An Ordinary Epidemic (17 page)

She found Oscar lying outside Zac's room, his ear pressed to the crack at the bottom of the door. More than an espresso machine, Hannah wished she could know for certain that she was disease free. She wanted more than anything to open Zac's door and give him a hug. It was such a small risk, such an infinitesimal possibility. But if she and Sean were sick, she needed Zac safe. An image flared into her mind, one she hadn't had for a while. But instead of Sean's shoulders supporting her family, now it was Zac's slender frame.

Her back ached. She turned carefully onto her other side and it eased slightly. She stretched her left leg over the top of her right, trying to push her toe forward as far as she could without hitting Sean's back. The pain disappeared and she let herself sink slowly back to sleep. But as she sank, the pain reasserted itself. She rolled on her back and stretched out her hips. Again the pain receded. Not really pain, more insistent discomfort.

She listened to Sean's rhythmic breathing, trying to distract herself. But after a minute or so, she found she was actively listening to him. She couldn't stop herself listening. It was as annoying as snoring. How was it possible that she ever slept next to the endless purring of his breath? There it was again, a dull ache in the small of her back. A need to move a muscle, which she couldn't satisfy. Tonight, last night. She couldn't remember if she had it the night before.

It was Monday's long drive. More than eight hours sitting cramped in the car. And the anxiety. That would cause this kind of pain. Surely Monday must have been the first night.

Symptoms had to start somewhere. The cancer that kills you begins as one wayward cell. As far as she knew, there was no way to tell the normal grind of life from warning signs. She could ignore it and regret it, or she could lie here obsessing about backache.

After all, she hadn't had a clue when she first saw her mammogram, a night photograph of the earth, bright white patches connected by well-illuminated corridors. The doctor worked his way around the image on the light box, until he got
to one densely lit area. ‘That's the one. We're going to have to take that out.' But the other clusters looked exactly the same to her, cities, more or less populous, but with no way to tell which were the nice neighbourhoods. Unless they were all bad and he was just pointing to the worst of them. Her eye caught on another patch that was, as far as she could see, the twin to the problem. ‘And all the others? Will we have to deal with them later?' He looked quizzically at her. ‘Like this one?' She pointed to the twin. He shook his head kindly, ‘No, no, no. That's normal tissue.'

She turned again, twisting herself into a yoga pose, the only position in which nothing hurt. There it was, the sleep, if she could only grab hold. Something jolted her. Concentrate on the sleep. And again. Something out of place, a noise. She let go of the sleep. She opened her eyes to listen better. It came again, a car door opening. Someone coming in late or going out very early, not a reason not to sleep. On a weeknight. In the middle of the night. She heard voices. Why was somebody standing around a car talking in the middle of the night?

It was someone else's problem, out in the street, nothing to do with her. Sleep was more important, if only she could get her mind away from the car. They would close the car door, drive away and that would be it, she could sleep.

The sound of the car door didn't come, her mind sharpened, trying to make out the smallest changes. She slid gently out of bed, tripped over her shoes lying on the floor and banged into the wardrobe door. Sean snuffled, rolled over and went back to breathing loudly.

She put her hand between the curtains and made a gap to look out. Four doors up on the other side she could see a silver sedan with its doors and boot open. The porch light of the house was on, and the front door open.

The man who lived there leant into the backseat and when he stood up, Hannah could just see, by the weak light spilling
from the house, his daughter in the back. He went to the boot, pulled out what appeared to be a blanket and tucked it around her. The girl's mother was coming down the stairs with a large cardboard box, heavy by the pull of her arms. As the woman reached the open boot, the nearest streetlight caught its contents, and Hannah saw a carton of cereal sticking out the top. The woman put the box in and tried to close the lid. She pushed down on the box and tried again. She shoved on the lid as it sprung back, then started unpacking. Out came a suitcase, a small kettle barbecue and another couple of boxes.

There was a sharp noise from the house, like the door closing. Hannah saw the man push his shoulder against the front door and, satisfied, make his way down the stairs. The woman had repacked and was waiting in the passenger seat.

Hannah wondered where they were going. Anywhere, she supposed, if they had a tent. Sean had found a website the day after their trip to Canberra, of people sharing circuitous routes out of the city that hadn't yet been closed but it seemed likely from the follow-up tales of failure that the police had found the site too. Maybe they were just going to another suburb, further south, further away from the hot spots.

Her back ached, there was no point going back to bed.

Light fell dimly through the panes in the front door, giving her a sketchy outline in grey to navigate by. She guided herself past Oscar's room and into the living room by the tips of her fingers on the hallway wall. The curtains let through a small glimmer but outside Zac's room, the hallway was windowless and engulfed in inky darkness. She paused to listen for noise. A stern voice had had little effect on Zac and Daniel, but they knew she wouldn't come in to follow through on her threats. Now they were quiet, finally asleep. She tripped and jumped as her foot hit something just outside Zac's door.

The bundle on the floor made little murmuring sounds. She
felt her way to the light switch outside the bathroom, shuffling her feet against further surprises. Oscar lay across Zac's doorway, in a nest constructed from his doona and pillow. His face was pale and empty and left her feeling disquieted and sad.

In the kitchen, her laptop was where she had left it that afternoon. It had been nine hours since she checked the internet. Seven of those before she went to bed. And it had been hard, steeling herself not to look. Nine hours of news that she didn't know. There might be an explanation of why her neighbours were doing a flit in the night. Or some of it might even be good, there had to be progress sometime.

The blue light of the screen barely lit the walls. She scanned down the newspaper's website, and registered that it was after midnight. Today was now yesterday. She found the number. Eighty-one. That had to be a typo, they meant eighteen. There were only thirteen dead on Monday. Only. Thirteen people dead in one day. But eighty-one. It had to be wrong. She snapped the laptop shut. Until the morning. The paper would notice their mistake and fix it by morning.

In the bathroom, she looked at her wan and fearful face. Through all the years of worrying and scanning her body, of being on high alert, this much she knew about cancer pain—you couldn't make it go away by bending or stretching. She told the panic merchant in the mirror firmly, ‘This isn't what cancer feels like.'

In her experience, cancer didn't feel like anything at all. It was blob on a mammogram, a wrinkle in the skin, but she still didn't know the difference between hysteria and prudence.

She took two painkillers and made her way back to bed, stepping over Oscar. She gently swivelled him so that he lay along the hall, not across it.

Oscar was stretched out on the sofa, in thrall to cartoons when she got up. His doona and pillow were still in a pile outside Zac's door. As Hannah passed, Zac called out, ‘Can we get some breakfast in here?'

‘In a minute.'

‘Mum, Oscar's been up for hours and he won't get us anything. And he says we can't come out. We're starving.' His voice was muted by the door.

Her head was muzzy from lack of sleep, but at least the pain was gone. ‘In a minute.'

‘Can we at least come out?'

‘This afternoon. Two days is this afternoon.' Zac said something which she couldn't hear and wasn't supposed to.

Of the bag of bread, only enough full slices remained for the boys' breakfast, leaving her the crusts. A teaspoon of chocolate powder floated in a glass of long life milk for each of the boys, the powder encapsulated in bubbles of air that divided as she stirred harder but remained bone dry inside the translucent skins.

The tin of coffee felt light. She shook it, as if somehow that would make it heavier. Her calculations were off. Unlike the bread, she couldn't blame it on Daniel. That had better be added to the next order. She filled the base of the ancient stovetop espresso maker with water, screwed the two halves together. The hiss and spit of an explosion of steam and shrapnel waiting to happen was exactly why she had retired it to the back of the cupboard years ago. But now that there wasn't a barista around the corner, it had been recalled from exile.

She knocked softly on Zac's door and, without waiting for a reply, opened it and slid the tray in. As she closed the door, she heard Zac's whine. ‘Mum, toast. I hate toast, it's like cardboard.'

Daniel's voice was softer, not designed for her to hear.
‘More for me.'

‘Yeah, right.'

The painful brightness of the yard darkened the unlit office more, so that she could barely make out Sean hunched over the keyboard. ‘Knock, knock.' He looked up at her but his mind remained in the virtual world. ‘Coffee.'

He put a hand out for the mug and took a sip. ‘Improving.'

‘How's work?'

He snapped into focus. ‘Do you know there's not a single case in Melbourne? The whole office down there is working normally. They're going out to lunch today.'

‘Are many people still going into the Sydney office?'

‘It's been closed.' He looked away and shrugged, as if it was unimportant. ‘One of the guys from another department lives in that block of flats. So they closed the office, as a precaution. After he was quarantined, like that's going to help.' He rubbed a spot of dirt from his screen.

‘What flats?'

‘You haven't looked at the paper yet? Ten people dead yesterday all in one block of flats. He was in yesterday. I was supposed to be in a meeting with him.'

‘Is he all right? Is he sick?'

‘I don't know. I don't really know him. An email went around earlier saying he was doing okay but... the whole block's quarantined. There are soldiers standing outside the building. It's all over the news. And it's not like the ten knew each other, they just live in the same block. They say it could be getting through the sewerage system. Aerosolised when you turn on the tap too hard or flush the toilet.'

‘How the hell could that even be possible? It spread through the toilet?'

‘Who knows? Maybe it's an old building with dodgy plumbing. Maybe they're secretly partying together. They don't know.' He ran his hand through his hair. ‘But I'm safe and everyone
who went in yesterday is going to spend today and tomorrow waiting for symptoms.' He looked around the room, as if for a solution. ‘Eighty-one dead yesterday and someone I work with lives in the same block as ten of them. The guys in Melbourne keep telling us to forget about work. But what am I going to do?' He put his arm around her waist and gave her a squeeze. ‘I'm okay and you're okay and Zac and Oscar and Daniel are all okay. But I have to keep doing something, pretending that it matters, otherwise it's not okay anymore.' He looked into his mug. ‘Is there more? You'll be rivalling the cafe in a few days. It's good.'

It was good because they had the old espresso pot. Because the air was fresh and voices of people were in the distance. Because Zac was in his bedroom and Oscar was watching cartoons. So the coffee tasted good.