Excerpt from “The New Plague “(previously published in Green Mountains Review)
Since our discharge from the hospital, and our arrival home in the white quarantine van, we haven’t spoken to anyone but each other face-to-face. It’s no longer possible. We can use the telephone and the computers, of course, but no more lunches or dinners with friends. No work at the office. No traveling for holidays. No coffee shops, or shops of any kind. You won’t find us on the streets or in a drugstore or at a bar having a drink. We have already ceased to exist in many ways.
In the van, we wore the silver quarantine suits, which stank of new plastic and made sweat pour out of our armpits, and the air they pumped inside for us to breathe was tainted and chemical. Neon green plague lights from the van’s roof reflected off the houses we passed and circled in on our faces. In the hospital they told us that we were the second house in our development to be infected. Disease was swifter in the first house, though, as we’ve already outlived that whole family.
We got phone calls but no one knew what to say, least of all us. We gave them the update and then they called again for a new update. Some days, I’d repeated myself five times a day before I gave up answering the phone altogether. I put a message on the machine, which says we don’t have any news. The answering machine filled and then they stopped calling, even our families. We don’t talk to anyone anymore.
In medieval times, we’d be long dead. Covered in beetle bulges and patches of liver and blackened skin, coughing up black blood. We would be ancient in our disfigurement.