Man can’t catch a break, not even when he’s dead, she ripostes on his behalf.
The FEMA van has pulled up outside, motor running, headlights aimed in twin halos at the front door, so she has to shield her eyes as she steps out. Two women clamber out, awkward in their bulky hazmat suits. Plague-o-nauts, she thinks. She can’t see their faces against the glare of the headlights, only the blank glass of their helmets.
The larger of the two yells, aggressive. “Stay where you are!”
“It’s okay,” the other one calls. “She’s not armed.”
“I’m not!” Cole raises her hands in confirmation.
“Can’t be too careful, ma’am.” Tall-and-Wide apologizes, moving in, her heft blocking the light. You’d have to be strong, in their line of work, heaving corpses around. “Where’s the body? Are you next of kin?”
“It’s my husband. He’s inside.” An aftershock of grief nearly slams her to the ground, because they’re here, help is here, and this seems like a license to fall apart and let someone else handle this. But Miles. Always Miles.
“Control. One adult,” the shorter of the pair says into her radio.
“Did he have any other complicating conditions we need to know about?”
“Like what?” Cole almost laughs.
“Cholera. HIV. Measles. Excessive bleeding or decomposition. Weighs more than 300 pounds, anything that will make him difficult to move.”
“No.”
“How many days dead?”
“Almost two. You took your time.” It’s hard to keep the bitterness out of her voice. She can make out their faces through the glass, finally, a stumpy white lady with a tight bow mouth, while the taller is Latina, or Polynesian, maybe, her hair tucked away under the ruched plastic that fits around her face like a shower cap, and blue glitter on her eyelids. It’s this detail that unmoors Cole.
“Standard.” Stumpy dismisses her. “Less than forty-eight.”
“You got any basic human compassion in that van?”
“Ran out three weeks ago,” Stumpy hits back.
“We are sorry for your loss, ma’am,” Blue Glitter says. “And we have our own. You have to understand, we’re on the front lines here.”
“I’m sorry. Of course. Sorry. It’s a lot to deal with.”
“Share your sentiment, ma’am. Here are the papers. We’ll be taking him to Central Processing for mandatory tests. You can claim the body in three days, or we can do the cremation and notify you when his ashes are ready to collect.”
“No. We’ve already…we’ve said our goodbyes. You don’t need to notify me. We’re leaving right away.”
She’s already running through the checklist of what’s in her bag, packed and ready. Clothing, food, $11,284 in cash in three different currencies (USD, ZAR and GBP) wrapped up in fat rolls with hairbands, and please let that be enough, and the infinitely more valuable contraband: codeine, Myprodol, Nurofen, Ponstan—the traveing pharmacopeia she’d carried from South Africa, where they could be bought over the counter, along with all the other travel essentials (cold and flu meds, anti-nausea pills, anti-inflammatories, antihistamines) that happened to be in her toiletry bag when they got stranded here all those months ago.
She had packed them innocently, remembering her first trip to the U.S. on a student air ticket, her period coming early and the cramps knifing her guts, only to be told by the irritated pharmacist behind the counter at CVS that the Ponstan she could buy as casually as aspirin back home wasn’t available, not even with a prescription. The diminishing stash they came to worship, which Dev dipped into only when the pain was so bad his breath came in whimpering hitches. They were saving the bulk of it for Miles. For in case. For when.
“Your prerogative.” The bigger woman shrugs. “Maybe put your contact details down anyway, your forwarding address, or other next of kin. People change their minds.”
“All right.” It’s so easy to follow instructions. “Oh,” Cole remembers. “Do you think you could help me jump-start the car? I tried to call AAA, but they’re not picking up. I don’t know why we pay them.” A joke, but also true. All the things you took for granted, like reliable internet and roadside assistance and access to hospital care, are apparently on hold right now.
“That’s really not in our mandate—” the stumpy, grumpy white woman starts.
“I’m sure we can. No problem,” her colleague interrupts. She hauls herself into the driver’s seat of the van and swings it around to nuzzle at the hood of Cole’s car. It would be a fitting part of the misery of this endless day if nothing happened when they hooked up the leads, but the engine fires right away and settles to a purr.
“Leave it running, ma’am,” says Blue Glitter. “Juice it up a bit.”
“Thanks, I’m so grateful, I just want to get out of here.” Cole is gushing (thanks for starting my car and hey, removing my dead husband’s body), close to hysteria now that escape is finally at hand.
The plague-o-naut is all business again. “If you can just sign here, and here.” But then she spots Miles’s face peeking through the window, round and scared, and she softens. “Your little girl?”
“My son.”
“You shouldn’t be traveling with him,” she says.
“This is still a free country, isn’t it?”
A rut of concern forms between Glitter’s eyebrows, tugs her mouth down. “Ma’am, my professional medical advice is that you shouldn’t move him while he’s sick. You want him to die in the back of your car?”
“Better than here,” Cole says. “Not that it’s any of your business.” And then, the words she’ll regret forever. “Besides, he’s not dying. He’s not even sick.”
8.
Billie: Hedgehog Rescue
The blank. The dark. Something nagging at her. Someone in the car with her. A shape. A voice.
“Excuse me.” Someone shaking Billie’s shoulder. Shit. Blinking hard. Her vision is swimming. Underwater, no goggles.
“Excuse me, miss. Miss, are you awake? Can you hear me? Miss?” Every bleated “miss” accompanied by another little shake. She can’t stand it another second.
“Would you stop that?” Billie sits up and swats the hand away. The daylight is too bright. Where the fuck are her sunglasses? The woman bleating at her looks like a hedgehog, a squinchy face, pointy nose out of place on a hulking rotund frame. She looks simple. Sounds it too, mumbling, bleating.
“You’ve had an accident. There’s, um, quite a lot of blood, and I think we should get you to a hospital. I don’t know—uh.”
Billie shoves her aside and leans out the car door to vomit a watery stream that tightens her guts with the effort of pushing it out.
“You need to get to a hospital. I can drive you. I don’t think you’re in any shape…”
“San Francisco,” Billie rasps. Her throat is stripped raw. She touches the back of her head gingerly. Matted hair and dried blood, the gut-clench again at rediscovering the piece of her scalp hanging from the side of her head. She pukes again. Dry-heaving this time.