Red Hill

Chapter Two

Scarlet

BY LUNCH, DANA HAD ALREADY been in and out of surgery. Christy told us they only opened her up long enough to see there was nothing they could do, before closing her back up. Now they were waiting for her to awaken so they could tell her she would never get better.

“Her boyfriend is still with her,” Christy said. “Her parents are visiting relatives. They’re not sure they’ll get back in time.”

“Oh, Jesus,” I said, wincing. I couldn’t imagine being away from either of my daughters in a situation like that, wondering if I would make it in time to see her alive one last time. I shook it off. Those of us in the medical field didn’t have the luxury of thinking about our patients’ personal lives. It became too close. Too real.

“Did you hear about that flu?” Christy said. “It’s all over the news.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think it’s a flu.”

“They’re saying it has to do with that scientist over in Europe. They say it’s highly contagious.”

“Who are they? They sound like troublemakers to me.”

Christy smiled and rolled her eyes. “They also said it’s breached our borders. California is reporting cases.”

“Really?”

“That’s what they say,” she said. Her pager buzzed. “Damn, it’s getting busy.” She pushed a button and called upstairs, and then she was gone again.

Within the hour, the hospital was crowded and frantic. The ER was admitting patients at a hectic pace, keeping everyone in radiology busy. David called in another tech so he and I could cover the ER while everyone else attended to outpatients and inpatients.

Whatever it was, the whole town seemed to be going crazy. Car accidents, fights, and a fast-spreading virus had hit at the same time. On my sixth trip to the ER, I passed the radiology waiting room and saw a group of people crowded around the flat-screen television on the wall.

“David?” I said, signaling for him to join me in front of the waiting room. He looked in through the wall of glass, noting the only seated person was a man in a wheelchair.

“Yeah?”

“I have a bad feeling about this.” I felt sick watching the updates on the screen. “They were talking about something like this on the radio this morning.”

“Yeah. They were reporting the first cases here about half an hour ago.”

I stared into his eyes. “I should leave to try to catch up to my girls. They’re halfway to Anderson by now.”

“As busy as we are, no way is Anita going to let you leave. Anyway, it’s highly contagious, but disease control maintains that it’s just a virus, Scarlet. I heard that those that got the flu shot are the ones affected.”

That one sentence, even unsubstantiated, immediately set my mind at ease. I hadn’t had a flu shot in three years because I always felt terrible afterward, and I’d never gotten one for the girls. Something about vaccinating for a virus that may or may not protect against whatever strain came through didn’t sit well with me. We had enough shit in our bodies with hormones and chemicals in our foods and everyday pollutants. It didn’t make sense to subject ourselves to more, even if the hospital encouraged it.

Just as David and I finished up our last batch of portable X-rays in the ER, Christy rounded the corner, looking worn.

“Has it been as busy down here as it’s been up there?”

“Yes,” David said. “Probably worse.”

“Can you still do that port for me?” Christy said, her eyes begging.

I looked to David, and then back at Christy. “The way things are going, if I take that pager, I’ll be stuck up there until quitting time. They really need me down here.”

David looked at his watch. “Tasha comes in at three thirty. We can handle it until then.”

“You sure?” I asked, slowly taking the pager from Christy.

David waved me away dismissively. “No problem. I’ll take the pager from you when Tasha gets here so you can go home.”

I clipped the pager to the waistband of my scrubs, and headed upstairs, waving good-bye to Christy.

She frowned, already feeling guilty. “Thank you very, very much!”

I passed Chase for the umpteenth time. As the hours passed, he’d looked increasingly nervous. Everyone was. From the looks of things inside the ER, it seemed like all hell was breaking loose outside. I kept trying to sneak peeks at the television but once I finished one case, the pager would go off again to direct me to another.

Just as I had anticipated, once I arrived on the surgery floor, there would be no leaving until David relieved me at 3:30. Case after case, I was moving the C-arm from surgery suite to surgery suite, sometimes moving a second one in for whomever was called up for a surgery going on at the same time.

In one afternoon I saw a shattered femur, two broken arms, and a broken hip, and shared an elevator with a patient in a gurney accompanied by two nurses, all on their way to the roof. His veins were visibly dark through his skin, and he was covered in sweat. From what I could make of their nervous banter, the patient was being med-flighted out to amputate his hand.

My last case of the day was precarious at best, but I didn’t want to have to call David up to relieve me. My girls were out of town with their father, and David had a pretty wife and two young sons to go home to. It didn’t make sense for me to leave on time and for him to stay late, but I had already logged four hours of overtime for the week, and that was generally frowned upon by the brass.

I walked past the large woman in the gurney, looking nervous and upset. Her hand was bandaged, but a large area was saturated with blood. I remembered her from the ER, and wondered where her family was. They all had been with her downstairs.

Angie, the circulation nurse, swished by, situating her surgical cap. It was covered in rough sketches of hot-pink lipsticks and purses. As if to validate her choice of head cover, she pulled out a tube of lip gloss and swiped it across her lips. She smiled at me. “I hear Chase has been asking about you.”

I looked down, instantly embarrassed. “Not you, too.” Was everyone so bored that they had nothing better to do than fantasize about my non-love life? Was I that pathetic that a prospect for me was so exciting?

She winked at me as she passed. “Call him, or I’m going to steal him from you.”

I smiled. “Promise?”

Angie rolled her eyes, but her expression immediately compressed. “Damn! Scarlet, I’m sorry, your mom is on line two.”

“My mom?”

“They transferred her call up a couple of minutes before you came in.”

I glanced at the phone, wondering what on earth she would be calling me at work about. We barely spoke at all, so it must have been important. Maybe about the girls. I nearly lunged for the phone.

“Hello?”

“Scarlet! Oh, thank God. Have you been watching the news?”

“A little. We’ve been slammed. From the few glimpses I’ve gotten, it looks bad. Did you see the reports of the panic at LAX? People were sick on some of the flights over. They think that’s how it traveled here.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about it. Nothing ever happens in the middle of the country.”

“Why did you call, then?” I said, confused. “Are the girls okay?”

“The girls?” She made a noise with her throat. Even her breath could be condescending. “Why would I be calling about the girls? My kitchen floor is pulling up in the corner by the refrigerator, and I was hoping you could ask Andrew to come fix it.”

“He has the girls this weekend, Mother. I can’t really talk right now. I’m in surgery.”

“Yes, I know. Your life is so important.”

I glanced at Angie, seeing that she and the surgical tech were nearly finished. “I’ll ask him, but like I said, he has the girls.”

“He has the girls a lot. Have you been going to the bars every weekend, or what?”

“No.”

“So what else is more important than raising your children?”

“I have to go.”

“Sensitive subject. You’ve never liked to be told you’re doing something wrong.”

“It’s his weekend, Mother, like it is every other weekend.”

“Well. Why does his weekend have to be the weekend I need help?”

“I really have to go.”

“Did you at least send dresses with them so their daddy can take them to church? Since he’s the only one who seems to care to teach them about the Lord.”

“Good-bye, Mother.” I hung up the phone and sighed just as Dr. Pollard came in.

“Afternoon, all. This shouldn’t take long,” he said. He held his hands in front of him, fingers pointing up, waiting for Angie to put gloves on them. “But by the looks of it we’re all in for a long night, so I hope none of you had plans.”

“Is that true?” Ally, the scrub tech, asked from behind her mask. “About LAX?”

“It happened at Dulles, too,” Angie said.

I glanced at the clock, and then pulled my cell phone from the front pocket of my scrubs. I could be written up if someone felt like ratting me out for being on it, but an extra piece of paper in my file was worth it in this case. I pecked out the words Call Me ASAP, and then sent them on to Jenna’s phone.

After a couple of minutes with no response, I dialed Andrew. It rang four times, then his voicemail took over.

I sighed. “It’s Scarlet. Please call me at the hospital. I’m in surgery, but call me anyway so we can coordinate. I’m coming there as soon as I get off work.”

Nathan

ANOTHER EIGHT-HOUR DAY THAT DIDN’T mean a damn thing. When I clocked out from the office, freedom should have been at the forefront of my mind, or should have at least brought a smile to my face, but it didn’t. Knowing I had just wasted another day of my life was depressing. Tragic, even. Stuck at a desk job for an electric co-op that made no difference in the world, day in and day out, and then going home to a wife who hated me made for a miserable existence.

Aubrey hadn’t always been a mean bitch. When we first got married, she had a sense of humor, she couldn’t wait until it was bedtime so we could lie together and kiss and touch. She would initiate a blowjob because she wanted to please me, not because it was my birthday.

Seven years ago, she changed. We had Zoe, and my role switched from desirable, adoring husband to a source of constant disappointment. Aubrey’s expectations of me were never met. If I tried to help, it was either too much, or it wasn’t done the right way. If I tried to stay out of her way, I was a lazy bastard.

Aubrey quit her job to stay home with Zoe, so mine was the only source of income. Suddenly that wasn’t enough, either. Because I didn’t make what Aubrey felt was enough money, she expected me to give her a “baby break” the second I walked in the door. I wasn’t allowed to talk to my wife. She would disappear into the den, sit at the computer, and talk to her Internet friends.

I’d entertain Zoe while emptying the dishwasher and prepping dinner. Asking for help was a sin, and interrupting the baby break just gave Aubrey one more reason to hate me, as if she didn’t have enough already.

Once Zoe started kindergarten, I hoped it would get better, that Aubrey would start back to work, and she would feel like her old self again. But she just couldn’t break free of her anger. She didn’t seem to want to.

Zoe had just a few weeks left in second grade. I would pick her up from school, and we would both hope Aubrey would turn away from the computer just long enough to notice we were home.

On a good day, she would.

Today, though, she wouldn’t. The Internet and radio had been abuzz since early morning with breaking news about an epidemic. A busy news day meant Aubrey’s ass would be stationed firmly against the stained, faded blue fabric of her office chair. She would be talking about it with strangers in forums, with friends and distant family on social networks, and commenting on news websites. Theories. Debates. Somewhere along the way it had become a part of our marriage, and I had been edged out.

I waited in my eight-year-old sedan, first in a line of cars parked behind the elementary school. Zoe didn’t like to be the last one picked up, so I made sure to go to her school right after work. Waiting forty minutes gave me enough time to decompress from work, and psych myself up for another busy night without help or acknowledgment from my wife.

The DJ’s tone was more serious than it had been, so I turned up the volume. He was using a word I hadn’t heard them use before: pandemic. The contagion had breached our shores. Panic had broken out in Dulles and LAX airports when passengers who’d fallen ill during their international flights began attacking the airline employees and paramedics helping them off the plane.

In the back of my head, I knew what was happening. The morning anchor had reported the arrest of a researcher somewhere in Europe, and while my thoughts kept returning to how impossible it was, I knew.

I looked into the rearview mirror, my appearance nearly unrecognizable to anyone that had known me in better days. The browns of my eyes were no longer bright and full of purpose like they once were. The skin beneath them was shaded with dark circles. Just fifteen years ago I was two hundred pounds of muscle and confidence; now I felt a little more broken down every day.

Aubrey and I met in high school. Back then she wanted to touch me and talk to me. Our story wasn’t all that exciting: I was on the starting lineup of a small-town football team, and she was head cheerleader. We were both big fish in a small pond. My light-brown, shaggy hair moved when a breeze passed through the passenger side window. Aubrey used to love how long it was. Now all she did was bitch that I needed a haircut. Come to think of it, she bitched about everything when it came to me. I still went to the gym, and the women at work were at times a little forward, but Aubrey didn’t see me anymore. I wasn’t sure if it was being with her that sucked the life out of me, or the disappointments I’d suffered over the years. The further away I was from high school, the less making something of myself seemed possible.

An obnoxious buzzing noise on the radio caught my attention. I listened while a man’s robotic voice came over the speakers of my car. “This is a red alert from the emergency broadcast system. Canton County sheriff’s department reports a highly contagious virus arriving in our state has been confirmed. If at all possible, stay indoors. This is a red alert from the emergency broadcast system . . .”

Movement on the side of my rearview mirror caught my attention. A woman was sprinting from her car toward the door of the school. Another woman jumped from her minivan and, after a short pause, ran toward the school as well with her toddler in her arms.

They were mothers. Of course they wouldn’t let the logical side of their brain talk them into hesitation. The world was going to hell, and they were going to get their children to safety . . . wherever that was.

I shoved the gearshift into park and opened my door. I walked quickly, but as frantic mothers ran past me, I broke into a run as well.

Inside the building, mothers were either carrying their children down the hall to the parking lot, or they were quickly pushing through the doors of their children’s classrooms, not wasting time explaining to their teachers why they were leaving early.

I dodged frightened parents pulling their confused children along by the hand until I reached Zoe’s classroom. The door cracked against the concrete wall as I yanked it open.

The children looked at me with wide eyes. None of them had been picked up yet.

“Mr. Oxford?” Mrs. Earl said. She was frozen in the center of her classroom, surrounded by mini desks and chairs, and mini people. They were patiently waiting for her to hand out the papers they were to take home. Papers that wouldn’t matter a few hours from now.

“Sorry. I need Zoe.” Zoe was staring at me, too, unaccustomed to people barging in. She looked so small, even in the miniature chair she sat in. Her light-brown hair was curled under just so, barely grazing her shoulders, just the way she liked it. The greens and browns of her irises were visible even half a classroom away. She looked so innocent and vulnerable sitting there; all the children did.

“Braden?” Melissa George burst through the door, nearly running me down. “Come on, baby,” she said, holding her hand out to her son.

Braden glanced at Mrs. Earl, who nodded, and then the boy left his chair to join his mother. They left without a word.

“We have to go, too,” I said, walking over to Zoe’s desk.

“But my papers, Daddy.”

“We’ll get your papers later, honey.”

Zoe leaned to the side, looking around me to her cubby. “My backpack.”

I picked her up, trying to keep calm, wondering what the world would look like outside the school, or if I would reach my car and feel like a fool.

“Mr. Oxford?” Mrs. Earl said again, this time meeting me at the door. She leaned into my ear, staring into my eyes at the same time. “What’s going on?”

I looked around her classroom, to the watchful eyes of her young students. Pictures drawn clumsily in thick lines of crayon and bright educational posters hung haphazardly from the walls. The floor was littered with clippings from their artwork.

Every child in the room stared at me, waiting to hear why I’d decided to intrude. They would keep waiting. None of them could fathom the nightmare that awaited them just a few hours from now—if we had that much time—and I wasn’t going to cause a panic.

“You need to get these kids home, Mrs. Earl. You need to get them to their parents, and then you need to run.”

I didn’t wait for her reaction. Instead I bolted down the congested hallway. A traffic jam seemed to be causing a bottleneck at the main exit, so I pushed a side door to the pre-K playground open with my shoulder, and with Zoe in my arms, hopped the fence.

“Daddy! You’re not supposed to climb the fence!”

“I’m sorry, honey. Daddy’s in a hurry. We have to pick up Mommy and . . .”

My words trailed off as I fastened Zoe into her seatbelt. I had no idea where we would go. Where could we hide from something like this?

“Can we go to the gas station and get a slushie?”

“Not today, baby,” I said, kissing her forehead before slamming the door.

I tried not to run around the front. I tried, but the panic and adrenaline pushed me forward. The door slammed shut, and I tore out of the parking lot, unable to control the fear that if I slowed down even a little bit, something terrible would happen.

One hand on the steering wheel, and the other holding my cell phone to my ear, I drove home, ignoring traffic lights and speed limits and trying to be careful not to get nailed by other panicked drivers.

“Daddy!” Zoe yelled when I drove over a bump too fast. “What are you doing?”

“Sorry, Zoe. Daddy’s in a hurry.”

“Are we late?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer that. “I hope not.”

Zoe’s expression signaled her disapproval. She always made an effort to parent Aubrey and me. Probably because Aubrey wasn’t much of one, and it was clear on most days that I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.

I pressed on the gas, trying to avoid the main roads home. Every time I tried to call Aubrey from my cell, I got a weird busy signal. I should have known when I got there that something was wrong. I should have immediately put the sedan in reverse and raced away, but the only thing going through my head was how I would convince Aubrey to leave her goddamned computer, what few things we would grab, and how much time I should allow to grab them. An errant thought ran through my head about how much time it would take the Internet to cease, and how ironic it was that a viral outbreak would save our marriage. There were so many should haves in that moment, but I ignored them all.

“Aubrey!” I yelled as I opened the door. The most logical place to look was the den. The empty blue office chair was a surprise. So much so that I froze, staring at the space as if my vision would correct itself and she would eventually appear, her back to me, hunched over the desk while she moved just enough to maneuver the mouse.

“Where’s Mommy?” Zoe asked, her voice sounding even smaller than usual.

A mixture of alarm and curiosity made me pause. Aubrey’s ass had flowed over and cratered in the deteriorated cushion of that office chair for years. No noise in the kitchen, and the downstairs bathroom door was open, the room dark.

“Aubrey!” I yelled from the second step of the stairs, waiting for her to round the corner above me and descend each step more dramatically than the last. At any moment, she would breathe her signature sigh of annoyance and bitch at me for something—anything—but as I waited, it became obvious that she wouldn’t.

“We’re going to be very late,” Zoe said, looking up at me.

I squeezed her hand, and then a white envelope in the middle of the dining table caught my eye. I pulled Zoe along with me, afraid to let her out of my sight for a second, and then picked up the envelope. It read “Nathan” on the front, in Aubrey’s girly yet sloppy script.

“Are you serious?” I said, ripping open the envelope.

Nathan,

By the time you get this I’ll be hours away. Your probably going to think I’m the most selfish person in the world, but being afraid of you thinking bad of me isn’t enough for me to stay. I’m unhappy and I’ve been unhappy for a long time.

I love Zoe, but I’m not a mother. You are the one that wanted to be a father. I knew you would be a good daddy, and I thought that you being a good daddy would make me a good mother, but it didn’t. I can’t do this anymore. There are so many things I want to do with my life and being a housewife isn’t one of them.

I’m sorry if you hate me, but I’ve finally decided I can live with that. I’m sorry you have to explain this to Zoe. I’ll call tomorrow when I’m settled and try to help her understand.

Aubrey

I let the folded paper fall to the table. She could never spell you’re correctly. That was just one of a hundred things about Aubrey that bothered me but I never mentioned.

Zoe was looking up at me, waiting for me to explain or react, but I could do neither. Aubrey had left us. I came back for her lazy, cranky, miserable ass, and she fucking left us.

A scream outside startled Zoe enough for her to grip my leg, and reality hit about the same time that bullets came crashing through the kitchen windows. I ducked, and signaled Zoe to duck with me.

There would be no calling Aubrey’s friends and relatives to find out where she was so I could beg her to come back. I had to get my daughter to safety. Aubrey might have picked a horrible first day for independence, but it was what she wanted, and I had a little girl to protect.

More screams. Car horns honking. Gunfire. Jesus. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. It was here.

I opened the hallway closet and grabbed my baseball bat, and then walked over to my daughter, kneeling in front of her to meet her tear-glazed eyes. “Zoe, we’re going to have to get back to the car. I need you to hold my hand, and no matter what you see or hear, don’t let go of my hand, do you understand?”

Zoe’s eyes filled with more tears, but she nodded quickly.

“Good girl,” I said, kissing her on the forehead.