Angelica is sitting on the sofa, playing on the iPad. It’s only 9:30 a.m. and I’m usually quite strict with iPad time but we’re locked up so the normal rules don’t apply. It was obvious immediately that I hadn’t been hired to be a nanny; I had been hired to be a mother. Mrs. Tai pays the children hardly any attention. She says good morning and good night to them and that’s it. I’m there for kissing bruised arms better and pinning their paintings onto the nursery wall and saying, “Yes we can watch Moana again but only if we watch Lilo & Stitch tomorrow and no we can’t have Frozen until next week, I don’t want to let it go again, that ice lady needs a time-out!” I hear their laughs and their cries and their mumbles in their sleep and I know what temperature Rupert likes the milk he still has at night that I really need to wean him off of, but it’s a good source of calcium and I’ll let him have it for a few more weeks.
I sit next to Angelica and stroke her hair. I want to ask her how she’s feeling but I don’t have any answers for the questions she would inevitably ask, so instead I just sit here, hoping my presence is enough. My phone pings for the fourth time in an hour. It’s another message from my mother. The Plague is back home in Mati. My mother calls it a sumpa, a curse. Her e-mails are hysterical. She doesn’t know anything, just that it is a terrible disease and the men are dying. It is scary enough being here but back home, if the power goes out or there are food shortages, there is no way to fix it. I try not to feel worried. At least we are a family of women. I think this every day and it makes everything seem better. My father left when I was small. Our greatest weakness has become a strength. Now, I think, what’s the worst that can happen? They will not die. I will not die. We will be okay.
I’m about to go and check on Rupert—he’s suspiciously quiet—when I hear a scream and Angelica and I jump up in unison. It’s Mrs. Tai, yelling for help in the bedroom. I know what this must mean but I can’t bear it. Don’t let the Plague be in the apartment, please. Not here.
LISA
Toronto, Canada
Day 68
Everybody in my office, we’re late, run don’t walk.”
One of the lab assistants practically sprints into my office, spilling coffee everywhere. Jesus Christ. The screen comes alive as one of the AV people finally gets the TV plugged into the laptop, and we’re greeted by a patchwork of faces of various pixilations. I immediately start scanning the screen for faces I recognize. It’s hard to see anyone. There’s so many on the screen, everyone except Amanda Maclean—the host of this online get-together—is tiny.
“Hello everyone,” she says. She has a beautiful voice. I love a Scottish accent. “Thank you for attending this, well, I suppose we’ll call it a meeting. I’m not sure what to say other than that I’m here and I’ll tell you everything I know, anything I can to help.”
Amanda doesn’t look good. She has bags under her eyes so deep they’re like divots and her eyes have the hollow determination of a religious devotee in a hair shirt. She’s losing it. She must have lost her sons and her husband. I’d bet my bottom dollar that’s why she’s surfaced after her period of silence.
“Are you working on a vaccine?” one of the voices asks.
“No, I work full-time as an A and E doctor in Glasgow. I’m not a virologist, I just happened to treat Patient Zero.”
Amanda has the dazed look that people get, ironically, after they make great medical discoveries. Often you see their expression at a press conference and they look like someone just caught them on a jog or something and told them they’d helped save the human race. “What, me? How? No way?” For Amanda, it’s the opposite. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.