Kevin Chong - The Plague

“‘God saved you,’” Aunt LiLi told me. “‘It was a miracle.’” In truth, I was my father’s favourite. This is my opinion: I was the one possession of his that didn’t arouse shame. He was simply too vain to kill me.

“I have hardly anything of my mother’s. She left a tube of lipstick at my aunt’s house when she was visiting the week before her death. For years, I slept with it in my hand. Even when I couldn’t bear to look at her picture. Even during the time I was telling my friends in high-school that I never knew my mother.

“A year after my mother and brother were killed, Aunt LiLi insisted I get baptised. I didn’t resist her. She was a good woman. The church we attended—the one my aunt worked for—had a wading pool built into the stage. I was baptised with a few other new members. Each of them had their head dunked into water. I began weeping as I stepped toward the priest. I was upset because I had an irrational fear that the priest would drown me. I was upset, too, that I was sinful. And I was upset that the water would wash away my mother from me.

“When Markus died, some memories of my family were cracked open. I saw everyone afresh.

“Why did Markus choose to obsess over me? Did I choose Markus because he reminded me of my father?

“Some people have gleaned my family story. They pried into my silences for my own good. They asked well-meaning questions. I answered them as briefly as I could. You’re the only person I have told this story—the most complete version—to. I’m going to tell Janice too.” She looked up at him. She was done. “This felt good.”

Rieux sat with this story once it was complete. It was three in the morning, and he could not account for how much time had passed. They must have talked about other things. Throughout Tso’s account, he had asked questions and sought clarifications. Tso had cried, but not as much as he would have thought. At that time, everyone cried; tears had been as omnipresent as face masks and hand sanitizer since the outbreak and quarantine. The economical choice would be to describe the times nobody wept.

He worried throughout her telling of the story that he was not reacting to it properly. He wanted to convey his empathy. But he was allergic to expressiveness by disposition and profession. He could not touch her.

“I want you to know I appreciate learning everything about you,” he told her finally.

“You don’t know everything,” she said.

“The rest is trivia.”

Tso looked at him, then the table. She nodded.

Grossman interrupted them, flapping her hands as though they were aflame. “He’s awake.” She removed a glass from a cupboard and filled it with filtered water from Rieux’s refrigerator.

The mayor was sitting upright in bed. His hair was matted to his forehead with dried sweat. He swallowed the water in a gulp and asked for more. Rieux examined him. The fever had passed. The doctor did not have any extra “dipsticks”—the white plastic devices that could detect the bacterium in a blood or urine sample without a laboratory test—on hand. Now he thought that Parsons might not have had the disease. Perhaps it was a flu brought on by exhaustion. It may have been a coincidence, too, that patients brought in during the final weeks of the quarantine responded better to treatment. Their recovery rates were a reversal of the dismal results witnessed near the beginning of the outbreak.

Grossman returned with another glass of water. Parsons drained it and asked for yet another. Midway through the third serving, he put the glass on the nightstand. “I’ve finally had my fill,” he told them, wiping his wet chin with his hand.

Rieux and Tso exchanged looks of disbelief. For each of them, Parsons’ recovery was their first pleasant surprise in months.

He turned in the bed and drew his legs to the floor. He became aware that he had been stripped down to his boxer briefs and undershirt. Grossman sat next to him and patted him on the knee.

“We were almost finished writing your obituary,” she told him. “Thanks for nothing.”

“You can save it for later,” he told her. “Maybe you’ll need to add a couple of new paragraphs at the bottom. I don’t like the way it ends right now.”

By early February, optimism and anxiety coursed throughout the city. For the first time since the outbreak began, Coastal Health Authority officials reported steep drops in both infections and fatalities. The success was attributed to the vaccine, and the anti-vaxxers or those who’d found excuses to avoid a needle rushed to the various clinic sites. During this wave, supplies correctly anticipated the surge of demand.

With good news came opportunities to call as many press conferences as possible. In the second week of February, one media event was arranged by Dr Orla Castello to announce the imminent closure of the auxiliary hospital. In the ensuing question period, Castello admitted that discussions about lifting the quarantine had begun. “There will be another press conference when we have a firm date in mind,” she added.

Romeo Parsons kicked off a full return to his role as mayor by announcing a date in late May for a referendum on his anti-poverty plan. “It’s also a referendum on my leadership,” he said. If the people voted “No,” he would resign. He acknowledged again his personal troubles, blaming them on hubris and an “outdated sense of a private life” that had not considered digital security. In a separate press conference with Canada’s Prime Minister (onscreen through a satellite connection), he also announced details of a federal stimulus package that included infrastructure improvements like free wi-fi in the downtown core.

The tentative date in mid-March for the reopening of the city was made known two weeks in advance. The barricade gates would be removed and the airport would open if the infection rate continued to drop. “It’s not unusual for these epidemics to lobtail,” Castello said. “We expect to see the last gasp of disease before the reopening.” Her tone implied that the reopening was conditional on our good behaviour.

This caution was not heeded. Strangers waltzed cheek-to-cheek, mask-to-mask, on Robson Street. Cyclists on the icy bicycle lanes rang their bells cheerfully as they passed one another. Restaurants and bars gave away celebratory rounds of smuggled, premium-priced alcohol. Parents took their children out of school for ice cream and Go-Kart rides.

To survive, Vancouverites had adopted a measured approach to the privations of the quarantine. They could not waste the energy needed to stay alert to infection. Their tears were reserved only for the suffering of those closest to them. With the deadline in sight, they lost their composure. Like long-distance runners with the finish line in sight, they began to notice their ragged lungs, sore joints, and aching muscles. They bawled and wailed in agony and relief.

During those two weeks, people started to wonder about the future. Some of them used that transitional period to ready themselves, while others booked vacations to their “bucket list” destinations. Some romantic relationships crystallized in this period, and many more dissolved in anticipation of freedom and possibility.

Not everyone prepared for their new life, but no one expected to return to their old one.

Janice Grossman had been offered her previous job as a tour-bus operator, at reduced hours. She declined to return. She hoped to continue hosting performances at her unlicensed space. “I mean, I know the fucking mayor, ” she told Tso. “I nursed him back from the grave.” To make up for lost income, she rented her downstairs apartment to Jeffrey Oishi.