although Jill could see that the rooms were still occupied.
“Hey! Hey, you!” a man’s voice called after her. “Help me!”
Jill turned to look into the room where an old man was staring at her, his face in the grip of a powerful emotion, but what Jill noticed immediately was the stream of blood coming from his nose.
“Do you work here?” he asked. “I need help.”
Jill took a step back. “I’ll get somebody,” she said.
“They won’t come. Won’t nobody come. You gotta help me. I’m not feeling so good and nobody has changed me.”
“I’m sorry, I’m here to visit my mother.”
“I really need a change. There’s diapers over there,” he said, waving his bony finger toward the cabinet.
“I wish I could help, I really do,” Jill said, as she hurried away. His voice called after her pitifully, “Help me! Won’t somebody help me?”
Nora was watching TV when Jill came in. “What took you so long,” she said sternly. “I’m hungry.”
“Mom? It’s me, Jill. Your daughter.”
Nora focused on her, shards of memory reorganizing themselves with this new information. She was usually better than this. Maybe she was thrown off by the mask. Jill could hear other voices crying out, joining the chorus of misery down the hall like baying dogs.
“How do you feel, Mom?”
“I told you. I’m hungry.”
“That’s good, that’s a good sign,” said Jill. “Didn’t they offer you anything?”
Nora made a dismissive sound.
“I’ll tell you what,” Jill said, as she arranged the snaps in the vase Helen had decorated at camp. “I’ll run down to the kitchen and get you something. What do you feel like? You want cereal? Maybe some ice cream?”
“Ice cream,” Nora agreed.
“Okay! I’ll be right back.”
Jill was now fully aware that the residents had been essentially abandoned. The executive offices of the facility also appeared to be vacant, but she saw an open door to the president’s office, and there sat Jack Sperling. There were dark circles under his eyes. It was a face of total despair.
“Jack, are you here by yourself?” Jill asked.
“We lost most of our staff when we got the first cases of flu,” he said. “Some of them I think are actually sick, but most of them are just scared. They’re not trained for this kind of medical emergency.”
“But who’s taking care of everyone?”
“We’ve got a handful of folks. It takes a while to get around to everybody. Your mom, I’m sorry, she probably hasn’t been fed yet.”
“Do you still have food?”
“We’re getting some emergency assistance from the Department of Agriculture, but we’re short on essentials, soft foods, like peanut butter, string cheese, chocolate milk—the stuff they like. Totally out of Ensure. But the real problem is medicine.” He gestured at a pile of documents on his desk. “Most of our residents are on some kind of critical medication, but every pharmacy I’ve called is rationing supplies. I spend my entire day trying to round up diabetes and heart medications. We’ve got people who desperately need antidepressants, but that’s got to wait till the critical cases get taken care of. There are other problems I don’t want to burden you with.”
“Like Kongoli,” said Jill.
Sperling sighed. “It’s all over the third floor and the memory ward.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“Tell me, Jill, would you really want me to? Do you want to take your mother home? If you do, please, help yourself. We’d be happy to have one less mouth to feed, one less body to bathe, to take to the bathroom, to wake up in the night for their medicine. You’d be doing us a great favor, but maybe not your family, knowing she’s been exposed. Think about it.”
Jill found the kitchen in the basement. There was one cook stirring oatmeal in several vats. She made a slight movement that Jill recognized as a cautionary don’t-come-near-me motion.
“Ice cream?” Jill asked.
The woman shook her head. “Long gone,” she said. “Oatmeal’s ready if you want.”
Jill carried a bowl up to Nora’s room, along with a plastic spoon. Fortunately, Nora had forgotten about the ice cream. Jill sat on the edge of her mother’s bed and fed her.
“Did I tell you about my trip to Maggie’s?” Jill said, watching her mother’s eyes search for the name. “We talked a lot about you. You’d be so proud of her, what she and Tim have done with that farm. It’s a showplace!” And so on, as if Nora were taking it all in. Jill knew that what was important was creating that feeling of familiarity, even if the