ever seen anything like this. The nurse told her no, but at least no one had died yet.
“It is a miracle,” she said in her broken accent.
They reached the parking lot. The nurse took away the wheelchair.
Kate Reese was on her own.
She put Christopher in the front seat and immediately drove to the Giant Eagle to fill the prescription. The hospital’s pharmacy was out for some reason. The traffic was almost as psychotic as her son had been accused of being. The horns honked so often it sounded like ducks on a pond.
When she finally reached the supermarket, Christopher was so sick, he could barely move. She kissed his cheek, which felt like it was on fire. Then, she opened the car door to let the cold December air cut through the fever that the doctors assured her he didn’t have.
“Can you walk, sweetheart?”
Christopher said nothing. He just stared through the windshield and blinked. So, she helped him to his feet and carried him into the supermarket like a baby. He was too big to sit in the top of the shopping cart, so she took off her coat to soften the metal and gently laid him down inside. Then, she rushed to the pharmacy and handed the prescription over to the pharmacist.
“It’ll be a few minutes,” the weary pharmacist told her as he scratched his hand.
Christopher’s mother knew they could be holed up for a while, so she quickly walked the rows of Giant Eagle, looking for enough supplies to get them through the next few weeks.
But there were none.
Christopher’s mother had seen grocery stores picked clean before. She had traveled enough of the country to see what happens when a tornado or hurricane warning hits a community. Sometimes, she wondered if the supermarkets put a little pressure on the local news to sell the storms just to move some inventory.
But she had never seen anything like this.
All of the Advil, Tylenol, and aspirin. All of the skin rash and itching creams. All of the canned soup, the dried fruit, the canned meats and fish.
Gone.
If Christopher’s mother didn’t know any better, she would have thought that the town was preparing for a war.
She picked up what she could. Beef jerky, boxes of Lipton soup and cold cereal. At least Christopher would get his Froot Loops. She went to the refrigerator section. She got some cheese because it keeps well. Then, she went to the milk. Dozens of Emily Bertovich’s pictures were keeping an eye on everything. She grabbed two half gallons and the last of the plastic jugs.
Christopher’s mother gave a quick glance to the cart to make sure Christopher was comfortable. She saw that he was okay right before she realized that the people in the store were not. Everyone was short-tempered. Fighting over scraps. Yelling at the stock boys about not having enough supplies. Christopher’s mother kept her head down. When she had filled the cart, she went back to the pharmacy to pick up Christopher’s prescription. The pharmacist was in the middle of a heated discussion with an old man.
“I asked if there was any aspirin in the back,” the old man said.
“What you see is what we’ve got,” the pharmacist replied.
“Can you check the back of the—”
“What you see is what we’ve got,” the pharmacist cut him off.
“I need my aspirin to thin my blood!”
“Next!”
The old man walked away, fuming. Christopher’s mother noticed that he was scratching his leg. She turned back to the pharmacist, who gave her a “can you believe that asshole” look and put Christopher’s pills in a white paper bag.
“Should he take this with or without food?” Christopher’s mother asked.
“Read the directions. Next!”
After Christopher’s mother paid for the pills, she took the groceries to the front. There was a long line and only one checkout clerk. She was a little teenage thing. Very pretty. A man in muddy boots was groaning his impatience.
“I’ve been here twenty minutes. Why don’t you open a new fucking register?”
“I’m sorry, sir. Everyone called in sick,” the teenage girl said.
“Then, maybe you could pick up the pace, you little—”
“Hey, why don’t you leave the girl alone?!” a burly man said behind him.
“Why don’t you go fuck yourself?”
“Why don’t you try to fucking make me?”
A security guard stepped in to quiet the skirmish. Christopher’s mother stood still, waiting for the storm to pass. The man in front of her in line turned around and started looking at some of the things in her cart. His eyes found