The Infection by Craig DiLouie Page B

AIDS and Ebola, no, not in a lab like this, but dangerous nonetheless: cancer, diabetes, emphysema, bone disorders. The pathologists examined tissues and blood and urine to figure out what was wrong with people. Doctors used these tests to treat people with all sorts of disorders and extend their lifespan. Researchers looked at the smallest living particles in the human body and tried to understand what hurt them and how they adapted to being hurt—knowledge that could be used to diagnose some diseases more easily, treat others, and even cure. Now the healers have all gone, possibly never to return.
    Ethan tries not to think of all the great things they might have accomplished.
     
    ♦
     
    He once thought he understood what severe stress was like. He and Carol both worked hard at their jobs. They juggled dinner and daycare and doing the dishes. They survived the dramas of raising a little girl who was deep into her terrible twos. Life was full of responsibilities and bills and little errands and phone calls and annoying bank mistakes and miscommunication and petty conflict. It was hard, but he would consider that sort of stress a breath of fresh air after what he has been through in the past ten days with the Sword of Damocles poised over his head, hanging by a thread. The human body was not meant to experience this level of fear for this long. Getting this close to death for too long can turn your hair white, break your mind.
    He and Carol would cope as best they could but every so often their frustrations boiled to the surface and they bickered. They bickered as they prepared dinner and as they ate it and as they cleaned up and put Mary to bed. They each knew how far they could go, and no further, to needle the other person without getting a major reaction that would upset their toddler. Every once in a while somebody would go too far, and there would be hurt feelings. When this happened, the bickering escalated and either Ethan or Carol would storm away from the table out of fear of shouting in front of Mary.
    One night, nobody walked away, and, without really understanding what he was doing, Ethan started shouting.
    “Carol, stop it, stop it, just stop it.”
    Carol sat back, stunned, while Mary, busily pouring her glass of water into her mashed potatoes, stared at him with eyes like saucers, her mouth hanging open.
    Ethan smiled at his daughter quickly, trying to reassure her.
    “How dare you shout at me in front of her,” Carol hissed.
    “I said I don’t want to argue. So stop it.”
    “I’m not the one shouting.”
    “STOP IT.”
    “Why don’t you shut up?”
    They shouted over each other for the next minute until he could not take it anymore and he stormed out of the house, seeing red. He walked for an hour, his mind boiling as he played the argument over and over in his mind, hating it. As his anger began to dissipate, he felt the first wave of panic over what they had done to Mary. He needed to talk to Carol. He hurried home.
    Ethan found his wife and daughter upstairs on the rocking chair in Mary’s room. Carol was reading her a story from a hardcover compendium of Curious George stories.
    “Are you happy, Daddy?” Mary said.
    “I’m very happy,” Ethan said, close to tears.
    They gave her a glass of water and tucked her in with her dollies, then turned out the light and left her to sleep.
    Carol went downstairs for coffee and Ethan trudged after her.
    “I’m sorry I yelled,” he said.
    “I’m sorry, too,” she said.
    The next thing he knew he was bawling with his head bowed and his shoulders shaking and Carol was holding him, telling him everything was going to be okay.
    “I didn’t like the look on Mary’s face,” he said.
    That heartbreaking look of confusion, fear, guilt that her parents were fighting.
    He had surprised himself by crying. He had not cried in at least ten years, when his mother died. But that look haunted him. That look of broken trust and loss.
    “Kids blame