“How can you know that what you have is this virus, and not just a regular flu? You haven’t been to the doctor, or had any tests done, nobody can confirm that.” I tried to stay calm and rational, but I guess I wasn’t doing so well, because my voice grew agitated.
She closed her eyes for a few seconds. “Nor can they deny it. I… I’ve got it right from the source.”
“What do you mean?”
She took a deep breath and the gurgling wheezy sound that came out of her throat made me shiver.
“I got infected in Perth,” she said. “I got the virus from a…. a confirmed case.”
I got up and made a few steps back without realising. Some sense of self-preservation must have kicked in. I couldn’t… no, I didn’t want to admit that what Connie was telling me could be true. But clearly I’d believed her enough to have two strong impulses fighting for dominance, be close to her and comfort her, and also protect myself and Ruby.
I immediately regretted the retreat, because Constance’s eyes filled with tears. There were so many questions screaming at me, fighting for attention.
“Did you know this when you flew over to us?”
She nodded and whispered, “I had to see you one more time.”
I froze with shock. Looking out of the window, I saw Ruby, my innocent, helpless granddaughter, happily playing in the sandpit.
“How could you do it to her, Connie?”
If I was in her shoes, would I be able to stay away from my family? I tried to convince myself that I would… while the doubt and the hesitation flowed through me.
“She won’t get it, Dad,” Constance said, and for the first time in this conversation, her voice wasn’t pleading, uncertain or broken.
“How can you know that?”
“She’s immune,” she said as firmly as her weak voice and unstable breath allowed. “Just like you.”
Tik tok tik tok. The clock on the wall kept ticking away in the quiet of the room while I tried to make sense of this information, feeling Connie’s eyes fixed on me.
“A moment ago you said that the virus is highly infectious and aggressive…” I didn’t want to argue, or try to persuade her that Ruby and I are just as vulnerable as she is, perhaps even more. Ruby was a child and I was approaching sixty. Weren’t those two of the most vulnerable categories? Small children with limited immunity and elderly citizens whose immunity wasn’t what it used to be?
“You were vaccinated.”
She must have been delirious from the flu. It was the only explanation I could think of.
“How could we be? The infection only started a few weeks ago, nobody knew what was coming. Vaccines for new illnesses always take time…”
I tried to gently contradict her without staring at her like she’d grown a second head. After that she started talking about some Collective and the Environmental Protection Association and I suddenly thought–not completely irrationally–crazy people don’t know they’re crazy. But then I was ashamed for thinking this way about my own daughter. But the longer she talked, the more I was starting to feel like the craziest person in the room was me.
Could I have been going mad?
Nothing she was saying was making any sense, it was ludicrous. I must have been the one who’s delirious, or maybe this whole crazy conversation was just a dream.
Connie
I couldn’t keep it all in anymore and told him everything. Words poured out of me like a waterfall and with every one of them my voice got higher and higher. I thought sharing the weight on my shoulders with another person would make me feel relieved, but that wasn’t the case. The weight only doubled, now that it was joined by Dad’s pain. It crushed my limbs, my chest, and my willingness to live. It wrapped itself around me, enveloping my body in a tight cocoon, robbing me of breath.
While I was frozen in place, completely incapable of any kind of movement, I watched Dad’s reactions. At first he looked like he wanted to run away, then his face paled as if he’d faint.
“How could you agree to this?” he whispered in a broken voice. The disappointment in his eyes nearly killed me.
“I had to make sure that you’ll be alright. That you’ll survive…”
“You could have survived too. There must have been a way!”
He was lying to himself and he knew it, he’d heard me talk about the rules about pairs of survivors, made up of a child and an adult. To stop him thinking that I could have suggested myself in his place, I laid out the last reason for my willingness to do whatever The Collective wanted.
“If the plague didn’t get me, it would be cancer anyway, Dad. It came back. The doctor gave me half a year to live, I wouldn’t make it to next summer. It’ll be better if you stay with Ruby…”
The dams broke and tears ran down our faces. How could our conversation last only forty five minutes when to me it felt like we’d been talking for days? Exhaustion and devastation gripped me in iron clamps. My throat was getting tighter and tighter and I was shedding tears while coughing violently.
And Dad… he was crying harder than I’d ever seen him. I wanted to hug him and comfort him, but I didn’t have the strength to. The virus was a prison and a thief, robbing me of precious time and the ability to comfort the one person who’d always, under all circumstances, been there to comfort me.
That moment, Ruby ran into the room, covered with sand, cold, but completely happy. “I’m hungry!”
Her cheerful words seemed almost morbid in the tense moment between Dad and I. He got up quickly and disappeared into his bedroom. I understood his need to be alone, pull himself together, take in the new information… but his departure still hurt me.
Which was ridiculous, because this had been happening
