“But—”
“Honey, I don’t have time for this.” Ann slammed the door shut, pressed the button on the remote, and heard the tiny beep. She couldn’t look back at her daughter’s white face.
She scooped Maddie into her arms and walked as fast as she was able toward the emergency room sign. Maddie’s head bumped against her shoulder.
A man stood there, arms crossed. He wore a heavy-duty respirator with circular vents. A gun rested in the holster at his hip. A woman stood beside him with a clipboard, wearing a white paper mask like the one Ann wore. Hand-lettered signs were taped to the doors.
FLU PATIENTS TO THE LEFT.
PLEASE USE OTHER DOOR.
Ann pushed through the crowd, trying not to jostle Maddie.
“Hey,” a man said.
“Sorry.” Ann kept going. Her heart thumped in her chest. The woman wearing a mask and holding a clipboard had to be a nurse. She was talking to someone and taking notes.
“Excuse me. I need help. My daughter’s had an allergy attack.”
The nurse looked over. “No fever?”
“It’s not the flu.”
The nurse came over, glanced at Maddie’s face, and then beckoned. “Come this way.”
The guard reached back to open the door.
“Hey, what about me?” A woman pushed around Ann, trying to get to the door ahead of her.
The guard stepped out in front of her, his arms crossed.
“But I’ve been waiting.” There was some scuffling as the door closed.
Ann followed the nurse down a short hallway into the waiting room. It was warm and well lit. Wheeled screens had been brought in and set up along the periphery. People were behind them. Ann could hear them moaning, could see feet beneath the curtains. People lay on stretchers and slumped in chairs. Here was where the city was. It had emptied into this room.
The nurse pulled a stretcher out from where it stood along the wall. “Put her down here.”
Ann set Maddie down on the sheet. Her daughter tried to sit up and look around. Ann patted Maddie’s shoulder. “Lie down, honey.”
The nurse took the rail along the side and started to pull the stretcher along. Ann grabbed the other railing.
“Doctor.” The nurse stopped the stretcher beside a cart on wheels. “I’ve got a kid in anaphylaxis.”
A man detached himself from where he’d been crouching beside an elderly woman in a wheelchair and came right over. He wore a mask, and his brown eyes looked kind. “What happened?”
A doctor, just like that. After weeks of everything failing, at last something was working the way it should at the time she needed it the most. She let out a shaky breath. “She had an allergy attack. I gave her an EpiPen.”
“When?” He reached for a bottle from the cart beside them and squirted a dollop of antibacterial gel onto his palms, rubbing briskly.
“Thirty minutes ago maybe.”
“Get the dexamethasone,” he told the nurse, then to Ann, “Has she ever had an attack before?”
“Once. She was hospitalized for two nights.”
He parted Maddie’s coat and leaned over her with a stethoscope.
“No gloves?” Ann said with alarm.
“Ran out weeks ago.” To Maddie, “Can you say your name?”
“Maddie.”
“And how old are you, Maddie?”
“Eight and a half.”
He lifted her sweater. Maddie’s eyes went round, and she pushed his hand away. “She’s shy,” Ann said.
“Sorry, honey. I just want to take a quick look.” He pulled Maddie’s sweater back down and patted her shoulder. “We’ll need to give her some medicine.”
“The nebulizer treatment?”
“Yeah, I would if I had any, but I don’t. But the shot will help.” Maddie’s eyes were huge above her mask, and she shook her head.
Ann took her hand. “It’s okay, sweetheart.” The nurse appeared with a syringe.
The doctor had told her to get something Ann had never heard of. “What kind of medicine are you giving her?”
“It’s called dexamethasone. It’s an anti-inflammatory. It takes a little while to work, but it lasts a long time.”
“How long?”
“Two weeks.”
Two weeks was good. Two weeks was a miracle. But should Ann allow this? Nothing about this visit resembled that first hospital trip, but the doctor seemed so confident. Really, what were her options? Maddie was watching with worried eyes.
“It’s all right, honey.” Ann pulled off Maddie’s coat, pushed up the sleeves of the two cardigans she wore, and bared her upper arm. “It’ll be over in just a second.”
The nurse swabbed Maddie’s skin with a pad and uncapped the needle. “Here we go. Just a small pinch.”
Maddie squealed. “Ouch.” She looked at Ann accusingly.
“All done,” the nurse said, pulling out the needle.
“You know what triggered it?” the doctor said.
“The reaction she had before was to a cat. But we don’t have a cat and we’ve been inside the house for months.”
“Home’s the best place for her right now. But you’d better figure this out, or it’ll recur.”
How could Maddie have developed a reaction to something in her own room? It was the middle of winter. Nothing was growing outside that either girl could have brought inside on their clothes or hair.
The doctor patted Maddie’s shoulder. “You should start to feel better pretty soon.” He looked to the nurse. “Keep an eye on her. Let me know if there’s no relief in fifteen minutes.”
The nurse nodded. “Be right back,” she told Maddie, and went off.
Ann pulled over a chair and sat down beside the stretcher. It was so warm in here. She unzipped her coat and took Maddie’s gloved hand in hers and squeezed. Kate and Jacob had been alone now for thirty minutes. Kate would be getting anxious, but she’d keep the car doors locked. She’d pound the horn if she had to. She was probably singing to Jacob, and rocking him. It was well past his afternoon naptime. He might fall asleep, curled up in Kate’s arms. “Why don’t you close your eyes, Maddie, and see if you can get a little rest?”
She hoped Peter was still sleeping, the sun falling into his room and giving the illusion of warmth. He kept kicking off the covers. She kept pulling them back up.
The waiting room was bright and surprisingly quiet. People occupied wheelchairs, folding chairs, stretchers. The nurse had gone over to talk to a young black man who leaned against the wall, cradling his elbow in one hand. A little girl sat cross-legged beside him, rose when he motioned. All three of them disappeared into a curtained alcove. An old man sat in the corner beneath the TV, gesturing and nodding to himself. IV tubing snaked out from beneath one sleeve. Someone lay softly moaning on a stretcher nearby. Ann couldn’t tell if it was a woman or a man. There was a whimper from behind one screen. Booted feet thudded to the floor. Urgent murmuring, then a young woman put her head around the screen. “Doctor, he’s awake.”
These were the people who didn’t have the flu. These were the diabetics, the heart attacks, the broken bones. What did they do if someone needed surgery? What about the women going into labor?
The nurse came over with the clipboard. “Mind filling this out?”
Ann looked down at the page and saw that it was handwritten. She glanced at the nurse, who shrugged.
“We ran out of forms a long time ago. This is the best we can do. At least we can keep up with the flow here.”
Unlike the other side, where the flu patients were. Ann took the pen the nurse extended and began filling in the blanks. Name of patient, age, address. “What’s it like over there?”
“You don’t want to know.” She put her hands on her hips and looked around the room. “Sometimes I think most everyone’s died.”
“My husband’s sick.”
The nurse looked back at Ann. She was a short woman, plain-faced, her black hair scraped back into a stubby p
onytail. Her brown eyes looked gentle. “I’m sorry.”
“He’s had it for seven days. When should I expect him to get better?”
“It usually peaks at five days, so you’re probably over the worst of it now. Make sure to keep him hydrated. But no tap water. You do know about that, right?”
“We guessed.”
“Have you been giving him anything for fever?”
“Ibuprofen, when he can keep it down.”
“If he’s made it this long, he’ll be okay. The important thing is you kept him home. Good for you. You did the right thing.”
It hadn’t been heroic at all. She hadn’t wanted him anywhere else. “When I first drove up, I was afraid you’d be shut down. All of this is such a relief to see.”
“We’ve had some bad patches. The generator died a couple weeks ago.” The nurse picked up Maddie’s wrist. “Fortunately, one of our patients was able to get it back up and running. We’ve gotten some supplies through, but there was a while where we were all living on vending machine candy. We’ve lost a lot of staff. Some of them just can’t get in.” She released Maddie’s hand and patted it. “And some of them …” She shrugged her shoulders again.
Ann handed the clipboard back to the nurse. “How are you getting to and from work?”
“Carpooling. There’s a gas station with a generator that only fills up for emergency vehicles. Sometimes I’m here for days before I can get a ride home.” The nurse clicked the pen and jotted something down, then handed Ann a sheet of paper. “Send this in to your insurance company. Whenever.”
Whenever mail service resumed. Whenever there was someone there to receive the receipt. Whenever. Ann folded the paper and tucked it into her purse.
The nurse nodded toward Maddie. “She’s looking much better.” Maddie was asleep, her eyes closed, her skin losing some of that awful ruddy color. The swelling was definitely going down. “But you’d better find out what caused her reaction. Next time we might be out of everything.”
“Thank you.”
For pulling us out of the crowd, for getting the doctor so quickly, for coming back to check on my daughter. For giving me some hope.
“Sure.”
Ann rose and hooked the strap of her purse over her shoulder. She put a hand on Maddie’s arm and gently shook her awake.
In the parking lot, they passed a woman leaning against a car, sobbing helplessly, her hands pressed to her face. Ann put a hand on Maddie’s shoulder and steered her down the sidewalk. Maddie was going to be okay. They were all okay, and Peter was getting better. By tomorrow, or maybe by the next day, he’d be well enough to get in the van.
She wondered where that gas station was the nurse had been talking about.
FORTY-SEVEN
BLUE WALLS PRESSED AGAINST HIS HEAD AND SHOULDERS, then rolled back. Somehow the hallway had become an ocean. Peter could hardly breathe. Coughing seized him and bent him in two. He sat down heavily on the step and grabbed the railing to keep from being swept away by the flood of carpet. His heart pounded a warning. He placed his palm there to calm it and felt the viruses teeming beneath his touch.
Now Ann was there, bending down. “You’d better drink this.”
He blinked and he was alone again. Right. He’d been getting a glass of water. He pushed himself to a standing position. The stairwell shrank to a pinpoint, then expanded. He shuffled across the cold kitchen floor. Grit rolled beneath the soles of his feet.
He reached for the faucet and curled his fingers around the handle. Nothing moved. He wasn’t pushing hard enough. A sudden splash of water into the sink.
He looked down. He’d given Kate her first bath in a steel sink just like this one. She’d blinked up at him with surprise as he ladled warm water across her belly. He’d bent to kiss her forehead and Ann had snapped the picture. She’d framed it and put it on her night-stand for a while.
William’s first few baths had been quiet, the water lapping the sides of the tub, the baby lying there cocooned on his bath sponge, his tiny thumb in his mouth. Peter would work the suds around his little bald head and William’s eyes would drift shut. Peter would lift him up and wrap him in a towel and carry him, sleeping, into the bedroom, where Ann would be combing Kate’s hair. They would look at each other over the heads of their children. They’d had no idea how closely sadness would follow on the heels of such simple happiness.
Peter held his hand beneath the silvery stream of water. It felt as cold as lake water. He thought of Canada geese flapping in perfect V’s across the golden water. A tight synchrony, but every so often a bird would veer away and head off in the wrong direction. The rest of the birds would continue on. Not one would pull out of the V to retrieve the lost comrade.
No geese this season. This year, they’d all pulled out of formation.
He brought his fingers up and patted his forehead and his cheeks, let the water drip down his neck.
Ann had almost drowned on their honeymoon in an ocean as warm as bathwater. She had waded out behind him, pulling up her knees and laughing. Then she was gone, snatched under and rolled away by the riptide. He’d plunged after her, caught her by one elbow, and yanked her free. She’d put her arms around his neck and kissed him. “My hero,” she said, laughing.
He heard drums. He turned his head. The room tilted. He placed a palm on the counter to steady himself. There was muffled barking, too. He didn’t remember a dog at the hotel they’d stayed at. Cats, yes, two of them slinking from room to room. But no dogs.
The walls trembled with each resounding thud. Where were they, these impatient drummers? He moved across the floor, letting the sound draw him through the dining room. His feet caught on the fringe of the rug. He lifted them free. He brushed past chairs, the hard corner of the table. I’m coming, I’m coming.
He was getting close. He could feel their presence in his bones. The light was brighter here, too, flooding in through panes of glass, glowing on the floor and shining up to the ceiling. The wall held him up. He saw dark shapes moving behind the glass. People were out there. He put his eye to the glass and peered out. He didn’t know them. They were strangers and they wanted to get in.
He squinted. They moved into the light. He couldn’t believe it.
It was his father standing there. Ann’s sister, too. They’d made the journey together. Pleased, he reached for the doorknob.
FORTY-EIGHT
WHAT TOOK SO LONG?” KATE DEMANDED AS ANN SLID open the back door. The baby reached over to bat Kate’s chin, and she grabbed his hand and held it. “Is Maddie okay?”
“I got a shot.” Maddie pushed past Ann and scrambled into the car. She’d torn the mask from her face and gripped it in one hand. “And the doctor pulled up my shirt in front of everybody.” She fumbled for the seatbelt with fat fingers, and Ann reached to help her.
Kate sat back. “So, everything’s okay now?”
“We still don’t know what caused Maddie’s reaction,” Ann said.
“I thought she was just allergic to cats.”
“She must have developed a reaction to something new.” Ann got behind the wheel and slammed the door. She looked in the rearview mirror at Kate. “I need you to help me figure out what it was.”
Kate looked worriedly at Maddie, who was staring out the window. “How do we do that?”
“I don’t know.” Two weeks, the doctor had said. “Tell me what you two were doing when Maddie got sick.”
“Nothing. We were getting Jacob dressed.”
Ann turned the key in the ignition and pulled away from the curb. “You didn’t go outside?”
“No.”
“Maybe it’s dust.” How would she know? She wouldn’t. “When we get home, I’ll wipe everything down. Stay out of your rooms until then. Maddie, you’d better stay downstairs.”
They exited onto the highway. Heat poured in from the vents. They drove past a hardware store, a cellular phone store, and a string of restaurants. All closed. The clock on the dashboard rea
d four-fifteen. They’d been gone an hour. As soon as they got home, she’d go upstairs and check on Peter. With any luck, he’d have been asleep the whole time. They’d gone through the worst, the nurse had said. Tomorrow would be better.
Kate said, “Was that there before?”
A fire engine sat in the middle of a vacant parking lot, parked at an angle as though it had slid to a hasty stop. One door hung ajar. Ann couldn’t recall whether it had been there. She’d been focused on getting to the hospital.
“It’s got something written on it.”
Ann glanced over. Maddie looked, too. A black circle was scrawled across the side of the engine, with a bold line crossed through it.
“I’ve seen that before,” Kate said. “It’s like that thing on Smith and Libby’s door.”
A huge vehicle like that had to have a big gas tank. Ann wondered if anyone else had thought of that.
“Only that one says three.”
A three here, a two on Libby’s door—small numbers that added up to too many.
Ann glanced into the rearview mirror and saw Kate staring out the window. Then a look of horror flashed across her face. She’d figured it out. She clapped a hand to her mouth. Jacob squirmed in her lap. After a moment, Kate allowed him to grab her hand back.
Ann tightened her grip on the steering wheel. She needed to get everyone home before they saw anything else.
Here was the grocery store, the clothing shop, the office supply store. Nothing but a row of blank windows and dark doors.
“Wait,” Maddie said suddenly. “There’s Heyjin.”
“Who?” Kate said.
“A girl in my class from Korea. She’s right there on that bus. I think she sees me.” Maddie waved.
Ann glanced over to the big blue-and-silver bus that was pulling past them. She glimpsed windows filled with children’s faces.
“Where’s she going, Mom?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t see her mom.”
“I don’t see anybody’s mom,” Kate said. “Or dad, either.”
How had the children been rounded up? How long had they gone without anyone taking care of them? This was what Peter was afraid would happen. He’d been right to worry. As soon as they got home, she’d bundle him up and they’d leave. They wouldn’t wait even one more hour. He could sleep just as well in the van as he could in the house, and he was past the contagious point. Better, too, to get Maddie out of the house and whatever it was that had caused her reaction.