Jubal stood outside the bathroom door for several minutes. He expected to hear Fiona’s sobs, but she made no sound.
Finally, he tapped his knuckle on the door.
“Fee?”
She didn’t answer.
“Fee, I’m sorry. I…I’m an ass. It’s so hard to act like I’m strong when I’m so goddamned scared.” He swallowed. That had been a tough thing for him to say. Now that he had, he felt better. Fiona loved him. She would accept him just as he was. After all, she had known him longer than almost anyone.
Actually, he realized, she had known him as long as anybody left alive.
“Fiona, did you hear me? I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
The voice was very small and came from a place near his knees. He pictured her sitting on the bathroom?oor, her head against the door.
Jubal leaned against the wall and slid down until he was sitting by his side of the bathroom door.
“I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m just stupid.”
“You’re not stupid. You’re a guy,” she said, as if that explained everything. Jubal supposed it did.
He pressed one side of his face against the door, hoping it was near Fiona’s. “Fee, we’ll get through this.”
“Don’t.”
“Just listen-”
“No, Jubal, you listen to me.” Her voice sounded on the edge of tears. Before yesterday, Jubal had seen Fiona cry two or three times in?fteen years. Now the sight and sound of her sorrow had grown too familiar. “I know you want to save me. To save Serenity, I suppose. But pay attention to what I have to say. Are you listening?”
“Yeah.” He pressed harder into the cool wood of the door, dreading what she was going to say, yet needing to hear it.
“You can’t save me. You can’t save this town. You need to leave. Just get in the car and drive somewhere else. Try to?nd a place where this disease hasn’t reached.”
“What? Fiona…no. We’ll stick it out together. I’m not leaving you.”
“You have to, Jubal.” She spoke slowly and clearly, as if addressing a child. Somehow that made her words sting even worse.
“It’ll be okay. You’ll see.”
Through the two inches of oak, Jubal heard her sigh.
“Don’t lie to me, Jubal. You’ve seen the blister on my neck, and now there’s one on my leg. Whatever this is, I have it. I’m sick.”
“No!” Now he was the one who was near tears. Again.
“I know it’s hard to hear, baby. But it will go easier if you accept it.”
Jubal turned the doorknob. It was locked. Still, he rattled it several times.
“No. You’re not going to die. We don’t know anything about this thing. Maybe it doesn’t kill everybody. Look at me, Fiona. I feel?ne.”
“I know,” she said. “And I think you’re right. Maybe it doesn’t affect everyone the same way. Like any other disease, it progresses at different rates in different people.”
He latched on to that. “See? You might-”
“And some are probably immune to it. I think one of them might be you.”
He opened his mouth but nothing came out.
”Jubal?”
His?rst thought was one that would haunt him for the rest of his life.
It won’t kill me. I’m going to live.
He felt the guilt slam down as if it actually had weight.
“You can’t know that,” he managed to get out.
What if it was true? What if he was immune to this awful plague? Would life without his friends and family be worth a good goddamn? Could he go on without Fiona?
“I know it, Jubal.” She began to cough, and while it wasn’t as wet or drawn out as the sounds Renee and Damon had made, it wasn’t a sign of good health either. When the coughing?t ended, Fiona said, “I don’t know how to explain it, but something is changing inside me. I can tell you’re?ne. You stand out like a splash of color in a black and white drawing.”
Jubal decided that Fiona must have a fever. She was starting to talk crazy. Of course that meant the stuff about him being immune was just bullshit. The brief disappointment he felt was enough to tighten the screws on the guilt.
He had to get her out of the bathroom and put her to bed. Maybe get her some Tylenol to bring down the fever. He thought there were antibiotics in the bathroom from that ear infection his mother had suffered through last year.
“It would have been a nice wedding,” she said.
Jubal stood up and moved to the small curio cabinet his mother kept in the hall.
“Still will be,” he said.
“I would have loved Egypt.”
The airline tickets were in the desk in his bedroom, but Jubal couldn’t dwell on that now. He felt like a mountain climber hanging by one hand over a bottomless precipice. If he allowed himself to think about everything that was going on-and how it was likely to end-then he just might think about putting the business end of one of the shotguns in his mouth. He could never do that to Fiona.
“Egypt will still be there when we get to it, Fee.”
He opened the drawer at the bottom of the cabinet and felt around.
“Sure, it’ll be there,” she said. “Full of plague victims and the dead army.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“Where are you going, Jube?”
He knew she meant why had he moved away from the bathroom door, but he couldn’t help but think of the question from a larger perspective.
Where was he going? Where Fiona was. That’s all that was important now. He had to keep them alive for another day, another hour.
His?nger touched something thin and metallic.
Got it.
He removed the bobby pin, black and shiny in the hall light. His mother had kept it in the drawer after a couple of moody pubescent episodes on Jubal’s part.
“Get away from the door, Fee.”
“What, you’re gonna shoot it open?”
The bobby pin had been bent into one long metal strand. Jubal slipped one end through the small opening in the doorknob and felt a satisfying click as the lock disengaged.
He opened the door and saw Fiona standing in the dark bathroom. Illuminated only by the hall light, she looked as sallow and insubstantial as a ghost. He thought he saw the shadows of small eruptions across her forehead and cheeks. He didn’t look too closely.
“Where did you learn to pick locks?”
“I used to lock myself in here when I was a kid. It’s how Ma and Dad got me out. Besides, it’s not a lock that’s really designed to keep anybody out.”
“I never had someone pick a lock for me before.”
“Come on,” he said, offering his hand. “Let’s go to bed.”
She smiled. It was a?eeting expression, gone as quickly as it appeared. “That’s the best offer I’ve had all day.”
And the rest of the day, they made slow, passionate love. Jubal made a point of caressing Fiona’s neck to show he was not disgusted by her illness-to show that despite it all, he really cared about her and always would. But after a while, he no longer had to make a point of it. He was lost in the depths of a love so strong that nothing
