The End of Men(41)

Amanda spent weeks being ignored and accused of hysterically overestimating the impact of the Plague, and yet she has devoted months of her life to research for which she has not been paid and, repeatedly, insists on sharing credit for. Does she feel in any way vindicated? She frowns and I feel as though I’ve overstepped a line. “No. I’m devastated by the deaths of my husband and sons, and by the destruction of the world as we know it. I’m also very, very angry at the way I was ignored not because I need attention but because more could have been done to limit the damage. Vindication suggests I enjoy being proved right. I don’t. I just wish the people responsible had done their jobs better. I wish they had tried.”

I ask Amanda if she thinks she would have been treated differently if she were a man: seen as less hysterical, less anxious, more credible. She sighs. “I haven’t been asked that question before but probably, yes. It’s impossible to know but . . .” I comment that as a Latina woman in science journalism I’ve learned that it’s always worth asking that question. I always assume a white man would have an easier time of things.

She is however being recognized for her efforts; Health Protection Scotland has, as of ten days ago, hired Amanda as a “public health consultant.” “I’ll continue to work five days a week as an A and E doctor and I’ll devote one full day a week for Health Protection Scotland while using the on-the-ground information and experience I gain as a doctor to add to the discussion around public health in Scotland.” Amanda’s done enough interviews not to say anything she doesn’t want to, but I can’t help but push. Surely, it feels good to now have the very institution that ignored her begging for her help. “They didn’t beg but yes, I think I will help HPS and I’m glad to be working with them.” I note she says with not for. For that observation I receive a raised eyebrow. Suffice to say, the history between Amanda and HPS means no one is under any illusions; they need her far more than she needs them.

Our discussion has to come to an end because Amanda has a fourteen-hour shift at the hospital for which she’s running late. My final question is one I’ve been asking all of my interviewees. “How are you coping with grief?”

She laughs, briefly. “I’m not,” and the screen goes black.





CATHERINE


Devon, United Kingdom

Day 132

I’m still here in Devon. There’s no point in me staying here but I can’t bear to leave. I committed my first-ever crime: I buried my son. What a way to break the law after a lifetime of careful, civil obedience. I couldn’t stand for them to take him away and burn him. I don’t have anything or anywhere to remember Anthony by. They couldn’t take Theodore away too.

He went mercifully quickly. I keep wondering if he was showing symptoms in the days after Anthony’s death and I just didn’t see. I think I wasted some of the last precious days I could have had with my son arranging a funeral no one attended and driving to Devon. He should have been in my arms every hour of every day. My only baby, I left him alone in the house so much in London. When Anthony was dying I wouldn’t let him sleep in my bed even when he cried. I wanted to keep him safe. I thought I was protecting him.

It took him in the same way everyone has been talking about. The Plague is ruthless and predictable. His temperature climbed and climbed all night. Nothing I did helped. Eventually I had him outside, in my lap as I covered him in cold washcloths in the January chill. He didn’t even shiver. The next day he fell into unconsciousness and he never woke up again. He had a seizure and died twenty-four hours after I noticed his temperature.

I didn’t call an ambulance. There was no point. They would have just taken him from me. Maybe pierced his soft baby skin with needles. Maybe broken his ribs when he stopped breathing in a show of human force in the face of this disease. Or worse, they would have ignored me. Told me to just watch him die and let them know when he was dead. He deserved better than that.

My boy died in my arms as I told him I loved him over and over again. My precious boy. The baby who made me a mother and made us a family. My last piece of Anthony. I hope they’re together again. I’ve never been religious but I have to hope. I hope that somewhere, my baby is being looked after and loved and cared for.

The hole I dug in the garden was too small. No body is meant to go into a hole that small. He couldn’t possibly fit in there, I thought to myself, but he did. He’s so tiny. I buried him with a blanket and a letter, as though the words I have written will somehow make their way into his life after death. Know that I love you. Know that I would have died for you in a heartbeat but I wasn’t given the opportunity. Know that I am broken without you.

Three days after I buried him I got my period. Genevieve keeps a shotgun in a cupboard for reasons beyond me. I spent four hours sitting at the kitchen table, the cold metal of the gun against my throat. I will never have another baby. I hadn’t thought I was pregnant, there had been no symptoms. But there was a chance. There had been a chance. Anthony and I had slept together enough times around when I ovulated. I thought the world would give me this. I deserved it enough. I wanted it enough. A baby to help me through my grief. A girl after losing Theodore.

But there is no baby, there was never a baby. I am a mother with no child. I will never have another child. The only reason I didn’t pull the trigger was the fear that I would go to hell. I don’t believe in hell but I want Theodore and Anthony to be together in heaven and there’s a chance. I couldn’t take the risk of never seeing them again because I couldn’t bear the pain. It was the most rational reason my brain could come up with. The risk that hell would continue after my death and I would be kept from my family.