, but he wasn’t holding my head up anymore, and my neck ached with the effort. Finally I took a deep breath and let my head rest on the bottom of the pool to give my muscles a break. I could feel him inside me, and I just prayed that he would hurry up so I could breathe again.
He rolled off me when he was done. I scrambled to my feet, surprised that my legs were still working, and started to run away—not knowing where I was going, just wanting to get away. I chanced a glance behind me as I ran. He was still sitting there in the pool, his pants around his knees, his limp penis lying waterlogged against his leg.
“Call me, or I’ll kill you!” he yelled, and I turned my back to him and kept on running.
Everything that happened after that is very vague in my mind. I put those memories behind a wall in my mind, along with all the other things I don’t like to think about. I do remember arriving back at home, soaking wet, and ignoring my mother’s questions while I locked myself in the bathroom and spent the next hour in the shower, trying to expel all remnants of him from my body.
A few weeks later, once I worked up the nerve, I walked alone into the downtown police station. I made a statement, but the officer gave me a strange look. And then he asked me if I really wanted to lay charges against the mayor’s son. Looking me straight in the eye, he threatened to slap me with mischief charges if it turned out I’d made it up. I just shook my head and left.
Then I told my parents, thinking they might help me. But they brushed it off. They told me I was probably exaggerating, and besides, they had always advised me to only date “nice Christian boys.” If I’d listened, this never would have happened. And we didn’t have the money to get involved in some legal brouhaha. They didn’t even ask for his name.
I knew now, in hindsight, that they had been under a lot of stress with Wes, that they probably hadn’t been equipped to handle yet another crisis in their family. But at the time, hearing those words, being so casually dismissed by the people who were supposed to love me and take care of me . . . it was more than I could take. I walked out of the house, stumbled down the middle of the road, and finally sat down on the curb outside a three-story yellow Victorian with white window shutters. I made the decision, then and there, to leave Clarkeston as soon as possible, to never look back. To never need anyone again.
But Wes believed me. I didn’t tell him the details. No one knew those. But I started to cry when he asked me how it went with “preppy boy,” and he gently teased the truth out of me. I begged him not to tell anyone, said I just wanted to forget about it, and he promised, albeit reluctantly.
A few days later, one of my friends told me that the mayor’s son had been mugged the night before while leaving a bar. According to the gossip raging around campus, he was fighting for his life in the hospital.
When the police showed up the next day, I didn’t have to ask why. Even then, Wes wasn’t hard to pick out of a crowd—he already had several tattoos, and his hair was bright blue. True to his promise, he didn’t tell them why he’d chosen to beat Myles to a pulp that night. He had looked the police officer straight in the eye and said, “Demons.”
“You don’t have to say anything until your lawyer arrives,” the officer had cautioned him.
“I don’t need a lawyer. I have the Lord Jesus Christ on my side. And I tell you, that boy was full of demons.”
After almost a year of lawyers and psychiatrists and judges, Wes avoided criminal charges and was sent to Riverside Psychiatric Facility. That whole time, he never spoke a word about what had really happened.
But I never forgot how it felt to be trapped.
I stopped pacing the hospital room and sat down again. If I had believed in God, I would have tried bargaining, but I knew it was hopeless. There wasn’t anything to do but wait. It was quite possible I wouldn’t get a second chance to right all my wrongs; that they would lock me in a room, or keep me strapped down for months or even years . . . And that was assuming a cure would ever be found.
But if I did get a second chance, I knew I had to take it. Wes was the only one who had believed me, the only one who had come to my defense. And I had abandoned him again.
For the first time since I had arrived back home, I let myself cry. I knelt down on the cold, hard floor and wept for my parents, for Wes . . . and for myself. I wept because I had allowed that one horrible night to turn my heart into stone, because I’d shut out the person who needed me most.
I had no idea where Dr. Hansen and his colleagues had taken Wes, when he would be released, or what kinds of tests they planned to do on him. But I’d seen the terror in his eyes as they dragged him away. His voice echoed in the empty room around me as I clutched my face in my hands: Clare! Help me!
I will, I promised him. If I get out of here, I will find you.
If.
I would not be on that flight even if I could.
The two hours had come and gone, and still Kenneth had not returned. I finally called Rob to explain where I was. He wanted to come see me, but I told him to stay as far away from the hospital as he could. I sent Latasha a text, telling her I wasn’t coming home that night after all. I’d explain the rest later. After crying myself dry and evacuating my bowels in the tiny adjoining bathroom at least five times, I lay on the bed, limp with exhaustion.
A knock at the door made me sit bolt upright. A nurse opened the door slowly, but she didn’t come inside. “Clare Campbell?”
“Yes,” I whispered. Where was Kenneth?
“Dr. Chu asked me to tell you that you
r results won’t be ready until morning.”
“Where is he? Is he okay?”
“He’s busy with other patients,” she said. “He said to apologize and suggest you get some sleep. I’ve brought you some extra blankets, but I’m afraid you’ll have to stay in this room until your results are in. I also have some over-the-counter sleeping pills for you. Dr. Chu thought you might need them.”
She set a small plastic bag, a bottle of water, and two blankets down inside the room, then made a hasty exit and closed the door. I padded across the room and examined the two pills in the bag.
“Thanks,” I muttered, before tossing them down my throat.
I was groggy the next morning when the door opened and Kenneth came in. He no longer wore his hazmat suit, and he looked a little unsteady on his feet.
“Good morning,” he said, closing the door behind him.
“Hi,” I managed to squeak out, sliding off the bed. I couldn’t ask the question, so I just waited.
He responded by pulling me to his chest. “You’re fine, Clare,” he said. “Your test was negative. Perfectly normal.”
I sank to the floor, and he came with me. I sat limply on the linoleum tiles. “You’re okay,” he said over and over again, his arms still around me.
I’m okay, I repeated to myself, barely able to believe it. “Thank you,” I finally managed to say.
“My pleasure,” he said. He got to his feet and held out a hand to help me up.
“Have you been working all night?” I asked.
“Yeah. Just finished. Going home to get some sleep now.”
“You deserve it. I’m going to find Wes. I should never”—my voice hitched—“have let them take him like that.”
