“Really?” I snarled. “I haven’t had sex outside of marriage with someone who is infected — can you say the same thing?”
She flinched, but then recovered. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” she snapped.
“I don’t know, Lisa — you’re an intelligent woman. You figure it out — but do it silently; I have no desire to interact with you in any way.”
“How dare you…” she started to say.
That’s all she got out before I got in her face and in a low growl said “Shut the fuck up, bitch,” words that I had never used with her before — or even thought of using. “If you infected our kids you’re in for a world of hurt!”
She ran crying into the bathroom.
My conscience was clear, and I knew how I would be reacting depending upon what happened with the virus, so I slept a full seven hours. When I awoke the next morning Lisa was on our bed as far away from me as she could get, awake but bleary-eyed. When she saw me get out of bed it was obvious that she had had an attitude adjustment. “Jim…can we please have a talk?”
“Once everything with the virus has shaken out — not until then — so don’t ask again,” I snapped.
Since I was involved I couldn’t do the contact tracing for my family. However, I did ask the kids and Karen about what they told the contact tracer, and all three of them had virtually no contact with anyone except the family. Also, all of my contacts were with protective gear on — that left no doubt in my mind (although I didn’t have any doubt anyway) that Lisa was the source of the infections in our family.
–δ–
Over the next few days there was some justice, and some injustice.
The justice — Lisa developed severe symptoms within two days after the afternoon she was tested. She ended up in the hospital ICU. Further justice, Karen, me, and my son, were asymptomatic and all of our vital signs were positive and based upon our doctor’s opinion we were likely to remain as such.
The injustice — my little girl was feeling poorly the day that Lisa was admitted to the ICU, and the next day she was admitted to the hospital too. That night Karen and I had a long talk after my son went to bed.
“Jim — you’re probably wondering why even though I tested positive Winston didn’t,” Karen said.
“I thought that it was just luck-of-the-draw,” I replied.
“There’s likely more to it than that,” she scoffed. “We haven’t been intimate in months. I know that you don’t like him, and over the last year I have come to see why you don’t, and to be honest I’m to the point now that I virtually hate him. I should have listened to Crystal when she told me not to marry him.”
Her last declaration gobsmacked me; I was slightly, but not entirely, surprised too by the rest of her statement. “Are you going to divorce him?” I asked.
“Yes, I am; once society gets back to a new normal that is likely the first thing that I’ll be doing,” she replied. “How about you and Lisa?”
I was a little surprised by that question. “Uh…what do you mean?”
“I think that you know. You somehow found out that Lisa is cheating on you.”