Pestilence

4

After spending a day with Duncan, Samantha had to get back to Atlanta. She’d filed her reports on the Ebola outbreak in Kinshasa electronically, and she’d gotten a reply that the assistant director wanted to meet with her in person to go over them.

Duncan drove her to the airport in the morning, where she kissed him and said goodbye. He handed her something before she walked through the metal detectors: a copy of Seneca’s On the Shortness of Life.

“Now?” she said.

“Its subtitle is ‘life is long if you know how to use it.’ It’s a book about overcoming tragedy.”

“Thanks. I don’t know if I can concentrate enough to read, though.”

He hugged her, and she watched him as she went through the metal detectors.

The flight didn’t take long, and after landing and using the bathroom, she retrieved her car from long-term parking. She put the hundred-and-twelve-dollar parking fee on a government-issued expense card.

Atlanta was warm but had a dry heat that didn’t affect her. She rolled down her windows as she drove home and listened to an Enya station on Pandora.

When she arrived at her house, she was struck by how much she had actually missed it. It was really nothing more than a small brown-brick house with three bedrooms-one for her, one for her mother, and a guest bedroom that was never used-but it held a comfort she’d lacked growing up in apartments and condos in Southern California. Samantha went inside and heard someone in the kitchen.

She walked in to find her mother’s nurse, Dana, cooking lunch.

“Back already?” she asked.

“I got done quicker than I thought. How is she?”

“Yesterday was bad. She didn’t remember who I was and kept thinking I was a burglar. She tried to call the police.”

“I’m so sorry, Dana.”

“Hey, that’s why you pay me the big bucks. She’s much better today. She’s watching her soaps if you want to go up.”

Samantha dropped her gym bag by the closet and went upstairs to the bedrooms. She went into her mother’s room and saw her lying on her back, staring blankly at the flat-screen television on the wall.

“How are you, Mom?”

“I didn’t get my medication today. I need my medication for my flu.”

Samantha sat next to her and gently brushed back her hair from her eyes. “You don’t have the flu, Mom. But I’ll check with Dana and make sure she gets your medication to you.”

“I need my medication. It makes my throat feel better.”

Samantha leaned down and kissed her forehead. She sat back up and held her mother’s hand. Placing her back against the wall, she turned toward the television.

“So, what’s going on in this episode?”

Within an hour, her mother was asleep. Samantha quietly rose, turned off the television, and left the room, shutting the door softly behind her. She went downstairs and found a note from Dana saying that lunch was prepared and in the fridge. Tuna fish sandwiches were wrapped in Saran Wrap, with small bags of chips placed next to them. She took hers and went out on the porch. Sitting down on her steps, she unwrapped her sandwich and took a bite, looking out over her neighborhood.

Her community was quiet, without any commotion in the short winters and few calls to the police in the long summers. The neighbors mostly kept to themselves, but they would invite her to summer barbeques and picnics, which she would always take her mother to. She tried to get her mother out as much as possible, but within the last year, that had been getting more difficult. The Alzheimer’s was slowly sucking away the strong, confident person Samantha remembered as a child. It had set in early, while Samantha was still an undergrad at New York University.

Dates were the first to go; she’d started out missing birthdays and holidays. Those were followed by events. Her mother would frequently confuse something that happened to her sister with something that happened to her. Or something she saw on television would become an occurrence that had happened to her. At first, Samantha, her brother, and her sister were in denial. They attributed everything to the natural processes of aging. But when she forgot how to open a soda can, they knew something was wrong.

Samantha placed the sandwich down on her lap. She took out her cell and tried her sister, Jane, again, and then she called her sister’s husband, Robert. Neither of them answered.