Viral Nation (Short Story): Broken Nation by Shaunta Grimes Page A

that Denver is Colorado’s city, but you can’t go there. Not now, even if you were allowed. You aren’t well enough yet.”
    My heart sinks into my stomach. “But I have to.”
    “I’m sorry.” Something about the dullness of her voice stops me from arguing more. She’s right, anyway. Claustrophobia washes over me. I’m trapped in this bed, in this hospital, in this city. I turn my face as tears sting my eyes, and push the button that gives me my drug and sends me back into my dreams of before.
     
    • • •
     
    Alex will come back for me. It will take more than a couple of weeks for me to believe otherwise. And if he doesn’t come back for me, I will find a way to get to him and the others.
    I don’t have anyone else. The people I want desperately to be with are practically strangers. I only met them in the weeks that I was in the camp, but the world has been upended enough that those who are left have to rearrange themselves into makeshift families if they are going to survive.
    I have to believe that my friends are safe. That they have survived, even Tomas and Maggie, who were as sick as I was. It hits me suddenly, all at once, as I’m remembering Maggie’s poor face and the way the Virus ate at her smooth skin, that they are probably here somewhere, in this hospital.
    When the nurse comes in, the same nurse who told me that no one could come in or out of Reno, I ask her name. She has the syringe, with its thick needle and icy blue medicine, for my daily shot and she looks at me like maybe I’m trying to distract her from using it. She’s been taking care of me for weeks, and I’m suddenly embarrassed that I don’t already know who she is.
    I turn on my good side, just enough to expose my hip, and the pain of the movement steals my breath so that I hiccup before I ask again, “What’s your name?”
    “Angelica.” She cleans my skin with alcohol. The needle is as thick as a juice-box straw, and the pain of the medicine, she’s called it a suppressant, sears down to join the pain of my surgery site.
    “Jesus,” I whisper, my left hand convulsing against the mattress as I try to contain the pain. She rubs the injection site, to make the medicine move through more quickly. I close my eyes, my brain desperately trying to segregate my right side from the waist down, as if it could cordon off all the pain and leave the rest of my body in peace. “How many more of those shots do I need?”
    “One a day,” Angelica says. “Every day. I’m sorry.”
    “For how long?”
    “Forever. That’s what they’re saying, anyway. Makes you feel any better, we all get it.”
    The pain is easing. I can’t think about forever right now. “Angelica, I think I might have someone here, in the hospital.”
    “What do you mean?”
    I start to say that I think I have friends here, but I hesitate. She might not care about helping me find my friends. I say instead, “My cousins. I think they were brought here when I was.”
    Her focus shifts from her usual middle distance to my face. “What are their names?”
    For a second, I can’t remember their last name and panic settles in my belly, constricting my lungs. And then the information is there. “Tomas and Maggie Montoya.”
    Angelica makes a note on her clipboard, takes the silver tray of syringes, and leaves me alone with my claustrophobia, stuck in my bed instead of walking the halls looking for my friends.
     
    • • •
     
    When the door to my room opens an hour later, I expect lunch. That’s the routine here. Torture shot, and then soup and Jell-O. A virus might have whipped through the world and changed most everything, but there is still green Jell-O.
    Instead, I see Maggie. She stares at me from the doorway like she isn’t quite sure she can trust what she sees. I have to look past the ruin of her face to see my friend, but once I do, I only see her and I open my arms.
    Maggie is ten. She’s tiny and soft and the most beautiful thing I think