Plague of the Dead
By
Alli Rayfield
Chapter 1
I could feel my cellphone vibrating in my pocket. I knew it was Adam calling which made it less appealing to answer. He was just mad because our daughter, Jackie, was feeling ill when I left and he couldn’t dump her off on the neighbors, ruining his normal Wednesday plans. I was aware of what he had been up to when I was at choir practice, even though he thought he’d been so sly about it.
I could’ve answered the phone though because we hadn’t even begun practice, even 15 mins into our allotted time. The pianist and choir director were having a dispute over one of the arrangements. They didn’t fight often but when they did it was epic and very little got done during their battles.
“You’re completely out of your mind or just tone deaf,” I heard Polly, our pianist, say.
“Are you really that arrogant to think you know better than me about this,” Lisa shot back.
“I’m not but you are.” Polly stated.
“Why can’t they just get along? We’re in a Church for sobbing out loud.” Lauren said to me, sitting back down after visiting the bathroom. Her bright blue eyes rolling as she shook her blonde head.
I shrugged, “it’s just some stupid power struggle. They have no power in their day to day lives so they’ve got to be in charge here.”
Lauren giggled. “Thank God I wear the pants at home; I’d hate to act like that every other week.”
I laughed along with Lauren.
“So Shelly, how are Adam and Jackie doing?” Lauren asked as it became obvious that we weren’t going to be getting any singing done.
Almost as if on cue, I felt my phone vibrate again indicating that I had a message from Adam.
“Well, Jackie wasn’t feeling very good when I left so Adam’s taking care of her,” I said, then added the lie, “other than that, they’re good.”
She nodded, “is Jackie alright?”
“Yeah,” I said. “She just said she felt funny. She didn’t have a fever or anything. Honestly, I think she just wanted me to stay home. She’s going through a phase were she wants me to stay home with her all the time. Daddy’s not good enough.”
“Sara went through a phase like that. It drove me crazy. I mean no matter how much we love them, sometimes we need a break, just a little time to ourselves.”
I nodded in agreement, “exactly. Excuse me a moment.”
I decided to go ahead and listen to the message just in case I was wrong about Jackie faking it. I really didn’t think I was though considering she had no symptoms to speak of. She just kept saying she felt funny. She said that last Wednesday too. Well last week she said she felt weird and I decided to miss practice. In ten minutes she felt better, like nothing had bothered her at all.
That’s how I figured something was going on with Adam though. He went to take a quick shower because he was going to play poker with some of the guys. While he was in the shower, his phone buzzed with a text message that said “I’m so hot for you. When are you coming? And more importantly when am I?”
I was in complete shock and didn’t say anything to him. I decided to wait to confront him until I knew what I was going to do about it. Finally I had come up with a plan. I was going to take Jackie with me to my sister’s in Arizona but I had to wait until her roommate moved out and coming up with the money wasn’t easy. A flight to Arizona from Guam wasn’t exactly pocket change. My sister offered to buy the tickets so Adam wouldn’t notice the charge on the credit card, which I originally declined but it became more tempting the more I stewed in my anger.
Though, the charge wouldn’t cause any suspicion from Adam considering that we’d been stationed on Guam for about a year and I’d never gone that long without seeing my sister. He wouldn’t think anything of me not asking him to go either since him and Cate didn’t get along.
I went outside to listen to my message. After going through a bunch of messages that had to be deleted since they had been on my phone too long, I finally got to my “one new message.”
“Hey, Shell, I’m taking Jackie to the ER. She’s running a fever of 105.2. I don’t know what happened but all of a sudden she just started burning up. You don’t need to leave early; I’ve got it under control. Just meet me here when you’re done.”
Panic shot through me. Panic and shame. I’d thought Jackie had been faking it. How could I be so blind to my own child’s needs? I took a few deep breaths and looked at the clock on my phone. There was more than twenty minutes to go but we hadn’t practiced at all. I figured if they weren’t going to be respectful of my time, I didn’t need to be respectful of theirs.
When I went in Polly and Lisa hadn’t let up on their stupid argument. I told Lauren that I needed to go because Adam had taken Jackie to the ER.
“Oh, dear. I hope she’s all right,” Lauren said sweetly.
“I’m sure she will be,” I said as I got my purse and headed towards the door.
Little did I know my daughter would never be the same.
Chapter 2
My journey to the hospital was a complete blur. I couldn’t remember the drive to save my life but I knew it was a miracle I didn’t get stopped or in an accident. A ticket wouldn’t have been the worst thing but the precious time it would’ve taken from me getting to my beloved Jackie would have been
