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: 79 days away
Walgreens wasn’t wanting to refill Kenneth’s prescription.
“Did they cancel our health insurance?” Liz said after she got off the phone with the pharmacist. The woman on the other end had told her to contact her insurance about it.
“Chris wouldn’t do that,” I said. “They’re probably just making stuff up, giving us the runaround to keep from paying out.”
“We don’t have time to mess around, Ben. We need the medicine now.”
The level of intensity around the house had slowly crept up over the past few days. The day before, I snapped at Liz because I noticed the plants by the window were dry. I never cared about the plants.
Some of that energy helped us stay sharp, but it made it difficult to tell what was real and what was just nerves.
I tried to clarify. “I thought we had like a month left?”
“We can’t wait until we’re down to three days to go looking for it.”
I got on the phone and called around. I didn’t make much headway with insurance, just got more upset at people who probably didn’t deserve to have a bad day. I practically hung up on the last guy when he started talking to his kid in the middle of the conversation. I was cordial, but he clearly wasn’t going to be much more help to me.
Finally, I called Dr. Madison to see if she could help us get the medicine. I walked outside and paced under the carport.
“I thought you took Kenneth off grennadryn?” she said.
I didn’t answer.
“Let me check my records. I believe the prescription has expired.”
“What does that mean? What does that mean—we can’t get it now? What are you telling me?”
“Calm down, Ben.”
I lost it.
“Calm down? You’re telling me to calm down? You cancel our prescription. Without telling us. And you’re telling me to calm down?”
“I can understand how you feel. I won’t—”
“Can you? Can you understand how I feel? Really? Where’s your son, right now? Does he need medicine? Every week? To walk?”
She didn’t say anything at first. She must have heard me breathing too.
“Those two kids,” she finally said, “the ones I told you had died but weren’t reported as deaths from the virus?” She paused. “One of them was my daughter.”
No.
No, I couldn’t accept that.
I held the back of my phone against my forehead, bit my bottom lip.
“I’m so sorry,” I said after a long silence.
“She was 23. But she was still my baby.”
I couldn’t say anything else.
I couldn’t imagine losing one of our children. I’d let myself go to some pretty dark places. Would I steal to keep my family safe? Would I kill someone? Would I kill an innocent person, if it came down to it? Why did I actually have a baseball bat leaning by our front door? What was I actually going to do with that?
All the planning. All the preparation. All the thought experiments extrapolated out. But I didn’t let myself go to the other side of losing one of our children. What would I do after that? I couldn’t plan for that. It wouldn’t even matter at that point.
“Ben?”
“I’m sorry. I’m here.”
“I know you’re scared. Everyone is.”
She was talking to me like I was a kid. I probably needed that.
“I just need the medicine,” I said.
“They’re researching it. How much do you have left?”
“Not sure. A month, maybe?”
“So, four or five doses total?”
“Yes.”
“You need to take Kenneth off of it. Save what you have, but take him off it. Call me if he gets sick.”
