| |
“Where are we going?” Kennedy’s voice was timid. Afraid. At least she could breathe. Everything would be just fine as long as she kept on breathing.
Please, Jesus ...
“Just come with me.” The security guard walked several paces ahead. Kennedy had to scurry to keep up. Why had she worn her little heeled sandals and not something more practical? Then again, when she left the Lindgrens’, she’d only been thinking about making it to Providence fast. She hadn’t stopped to worry about shoes fit for racing down empty hospital corridors.
“Is everything ok?” What kind of a stupid question was that? Nothing was ok. That’s what happens when you’re stuck in a hospital lockdown in the middle of a horrific epidemic. Why hadn’t she taken her dad more seriously? Why had she breezed through the past few weeks taking her health for granted, refusing to think of all those people getting infected?
Folks were dying. Not just in far-off reaches of the globe. In New York. Florida. Right in her backyard in Boston itself. The Nipah virus didn’t care if you were young or old, strong or weak. It didn’t pay any attention to your medical history, your immunization record.
Kennedy was the queen of germophobes. Did her little bottle of Germ-X delude her into thinking she’d march through this whole epidemic unscathed?
She thought about different outbreaks she’d studied in history class. The black plague. More than decimated the world’s population. Typhoid Mary. Infecting scores of individuals before doctors forced her into quarantine. Lived completely alone for decades before she finally died of pneumonia. More recently there’d been SARS, swine flu ... Kennedy had heard about all of those but never knew anyone who actually got sick from any of them.
Maybe that’s where her little bubble of perceived invincibility came from. She’d never been seriously ill. Of course, there were all the typical childhood conditions. Colds. Stomach viruses. An ear infection or two. She’d had chicken pox, though she’d been so young she had no memories of it. Is that why she assumed she could blitz through this whole Nipah scare without having to worry herself about it?
She glanced at the hallways lined with closed doors, wondering how far she’d have to go before she’d learn what she was doing here. Was she infected? Did they suspect she was a carrier? Had Woong’s teacher tested positive for Nipah? Were they quarantining everyone who was possibly exposed? How long would they keep her here? And what about Willow? Had she put her roommate in danger?
She hated hospitals. Hated the bleached, antiseptic smells that only vaguely masked the odor of vomit and blood and bodily fluids. She hated the way hospital air made her skin crawl, as if every single germ in a ten-foot radius swarmed her like a mob of hungry mosquitoes. It was ironic, really. Before starting college, she’d pictured herself in that white gown, stethoscope hanging from her neck like a mantle, walking stately from one needy patient to another. Now she just hoped she could make it down a single hallway without turning into a hyperventilating mess.
Her counselor said that maybe Kennedy’s academic drive was related to her trauma experiences. That maybe she threw herself into her studies to combat how helpless she’d felt watching a young girl nearly hemorrhage to death on a grimy bathroom floor at the start of her freshman year. It sounded logical, but he hadn’t met Kennedy before the PTSD. She’d been like this for as long as she could remember. Always been a control freak. An overachiever. With or without the panic attacks, she’d always pushed herself past her breaking point. Anything for the grade. For the sense of accomplishment. That’s how she’d gotten into Harvard’s early acceptance medical program to begin with.
She was destined to become one of the nation’s top physicians. Except she couldn’t stand five minutes in a hospital.
Who ever said God didn’t have a sense of humor?
If anything, her disdain for hospitals started over a decade ago, at her grandmother’s bedside as she lay dying from lung cancer. Kennedy had been so young. So naïve. So certain that what the Bible and her Sunday school teachers always told her was true. If she prayed, God would answer.
And so she’d prayed. So fervently. With that impossible to imitate faith of a child. A child who foolishly believed that if she trusted hard enough, God would always give her what she asked for. It’s not like she was praying for a pony to ride or a castle to live in. She just wanted her grandma to be healed. To be able to go back to her own home. Enjoy her evenings with Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy and her cans of plain black beans she heated up for dinner. To be there every Christmas and every summer break in that beautifully quaint little cottage in upstate New York. Far from the city, from traffic. Kennedy’s perfect little refuge. Where she’d catch dragonflies in the summer and race her dad down giant sledding hills in the winter.
All she’d wanted was for Grandma to stay alive. It wasn’t fair she’d gotten lung cancer in the first place. She’d never smoked a day in her life. Hated cigarettes. But still came down with the dreaded disease after spending forty years married to a chain-smoking addict.
In the end, it’s what killed her. Killed her in spite of Kennedy’s prayers. In spite of Kennedy’s perfect, childlike faith. In spite of all the Bible promises Kennedy read and claimed and called her own.
Grandma still died, but not until after six months of torment. Six months of torture. With her hair falling out in clumps, her entire body hooked up to tubes and machines that reminded Kennedy of some scene from Star Trek: First Contact. No wonder there were those parents who refused chemo for their kids. Six months while the medicine ravaged her grandma’s body. Poisoned her blood. It shrunk one of the tumors for a few months. Enough time for Kennedy to assume her prayers really had worked.
Until a routine checkup showed the tumor had grown. And spread. And by then, there was nothing to do but make hospice arrangements.
And still Kennedy held onto faith that God would heal her grandma. Held onto that faith until the morning her grandma died, surrounded by family, covered in tubes, her body shrunken to nearly half her pre-diagnosis weight.
Is it any wonder Kennedy hated hospitals?
She let out her breath. This line of thinking wasn’t going to get her anywhere. Come on. She gave herself the best pep talk she could muster. Think about something else and snap yourself out of this. The last thing the guard needed was a hysterical basket case on his hands.
She bit her lip, focusing on the pain it caused. She glanced around her, desperately hoping her eyes would land on something to ground her. Something to snap her brain back to the present. Her counselor had given her clear instructions when she felt a panic attack rising up in her chest. Name four things you can see. Four things you can hear. Focus on her senses, not on her irrational fear.
The plan made perfect sense on paper. Harder to do when your lungs have already decided to seize shut on you. Harder to do when your breath is so short and choppy your brain’s overcome with dizziness until you’re certain you’re about to suffocate. When your heart’s racing so fast you wonder if you’re about to become the first sophomore in the history of Harvard University to die from cardiac arrest.
She bit her lip even harder when the officer unlocked a small room at the farthest end of the impossibly long hallway. Her thoughts flashed back once more to Typhoid Mary, locked up for decades to keep from infecting anyone around her.
That couldn’t be what was happening to her. She was a citizen. She had rights. Her dad knew lawyers ...
“Kennedy? Thank God they found you.”
At the sound of the welcomed voice, she rushed toward Dominic who held out his arms to her.
“It’s ok,” he whispered. “You’re safe here.”