The End of Men(32)

I step carefully up the stairs, the cat bouncing up ahead of me, and put Theodore in the bed in the spare bedroom. For the first time since Anthony died, I allow myself to hope that maybe, just maybe, everything will be all right.





ROSAMIE


Singapore

Day 68

Mrs. Tai’s scream echoes through the apartment.

“Stay here,” I warn Angelica in my “I seriously mean it” voice. Whatever is going on, I don’t want her to see it. I walk through the quiet corridors of the apartment telling myself to stay calm. The atmosphere in the apartment is strange. The maids are all holed up in their rooms—terrified, calling their families, unsure what to do.

I follow the screaming into Mr. and Mrs. Tai’s bedroom. Mr. Tai is having a fit. His body is shaking and he is foaming at the mouth. It’s painful to watch him convulse and shake, his head throwing itself around on his pillow. Mrs. Tai is staring silently at him in horror.

“Mr. Tai?” I say in a calm voice, and try to hold his arms still. It takes all the strength I have but I manage to keep him still enough to stop his head crashing. After a few minutes his body relaxes and the fit stops. Mrs. Tai is still standing behind me; she must be in shock. Mr. Tai is definitely dying, there is no doubt in my mind. His forehead is so hot, I don’t see how he could live. It is hotter than any living thing should be and his face is gray and flushed at the same time. I sit on the side of the bed, unsure of what to do. I am holding his hand and looking at him while his wife stands looking at me. This is all the wrong way around. After I don’t know long, Mrs. Tai comes to her senses and pushes me out of the way. She snaps something at me in Cantonese that I don’t understand, but I know her well enough to realize it means, “Get out.”

I bump into Angelica as I leave the bedroom. “Angelica!” I whisper. Her face is screwed up with worry. My lovely girl, she’s too sweet and nervous for all of this. “Let’s go back to the nursery.”

“And watch Cinderella?”

“And watch Cinderella.”

I try to push Mr. Tai out of my mind and focus on Rupert and Angelica. The thought that the disease is inside, and close to Rupert, encloses my mind for a dizzying moment. I push it away. Rupert hasn’t seen Mr. Tai. I look down at my phone again. My mother hasn’t been replying to my e-mails. Her last e-mail had said that lots of the men in town had left. They had gotten boats and gone to other islands, thinking that maybe the disease would, I don’t know, not follow them? Not be waiting for them when they got there?

Angelica gets to the nursery ahead of me, turning on the TV to watch Cinderella. Rupert isn’t up yet, which isn’t like him. He’s always up by eight. I go into Rupert’s room, to the side of the nursery. His little body is facing away from the door and he’s curled up into a ball under the blankets. I call his name gently and try to pull the blankets off him but he whimpers. My heart skips and for a moment the world is stopping. Technically I’m just a nanny. Technically these aren’t my children, but what makes a mother? The woman who grows them or the woman who raises them? These are my babies. My life is spent looking after them.

I force myself to feel Rupert’s forehead and I know it’s hot before I even touch it. The heat is fiercer than I could imagine, even hotter than Mr. Tai. It’s like he is burning. I pull the blankets off and yell for one of the maids, for someone, anyone. Mrs. Tai must hear me because she rushes into the room, her eyes all puffy from crying. She starts yelling and crying again. I tell her to call an ambulance and shove my way past her to soak some towels in cold water. I’m covering Rupert in the wet towels and she’s trying to grab them off him, she doesn’t understand. I’m fighting her, pushing her off and trying to explain to her that we have to bring his fever down or . . .

Then she understands.

She sits by his side, crying to herself, saying over and over again, “My life is over, my life is over, my life is over.” After a while I snap and tell her to shut up. How is that going to help Rupert? I keep thinking, Where’s the ambulance? It’s like a mantra. “Where’s the ambulance?” Mrs. Tai is phoning and phoning. She phones private companies and taxi companies and hospitals but they all tell her they are busy, they are full, stay where you are, nothing they can do, stay home. I keep thinking it will come, all the way through the day. It has to. Someone has to take pity on us. We cannot stay here in this room, watching a little boy die without any help. Angelica keeps coming in and hugging me from behind as I sit by Rupert, holding his hand. Mrs. Tai looks at me with an expression she has never used before. It takes me a while to work out what it is and then, as I kiss her daughter on the forehead, while comforting her dying son, I realize. It’s jealousy. This woman had everything in the world she could possibly want, but she wanted all the wrong things.

Rupert keeps getting worse throughout the afternoon. I’m gripping his hand tighter and tighter, as if I can keep him here as long as I’m touching him, but I know how powerless I am. The ambulance doesn’t arrive. It’s never going to arrive. In the evening his breathing becomes shallower. He’s gasping for each breath. I didn’t think it was possible for a fever to get any worse but it keeps climbing and climbing. It’s like the devil has gripped him and is burning him through. Maybe I should put him in the bathtub with cold water and ice. It probably wouldn’t make a difference. Nothing makes a difference. His breathing becomes more and more painful to listen to until it stops, just before midnight, and then all I want to hear again is his little chest heaving out a breath. Blessedly, there is no fit like Mr. Tai had suffered. I keep holding his tiny hand. I feel his forehead, the heat leaking out of his cooling skin. Mrs. Tai is slumped behind me, crying about her baby. I want to shout that he’s not her baby, what does she know? Does she know the three vegetables he will eat? His favorite movie? The order in which his blankets have to be laid over him—turquoise fleecy, then the white sheet and then the duvet—for him to sleep? How you have to slide Monkey out from under his elbow when he’s sleeping to wash it in the middle of the night and make sure to tumble dry it so it’s not damp before placing it back in his arms? She doesn’t know anything.