Half-Life of a Double Life

I don’t have much to report to Laura. I did fifty push-ups and ran in place for an hour. It’s a fitting joke that I’m now in the best shape of my life. Time passes slowly, and I have too much time to think.  

I ask her if the hate mail has stopped. “Oh, I don’t even open the mail anymore—unless it’s clearly a bill. The rest goes straight to the incinerator.” I always found the threats inexplicable. Still, the relatives of the victims and an assortment of others need to vent somewhere. With me out of reach and closely monitored, she’s the one who was nearest to the source of their problems. I wonder if she ever suffers from survivors’ guilt, or if they feel the need to foist it on her. 

Then, out of nowhere, she says, “Ross was asking about you.” My throat goes dry. “As we were watching the stars, he said, ‘Daddy’s up there, looking down over us.’ I gave him a big hug and told him that you weren’t ‘up there’, but that you were far away, thinking of him always." 

“Wouldn’t it be easier for them to move on if they thought I was dead?”  

“We’ve been over this: They’re gonna find out more details when they’re a little older, and when they do, they’ll have enough to be angry about without thinking I’m a liar." 

“Sometimes it’s healthy to have someone to direct your anger at,” I say. I instantly regret suggesting that they take out their anger on her. 

I think back to my final moments of freedom, when helicopters surrounded our house early one Wednesday, and the military and CDC roused us and separated us. I was taken in one chopper, and Laura and the kids were led into another. One of the MPs jostled me against the bulkhead, and pushed me onto my stomach. My face hit the floor panel and I saw stars. He winched zip cord handcuffs around my wrists, cutting off circulation, until an officer ordered him to ease off. “Remember, he came voluntarily. It’s important to keep his cooperation.” 

He glared at me for the rest of the flight, from behind his filtration mask. I pleaded with him that none of this was my fault, even though I had been told that my body was the breeding ground of an inordinate amount of suffering. “If this was all an accident, then how come your family is still alive?” he growled. I’ve never had a good answer for this, though it’s a question I come back to when I wake up in a cold sweat. Why did fifty-nine other families have to suffer—friends, colleagues, people I sat next to on the bus—while Laura and the kids never showed any symptoms? 

He hated me for the pain I had brought, and I hated him for his judgment. 

And I hated myself for being the vessel that bred the virus, a factory co-opted to manufacture tools of war, even as the workers run the same machines they did in peacetime. There must have been some sign I missed, some action I could have taken to prevent this. I hated that I had nobody to justifiably hate—not even myself, if I’m rational about everything. 

While others suffered, either by watching their loved ones degenerate or by degenerating themselves, I remained intact and uncertain, the unmapped center of a galaxy of pain. Even the researchers don’t know where I could have been exposed to Degraw’s disease. All they do know is that now it’s part and parcel with my DNA. 

And to think that I spent the early days of the epidemic as though nothing had changed. At the grocery store, I squeezed eight avocados before finding one I liked. I took five shirts to the changing room at Macy’s, and let each one sit next to my bare skin. I handed change to the girl at the convenience store. 

Laura says, “I think it would be healthier for them not to need to have anger. I’m gonna be honest with them: We’re going to have a tough go of it for a while, but that they shouldn’t hold it against you or the hate mail senders, or anyone else out there, for that matter. At least when it comes to this whole thing. Anger can be useful, but if there’s no outlet, it’s going to bottle up in them and lead to future hurt. That’s no way to grow up.” She’s so right about this. I try every day, sequestered and subject to remote monitoring, to let go of my anger. Once, I had a promising career, a wife and two children who loved me, neighbors who would invite Laura and me over for dinner and wine, and to observe their diamond-patterned lawns through picture windows at sunset. Now, only Laura calls, and half the time, I can’t even bear to hear her voice. 

She brings me back to a past world that was robbed from me. She reminds me that there are people who once depended on me, who now know that their entire world can crumble at a moment’s notice. Ross was too young when the outbreak occurred to be fully cognizant of what was going on. Gina remembers. She took every death in our circle of friends personally. Even when the city was quarantined and we couldn’t leave the house, she followed the newsfeeds for new deaths, and then video chatted with her friends to confirm their identities. She covered the wall above her bed with the names of the deceased and drew a forest of crosses. As time went on, she wouldn’t leave her room at all, and Laura and I had to leave food outside her locked door. An empty plate was always in the hallway in the morning. 

“I’m thinking of sending Gina to Finchwell Academy,” she says. “She’ll be starting seventh grade. She she was pretty shut down for most of last year, which I understand, of course. First, the disease, and then the move to Ann Arbor. She ate lunch by herself every day." 

“Are you still happy with the therapist she’s seeing?" “Progress is slow, but I think she’s coming back, bit by bit." 

“Did the therapist recommend the switch to private school?” “I’ve been talking to her about it, and she thinks it might be good for her to have another fresh start. I don’t regret moving to Ann Arbor, but I don’t know if there was any right move we could have made with Gina at that point. She has the look you see in the eyes of children in refugee camps." 

“Her past is something that she’ll have to come to terms with,” I say. 

“Yeah, but it’s tough to do that when you also don’t want any of your new friends to know that you were at the center of last year’s biggest news story. We’re basically living in a witness protection program. Minus the security. It only takes a quick Google search to find out who we are." There are a number of harebrained theories out there, which a small but vocal minority has promoted, including terrorist linkages and a government cover-up. 

“Anyway,” she continues, “Did the doctors have any news for you this week?” She’s referring to the small team of medical researchers granted clearance to work with my deadly cargo. Because most of their work takes place in a secure lab, I don’t have much contact with them. Once every few weeks they show up to take blood and saliva samples. 

At one vacuum-sealed door, which remains locked from the outside, a white cotton sleeve hangs through into my room. There’s a glove on one end of it. The doctors examine me and take tissue samples without ever coming into direct contact. They pass the sample out through a small airlock hatch next to the sleeve, and sterilize the syringe or bottle. Like most scientists I’ve met, they’re content to commune with their equipment, but aren’t very chatty around me. I have to pry to get anywhere with them. My isolation, it seems, would be their dream. 

“They haven’t been by since last week. They’ve promised to let me know if they make any breakthroughs, and if there’s any progress on…” My voice trails off. 

“A cure?” She finishes the sentence for me. I’m leaning against the wall, heart beating loud enough that I think I can hear it echo in my small, concrete chamber. The thought of being freed from my burden terrifies me. By myself, wrapped in layer after layer of antiseptic protection—underground, I think—I don’t have to worry about losing control of myself, and even if I do, I won’t put anyone else at risk. Food is delivered every day. The lights turn on at an imagined sunrise and off at an imagined sunset. I can request books every now and then. I maintain a strict exercise regimen. 

She notices my silence: “What’s wrong?" 

I want to tell her that I’m scared of what society will think of me if I ever have the chance to leave this room. The papers wouldn’t miss the opportunity to milk another story from my and fifty-nine other families’ suffering. I’m scared of what my children will think of me, the father they’ve been instructed not to talk about. I’m scared of what I will make of a world that I will have to glue back together like a shattered teacup. I’m scared of having to face the fact that maybe I don’t have anything to feel guilty about, that my connection to this whole mess didn’t actually have anything to do with me or my actions.