The Way We Fall

  But it doesn’t matter how it happened. I don’t care why she did it. I just want this to be over. I want the stores to be open and people to be able to talk to each other without masks over their faces and no one to ever die again.

  We were supposed to have Thanksgiving dinner today. Mom surprised us by showing us the turkey she started thawing in secret yesterday. She must have bought it before Gav’s group ransacked the grocery store.

  “We’ve got a lot to be thankful for,” she said. “The five of us are still healthy, and your father’s making progress with the vaccine.”

  Honestly, we have way more to complain about than to celebrate, but it was a relief to see her smiling. So I said I’d help with the cooking, and Meredith volunteered too. Drew begged off, claiming he was busy with something on the computer, but I caught a glimpse of him slipping out the back door a few minutes later.

  We started getting dinner ready a little after lunchtime, even though Dad said the earliest he’d be home was six. Mom was preparing the turkey over by the oven. I was peeling potatoes by the sink. Meredith was setting the table.

  I was telling her to just use the regular knives and forks, that we didn’t have anything fancy for holidays, when Mom suddenly went still.

  Before I had a chance to ask her what was up, she walked right out of the kitchen. The turkey was sitting there on the cutting board, with half the stuffing still in the bowl. I figured she must have needed to go to the bathroom. But when I’d finished with the potatoes and washed the slimy feeling off my hands, she still hadn’t come back. Meredith wanted to know what she could do now that the table was set.

  “Why don’t you take a break?” I said. “You can play Nintendo if you want.”

  Mom wasn’t anywhere downstairs, and the bathroom was empty. Her bedroom door was closed. I knocked.

  “Don’t come in,” she said right away.

  “What’s going on?” I said. “Do you need anything?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m just feeling a bit off. I need a little time by myself, okay?”

  She hadn’t sneezed or coughed, but all of a sudden I understood. She was afraid she had the virus. My whole body tensed up.

  Mom must have sensed I was still standing there. “Don’t worry, hon,” she said firmly. “Go downstairs. I’m sure you and Meredith can get the rest of dinner together. I’m going to take a rest.”

  I turned and started down the stairs, my heart pounding so loud I could hardly hear anything else. I have to tell Dad, I thought. It was all I could think. Over and over, Get Dad, get Dad. He’d know what to do.

  Telling Meredith would just have scared her, so I said I was going out for a bit and she should keep playing her game. It wouldn’t take more than half an hour, I thought. Drive to the hospital, grab Dad, drive back. I took the keys off the hook and went to the car.

  The whole way there, my heartbeat chased my thoughts through my head. Mom couldn’t really be sick. She didn’t have any symptoms. She was just nervous and being extra careful. Dad would see that. He’d tell her she was fine, and she’d calm down, and we’d have a normal Thanksgiving dinner. But then I’d remember the way she’d stiffened up and walked out without a word, and my pulse would thump even louder, and I had to tell myself the story all over again.

  I figure it’s a miracle I managed not to drive into a telephone pole or a fire hydrant. But I reached the hospital in one piece. The parking lot was jammed. I wove back and forth along the rows twice, searching for a space. I’ve never seen the lot even halfway full before. Some of the cars had a fine layer of dirt all over them, like they’d been there a month without being used.

  Which maybe they had. Maybe the people who had driven them there to get help had never come back out.

  I had to park a block away. I ran from there to the hospital doors.

  I hadn’t been inside the hospital since those couple of days during our summer visit last year, when I got that bad fever. Usually there’s a nurse or an orderly at the desk in the reception room, and a mom or a dad with a crying kid, or one of the elderly islanders who’s come in for a checkup. Never more than a couple of people. It’s quiet, almost peaceful, in a disinfected, artificial-light sort of way.

  Today it was crazy.

  The reception room was so packed I couldn’t make out the desk, only a crowd of people shifting restlessly. Voices were echoing off the walls. I hadn’t made it two steps from the front door when Mrs. Stanfeld from fourth grade came in behind me with a little girl who was skipping and chattering between her sneezes. They rushed past me into the room.

  “My daughter needs help!” Mrs. Stanfeld shouted, and someone yelled back, “Everyone needs help! Wait your turn!” And someone else started sobbing. All around, people were coughing and sneezing and rasping their fingers over their clothes to get at some itch they couldn’t quite scratch away. The disinfectant smell was still there, but overwhelmed by sweat and something sour that made my stomach turn.

  I’d been in such a panic when I left the house that I’d forgotten my face mask. I felt like I’d walked in there naked. But no way was I turning back and going home and starting over. So I held my sleeve up to my nose and squeezed into the room.

  A nurse with a mask, a plastic gown like a thin raincoat, and long plastic gloves was drawing a blood sample from an older woman who couldn’t stop rubbing her chin. The nurse had a cart of labeled samples behind her—probably for testing to see who really had the virus. They all have it, I thought. For a second, I couldn’t breathe. It felt like the virus had to be all around me, clouds of it in the air.

  Dad wasn’t in that room, and obviously the nurse was too busy to help, so I pressed my arm to my face as tightly as I could and pushed through the crowd to the hall at the other end.

  Another nurse hustled by. She ducked into one of the exam rooms, which I saw held six patients crammed in on cots and a couple on mats on the floor. “They’re coming, they’re coming!” one of them started to whisper in a hoarse voice.

  “No one’s coming,” the nurse said. She injected something into his arm, and his eyes went glassy. She stood watching him for a moment, looking like she might be blinking back tears.

  “Excuse me,” I started to say as she came out.

  “Back to the reception room,” she said briskly. “Blood test, then you’re admitted.”

  Before I could explain, she’d hurried on to the next room.

  Maybe Dad was upstairs, but there was a bunch of people already standing around the elevator, and I didn’t know where the stairwell was. As I walked on, an orderly marched past me with a bunch of feverish, coughing people from the reception room in tow.

  “Where are the new ones going?” he asked a nurse in an anxious voice. I couldn’t hear the answer.

  Around the corner, mats lay on the floor along the wall, some occupied, some vacant. The orderly gestured to them.

  “What?” a woman said. “You’re leaving us in the hall? Where are the doctors? We need proper treatment!”

  I turned the other way, searching for the stairs, but there was only a short hall lined with patients, and a dead end. In one of the rooms nearby, someone started shrieking.

  I stepped back against the wall and sank down, my sleeve still pressed against my nose, trying to take deep breaths through the fabric. I just needed a moment, I told myself. Just a minute or two, to pull myself together. But with each breath I felt like I was shaking more, not less.

  I’m not sure how long I was there. It was a blur of voices and people rushing by, until I felt someone stop in front of me.

  “Kaelyn?” she said. It was Dad’s friend Nell. She looked like she’d been on her feet since the night before. Her hair was frizzing out of her bun, and brown and yellow stains spotted the plastic gown she was wearing over her lab coat. Her smile was hardly more than a flat line. But it was something. I stood up.

  “I need to find my dad,” I said. “My mom thinks she’s got it. He needs to come home.”

&n
bsp; Her trace of a smile disappeared. “Oh, Kaelyn,” she said. “I don’t know where he is. He’s been going back and forth between here and the research center.”

  I must have looked totally helpless then, because she touched my arm with her gloved hand and said, “Is she bad?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t even know if she’s really sick,” I said.

  “Okay,” she said. “Then you don’t want to bring her here. She’ll be better off at home, where she’s comfortable. I’ll give you a couple of drugs we’ve found help with the symptoms. Stay right here.”

  She pulled her mask back up over her face and hurried off. A few minutes later she came back with a couple boxes of sample pills, and a mask for me. I slid it on gratefully. “I’m sorry I can’t give you more—we’re running low again,” she said. “If she takes one of each, it should help at least a little. You get out of here now, okay? As soon as I see your dad, I’ll let him know.”

  “Thank you,” I said. A few pills didn’t seem like a very good trade for Dad, but that wasn’t Nell’s fault.

  She walked me out the front door, even though she must have had a million other more important things to be doing. When we got there, I blurted out, “Does anyone get better?”

  Her jaw tightened, and she looked outside. “We have a few cases that look promising,” she said.

  A few cases. How many people have already died?

  When I got home, Meredith was still jabbing away at the controller. I went upstairs and stood outside Mom’s room, but I didn’t hear any coughing or sneezing. So maybe she really is okay. I showered and changed and threw my old clothes into the wash. Then I went downstairs to the kitchen, to figure out if I could do anything with all the food. That was where Drew found me.

  “Where’ve you been?” he said the second he walked into the room. “I wanted to talk to you, and Mom said she didn’t know where you were, and all Meredith knew was you’d gone out. You can’t just wander off without telling anyone!”

  My nerves were way too frayed already. How could he seriously think he had any right to complain about me? “What are you talking about?” I said. “You sneak off all the time!”

  “I have good reasons,” he said. “I’ve never—” He cut himself off and shook his head. “Look, I don’t want to argue right now. You’re back, that’s what’s important. We’d better get started.”

  “Get started on what?” I said. “What’s going on?”

  “I found a way to leave,” he said.

  Which was so not what I was expecting to hear that I just stared at him and said, “Leave where?”

  “The island, of course,” he said, lowering his voice. “I’ve figured some things out—I’d have gotten a plan together faster if the internet hadn’t gone down. I know Dad won’t go, but I bet we could convince Mom if she thought it’d protect us and Meredith. We’re all still okay, so it shouldn’t be—Kae, what’s the matter?”

  I wiped at my eyes before any more tears could leak out. “Mom thinks she’s sick, Drew,” I said. “That’s why I went out. I went to the hospital to try to find Dad.”

  “She’s sick?” he said. “She sounded fine when I talked to her—she just wanted to take a nap.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I could tell she’s worried. She wouldn’t even open the door to talk to you, right? I guess Dad will do a blood test or something to find out. When he gets here.”

  Drew frowned. “She can’t be sick,” he said, sounding like he was talking to himself more than to me. “She hardly ever goes out. How could she have caught the virus? She’s just on edge, like the rest of us. Dad’ll say she’s fine. Then we’ll talk about leaving, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  I should feel relieved he thought the same thing I did. That Mom isn’t really sick, just nervous. But Mom isn’t normally the kind of person who lets her worries get the better of her. And we still don’t know for sure all the ways the virus might be passed on. We’ve all been out of the house. Any one of us could have brought it home.

  I was going past Mom’s room to the bathroom a few minutes ago, and I heard her coughing.

  It still doesn’t mean anything. Lots of things make people cough. It could even be her nerves making her imagine a tickle in her throat. That happens. Psychosomatic symptoms.

  I tried to talk to her, but she said she’s resting and not to worry. So I told her I was leaving the pills Nell gave me outside her room, and she should try taking one of each. She opened the door to get them as I was going downstairs.

  We never ended up making dinner. The turkey’s still lying on the counter half stuffed. It’s eight thirty and Dad’s not home. Where the hell is he? The people at the hospital have other doctors. This is Mom. He should be here.

  Happy Thanksgiving.

  Leo,

  Sometimes I envy you for getting out of here before all this started. But it must be almost just as awful for you, being stuck out there not knowing what’s happening to your parents or your girlfriend or any of your friends.

  I wonder if you worry about me at all?

  I hope you’re okay in New York, at least. I know from TV that there’ve been a few deaths off the island that the reporters say are related to the virus, and now there’s a segment on precautionary measures on every news broadcast, but the government hasn’t tried to quarantine Halifax or Ottawa. So the situation can’t be that bad—not as bad as here, anyway.

  There is some good news. Another helicopter delivery of supplies came this morning. And Dad got in late on Thanksgiving because the team he’s been working with finally figured out how to make a potentially usable vaccine. Some of the WHO people took it off the island for testing—and hopefully mass production, if it’s working. Which is great, except a vaccine isn’t going to do anything for someone who’s already sick. Like Mom.

  Dad took a blood sample to the hospital yesterday to confirm. Mom still hasn’t come out of her room. I haven’t seen her since we were getting Thanksgiving dinner ready. But I hear her coughing and sneezing through the walls. Dad gave her a little of the emulsion they’ve made from Tessa’s plants, and he says her symptoms eased off a bit.

  I’ve been talking to her through the door. “You just look after yourself and Meredith,” she says, “and I’ll do everything I can to get better. We’ll get through this.” But if she talks for very long she starts coughing so hard she can’t speak, so I haven’t tried as much as I’d like to.

  God, what if I never get to hug her again?

  I can’t think like that. It’ll just make me crazy.

  At least I did something useful today. Dad said they’d gotten everything they could from the two plants Tessa gave us, so I called her up. She said the others had sprouted and were looking good. I went over this afternoon to pick them up.

  When she opened the door for me, I suddenly felt awkward, because the last time I saw her was the day I found that woman in the summer house. Maybe she could tell, because she said, “I thought about calling you, but then I thought, if it were me, I probably wouldn’t want to be reminded of it. But if you want to go out again…”

  Even considering going into one of those houses made my stomach clench. “No,” I said. “I don’t think I will.” But in a weird way it was nice to know that she’d bothered to worry about me. It also made me feel guilty for maybe not worrying enough about her. I just never feel like she wants anyone’s help.

  We carried about a dozen pots out to the car, and this youngish man, maybe in his twenties, came sauntering down the street toward us. “Pretty ladies!” he called out. “Just what I’ve been looking for.”

  Then he sneezed, but we’d have gone inside and shut the door even if he hadn’t been sick.

  “And that’s why I spend most of my time inside or out back,” Tessa said.

  She made lunch for both of us. I protested until she pointed out that she had more food than she could eat on her own before it spoiled.

  “Normally I’d give the
extras from the greenhouse to the neighbors,” she said. “I should send you home with some. There’s lettuce that’s about to go to seed, and tomatoes ready to burst, and I think some beans that are ripe too.”

  “I didn’t know you grew vegetables,” I said. Somehow when I was in there before I only noticed the big exotic plants.

  “Oh,” she said, “the showy flowers and things are just for my mom. She said if I was going to take up most of the backyard, I’d better make the greenhouse look nice. But my focus is common crops. Do you know the big farming companies have been decreasing the diversity of the genetic pool for almost every one? Which means if some plant disease comes along that attacks one type of corn, or broccoli, or whatever, we could lose all of it.”

  She had a bunch more opinions to share about farming corporations and plant genetics while we went into the greenhouse to harvest some of her “crops.” It was strange seeing her so intense. A dead toddler doesn’t faze her, but corn and broccoli she gets worked up about.

  “Wow,” I said at one point. “You must have done a ton of research.”

  She nodded. “I want to help reverse the process,” she said. “I’ve been working on different strains of certain vegetables. Someday I’m going to have a whole farm, maybe here on the island, and start providing new seeds to other farmers.”

  When she was talking, I sort of got why you fell for her, Leo. The way she feels about her greenhouse, it’s like you and dance. You both have this passion that most people wouldn’t understand.

  My biggest goal has always been to go off into the wilderness and study arctic wolves and mountain lions. Tessa’s planning on saving the whole world.

  I guess that’s how she manages to stay sane, living there alone, not knowing when she’ll see her parents again. But as we were standing in the front hall, me with my armful of vegetables, she glanced at me with those dark blue eyes, and for a second she looked lost. I had to say something.