Susan Pfeffer - Life As We Knew It

“Peter,” he said.

I shook my head. “We’re on our own,” I said. “It’s just the flu. We’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” he said, and closed his eyes. For the most horrible moment of my life, I thought he’d died, that he had stayed alive until I got back and then felt he could die. But he’d just fallen asleep. His breathing was shallow, but he was definitely alive.

I put some wood in the stove and collapsed onto my mattress. That’s where I am now. I don’t even know why I’m writing this down, except that I feel fine and maybe tomorrow I’ll be dead. And if that happens, and someone should find my journal, I want them to know what happened.

We are a family. We love each other. We’ve been scared together and brave together. If this is how it ends, so be it.

Only, please, don’t let me be the last one to die.

We’ve made it through the night.

Mom and Jonny don’t seem any better. It was harder getting the aspirin down Mom’s throat. She coughed a lot and threw the pills back up, so I dissolved them in tea.

Jonny alternates between delirium and stupor. I don’t know which is scarier.

Matt is the least sick of the three, and I really think he’ll survive. He sleeps most of the day, but when he’s awake he’s Matt.

I gave all of them aspirin and cold remedies every 4 hours and sponge bathed them and gave them alcohol rubs. It’s hard keeping the blankets on Jonny.

I heated beef broth and spoon-fed all of them. I had to hold up Mom’s and Jonny’s heads when I did. Matt was able to stay awake long enough to take a few swallows on his own.

That’s got to be a good sign.

When I went out this morning to clean the bedpan, I discovered it was snowing again. It probably started right after I got in yesterday. It was obviously dying down by this morning, but we probably got another 6 inches. Not that it matters.

I don’t have a fever. I’m tired from staying up and it’s hard to remember to eat, but I’m definitely not sick. Maybe I’m crazy, but I keep thinking if Mom and Jonny and Matt have made it this long, they’re not going to die. Linda and Maggie made it sound like everyone at the hospital died the day they got sick.

Mom’s moaning. I think I’d better check on her.

No change.

Matt’s a little weaker. Jon’s a little quieter. It’s getting harder for Mom to swallow.

There was an ice storm last night. The tree branches are all covered in gray-tinged ice.

Horton woke me up. He was yowling. I didn’t even realize I was asleep. I remember putting logs in the woodstove and lying down for a few minutes, and I must have fallen asleep.

Horton was yowling and I was coughing. Gut-wrenching coughing.

Then I realized the room was filled with smoke and we were all coughing.

I thought, The house can’t be on fire because that would just be too funny. I managed to turn my flashlight on, like I needed it to see if the house was on fire, but I didn’t see any flames.

I moved the flashlight around and saw the smoke was pouring out of the woodstove. It had backfired and was filling the room with smoke.

Smoke inhalation can kill you.

My first thought was to get the hell out of there, run outside, and breathe some real air. But everyone else was coughing, which meant they were all still alive and I had to get them out of there.

Mom and Jonny were far too weak to get up on their own. I didn’t dare take them outside. The kitchen floor was going to have to do.

I took my blankets and grabbed one off of Matt’s bed, waking him up in the process. I was half blind from the smoke, but I managed to get the blankets onto the kitchen floor. It took every ounce of courage I had to go back into the sunroom, but I did. Thank goodness Matt had enough strength left to help me pull Jonny first and then Mom into the kitchen. I told Matt to stay there, and I ran back in and got everyone’s pillows and blankets. Matt helped get them in place. He was gasping so badly I was afraid he’d have a heart attack, but he waved me off.

Next I went to the thermostat to turn on the furnace, but I didn’t hear anything go on. I remembered that Dad and Matt had jerry-rigged a battery cell to the furnace, and I would have to go to the cellar to turn it on. I went back to the kitchen where Mom, Matt, and Jonny were all still racked with coughing, and I opened the cellar door. At least the air was clear down there, but the temperature was probably close to zero and I regretted not having put my shoes on. I held on to the flashlight, and with it I raced to the furnace, took a moment to figure out what to do, and pulled the right switch. The furnace turned on almost immediately. We still had oil. I went back upstairs as fast as I could and put the thermostat at 65 degrees.

Horton had followed everyone into the kitchen so I didn’t have to worry about him. I went to the bathroom and found the cough medicine with codeine that we’d taken from Mrs. Nesbitt’s medicine cabinet. I gave Matt his first and his cough subsided enough that he was able to help me give the medicine to Jonny and Mom. I was afraid to take it myself in case the codeine put me to sleep. Instead I grabbed a washcloth and threw it into a water pot. Once it was thoroughly wet, I covered my mouth with it and went back into the sunroom.

Panic overwhelmed me. The room was filled with smoke and breathing was close to impossible. I couldn’t think what to do next. We were all going to die and it would be all my fault. I got really mad then and that pushed me into action. The first thing I did was open the back door to air the room out. There was one piece of good luck: The wind was blowing in the right direction.

I stayed outside long enough to get some air back into my lungs. Good thing I’ve been sleeping with my coat on, but even so I couldn’t manage more than a minute since I didn’t have any shoes on. Still that was enough air to get me back into the sunroom.

I tried opening the skylights but there was too much snow on top of them. I cursed myself for not having gotten on the ladder to clear them off when the snow had started, but it was too late now. I pulled the plywood off one of the windows opposite the door and opened the window. The crosswind worked and I started to see the smoke lessening.

I knew what I had to do next and that was get rid of the piece of wood that had caused the backfire. I went to the door, took a few deep breaths, then came back in and opened the woodstove.

The smoke was overwhelming. I raced back outside and grabbed a handful of snow to rub against my burning eyes. I swallowed some of the snow. Mom’ll kill me, I thought, drinking unboiled snow.

The thought made me laugh, and that got me coughing again. I laughed and cried and coughed and choked. But in spite of it all, I was damned if I was going to die and I was double damned if I was going to leave Matt and Jon and Mom like that. So I went back into the sunroom. The smoke was still incredibly thick and I thought I’d cough my lungs up. I crawled over to the stove and put on the mitts. I reached in and pulled out the smoking log.

Even through the mitt, I could tell the log was wet. Hot and wet and steaming and smoking. I juggled it between the mitts, crawled to the door, and threw it out.

The log shouldn’t have been wet. We hadn’t had that problem with any of the wood Matt and Jonny have cut up until now. I realized the stove had to be wet. Snow or ice must have fallen through the chimney and made the entire stove damp. I had to make sure the stove was dry or else the same thing would happen again. And that meant I had to get another fire going just to dry out the stove, and that meant more smoke. My whole body began to shake. It was stupid, but I kept thinking how unfair it was. Why did I have to be the one? Why couldn’t I be sick and Matt take care of me? Or Jon? He’s the one who gets to eat. Why did he have to get sick? He should be healthy. He should be the one choking to death and I should be in the nice warm kitchen, all drugged with codeine.