Kevin Chong - The Plague

Elyse sometimes accused him of being cynical, and this was another moment when he wished she was wrong. And yet, he was not self-aware enough to understand that his own motivations with Parsons—to prove him wrong in the most devastating fashion possible—were the same.

He looked at Castello and saw that the time was approaching. Rose struggled under her covers again, then tossed them away from her. She turned over and drew her knees to her face in a fetal position. She raised her head, her neck stretched, and started to move her eyes. New tears had filled them. Suddenly, she screamed.

The parents said something to Rieux, but he couldn’t remember what they said or what he said back. They moved around pointlessly, taking turns sobbing on one another. A nurse came into the room and they calmed themselves again.

Rose Oishi was quiet through most of the evening. Throughout this time, there had been a din of groaning and sobbing from other rooms that regular visitors had to ignore. Rose Oishi’s scream was clear as glass and had the effect of dishes crashing onto the floor of a busy restaurant and silencing the room.

When she finished screaming, she turned onto her back. It was now a little past one in the morning. Her eyes sharpened into focus and she looked at her mother and father for a handful of hollow breaths. Her fingers clutched the railing of the bed before they slipped. She arched her back, then slumped onto the bed.

It seemed like everyone around that bed and in that room had waited for her scream to end. The din in the room returned. The parents, who had braced themselves against her bed, commenced their wailing. Castello poised herself to console them.

Rieux watched Romeo Parsons, who looked up into the fluorescent lights and then back at the body of the newly deceased child. He was like Leontius in Plato’s Republic, who could not resist the urge to gape at recently executed bodies by a wall. “There, ye wretches,” he says, addressing his own two eyes, “take your fill of the fine spectacle!” Each time Parsons’ eyes returned to the dead girl, the more they dimmed. Rieux did not need to tell him that this child was not responsible for her own death.

The doctor realized what it meant to have never had children. He had wanted them with Elyse and knew they would consume his life. But the love parents had for their defenceless children was still an abstraction for him. Parsons, by contrast, had children. Rieux already knew that. But he would have known just by looking at Parsons’ face then.

The mayor turned to Rieux and spoke in a froggy voice. “I’ve passed your test,” he said. “Let me know when the first shift begins.”

The vaccine was introduced to the public through a stubbornly icy last half of January. It was heralded by health officials as a turning point, and in the end statistical evidence would support the claim. In the meantime, confusion ensued after its release. Death counts spiked in that period. Half the citizens thought the inoculation wouldn’t work. They believed it would hasten their deaths or that it was a part of one of many conspiracies. The other half of the population, who submitted to vaccination, viewed it as the end of their troubles. They found themselves in four-hour lineups and got visibly upset when clinics began their days without supplies.

Raymond Siddhu watched these developments from home in his pilled bathrobe. He subscribed to his old newspaper and tried not to read their articles like a former employee or a competitor would. Opening the door each morning to get the paper from his front step was his only exposure to the world outside his house in the three weeks since he’d returned home.

He had become, as he feared, a stranger to his own sons. When they were reunited at last, Ranjeet bawled at the sight of him and Ravinder did not make eye contact. When Uma went out to the gym or the mall, he watched the boys until they were tired of being watched. He’d turn his back to get more blueberries from the refrigerator and they would burble back to life. He wished he hadn’t given his yo-yo away.

Siddhu traded bowls of ice cream for smiles and hugs. He let them watch TV beyond the rationed time allowed by Uma and stood in front of it until they spoke to him. By the end of the third day, they responded to him, shrieking and tumbling into his arms. They wrestled on the couch after he delayed bedtime.

“It’s harder with the kids now that you’re back,” Uma fumed. “We had a structure.”

While the boys napped, he laboured slowly on his escape story for GSSP. Horne-Bough wanted it badly and sent Siddhu texts twice a day to inquire about its progress. “Our readers want this,” he said. “You swam in garbage, you wrestled with rats, then you busted out of the city. You’re a fucking hero.” Siddhu felt an obligation to finish the story but worried about the scrutiny his illegal act would invite.

“Once you publish that story, the cops will come for you and take you right back to the city gates,” Uma said. “Are you sick of us already?” She had been jittery since his return. She wanted him to fix the running toilet and screamed at him when he couldn’t leave the house to buy the parts. Then she tearfully stroked his arm. “Why have you become so cold?” she asked. She had become so hot.

He hadn’t gotten used to sleeping on only half the bed again. He lay there, coiled, worried he’d spring if he dropped his guard. His body may have left the barricades, but his mind had not escaped. He did not, of course, want to return. And yet, he’d not been ready to leave.

One night, he attempted to have a video chat with Megan Tso. She didn’t accept his call. When she called back, he was already in bed. Uma was drifting off and was startled by the incoming call. He took his tablet into the kitchen.

“Is it too late?” Tso asked from Janice Grossman’s apartment. She was drinking wine and eating Triscuits with slivers of apple and cheese.

“A little,” Siddhu admitted. “But I’m glad you called. Still hiding out, I see. What’s the latest on your stalker?”

“You don’t want to know,” she told him. Her expression was more resigned than fearful. “Let’s just say he’s still looking for me.”

He heard someone say from offscreen, “Is that Rrrrrrrrrrr aymundo?” Tso nodded. Grossman appeared onscreen in pyjama pants and a tank top. On one of her bare arms she wore a bandage. She had been vaccinated. “We miss you, buddy. And not just because you had the best yo-yo tricks. The quality of news coverage has dropped. Where am I going to learn the truth about City Hall?”

“We could ask the mayor himself,” Tso suggested. “We just spent eight hours with him, scrubbing bathrooms and driving old people to clinics.”

Siddhu pinched the bridge of his nose. He felt an acute nostalgia for the drudgery of the Sanitation League. “I feel like I’m in two places,” he confessed. “The whole time I was in that hotel room by myself, I’d fantasize about being beamed home, like on Star Trek. Now I’m home, but it doesn’t feel right. It’s like I’m still being beamed back, like I’m transparent and there’s sparkly light coursing through my body, and I’m not quite here yet. Does that make sense?”

“ Star Trek is with the Vulcans, right?”

He could normally tell when she was being sarcastic. This time he wasn’t so sure. “Yeah, it was set in the twenty-third century, when humankind had to leave earth to find problems,” he said. “Am I crazy for missing my old life? This whole thing has been terrible, but I felt like I was in a community for the first time.”

“It’s true. I’ve seen people risk their lives for strangers, people who would otherwise be unheroic. Being at home surrounded by family, in safety, must be a comedown.”