She said, “Jase, are you OK?”
I sniffled. “No.”
“Yeah, me too.”
I felt like telling her everything would be all right, like Mom used to say when one of us had skinned a knee. But I couldn’t say it, because I didn’t know.
—
At some point I must have fallen asleep because when I opened my eyes, the sun was poking in Allie’s windows. My phone said 6:52. I was a little sore from lying on the carpet, but this didn’t concern me. I sat up, stretched, and looked over at the bed, where Allie was looking back at me. “Hi,” I said.
“Hey.”
“Did you get any sleep?”
“Not really.”
“Yeah. I stared at the ceiling a long time. Maybe slept an hour.”
We turned on the news, where Zara was the top story. Once-peaceful Vermont, overtaken by a deadly African virus. There were no specifics about who was infected, but the story made me wonder if our names would be released to the media. We sat at the foot of Allie’s unmade bed, glued to the screen.
The news showed a lot of general information about Zara symptoms. You feel fine the first day after exposure. Never better, actually. Then on the second day a cough starts, light at first, doesn’t seem unusual at all. But it gets progressively worse, and after about 12 more hours the coughing becomes uncontrollable and bloody. On the third day your internal organs progressively shut down and you die. It’s remarkably fast.
Allie and I watched all this in silence. My heart was pounding, but there was still a sense of detachment, like all this couldn’t be happening to us. The news went to a commercial and Allie muted the sound.
“Jase, do you know who the guy was? On the plane, the guy from Africa?”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” I said. “I don’t really know. No one really seemed out of place or anything.”
“Was anyone coughing?”
“No. I mean, once in a while someone would clear their throat or something, but no one had a coughing fit.”
Allie beamed with a revelation. “So that means the guy on the plane was on his first day after exposure. Any more than that and he’d have been coughing.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
“So that means today is probably the guy’s second day. At some point today he’s either going to start coughing or he isn’t, and then we’ll know. I think we’re going to find out today if we’ll live or die.”
“Jesus.”
“And since it’s our first day, we’re going to feel fine all day. If that Samantha lady calls with bad news, at least we’ll feel healthy.”
The news came back on, but they went on to a different story and Allie turned the TV off. I stood up and said, “Well, if it’s my last day to feel good, I need to take a shower.”
Allie took my cue and stood up too, then smoothed the sheets and blanket. “Sure, go ahead.”
“The thing is, I wasn’t exactly joking earlier about my suitcase. All my clothes are dirty.”
She glanced my way. “Oh.”
“Do you have something I could wear today? I promise, I won’t even go outside.”
“For god’s sake.” She went over to her dresser and extracted a pair of blue sweatpants, followed by a T-shirt too big for her but smaller than I would normally wear. “These will probably fit you. I was thinking about getting rid of ’em anyway, so now they’re yours.”