“We don’t have to watch anything if you’re not in the mood,” I said, turning off the TV.
Dorrie picked up the remote and turned it back on.
“No, let’s watch something ridiculous,” she said.
She curled into me, and I thought about all the nights these past nine months that ended just like this one—never acknowledging the future, desperately wanting to forget the past—taking small comfort in the equilibrium that we both knew couldn’t last forever.
*
I awoke the next day to the distant bellow of Osiris making a test run. Dorrie was still asleep beside me, her legs tucked tight against her body. I was normally at the park by now, changing into my costume before she stirred in the morning. I peeked out the window and saw others doing the same, waiting for their turn to make their way to work with minimal chance of running into someone else. No neighborly chitchat or gossip, each of us holding a perpetual funeral in our heart and mind, eyes fixed on the peak of Osiris, where loudspeakers blared Grieg’s “Morning Mood” right on time, every day at 8:00 A.M., and the soft female voice, sometimes adopting a faux-British accent, telling us to smile and laugh, to focus on the good we were doing for the children, for our country. “And always remember,” the voice continued, “to turn that frown upside down!”
In the next room, I could hear Fitch watching an old episode of Barney & Friends. I climbed out of bed, walked up to the glass wall that separated him from the rest of the world. He looked over and waved, quickly returned to drawing a labyrinth with crayons. It was a good day for him, which meant a day of video games and comic books punctuated by visits from the park nurse who checked his vitals. Such spells of energy never lasted long, though, and it was too early to be certain of the treatment’s effectiveness. The color had returned to his skin, but his eyes remained those of a person who’s never known rest, sunken into bruised craters.
“I bet you can’t solve this one,” he said, crossing his arms. He held the labyrinth he’d drawn against the glass. “You have to get the prince and princess out. The prince came to save her but then he got trapped, too.”
“What are those pointy things?” I asked. “And those rectangles in the middle of the path?”
“Spikes and trapdoors,” he said. “And there’s a half Pegasus, half shark that will eat the prince and princess if they don’t escape soon. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi . . .”
After I saved the prince and princess, I gave Fitch his daily comic book. This had become something of a routine between us. It was the one hobby I’d shared with my little brother, eventually amassing nearly three thousand issues. Comics let us see a brighter world, forget our troubles, allowed us to dream. And I wanted this for Fitch. He deserved another world.
He was flipping through one of my brother’s favorite issues of Fantastic Four. “Who is this?” He’d begun asking me for background on the characters. “And this?”
I pointed to each team member and explained they had traveled in a spaceship through a cosmic storm that gave them superpowers.
“I wish we could have a cosmic storm,” he said.
“Oh? And would you want to be invisible, be a human torch, have your body stretch, or be a pile of rocks?”
“I’d want to shape-shift so I could be all of those things or anything I wanted,” he said. I could tell that our brief interaction had drained him more than usual. He sank into bed, the comic book resting in his lap, eyes fluttering. I placed my hand on the glass wall to say goodbye and told him I’d check on him after work.
When I went to the living room, Dorrie was already there, combing over an email from one of the drug trial’s doctors. She spent hours each day researching treatments that were in development both in the United States and abroad, emailing the various programs about Fitch’s case. I sat beside her on the couch as she cradled her morning coffee.
“The trial doctors told me the first round of drugs are barely slowing the spread of the virus,” Dorrie explained. “And the pills could create more problems if Fitch keeps taking them long term. He’s on a lower dose now, but I’m searching for other trials.”
“So, you’d move again?” I said. I was thinking about myself, the price of moving forward, of all the good days Fitch would have versus the ones that were almost unbearable to witness. Dorrie still seemed to believe, or maybe she needed to believe, that everything would be okay somehow. I tried to play my role for her, the supportive friend, part-time mediocre lover, coworker, sort of father figure to Fitch.