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: 70 days away
“The ventilator won’t fix her lungs. At best, it’ll buy time.”
“How much?” I asked.
“The longer she’s on it, the less chance she ever comes off it.”
I had to take a walk, get some air.
I didn’t know much about ventilators. Up until that point, the story I told myself was that the major cause for worry in the pandemic was overcrowding the hospitals with patients who needed ventilators. YouTube had lessons on how to hook up more than one patient on one breathing machine. That’s where we were at.
As long as patients made it to the hospitals and the hospitals had enough ventilators, we were going to be okay. That’s what I told myself. Because that’s what I gathered. That’s what I heard.
I heard my name from across the hall.
I turned to see Kenneth’s rheumatologist approaching me. She wasn’t wearing all the protective gear, just a simple mask and gloves. It was the clear frames on her glasses that gave her away.
“What are you doing here?” she said.
“Liz is sick. And we had our baby.”
“Congratulations?” She tilted her head. “What a mixed bag. How sick is she?”
“She’s in the ICU. Breathing machine. All that.”
“How’s Kenneth? Has he been in contact with her?”
I told her the story about our new campground, trying to quarantine in separate sections with Liz. I left out some details. I trusted her, but I wasn’t telling anyone where our kids were.
“I’m more worried about our baby,” I said. “I haven’t even seen her.”
“Typically, newborns don’t get infected by their moms. Especially if they’re separated immediately. I wouldn’t worry about that.”
I questioned how she knew that. I didn’t feel like anyone knew anything about this virus. The further we got into it, the less it seemed like we knew. I trusted her, but I wasn’t betting my baby’s health on it.
I asked a more pressing question instead.
“Why did you tell me to call you if Kenneth got sick?”
“Did you take him off grennadryn?”
“We did.”
“From what we’ve seen, if he’s been off for 10 days, the odds that he will contract the virus are extremely low. JIA has proven resistant to most strains we’ve tested.”
“You’ve tested kids? Or just in a lab somewhere?”
“Listen, Ben. Let me tell you something.” She glanced around. “We don’t have a vaccine for it, but we might have an antidote for the symptoms. That’s why we blew the bridges.”
The bridges? What did she know about that?
She must have seen the question in my eyes. That, or she just anticipated it, fully aware of what she’d said.
She leaned forward, unhooked the side of her mask, and whispered the rest to me.
“And everyone here? Everyone knows this?” I didn’t bother lowering my voice.
“Ben,” she kept her voice down. “There are only about five of us who do. Now six.”
My mind raced. I wasn’t sure I trusted her at all.
“We’re trying to buy time,” she said.
