intellect was rare, his brilliant mind was encapsulated by a flawed and diminished body. And yet he was never angry at those who underestimated him or gave him pitying looks. Jill despised them all. They didn’t understand the one great quality Henry Parsons had, a trait that defined him in Jill’s mind as no other did: his enormous capacity for love.
There was another quality that Jill wondered about endlessly. Henry had a guilty conscience. When they first met at the ballpark, Henry had been on temporary assignment to the CDC from Fort Detrick. He lived in a covert world and was never going to reveal what he did there. Shortly after they met, he took the permanent job at the CDC. That was sixteen years ago.
Henry gave Jill credit for bringing him into life, almost as if she had given birth to him. He always said that their wedding was the happiest moment he had ever known. It was for her as well. But happiness is a fickle quality, and Jill often feared that a tidal wave of despair was awaiting her, the reckoning for years of bliss.
* * *
—
TEDDY WAS ON the playground when the kid threw up on the jungle gym. A monitor helped the boy to the nurse’s office, where there were three other children with nosebleeds and nausea. The principal, who had just heard the news, said over the PA that there was a Code 12 in effect, meaning that teachers were to keep the children in the classrooms and out of the hallways until parents arrived. Some of the parents had already heard, and they rushed over to pick up their children. Their eyes were full of fear.
Within the last twenty-four hours, another eighteen thousand Americans had perished of Kongoli, in seventeen cities—including Atlanta, where more than two hundred flu-related deaths had been recorded. The news was brimming with stories: the parents who died at the dinner table, leaving four orphans; twelve prisoners in a Detroit jail who succumbed and another thirteen who were ill, causing the county to simply open the gates because they were unable to protect them. These were parables of a society that was fractured by a disaster that everyone thought had run its course.
Most of those who died had been quickly struck down by their body’s furious counterattack to the infection. Other victims would take as long as ten days to die, usually of acute respiratory disease syndrome, a virulent and overwhelming pneumonia. In the wake of the Kongoli pandemic, new, antibiotic-resistant strains were proliferating. The rate of death from flu and pneumonia combined was close to 50 percent.
Jill had to wait until the last of her students had been picked up before she could get Helen and Teddy home. Her pantry was practically empty, and she was frantic to get groceries before everything shut down. She rushed to the natural foods store near her house, where she figured there would be less panic, but she encountered a frantic crowd, women in yoga clothes (there was a studio next door) darting through the aisles, businessmen in suits pushing two or more carts, others walking out with their arms full of unpaid goods. Jill thought about doing the same. The two clerks were doing what they could to handle the sales, but they also were frightened and desperate to get away from possible exposure.
“Cash only,” said a slight Indian girl with a red tilaka mark on her forehead.
“Oh, come on, I don’t have that much on me.”
“The credit card system is not responding,” she said. “So cash, that’s it.”
Jill noticed the businessman behind her with a handful of bills. Somehow everyone knew more than she. In her purse, she found forty-three dollars. The clerk simply took the money without counting up the groceries. Jill bagged them herself and left the store. She felt light-headed and was breathing shallowly.
When Jill got home, Henry called on FaceTime. He was in the Saudi Health Ministry, wearing a white lab coat with some Arabic writing on it. For some reason the sight of Henry comfortably at work inflamed Jill. “Why are you still there?” she demanded. “You don’t belong there. You’re supposed to be here, taking care of us. Running your lab. Instead, you’re off in Saudi Arabia!”
Henry was caught off guard by Jill’s vehemence. “I’m doing everything I can to find a way to come home,” he said. “The American ambassador here is pulling strings for me, but Saudi Arabia is still quarantined and