“Shit’s just as flammable, too. My own personal concoction. Distilled dandelions and pinesap. I’ll join you for the second round.” Tim was threading a hooked needle.
Again, David averted his eyes. “What’s with all the potted plants?”
“I’ve become something of a horticulturist. Some of the best people I know are plants.”
“So you’re a horticulturist and a part-time surgeon. A regular Renaissance man.”
Tim grinned. “Don’t look.”
David turned away. He winced as Tim sank the hooked needle into his flesh. “Christ, are you kidding me? Goddamn it!”
“Hold still, you big sissy,” Tim said. He was still grinning. “Remember that time we were roughhousing in the living room and I body-slammed you and broke your collarbone?”
“It still aches.”
“I bribed you to keep your mouth shut, gave you my new baseball glove and everything.”
“I never squealed,” David reminded him.
“That’s right. But you could only mope around the house so long with one shoulder slumped before someone started to notice. And boy, did my old man let me have it after that.” Tim chuckled, and the sound of it briefly transported David back to a simpler time—a time of his youth, of family, of living in the rambling old house in the woods of rural Pennsylvania with his mother, Tim, and Tim’s father. Ancient memories, buried and forgotten beneath mounds of brain dust.
Once Tim had finished stitching and bandaging his arm, he returned to the adjoining room, only to reappear with an unlabeled jug of liquor and a second lowball glass. Out in the field, Ellie was holding a large gray rabbit against her chest, the rabbit’s hind legs cycling wildly in the air. David heard Ellie squeal with delight.
“I guess I should tell you what happened,” David said after some silence.
“It’s up to you,” Tim said. “If you want to do it now, let’s do it now. If you want to wait, maybe get some rest and put some food in your belly first, then it can wait.”
“I want to wait, but I also want to get it out while Ellie’s not sitting next to me. You know what I mean?”
Tim nodded. “Then let’s do it.”
David cleared his throat and said, “Kathy was working as a psychologist at a state hospital. When things got serious—when some patients and a few doctors got sick—they mandated that all staff get tested. I actually thought it would be a good thing. She had become so depressed, so unlike herself. . . and so convinced that she was sick . . . that I thought this would help alleviate her concerns. Sometime after that, we got a visit from the CDC, some doctor named Sanjay Kapoor, head of their Infectious Diseases office in D.C.”
He was reliving it now—the conversation with Dr. Kapoor in their living room, a mixture of emotions coursing through him. He had held Kathy’s hand in his as they sat together on the couch, listening to Dr. Kapoor explain the situation. Had they been pardoned or cursed? It was easy to answer that now, in hindsight, but he had been lost and confused at the time. And maybe—stupidly—a little bit hopeful.
“There was an abnormality with Kathy’s blood work, something Kapoor and the CDC were very interested in. They were interested in the presence of what they called IgG antibodies in her blood. In other words, she had been exposed to Wanderer’s Folly but had somehow developed antibodies to fight off the virus. Kapoor said that viruses generally rely on receptors that exist on cells within the body. Kathy had what Kapoor called a genetic mutation for that receptor, which prevented the virus from attaching to and infecting the individual cells. It was a hiccup in her DNA.”
“She was immune, in other words,” Tim said.
“Exactly. She’d been exposed but that genetic mutation was creating antibodies that fought off the Folly. And they were thrilled at the prospect. They wanted her to volunteer and submit herself to a battery of tests. Blood cultures, exposure to the virus, that sort of thing. There’s a lot of . . . of medical jargon I can’t really . . .”
“It’s okay,” Tim said.
“They made it sound so harmless at first. Kapoor said it was no different from donating blood to the Red Cross—those were his actual words, Tim—and that there was no way she could deny their request because she would be in no danger. Like I said, Kathy had been losing it for a time. This whole epidemic terrified her. She’d become severely depressed. She’d started seeing a shrink and was on meds for depression and anxiety. She still looked the same, but I swear to God, Tim, when she walked around the house, it was like someone else was controlling her. When she looked at me, someone else stared out from her eyes. I know how that sounds, but I swear it, Tim. I swear it.”