The Way We Fall (24 page)

First snowstorm of the winter. Not even really snow—sleet. Gray, slushy rain pattering against the windows since early this morning.

Meredith and I were watching
The Little Mermaid
after dinner for the eighth time when the lights and the TV flickered and died.

I don’t know whether the outage is temporary or permanent. Hopefully temporary. No electricity means no fridge, no oven, no microwave. Maybe no heat too.

Gav called a little while after the power went. I could tell he was at the hospital because of the jumble of voices in the background.

“The entire hospital went black while I was hanging with Warren,” he said. “They only just got the generator going. I heard the whole town’s gone out. Are you okay?”

I’d had to grope through the dark for the phone. Meredith was still curled up on the couch, breathing shakily. I crouched down by the wall and closed my eyes. “Yeah,” I said. “Tessa’s looking for the candles her parents kept for emergencies. It’s kind of spooky, but we’ll live.”

“I’ll come over,” he said. “Just got to say bye to Warren.”

I wanted to see him. Wanted it so badly, my stomach ached that he wasn’t already here. I’ve hung out with him and Warren at the hospital a bit, but I feel uncomfortable intruding on their friendship, so I haven’t seen him much the last few days. But as I opened my mouth, the window beside me rattled with the wind and the sleet, and I could see in my mind the long slippery roads through the pitch black between him and me. The image of the shattered glass from the greenhouse rose up behind my eyelids, shifting into the Ford’s smashed windshield, and before I even knew I was going to, I heard myself saying, “No. Stay there.”

“They don’t need me,” Gav said. “They’ll be doing lights-out for the patients in a half hour anyway. I’ll just—”

“Gav,” I said, trying to sound firm, even though the ache in my stomach had turned into a heavy lump. “Don’t. I don’t want you to come. We’ll be fine.”

There was a pause, and a sharp intake of breath, and he said, “Okay. Sure. Fine,” like it wasn’t fine at all. “I’ll see you later, then,” he added, and suddenly I was saying, “Bye,” even though I’d meant to explain.

“Kaelyn?” Meredith said, as the dial tone droned into my ear. By the time I made it back to her on the couch, Tessa had come in with the candles, and we went to our rooms.

Meredith finally dozed off a few minutes ago. The ferrets are perched on the upper platform of the cage, heads bobbing as they follow the flickering of the candlelight. I probably shouldn’t be wasting it on writing here. The box Tessa found only had a few left.

Besides, it feels kind of fitting right now, to be adrift in the dark.

So I’m here in Uncle Emmett’s living room again, where we sat a million years ago while Dad talked about a virus that had killed one person, that
might
be a risk. It feels so strange to be back.

I took a nap on the couch this afternoon, and when I woke up and heard someone moving in the kitchen, for a second I thought it was Mom.

“You don’t need to go to so much trouble, Grace,” Uncle Emmett used to say, and Mom would answer, “I want to know you’re having a decent meal at least once in a while,” and then he’d mutter something to himself and plop down in the armchair to watch TV. It used to drive me crazy how he’d complain about her making dinner, but never offer to help.

I’d give my right arm to have them here, griping at each other again.

We moved in yesterday morning—Meredith, Tessa, the ferrets, and I—because the electricity seems to be gone for good, and unlike Tessa’s house and mine, Uncle Emmett’s has a generator. Dad helped me fix the front door, and between our car and Tessa’s, we were able to move everything important in one trip. The gang took the computer and the TV when they came through, but those would have been luxuries we’d hesitate to use anyway. We don’t want to risk overloading the generator. We have the stove for boiling water and cooking, and we’ve got light if we have to use it. Which is all we really need these days.

I’m not sure what everyone else in town is doing. The hospital’s fine, of course—it’s got the biggest generator on the island. And some other houses have private generators, so people can get by. Dad said there are a few empty places like that near the hospital for anyone who needs shelter. The church has one too, so the kids should be okay.

Meredith and I are sharing her old bedroom. It’s a little cramped, but I brought the binoculars, and I’ve started watching the mainland from her window whenever I have a free moment, even though all I’ve seen so far are faint lights through the fog rising off the strait. Since we’re the hosts now, I figured I should offer Tessa the master bedroom.

I don’t know what she’s feeling—but then, I’ve always had trouble telling. She went out to the backyard before we left her house, and came back in with nothing. I guess there wasn’t much she could salvage. There’s a stiffness in the way she moves, the way she talks now, that I don’t remember from before. Like she was broken and the parts didn’t fit together quite as well when she got put back together.

So I’ve been doing all the cooking, such as it is, and I let her decide when she feels like talking to me. Small offerings. If I could think of something better, I’d do it.

I didn’t hear from Gav all yesterday. This morning as I was putting away the breakfast dishes, there was a light knock on the door. When I opened it, he was standing on the front step with his shoulders slightly hunched and his hair rumpled, looking just as wary as he did the first day he came to my house. For a second it felt as if nothing that’d happened since then was real.

“Hey,” he said, and I said “Hey” back, and then I reached toward him instinctively. He caught my hand and stepped inside, interlacing his fingers with mine. He held my gaze as if he was searching for something. After a moment he leaned in to kiss me. And I was pretty sure that it had been real after all.

I slid my other arm around his waist, and he eased back slightly. “I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner,” he said. “I went by Tessa’s yesterday afternoon, and you were gone. I wasn’t sure where to look.”

“It’s okay,” I said. It didn’t seem worth mentioning our awkward conversation on the phone the night the power went out. “I figured if you didn’t find us before then, I’d see you at the hospital when I went in today. How’s Warren?”

Gav shrugged, but his jaw tensed. “As comfortable as they can make him,” he said. “They give him a little aspirin for the fever, and tea and mint candies to help his throat, but I guess that’s about all they can do anymore.”

“It’s not their fault,” I said. I suspect Dad would swim across the strait during a snowstorm if he thought they’d give him the medications we need when he got to the other side.

“I know,” Gav said. “And it’s not like any of the specialized drugs made a difference before. Maybe the real cure’s been mint all along.” He tried to smile, but his mouth wavered.

“I think it’s been hard for him,” he added. “His dad took his little sister to stay with their grandparents in Dartmouth and didn’t make it back before the quarantine. And his mom’s afraid to go in the hospital. He’s had to make do with mostly just me for company.”

“You think he’d like me to come by again?” I said. “I’m happy to visit more—I just wasn’t sure how he’d feel, since he doesn’t know me that well.”

“I think he’d like that a lot,” Gav said, and really smiled. “I was going to head over there after I’d seen you—why don’t you come too?”

So I did.

They have Warren in one of the smaller rooms that used to be an exam room when the hospital was operating normally. An elderly woman was lying on the exam table, having a sneezing fit as we walked in, and a boy who was maybe ten sat against the wall and kept pausing his handheld video game to scratch the top of his left foot. Warren was sprawled on a folded blanket on the floor, his back propped up against a pillow, a book open on his knees.

“Kaelyn!” he said when he saw me, and raised his eyebrows at Gav. “Got tired of coming on your own, eh?”

Even with the mask covering his face, I could tell Gav was grimacing at him.

“I keep telling him to stay home,” Warren added, to me. “If you want to catch that thing, this is the place to do it. But like always, he ignores me.”

“I always listen to you when you say things worth listening
to
,” Gav retorted, and Warren grinned at him for a moment before he started to cough. He picked up a mug beside him and sipped his tea until the cough subsided.

I had to grope for something to say that had nothing to do with the virus, or the hospital, or anything else depressing. Finally I settled on, “What’re you reading?”

“This political thriller someone left here,” he said. “Not really my genre, but there aren’t many alternatives.”

“There’s a library on the second floor,” I said. “It’s small—really just a closet—but they try to have a little of everything. What do you want?”

His eyes lit up. “Where would I start?” he said.

He kept up the same cheerful tone as he suggested authors and topics: “Politics is fine, as long as it’s nonfiction—but not biographies, political biographies are even worse than this.” That sort of thing. Like it was no big deal he was there, like he’d just caught a bug that would clear up with some rest. But the truth is, he’s been sick nearly five full days, which means chances are he won’t be himself by tomorrow, and I could tell he knew that just as well as I did. His hand shook whenever he picked up the mug of tea, and his eyes flickered away from us when he laughed. And any time he mentioned the hospital, or alluded to being sick, his smile got bigger.

Gav and I weren’t the only ones wearing masks. I watched Warren hold up his with jokes and banter, and a sharp little pain dug into my chest.

He’s scared, like anyone would be. I don’t know how much of the cheerful act is to boost his own spirits, and how much is for Gav’s benefit, but it’s not really important. Because either way, there was nothing I could do except stand there and notice, and go upstairs to grab him a new book.

And then I come back here and write all this down, like I would have recorded the habits of coyotes and my observations of seagulls before.

Useless. So incredibly, completely useless.

I found it! Oh my god, Leo, I really did! The answer was there the whole time. I just never looked back far enough.

I probably would never have seen the connection if it wasn’t for Howard—that survivor who takes the bodies out of the hospital.

I think he’s been living there since the electrical service went out. I went into the hospital kitchen this morning to boil some water, since we were getting low again, and he was there mixing up a glass of powdered milk to pour on his shredded wheat.

I’d never seen him without his gurney. He’s taller than I realized, I guess because he has to bend over to push it. And even though his hair’s mostly gray, up close you can see he’s not that old. Younger than Dad—in his thirties, maybe.

I said hi, and he said hello, and it was a little awkward because I don’t know anything about him other than what he does for the hospital, which isn’t exactly a great conversation starter. I filled up a pot and put it on the stove, and he picked up his bowl and headed out into the cafeteria. That was when I noticed the way he walked.

“You okay?” I said. “You’re limping.”

“Oh,” he said. “That’s nothing new. ’Bout a year ago, I was working with the boats, managed to drop an anchor on my foot.”

I winced and said, “Ow!”

“Yeah, it smashed my toes up good,” he said. “Couple of them didn’t heal straight, that’s why the funny walk. Had a hell of a fever afterward, too.”

“A fever?” I said, and memories from our summer trip to the island last year rushed into my head. The two days right before we went back to Toronto, when I was stuck in the hospital here, feeling like I was on fire.

I’d been by the water when it happened, just like Howard. Cut my heel on a mussel shell as I was climbing onto the rocks after a swim. I’d never thought the two might be connected. Dad had said it was probably something I’d eaten.

I turned off the stove and ran out into the hall without another word. Howard must think I’m insane.

But the truth’s there in the hospital records. Five of us who survived the virus, we were in the hospital between April and October of last year with a bad fever. I’m sure the other guy must have had it too—maybe it just didn’t get bad enough that he needed treatment.

Having that fever protected us. Kept us alive. Which means if we can figure out how, there’s got to be a way we can keep other people alive too.

Dad must have missed the connection for the same reason I did. Too focused on the virus itself, not bothering to check back beyond the start of the epidemic.

I have to talk to him. I looked all morning, but I couldn’t find him. Nell said he might have gone to the research center, but the doors were locked when I checked there. I’ll go back after Meredith’s had lunch. The sooner he knows, the sooner we can do something.

Finally. I can’t believe I found it!