She blurted out, “Burke knows you’re not here, at the hospital. He knows you left.”
“How?”
There was silence. Then, in a smaller voice, almost a child’s, she said miserably, “Someone told them.”
I was vaguely aware of the kiss of snow on my face. I asked who told them and she didn’t answer. I heard jagged breathing. She was learning about choice. I think understanding the consequences of choice is what distinguishes childhood from adults. Suddenly I understood that her tortured breathing was her answer.
“Your mom told them?” I whispered into the phone.
Aya started babbling. “She was afraid for me! She got jailed last time you did something! She was scared we’d be separated, Joe, and she argued with Mr. Burke that you were right. She took your side! You should have heard her! Fighting for you, Joe!”
“Fighting for me. I see that.”
Christ, I thought. Burke knows I left. There might be soldiers on the way here right now. Judging from what happened in Nevada, I might never get to see Burke if they take me in. I might never get to tell anyone except a prison guard anything.
“Joe, she was shouting and she never does that. Don’t be mad at her. I shouldn’t have told you. But I think they’re after you. I can’t believe I said it. I’m such an idiot. I didn’t know what to do.”
“You did right,” I soothed. “I’m not mad at your mom, or you. Your mom was right. Absolutely right,” I said, thinking, Fucking asshole fucking you didn’t even tell me… I said, “I understand. Thanks for the heads-up. Aya, why don’t we just forget that you and I ever talked.”
“No! I’m going to help you!” the poor girl said. She clicked off.
A wave of futility hit me. I was dragging people I cared for into things again. Chris was right. What’s wrong with you, Joe! I called back but Aya didn’t answer. The truth was, Chris had done the sensible thing if she wanted to make sure she stayed with Aya. Burke might wait for me to return before lowering the boom. He wasn’t stupid. He just hated me. It would be stupid to waste manpower by sending troops after a doctor who’d temporarily absented himself from a hospital.
What had I learned anyway?
Nothing really.
Go back and throw yourself on his mercy. Damnit, Chris. All you had to do was shut up and I would have come back.
Either way, no good.
I rounded the corner and turned onto the small side street where I’d left Galli’s 4Runner. It was darker here as a streetlight was out. Who was I kidding anyway? I’d gone from depending on trained researchers to begging a fifteen-year-old kid for help. And the fifteen-year-old, almost instantly, had started questioning everything I asked her. I could no longer see the cathedral. I was almost at the car.
I saw, in my mind’s eye, exactly how far I’d sunk.
I’d fallen victim to the delusion of feeling essential, Washington’s principal disease. I was tired. I needed to get to the hospital and ride out Burke’s anger and see patients, be useful, instead of imagining I had answers that everyone else had missed.
Still, I thought, maybe I can convince them. Maybe when I tell them about the Sixth Prophet, they’ll at least check it out. But what will I say? I don’t even know whether it means anything, or if it is a dead end.
Where the hell had I put the car keys?
Then I saw the vandalism. Four cars in a row were tilted sideways, toward the middle of the street. Someone had gone down the line and punctured tires, two on each car. Two flat tires meant my spare would be of no use.
Of all the times for this to happen, I thought.
Then the stranger appeared up the block.
“Goddamn kids. They got you, too? I chased them away on Woodley Road. They were slashing tires there, too.”
The man had walked up to me as I was trying to call the admiral’s road service 800 number. The admiral’s GEICO help sticker was on the window, but when I punched in the number, a recorded voice told me that service was “temporarily suspended” due to the national emergency.
I clicked off. The man and I stood ten feet apart, slightly farther than the usual distance for polite conversation, but with sickness spreading in the city, that was, at best, the probable new norm.
“Kids,” I said.
“Yeah. Teens. Just going car to car, laughing. I hope they didn’t get my car, too. I’m at the end of the block. I’d offer to help you with the spare, but,” the guy said, as if embarrassed, “everyone’s nervous about infection.”
“I understand. Anyway, I’ve got two flats. The spare won’t help.”
“All the gas stations are closed.”
“I know.”
“You live near here?”
“I was heading over to Georgetown Hospital.”
“My father is there,” the man said, taking one step closer. “He got sick at the stadium. They won’t let me see him. They won’t tell me how he is. Are you sick, too?”
“No, I’m a doctor. I work there. I’m sure the staff is doing their best for your dad,” I said.
“Hey, I recognize you,” he said. “You were in the cathedral, praying.”
I squinted in the dark and realized that the man might be the same guy who’d come in while I was talking to Nadine, and who had kneeled in the Miracle Chapel. I saw a bland face below a stocking cap. The snow-dusted jacket covered an average-sized man, maybe thirty years old. No accent to speak of, except helpfulness. A man who, like any normal stranger, showed a combination of courtesy and wariness that was understandable on this particular night.
“My dad phoned me two nights ago and said his lips were tingling, then he said he had sores on his nose. He said he thought he had the Bible Virus. I told him to go to the hospital, like the TV says.”
“That was the right thing to say.”
The stranger started to walk away. Then he turned back.
“Oh hell,” he said. “Nobody helps anyone out here. They’re all scared. I guess I could drive you to the hospital. It’s only a couple of miles. You’re not sick, are you? If you’re a doctor, they wouldn’t have let you out of the hospital if you had symptoms. Don’t lie to me. Are you sick?”
“I’m not. I can walk it. Don’t worry.”
The man continued to stand there awkwardly, torn between the Good Samaritan instinct and survival. He made up his mind. He even took a half step forward. His left hand stayed in his jacket pocket, rummaging for keys, I guessed.
He said, “No! You’re risking yourself to help people like Dad, and I won’t just leave you here like a hypocrite who goes to church and then ignores the needy.” The man laughed wryly. “I’m Robert Morton. I was just asking God to help my father. I swore if he did that, I’d be a better person. Maybe you’re a test,” Morton said. “From God.”
“I doubt it. But thanks for the ride.”
“Well, only if my tires still work. Let’s check.”
“I thought you said your car was on this block.”
“It’s just around the corner.”
We walked in the opposite direction from the cathedral. We reached a section where three streetlights were out. We stayed six feet away from each other, proper plague distance, in the middle of the street. The wind seemed stronger on this block and piled snow in irregular mounds on front lawns.
“Have you doctors figured out how to cure the Bible Virus?”
“I wish.”
“Still no idea where it came from? Fox News says terrorists spread it, but nobody knows if it came from a lab or not. Wikileaks says the White House blames Al Qaeda or ISIS.”
“We don’t know that for sure,” I said. “By the way, it’s not a virus. It’s a bacteria.”