David Walton - The Genius Plague

“Yes, I was hoping to reach Maisie Berquist,” Paul said. I slipped out into the hallway to give him some privacy. With nothing else to do, I visited the bathroom. When I returned, I was surprised to see that he was already off the phone.

“Your girlfriend doesn’t want to talk to you anymore?” I said. I was going to add a jab about the challenges of long-distance relationships, but I stopped when I saw his face.

I couldn’t really say he had gone pale, since he was already as pale as a living human being could be. But his expression had the kind of shock in it that made me think the blood would have drained from his face even if he hadn’t been sick. “Are you okay?” I asked. “Should I call a nurse?”

He opened his mouth and paused, as if his lips and tongue wouldn’t obey his instruction to speak. He bit his lip and swallowed. Finally, he said, “She’s dead.”

I stared at him. “Maisie? What happened?”

“Fungal infection, just like me.” Paul’s voice was even, but there was a sharp edge to it. “I talked to her sister. Maisie started coughing on the plane, apparently, but she didn’t seem as dramatically sick as I did—no blood, no passing out. By the time she started coughing hard enough that they were worried, she was at home. They called 911, but the ambulance didn’t get there in time. She was gone”—he took a shaky breath—“before the EMTs even arrived. Her lungs stopped working, and she couldn’t breathe. Her sister tried to make it sound more peaceful than that, but I could tell it was pretty horrible.”

I put my hand on his arm, too shocked to know how to respond. “I’m so sorry,” I said.

“I barely knew her. We met five days ago.”

“Still,” I said. “You went through an ordeal together.”

“She was so strong. She ran triathlons. She was healthier than I was.”

I shrugged. “Sometimes that doesn’t tell the whole picture. Maybe she had some other medical problem, something that made her susceptible.”

“I can’t believe it,” Paul said. “She lived through a terrorist attack and a fifty-mile trek through thick jungle, only to die at home of a lung infection.”

His breathing was faster, more labored. “Take it easy,” I said.

“It should have been me. I was the one picking up mushrooms all the time. If somebody was going to die of a fungal infection, it should have been me.”

I stood by his bedside, impotent. “Do you know when the funeral will be?” I asked, falling back on practicalities.

“It doesn’t matter. Even if I’m out of the hospital by then, I wouldn’t go. It’s too far, and nobody there knows me. I’m not even a friend, not really.”

“Maybe not. But you survived together.”

Paul’s voice drifted, as if he were somewhere other than the Baltimore Washington Medical Center. “Only she didn’t,” he said.

I could always tell which of my parents had cooked any dish. My mom was an Iowa farm girl who grew up in a town of five hundred people, most of whom still lived there. She learned to cook from her mother and favored beef and potatoes and everything-in-a-pot casseroles. My father didn’t learn to cook until he was stationed in Brazil and had a more adventurous bent. The dishes he made were all Brazilian, a mix of indigenous and Portuguese flavors, which almost always featured rice and beans. There was even a Brazilian expression, arroz com feijão —rice and beans—that meant commonplace, everyday. For me, it was comfort food, and eating it felt like home.

Incredibly, the ability to cook was a skill my father still retained, although my mother always watched him carefully while he juggled hot pans over the stove. He had cooked for so many years that making familiar dishes was automatic to him, requiring no recipe or measuring cups. Somehow, those neurons had escaped the strangulating plaques and tangles so far, though I had no doubt they would eventually succumb.

When I finally came home from the hospital, my parents were there, having driven back from New York when they heard about Paul. It was, by then, one o’clock in the morning, but everyone was famished, so Dad heated up some shrimp bobó over rice and we all shoveled it down.

“So Paul’s going to be okay?” Mom said.

“Physically, I think so,” I said. “The doctor said the worst was past. Emotionally, I don’t know. He tried to call Maisie while I was there. Apparently she got the same infection he did, only she died of it.”

Mom gasped and put a hand over her mouth.

Dad looked confused. “Who’s Maisie?”

“The other survivor,” Mom said. “The young woman Paul rescued and brought safely through the wilderness.”

She said it patiently, matter-of-fact, with nothing in her voice to suggest that my father should have remembered that detail.

“Paul’s taking it pretty hard,” I said. “He says it’s not a big deal, that she didn’t really mean anything to him, but I don’t believe him. He’s having trouble coming to terms with the fact that she’s dead, and he’s still alive. Out of all the people on that riverboat, he’s the only one who made it.”

“We’ll go visit him in the morning,” Mom said. “There’s no worry, then, for Paul? That he might… ?”

She meant that he might die, too. “The doctor I talked to didn’t seem too concerned. She said we should take it seriously, make sure he took his antifungals. But I don’t think his life is in any immediate danger.”

“Well, then.” Mom slapped her hands on her knees, closing the subject. “Enough talk of death, then. Charles, we should show Neil pictures of his new niece.”

Dad looked startled. “Did you take any?”

“No. That was your job.”

“I don’t have a camera,” Dad said.

“You have an iPhone, dear. And you did take pictures; I saw you do it.”

I scooped another helping of shrimp. “Julia sent me some pictures of Ash already,” I said. “She’s a cutie.”

“Bald as a ping-pong ball,” Dad grumbled. “And what kind of name is Ash? Ash? That’s the black stuff you dig out of a fireplace. It’s no name for a child.”

“It’s a perfectly lovely name,” Mom said. “Girls named Ashley are called Ash all the time.”

“But her name isn’t Ashley,” Dad said. “Ashley wouldn’t be strange. There are thousands of good names out there; why does she have to get creative?”

“Be nice,” my mother said. “She’s your granddaughter.”

“It’s my daughter I was complaining about.”

Mom was beaming. She had a granddaughter, and Paul was safe, and Dad was actually responding appropriately, bantering with her like he used to do. I finished the last of my shrimp bobó and eyed the serving bowl, wondering if I would regret taking a third helping. I decided to risk it. “I was hoping to visit Julia this weekend,” I said. “But my car…”

“You can take mine,” Mom said.

“Are you sure? You don’t need it?”

“Your father and I can make do with one car for one weekend. Take it. Julia will be happy to see you.”

My father argued good-naturedly with me about the best route to take from Baltimore to Ithaca. It was about a five-hour trip regardless, but my dad was convinced you could shave a few minutes off if you went up Route 81 through Wilkes-Barre and Binghamton. It was the sort of argument he excelled at—meaningless and impossible to prove—and even before his Alzheimer’s, he had loved to debate a subject endlessly without worrying about reaching a resolution. The fact that he could actually remember the names of the roads made me smile. It was always surprising what things he could bring to mind and what things seemed out of reach.