Red Hill

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 and smiled, 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 walked over to the phone, pecking at the numbers. Andrew’s phone rang four times, and 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 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 that 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 debrief 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 the 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 farther 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.