Matthew Mather's Compendium

by Matthew Mather

  “What does that mean?” asked Susie, staring at the TV screen.

  As if answering her question, the analyst looked straight into the camera. “The only thing I can assume is that we’re being purposely attacked, with the only goal of inflicting as much damage as possible.”

  Susie brought one hand up to cover her mouth. Saying nothing, I sat down next to them and tried calling Lauren for the dozenth time.

  Where is she?

  5:30 p.m.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Lauren was gripping Luke in her arms, her knuckles white. When we’d retrieved him from the Borodins’, he was crying great wailing sobs. I’d tried feeding him, but he didn’t want anything. His forehead was burning up.

  “Sorry doesn’t quite cut it,” I complained. “Come on, give Luke back to me. I’ll try feeding him again.”

  “I’m sorry, baby,” whispered Lauren, speaking to Luke, not me. Her face was flushed scarlet from the cold outside, her hair a tangled mess.

  “Why the hell didn’t you answer my texts for four hours?”

  We were back in our apartment, and it was dark outside. I’d spent the whole afternoon trying to get in touch with Lauren. At half past five she’d finally shown up at Chuck’s door, asking questions about what was going on, asking where Luke was.

  “I had my cell off. I forgot.”

  I avoided asking what she’d been doing. “And you didn’t notice all this was going on?”

  “No, Mike, I didn’t. Not everyone’s surgically attached to CNN. When I found out, I rushed straight home, but there were no taxis and the Two and Three lines weren’t working, so I had to walk twenty blocks in the freezing cold. Have you ever tried running in high heels?”

  I rolled my eyes. Everyone’s nerves were on edge, and it wasn’t any use fighting. Sighing, I relaxed my shoulders. “Why don’t you try feeding him?” I said. “Maybe if Mommy tries he’ll eat?”

  Luke had stopped crying and was sniffling. Picking up a wet wipe from a plastic container on our coffee table, I tried to clean his face. He fussed and shifted his head back and forth, leaning back out of my reach.

  Lauren peered into his face and put a hand to his forehead. “He really is burning up.”

  I took another look at him. “It’s just a little winter cold.” He looked unhappy, but not that bad.

  My cell phone pinged a text message. Lauren’s phone chirped as well, and through the open doorway to our apartment I could hear Chuck’s and Susie’s phones too. Frowning, I pulled my phone from my pocket and swiped the code to open it, clicking open the new text message. It was from the NY-ALERT emergency notification service Chuck had encouraged us to subscribe to: Health Advisory Warning: Widespread infection bird flu H5N1 New York Connecticut. Highly pathogenic. Advise public stay indoors, emergency closure Fairfield County & Manhattan Financial District & outlying areas.

  “What is it?”

  Looking up in horror, I watched Lauren wiping mucus from Luke’s face with her hand, wetly kissing his bare cheek. I remembered taking Luke out to meet my clients in the days before, my mind filling with images of him getting kisses from people in Chinatown, Little Italy, all over the place. And then there was that Chinese family down the hall—the wife’s parents had just arrived from the mainland. Did I expose him to something?

  “What?” asked Lauren, her voice rising as she saw my face.

  “Honey, put Luke down for a second and go wash your hands.”

  The words from my mouth sounded strange, like they were being spoken by some alien being. My mind raced, my heart pounded in my chest. It’s just a false alarm, it’s just a cold. The irrational fear I’d felt running back from Whole Foods flooded my veins again.

  “What do you mean, put Luke down?” demanded Lauren. “Mike! What are you talking about? What was in that message?”

  Chuck appeared in our doorway, and Lauren looked up at him. I’d crossed over to Luke and Lauren, holding a blanket I’d grabbed from the couch. I was wrapping it around Luke, trying to take him from her.

  “It’s just a precaution,” said Chuck, advancing slowly into the room with his hands held out in front of him. “I’m sure it’s just a coincidence. We don’t know what’s happening.”

  “What don’t you know is happening?”

  Lauren looked up at me and, trusting but not understanding, released Luke.

  “Report of a bird flu outbreak,” I whispered.

  “WHAT?”

  “We haven’t heard anything on the news—” Chuck started to say, and then we heard the TV announcer’s voice floating in from their apartment next door. “Breaking news—reports of an outbreak of bird flu virus have just been reported from Connecticut area hospitals—”

  Lauren shot up and reached for Luke. “Give him back to me!”

  I didn’t resist. She glared at me, and I shrank back.

  “He’s right, Lauren,” said Chuck, continuing to approach her. “I’m sure it’s nothing, but this isn’t just about you or him. We’re all at risk.”

  “Then stay away from us!” She turned to me, the veins in her neck flaring. “So that was your first reaction? To quarantine your infant son?”

  “—CDC in Atlanta cannot confirm or deny the outbreak, saying that they don’t know where the warning originated but that local emergency workers—”

  “That’s not what I was doing. I was worried about you.” I waved the blanket around in the air. “I don’t know, what’s the proper reaction when a deadly virus is announced?”

  Lauren was about to unload a return salvo when Susie appeared behind Chuck. She was cradling Ellarose in one arm. “Keep calm, y’all. This ain’t no time for fighting with each other. I know it’s been tough between you two lately, but that’s gotta stop.”

  Susie walked into the middle of the room, keeping her free hand up high, palm outwards in a calming gesture.

  “Susie, I think you should take Ellarose back into—” I started to say.

  “No, no,” she objected. “If it’s done it’s done, and we’re all in this together.”

  Ellarose saw Luke and squeaked. Luke, puffy and congested, looked over at her and attempted a grin in return.

  “Let’s not go making mountains out of molehills,” continued Susie. “Luke’s got a little cold is all. This is a strange day, so let’s all calm down.”

  With her steady words, the tension began to evaporate.

  “How about I just take Luke down to emergency to make sure,” I said after a pause. “He is sick, and I don’t mind going.” I smiled at Lauren. “Just to be sure.”

  “Wait a minute, that could be about the worst thing to do,” objected Chuck. “Hospitals are the worst place to be if there’s really an outbreak.”

  “But what if he is infected?” I replied, my voice on edge. “I need to know, no matter what, get him taken care of.”

  Lauren glanced at me. “We’ll go together.”

  “I’ll go and get some masks from downstairs,” said Chuck. “You should at least wear masks.”

  Susie gave him an evil look.

  “I’m being practical. Bird flu is twice as deadly as bubonic plague.”

  “What’s wrong with you?” said Susie, exasperated.

  “No, it’s a good idea,” agreed Lauren, gripping Luke. “Get the masks.”

  7:00 p.m.

  Chuck went downstairs to raid his storage locker while we moved back into their place to watch CNN. He came back up loaded down with hockey bags stuffed with equipment and supplies.

  After setting it all down in the middle of the room, he fished around, pulling out bags of freeze-dried food and camping equipment before finding the medical masks. They looked like the ones you’d wear if you were spray-painting something. He handed them out and then went out to distribute some to the neighbors.

  Chuck tried to get us to wear latex gloves, but Lauren refused, and so did I. The idea of holding our infant son in gloves, protect
ing ourselves like he was some kind of pariah, was too much to seriously consider. If he was sick from whatever they were talking about on the news, we were already infected, so there was no sense in it. Wearing the masks was more to protect other people.

  But in the outside world, who knew? Luke probably just had a cold, and we might be walking into a mass of infected people in a hospital. It was impossible to say, but we had to be sure Luke was safe. I put some of the latex gloves into the pockets of my jeans.

  Susie went down the hall to see if Pam, the nurse, was home yet. I was hoping she might take a look at Luke, or sneak us in the back entrance of a hospital somewhere, but no luck. She and Rory weren’t home. We tried their phones, but the cell networks were completely jammed.

  While Chuck talked about how to recognize the signs of infectious diseases, dispensing advice about not touching or wiping our faces, I combed through a White Pages looking for nearby clinics and hospitals, scribbling the information on a piece of paper. I was relieved to find the phone book, stuck in the bottom drawer of a kitchen cabinet. I hadn’t seen one in years. My first impulse had been to search the map on my smartphone, but the screen remained stubbornly blank. It was getting no incoming data feed. My usual stream of messages, after a brief flood of concerned e-mails from friends, had stopped as well. I couldn’t access the Internet at all. Neither my smartphone nor my laptop would load any Web pages, or at least not anything intelligible. When I tried Google, either nothing would load and an error message would pop onto the screen, or a random Web page would appear: an African tourism site or a college student’s blog. So I scribbled on paper.

  As we left the apartment, half of our neighbors were out in the hall, talking in quiet whispers with masks hanging around their necks. They edged away from us as we walked out, mostly away from Lauren, who held Luke. The Chinese family at the end of the hall wisely stayed inside. Richard had called down for his car service to drive us, and I wanted to thank him, but as I held my hand out, he shrank away and put his mask on, muttering that we’d better hurry.

  Outside, Richard’s black Escalade and driver were waiting for us. The driver, Marko, was already wearing a mask. It was the first time I’d met him, but Lauren seemed to know him.

  First we tried the Presbyterian clinic just around the corner on Twenty-Fourth. It was listed as open, but when we arrived, people were streaming out and telling us it was closed. We circled around to the Beth Israel clinic nearby, but there was a line stretching onto the street already. We didn’t even stop.

  Lauren cradled Luke in layers of blankets, humming lullabies to him. He’d given up crying and was just sniffling and squirming. He could sense something was wrong, that we were scared.

  The warmest things we’d been able to find in our closet for Lauren were a leather jacket and scarf, and I was still wearing the thin jacket and sweater from earlier. It was warm inside the Escalade, but bitter cold outside.

  I found myself worrying that Marko would abandon us somewhere if it got too late. He must have a family somewhere too. It would be impossible to find a taxi, with all this going on, and Lauren had said that the subways weren’t working either. I tried bringing this up to Marko, but he just said not to worry, that everything was fine, that we could trust him.

  I still worried.

  The streets of New York had transformed from holiday festive to cold and desolate. Long lines of people snaked out of convenience and grocery stores and outside bank machines, and there were long queues of cars waiting for gas at the stations. People hurried down the streets, loaded with bags and packages, nobody speaking, everyone staring at the ground. None of the packages looked like Christmas gifts. New Yorkers always had the feeling that their city was a target, and now it seemed, from the hunched shoulders and furtive glances I saw on the streets outside, that the monster was rearing its head again.

  It was a collective wound that had never quite healed, affecting anyone who came here. When Lauren and I had moved into the condo in Chelsea, she’d been concerned that we were too close to the Financial District. I’d told her not to be silly. Had I made a terrible mistake?

  We stopped at the emergency clinic at the Greater New York Hospital on Ninth between Fifteenth and Sixteenth. The place was swarming with people, and not just sick-looking people, but crazy-looking ones too. The woodwork of the city was opening up. I got out and tried to talk to the police and EMTs at the entrance, but they shook their heads and said it was like this all over the city. Lauren waited inside the car, her eyes following me as I walked around trying to find someone to talk to, anyone that might be able to help. One of the cops suggested St. Jude Children’s up at Penn Plaza on Thirty-Fourth.

  I jumped back in the car.

  On the drive to Saint Jude’s, Luke started crying again, wailing now, his face red and apoplectic with each shrill scream. Lauren trembled and began crying as well. I put my arm around the two of them, insisting it would be okay. Finally reaching St. Jude, we saw there was no crowd of people outside the emergency room, so we jumped out and ran in, only to be confronted by a mass of people inside.

  A triage nurse gave us a quick inspection, replacing our masks with N95s, and we were immediately cordoned off into a set of rooms that were crammed with other parents and children. I found a chair for Lauren in one corner, next to a leaking water fountain, beneath yellowing posters about the importance of the food pyramid for young children’s health. We waited for what felt like hours. Finally, another nurse appeared and led us into an examination room, saying that seeing a doctor wouldn’t be possible, but that she’d have a look.

  After quickly examining Luke, she said it looked like a cold and that there had been no cases of bird flu in their hospital. She promised us that they had no idea what the news was talking about and gave us some Children’s Tylenol, asking politely but firmly if we could go home. There was nothing else we could do.

  I felt powerless.

  True to his word, Marko was waiting outside when we came out. The cold was intense. Opening the car door for Lauren and Luke, my hands became numb. The wind cut through my thin jacket, and long plumes of vapor spun into the air with each tired breath. A few tiny snowflakes had begun to fall. The idea of a white Christmas usually excited me, but now it felt ominous.

  On the drive back, New York was as quiet as a morgue.

  3:35 a.m.

  “I am not leaving them here!” I heard Susie shouting through the doorway.

  “That’s not what I’m saying,” Chuck replied in a quieter voice.

  Hanging back, I hesitated but then knocked. Footsteps padded toward me and the door opened, spilling bright light into the hallway.

  “Ah, hey,” said Chuck awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. “I guess you heard all that?”

  “Not really.”

  He smiled. “Uh-huh. You okay? You want a cup of tea? Chamomile or something?”

  I shook my head and walked in. “No thanks.”

  Their place, a two-bedroom apartment only slightly larger than ours, was filled with boxes and bags. Susie was sitting on the couch, an oasis in the middle of the confusion piled around her, looking embarrassed. They weren’t wearing their masks, so I took mine off.

  “You get a new mask?” asked Chuck.

  “They gave us N95s or something. I don’t know what that means.”

  Chuck snorted. “N95, ha! The one I gave you was way better than ninety-five percent. You shouldn’t have let them take it. I’ll get you some more.”

  “It’s like he’s preparing for World War Three,” Susie laughed. “You sure you don’t want a cup of something hot?”

  “Not hot, but maybe something strong.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Chuck, heading to the kitchen. He produced a bottle of Scotch and two tumblers from a cupboard. “Ice, no ice?”

  “Neat is fine.”

  He poured a generous dose into both glasses.

  “So how’s Luke?” asked Susi
e. “What did the doctors say?”

  “We didn’t manage to see one. A nurse examined him and didn’t say much except it didn’t look like bird flu. He’s got a fever of a hundred and three. Lauren’s taken him to bed and lain down with him. They’re sleeping for now.”

  “That’s good news, right? Pam came back when you were out, said you can wake her up if you want. She has a degree in tropical medicine, I think.”

  I wasn’t sure how tropical medicine might help in this situation, but I knew Chuck was trying to be comforting. It was reassuring that Pam was nearby. “It can wait till the morning.”

  “So what would you think of a little vacation in Virginia?” asked Chuck as he handed my drink over.

  “Virginia?”

  “Yeah, you know, our old family place in the hills near the Shenandoah? It’s in the national park, only a few cabins on the whole mountain.”

  “Ahhh,” I replied, the light dawning. “Time to bug out?”

  He motioned toward the TV, still on but with the sound muted. The headline scrolling across CNN was about a bird flu outbreak being reported in California.

  “Nobody knows what the hell is going on. Half the country thinks it’s terrorists, the other half an attack by the Chinese, and another half thinks it’s nothing at all.”

  “That’s a lot of halves.”

  “Glad you have a sense of humor.”

  Taking a sip from his drink, he grabbed the remote from the kitchen counter and turned up the volume on CNN. “Unconfirmed reports of bird flu have been springing up all over the country, with the latest in San Francisco and Los Angeles, where health officials have quarantined two major hospitals . . .”

  I sighed and took a big gulp of my drink. “I most absolutely do not find this funny.”

  “Emergency services all over the country are screwed, cell phone networks jammed,” said Chuck. “It’s a total mess out there.”

  “Don’t need to tell me. You should see the hospitals. Has the CDC confirmed anything?”

  “They confirmed the emergency notifications, but nobody’s been able to get in to find out what’s going on.”