This is a fictional story. All names, places, and viruses are used fictitiously. Resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, past or present, are intentional.
If you haven’t read from the beginning, please start at Chapter 1 here.
***
Due Date: 87 days away
“What are you doing home?”
“So much for business as usual,” I said.
Liz’s face turned serious.
I slumped into the couch beside her.
“Travis died.” I didn’t even try to soften it.
“What? I thought you said he was okay.”
“I thought he was okay.”
We sat with each other for a few minutes, quiet.
Liz normally wanted to talk and get all the details about what happened. She could sense some of the heaviness on me. She gave me space.
It took me a bit, still processing what had happened, still trying to make sense of it all, trying to come up with what to say next, what to do. I didn’t know. I hadn’t known for over a month. What started as some general uneasiness, news about this weird virus over in China, had continued to tighten on me. Right when things started to feel normal, right when we’d started settling into the quarantine, this happened. It’s like I could see it coming, like an oncoming vehicle, but all I could do was watch.
And then keep driving.
“Kenneth’s sleeping?” I finally said.
Liz nodded and then leaned her head on my shoulder. “He’s been in there since 1:30.”
I looked over at my wife, my palms face down on my lap. I wasn’t prepared for this. At the beginning of the year, I was concerned about our health insurance going up, or switching, mid-pregnancy. Nothing on my important list from back then made the cut now.
“So, we’re shut down for a while,” I said.
“At work?”
“Yeah.”
“What did Chris say?”
“Not much, really. We didn’t have a company meeting.” I grunted. “He just told us to bring everyone back and take off.”
It was her turn to process it.
“Is he paying anyone?”
“I don’t even know if we’re going back.”
That sounded worse than I meant it.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that at you. I’m assuming this is just a week or something.”
She lifted her head off my shoulder and looked at me.
I tried to reassure her.
“It felt like a knee-jerk reaction. We’ll see what happens. I’m sure I’ll get paid, even if it just comes out of our vacation time.”
Kenneth had come out to the living room, also noticeably surprised to see me.
“How’s school?” I asked him, my instincts kicking in.
“Good. Finished. For today.”
“That’s good.”
He looked from me to Liz, searching for some kind of explanation. It wasn’t just that I was home. It was that we both probably looked like death.
“Why don’t we go get some ice cream?” I said. “Don’t want this stimulus money to go to waste.” And then I added, “We’ll talk.”
On the way to Dairy Queen, I told Kenneth what happened.
“He’s the first we knew, personally,” I said. “It’s like Isaac said. It all feels real now.”
We all assumed he had the virus, but from what I heard, he never got tested. From what I heard, he didn’t count as a virus death.
