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.
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Due Date: 74 days away
We hadn’t made a plan for the hospital. I knew we’d go if we needed to go, but we hadn’t made a plan for how. Were the kids going to go with us? In the same contaminated car with us? What would they do once we arrived? Would they just wait in the parking garage? We weren’t prepared.
I woke Kenneth up.
“I’m up, I’m up,” he said, sitting up with his eyes still closed.
“We have to go,” I said. “I’m taking mama to the hospital.”
His eyes opened.
“She’s going to be fine. I need you to stay here with Shepherd. Can you do that?”
He nodded quickly.
“Let him keep sleeping. You can sleep too. Do you have your phone?”
“In my room.”
I found it for him, dead. I brought his charger too.
“Let’s plug this in, make sure it turns on. You need to keep this charged, okay?”
He nodded again.
The little light flashed on it, and I held down the power button. The screen came to life.
Liz coughed in the bedroom.
“I have to help mama. Turn up the ring volume when this turns on, all right?
“Okay,” he said.
Liz was trying to change into pants.
“What are you doing?” I said.
“I’m so cold.”
I helped her get the dress off over her head, helped her find a shirt, and then went hunting for a jacket or sweater or something in the living room closet.
“Do want to take one of these?” Kenneth asked, motioning to the pile of blankets I’d brought back in.
“Good idea.”
My mom always told me not to ask questions in an emergency, just get help. “You call 911. You don’t hesitate.” When I was six or seven, our toaster caught on fire, and I immediately wanted to call the fire department. She put it out with a towel and told me we’d be okay. It was hard to balance the kid instinct for simple, immediate action with the adult instinct for reasonable caution.
I texted her on the drive in. There weren’t any other cars on the road anyway.
“Headed to the hospital. Liz has a fever. I’ll let you know when I know more.”
Stashing my phone in the cup holder, the whole experience felt surreal. Driving way too early on a Sunday morning. Liz dry coughing a few times but breathing fine. No kids in the car with us. Wondering if we were overreacting.
The feeling only got worse when we arrived. At the entrance, they took our temperatures. We told them Liz had a fever. We told them we were concerned she might have the virus.
“Please step this way, ma’am.”
I looked at Liz, the moment taking me off guard. I couldn’t see her nose or her mouth or her cheeks with her mask on, just her eyes.
“You okay?” I said.
She nodded her head, quickly, like Kenneth had when I asked him if he could stay with Shepherd.
“Text me?” I said, miming with my thumbs for emphasis. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
“Sir? Sir, if you’ll please take a seat over there,” someone else directed me, “and fill this out.”
She handed me a clipboard.
And that’s how we were separated.
We hadn’t prepared for this.
It reminded me of the Holocaust trains, from all books I read. Men to the right. Women and children to the left. That fast. The difference was that there was no screaming. We didn’t cry. We didn’t cling to each other’s arms. The difference of course, the difference that made the comparison absurd, was that I knew they were trying to help her and I thought she’d be okay.
