The End of Men(13)
I was so disappointed when Theodore was a boy. You’re not supposed to say that, but I was. I cried when the sonographer told us. Anthony didn’t know what to say as I wept on the table, the jelly cold and wet on my stomach. I was weeping for boring blue dungarees and diggers and running around parks that I didn’t have the energy for. I wanted to replace the relationship I had with my mother before she died. If only I could go back and tell myself what I know now. I would also weep for the safety lost.
No one from the scientific community has made a statement about why it affects only men. We all know that it does; it’s obvious. But no one has said why. Maybe they don’t know? Surely they know. We can separate conjoined twins and treat cancer and prevent AIDS with drugs. Surely they know why men, and only men, are dying. And nearly all of them die. The death rate is staggering. A 3.4 percent recovery rate, which seems to be completely random. There is no rhyme or reason. An elderly man was on the television last night telling his tale of coming close to the brink and somehow staving off death despite the Plague’s best efforts. In the next clip a mother cried about her twenty-four-year-old son, a promising footballer who looked almost embarrassingly strong and healthy. He contracted it on the bus, she thinks, or maybe from one of the other players on his team. Nine of the other players have died. The team is disbanding.
Anthony sits on the sofa next to me, grasping my left hand as I journal. We haven’t discussed it but we spend as much time as possible together. We sit next to each other at dinner, as close as we can physically be. We curl into each other on the sofa. We sleep entwined like otters.
He hasn’t commented on my incessant writing, but he’s used to it now. I’ve always journaled, on and off. More so when there are things to write about. Now there is everything to write about. The small part of my brain that is still engaged in my work can’t help but pick up on the changes we’re seeing through the television. I will record this. I know I will. I’m not sure how, but I will. I don’t understand how everyone isn’t already recording everything. I’m taking tens of photos and videos of Theodore and Anthony a day. I flick through them before I have a bath as I get all of the weeping I want to do all day out of my system in the quiet calm of the early morning.
I can’t bear the possibilities. The questions flap around me. Will Theodore catch it? Will Anthony catch it? Will my gorgeous baby boy die? Will my husband die? Will everyone catch it? Will there be a cure? When will there be a cure? What if there is never a cure? What if this never ends? Is this the end of the world as we know it?
They started calling it “The Great Male Plague” last week. The tabloids had a field day after the doctor who treated the first patients, Amanda Maclean, did an interview. She said it was the worst virus she had ever seen. She called it the new Plague and it stuck. She says she wasn’t listened to and if Health Protection Scotland had taken her seriously we could have gotten control of it. I don’t know what to think about that.
You always assume that the people in power will know what to do. Surely they’ve all got it figured out, but I don’t think anyone knows what to do. Nothing like this has ever happened. We’re all blindly stumbling around in the dark and none of us knows a thing.
They’re showing a clip on the TV of one of the trains leaving Glasgow. It looks like a scene from a film. There are people pushing ticket inspectors to one side and shoving themselves onto trains. They’ve all gone mad. The whole world is going mad.
Anthony switches off the TV with a decisive click.
“That’s enough news for tonight,” he says quietly before pulling me into his arms.
ELIZABETH
London, United Kingdom
Day 37
As I get off the plane, I’m asked to step to one side. Immediately I panic that I’ve made an egregious mistake at work and the US government has decided I need to be dealt with while I’ve been on the flight to London. I’m never sure how to marry up the objective ability of my brain as a scientist with the feeling I so often have that I’ve done something wrong.
“Ms. Cooper, I have a car here to take you to see Dr. Kitchen.” The man is subtly well dressed and serious.
A sleek business car is waiting for me. I gulp but try to eke out a friendly smile even though I’m unnerved. Government science departments don’t tend to be Mercedes S-Class kinds of places. At least not for small-time visitors like me.
We make our way swiftly through the gray streets of West London snaking away from Heathrow. Everything looks so normal. Nobody is freaking out, yelling in the streets. There are Christmas lights up as the city prepares for the holidays. There’s traffic and a garbage truck making its way slowly down the road and a woman with her daughter on the way to school, unicorn-covered backpack bouncing up and down as they walk down the street.
Maybe this was all a mistake. I cringe at the memory of the conversation with my boss that led me here. It took every ounce of strength, and a lot of the techniques I learned at an “Assertiveness for Women in the Workplace” workshop, not to apologize, back out of his office slowly and leave as if nothing had happened. I didn’t though. For the first time in my life since I was eighteen, I was bold and brave and maybe even a little reckless. I use the example of Stanford versus Ole Miss whenever I need to feel like I’m making the right choices; it never fails me. My parents were so sure they were right and I was wrong. Who did I think I was acting like I was too good for the University of Mississippi? They were convinced Stanford would be an expensive waste of time. They were wrong. I was right. I need to remember that more often.