Is that it? Is that making me feel uneasy? The general malaise that comes from being homesick, away from who and what you love? Or is it the motion of the plane, the unnatural feeling of being in a tin can, moving on a seat at 450 miles per hour almost seven miles up in the air?
Something wasn’t right. Rose knew it, but also knew she couldn’t explain it. Just a mother’s intuition, she told herself, as she tugged a blanket under her chin and tried to sleep.
***
Kevin Colbert returned weakly to bed in his Sutton, Massachusetts home with two glasses of orange juice and the Sunday Boston Globe. His wife, Monica, lay in the bed semi-awake, moaning, with the covers pulled tight. Kevin laid the newspaper on a chair, hoping he would feel well enough later to read it.
“Can you get me some more Motrin?” Monica groaned. Kevin sat the orange juice on the nightstand beside her and leaned over to feel her head. He wiped away the beads of sweat from her burning head and visualized a body emerging from a steam room. He stroked her head. “It’s too early,” he said. “We just took some three hours ago at 5:45 a.m.”
As he stood back up, Kevin felt every part of his body ache. He trudged to the master bathroom and soaked a washcloth in cool water, wringing it out lightly as he looked up at the mirror. The man returning the gaze was blurred, disheveled, and in no way resembled the suave gentleman who had been on the CNN supper club segment the month before, or the debonair gentleman who dined with some of society’s elite the night before at an underground supper club in an exclusive home in Dover.
Thank God we didn’t get this flu yesterday, he thought to himself. We would have never been able to make that dinner. Kevin shuffled back to the bedroom and placed the cloth across Monica’s forehead, having determined that there was really nothing else he could do. Of the two of them, Monica was the first to feel the symptoms come on, having awoken at 5:30 complaining of all-around body aches and pains. Kevin tended to her by giving her some juice and Motrin. He then used his computer to research the symptoms that Monica complained about––aches, pain, fever, and slight breathing difficulty––and found them to match the flu-like symptoms on the CDC’s website. The recommendation was to stay home, drink fluids, get rest, and don’t visit the emergency room unless you were in a high-risk category. Take ibuprofen or acetaminophen for fever if necessary, and have a family member look after you if possible.
That wasn’t possible. As a precaution, John had sent a text to his only daughter, Kelly, just to let her know how they were doing. Kelly lived about an hour away, in Watertown, and had gone with her husband to Vermont for the Columbus Day weekend. She wouldn’t return until late that night or the following morning...Kevin wasn’t sure. He had not wanted to call her early on a Sunday morning so he simply texted her, “hope you guys are having fun! mom and I feel down today with flu so we’re in bed. Turned phone off so we can rest. luv dad.”
Had they lived in a more populated area, Kevin might have gone to a health clinic despite the CDC’s recommendations. But they moved to their quiet and wooded home on Town Farm Road in Sutton for a reason. It was out in the boondocks, or at least as far out as you can be and still be close to Providence and Boston, and reasonably close to the Cape and the Berkshires. The only downside was that there was no medical clinic in Sutton and certainly no doctor’s office open on a Sunday morning. The closest choices would have been emergency rooms at Milford Regional or in Worcester. There was no reason to make a big deal out of this, Kevin reasoned, so he turned off the computer and went back to bed.
Now, he had awoken with the same symptoms, and Monica had not improved. He crawled into bed to get his own rest. Monica’s raspy breathing sounded like air was being sucked through a straw that was punctured with pinholes. Her lungs were trying to inflate, but it seemed like all the air wasn’t getting in. Kevin went to sleep worried about her and hoping that he would fare better.
***
The taxi stopped in front of the Athens Regional Medical Center. “$6.50,” the driver said. Megan Wilcox fumbled through her purse and squinted at the bill, trying to determine if it was a ten or a twenty. She shook her head in frustration at her blurred vision, which only succeeded at making her head pound even more. She tossed the bill in the driver’s direction and grabbed the door handle.
“Hey, that’s a twen—” the driver began as she closed the door. Megan looked up at the large red letters that spelled EMERGENCY in front of the huge panes of glass windows. She walked to the admissions station and stood behind an elderly man. Now he should be here, she thought. The admissions nurse pointed to a clipboard and nodded her head in the direction of the waiting area. Megan took the clipboard and walked to take a seat.
Walking slowly through the maze of interlocking, cheap, tweed-covered chairs, she looked for a place to sit where she could be at least a few feet away from the walking wounded, thinking naïvely that she wouldn’t want to catch whatever they had. Not thinking at all that she might have something that they’d prefer not to have, thank you. As she passed, she took in the faces, some looking vaguely familiar to her even though that seemed impossible, given how far away from home she was. I guess sick people all look the same, she thought to herself.
She tried to focus on the form as she sat. Megan Wilcox, her trembling hands began to write with difficulty. It was difficult for her to see the form, even though she had perfect vision. She concentrated and tried to continue. 1445 Hutchinson Street, Armonk, NY, she wrote and then paused, trying to remember her ZIP code. Distracted, she glanced at the magazines on the table. Always the same ones in these places, she thought. WebMD, Smart Money, Georgia Magazine and People. She removed a copy of Reader’s Digest from the seat beside her that featured the short stories of Edgar Allen Poe. On the cover, a raven held its mouth open and cast an ominous gaze. She tossed it on the table with the others as she returned to the the maze of questions on the form. Not reading any of them, just checking “no” to each one as she walked back to the desk.
“May I have your health insurance card?” the nurse asked. Megan sighed and reached into her wallet for the Blue Cross Blue Shield card and handed it to the lady. The health care coverage was the last thing on her mind. IBM offered a great health care plan, even if she was almost a thousand miles from home. No, the only thing she wanted was some meds, something to get rid of the chills, aches and fever that had come over her out of nowhere in the early morning hours.
“Here you go,” the lady said, returning the health care card she had just copied. “The nurse will take you in now.”
The nurse asked Megan to step on the scale and recorded her weight and height. She wrote down 127 pounds, 5 feet 6 inches on the form as Megan slumped on the scale and stared at the wall. “You can step down now,” the nurse said, “and have a seat. Says here you’re thirty-four years old, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“New York,” the nurse continued. “Long way from home.”
“I’m staying at the Marriott here in Athens. Flying home tonight.” Megan said.
The nurse popped a thermometer in Megan’s mouth and recorded her temperature of 102 on the form. She sensed that Megan wasn’t in the mood to roll up her left arm sleeve so the nurse leaned over and did that for her, strapping the blood pressure cuff over her arm. She pumped air into the cuff with the squeeze bulb as she surveyed Megan’s condition. The nurse had already made up her mind that it was the flu. It was the fourth case she had seen in the past hour, even though it was months away from the heart of the flu season. After four years this job had become so mundane to her, other than the real emergencies that came in. But those generally went straight into the emergency room or prepped for surgery. The cases she saw were generally the same. The most exciting case she had seen this year was a beekeeper that was stung twenty times and was on the verge of anaphylactic shock. He couldn’t speak and could barely breathe, so the doctor wasted little time giving the epinephrine injection. Other than that it was always people with cold or flu-like symptoms who came in and paid the exorbitant emergency room fees even though, she thought, everyone knew to not waste the emergency room’s resources for common colds and flus.