An Ordinary Epidemic Read online

  Down the bottom of the pantry, pushed in between some tins of fruit was a pamphlet she had downloaded a year ago from a government website. She hadn’t gone out of her way to hide it, but she didn’t mind that it wasn’t visible. Sean already thought she was obsessed, but it was more like having insurance. The pamphlet said so. The whole back page was a table to calculate how much food, how many toiletries and other groceries they would need for two weeks. Two weeks was a heartbeat, two weeks couldn’t possibly cover any eventuality. Besides, it never hurt to have an extra tin of tomatoes or a packet of rice in the house, although if she looked hard it was ten tins of tomatoes and five kilos of rice. Just to be safe. No matter what happened, there would be food.

  On the shelves, she saw only what was missing from the non-perishables mandated by the pamphlet. Making the pantry complete might only be a ritual, but it was better than waiting and doing nothing. There had to be food less utilitarian and more fun than tinned tuna and beans. It would be like the big shop before going on holidays, as if whatever small town they were staying in wouldn’t have city conveniences like bread.

  The pharmacist was losing patience with the woman in front of Hannah. ‘If you buy something else to take the total over ten dollars, then you can EFTPOS it.’

  ‘But I don’t want anything else.’

  ‘Well, do you have exact change?’

  ‘I’m not quite sure, I didn’t bring my glasses. Could you add it up for me, dear?’ She held out a hand full of coins but the pharmacist kept her hands by her side.

  ‘We’re not touching the money, Mrs Mac. You drop it in the disinfectant.’ She gestured to a large fish bowl. At the bottom, a layer of assorted coins stood in place of the sand and halfway up the notes hung suspended like lazy tropical fish, their colours tinted blue by the antiseptic.

  Mrs Mac looked at the collection of coins. ‘Well, I’m not sure...’

  ‘Hold out your hand.’ The pharmacist peered, keeping her distance. ‘You’ve got enough change there. Why don’t you drop the coins in one by one, and I’ll tell you when to stop. Start with the gold ones.’ They counted out six dollars, each one making a small splash and falling surprisingly slowly through the liquid. ‘There you go, now you need fifteen cents.’

  ‘I’ve only got a twenty cent piece.’

  ‘Well, take the change from the bowl.’

  Mrs Mac dropped the coin in and looked doubtfully at the liquid. ‘I think I’ll leave it. I don’t want my hands smelling like that all day.’

  ‘Best thing for them just now, Mrs Mac.’

  Hannah hesitated to hand over the prescription she held in her bare fingers. ‘I don’t know how you’re going to disinfect this.’ But the pharmacist reached out a gloved hand for it.

  ‘You have no idea how many hands money passes through. I imagine this script has only been touched by two people, at least one of whom should know something about asepsis. They say you can find cocaine on almost every note. Imagine what else gets on them. Not touching the money today.’

  The pharmacist came back with Hannah’s pills. ‘Do you need any hand sanitiser? For regulars I’ve still got a few bottles. Only two per person though. When they’re gone, I’m out and I can’t order any more. My supplier says the hospitals are taking everything they can make. So if you want some...’

  The pharmacist pushed the EFTPOS machine at her, careful to touch only the back of the machine and with only the back of her gloved hand. Almost every person who’d been in here today must have touched that keypad and sick people went to pharmacies. Hannah knew she looked ridiculous but the pharmacist was wearing gloves and there was no one else in the store to see her. She pulled a wipe out from her bag and cleaned the machine.

  The pharmacist rang up the script on the cash register. ‘Do you want cash out? I’m only giving what’s in the jar.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ As Hannah picked up the plastic bag with the pill bottle inside, she couldn’t help but feel a vague contamination. ‘I need to fill another script in a couple of weeks. Will you still be getting things in?’

  ‘So long as it’s not antivirals or vitamin C, you should be fine. Oh, and the hand wash is only for regulars. Don’t tell people.’

  As she left the pharmacy, she briefly considered going back for the hand wash. There was some in the pantry, as specified by the list, but she had no idea how much they might use. Either it would sit there taking up space or they wouldn’t have enough.

  A car honked its horn and she looked up. It swerved around two people walking down the middle of the road. A man and a woman, maybe late fifties. They were involved in their conversation, just as if they were walking on the footpath. When they came to the intersection, a mother and her two small children were on the crossing. The couple waited a few metres back until the family was on the other side. They carefully looked both ways before crossing directly through the middle of the roundabout.

  She picked up Oscar from school, rushing him into the car. Her instinct was to get back online and check what had changed in the last couple of hours, but she had to resist that ever-present obsession. She ferried her bags of groceries from the car to the kitchen.

  As she unpacked them, she made two piles, one for the kitchen cupboards and one to go back up the hall to the pantry. A cornucopia. Eggs, dried chorizos, some salami-like things that had been hanging at the deli and looked like they would keep well. Fresh meat, fresh fruit, fresh vegetables. She could throw into a shopping trolley a better life than almost everybody who had ever lived. Even the kings. You could rule everything you saw but without polytunnels or airfreight, it wouldn’t do you any good to demand out-of-season fruit.

  The big block of cheddar would make sandwiches but she’d also bought fancy cheese, something they would relish. She imagined sitting around the kitchen table with Sean, Zac, Oscar, a glass of wine and some brie and crackers. That’s what she wanted, for her kids to say to her years later, ‘Remember that time we shut the front door, and didn’t go out for weeks, and we had cheese and crackers and played cards all day.’

  With all this food, the only thing she hadn’t thought about was tonight’s dinner. It hurt to think of using any of the bounty in front of her. All this was for storing, not eating. She would rather make a meal of leftovers than start depleting their stock. In the freezer, she found a plastic bag of excess mince. A tin of tomatoes would make a bolognese sauce but that meant using a tin. Only one tin, but the pasta as well.

  Oscar was watching her from the doorway where Zac had been standing yesterday. He took up so much less space. Where Zac had a boy’s body stretched tall, Oscar still had a solidness and stood firmly in contact with the ground. Zac’s movements were awkward but leisurely but when Oscar ran each foot hit the floor with a thud that reverberated along the floorboards throughout the house and under the party wall to Gwen’s. Just as well she was a bit deaf.

  ‘Can we play a game? Can we play Cheat?’

  ‘You can see I’m putting away the shopping. Maybe we could do something when I’m done.’

  ‘I don’t have anything to do.’

  ‘You’ve got a room full of stuff. Look on your shelves, there must be something there.’ Oscar stomped away, joists shaking. ‘Try not to disturb Gwen.’

  She put all the packets and tins back in the green shopping bag and carried it to her pantry. It took up one side of the small vestibule in front of the bathroom, presumably intended as a linen closet before she co-opted it. The rows were soothingly neat. She took her time lining up the new tins, making sure the flour and sugar and oats were in one area, the different kinds of tinned vegetables in another. On a whim, she moved the packets of lentils and kidney beans from next to the dried fruit and put them next to the tinned beans. Satisfying, as if each tin was another brick in their defences.

  There was an unusual lack of noise from Oscar while she finished. That often meant trouble but if she checked up on him, he’d instantly lose interest in whatever he was doing. Better to trust he wa
s occupying himself well.

  When she looked at the pantry, she saw meals. Large bags of rice and pasta, calculated out to be so many dinner, lunch and breakfast servings. She had allowed extra flour for making treats like biscuits or scones, to go with the jars of jam stashed away. She had jars of anchovies, olives, little things that could be added to the basics. Cubes of vacuum-packed coffee and long life milk calculated out at so many cups a day. With all these she had made her preparations, but she couldn’t be sure that they were enough. There had to be flaws in her plans, if only she knew what they were. She needed confirmation, more information, another checklist. She needed to look on the net for new websites on emergency pantries, to find the thing she had missed.

  But not yet.

  On the way up the hall, she could hear Oscar talking to himself in two voices. She paused just outside his open door. In the middle of his floor was a big pile of playing cards. On one side, a neat hand of cards lay face down, on the other sat Oscar, holding his. He announced to the room in a high voice, ‘Two kings’ and placed two cards on the top of the discard pile. He lay his hand face down and moved around to pick up the other hand. In a deep voice he said, ‘Three aces’ and put three cards on the pile.

  ‘What are you playing, Mouse?’

  ‘I’m playing Cheat.’

  ‘How can you play Cheat by yourself?’

  ‘I play both sides.’

  ‘But you know if you put down kings or not.’

  Oscar looked outraged. ‘But I can’t say cheat just ’cause I know. That would be cheating.’

  ‘Maybe I could play?’

  ‘Okay.’

  She allowed herself to become engrossed in trying to cheat obviously enough to get caught, but not obviously enough that he knew she wanted to be caught. It was harder still to pretend not to notice the grin on Oscar’s face every time he sneaked six cards onto the pile saying it was three. Or when he put down his eighth queen. He didn’t cheat by halves.

  Oscar threw his last cards triumphantly on the pile. ‘Two sixes!’ A third card peeked cheekily out from the two he had fanned out. She was holding three sixes in her hand. He’d thrown them into the discard pile just before she picked up, saying they were tens.

  ‘You win.’

  ‘Can I watch TV?’

  ‘Sure.’

  The instant he was out of the room she knew she needed something to distract her from the subliminal craving to get back to the computer. Too early to start dinner, too late for another coffee. All the shopping packed away. She stared out the kitchen window at the office, and found herself walking across the yard.

  The home page of the newspaper had changed again, two new Manba stories. Several schools shut awaiting test results and the government asking promoters of concerts and sporting events to consider postponing ‘until the situation was clearer’.

  She searched for Manba again. The same list of results, even down to the ‘Aussie in Paradise’ blog. She made it through to the third page before she found something new—the website of a maths student who had created a program to trawl tweets and blogs for instances of Manba related words.

  Two months ago, cough and fever were all a flat line. Then seven weeks ago, ‘cough’ and ‘fever’ rose, slowly at first and, close on their heels, ‘diarrhoea’. Around three weeks ago, the curve rose sharply. The word ‘rash’ followed the same curve, but smaller and lagging by about four days. ‘Manba’ came from nothing two weeks ago, but quickly caught up. The student noted that the uptick in blogged symptoms predated the first medical report by about a month. Hannah clicked on the ‘separate by country’ button. China was responsible for most of the early curve, but the word ‘Manba’ itself barely registered.

  She checked the weather in Canberra. Fourteen and overcast.

  There was only one new email. The same departmental form letter the school had sent every day this week giving hygiene advice and the school’s exclusion policy for kids who had travelled recently. She wondered if the school was excluding kids who had travelled across the bridge. If Zac were here, she’d close the door. She’d keep them home from school and work from home. If only Zac were here.

  Hannah was part way through reading Oscar his bedtime story when the phone rang. She listened out for Sean to answer it.

  ‘You missed a bit.’ Oscar looked at her darkly.

  ‘Oh, did I? What did I miss?’

  ‘You missed that bit there.’ He pointed to a paragraph she had indeed missed.

  ‘I think you can read. If you can read, why am I reading this to you?’ She was trying to catch the tone of Sean’s voice even though she couldn’t make out words, to get a sense of who he was talking to.

  ‘No, I can’t,’ Oscar smiled mischievously, ‘I can’t read.’

  ‘Except when you see ice cream. I think you can read the words “ice cream”.’

  Oscar pushed his hands over his mouth, trying to hide his smirk. She could hear Sean’s steps in the hall. And Gwen probably could too, the way he was thumping.

  Sean’s head appeared around the door. ‘It’s for you.’

  ‘Is it...’ Hannah made a little Zorro ‘z’ in the air with her finger.

  ‘It’s Kate, I’ll finish the book.’

  It was never going to be Zac. He’d been gone less than two days, it wouldn’t occur to him to ring. And neither it should.

  ‘Hi Kate.’

  ‘Hi stranger, we missed you at work on Monday.’

  ‘I had some errands and Zac had a thing.’

  ‘And I had to have lunch by myself. So you can make it up to me tomorrow and take me out. We’ll call it a business meeting and you can charge it to the company.’

  ‘Tempting as that is, I think I’ll work from home tomorrow.’

  ‘Seriously?’ Kate sounded a little annoyed. ‘We’ve got stuff we have to go over. I’ve got a technical document covered in notes to give you.’ Her voice changed again. ‘You had an appointment, didn’t you? I forgot, a doctor’s appointment. Is anything wrong?’

  ‘Fine, no problems, I’m fine. I’m just keeping Oscar home from school.’ Better get it out of the way now. ‘It’ll probably be a few days. Maybe you could post it. No don’t post it,’ fingers on paper, someone licking the envelope, ‘scan it. When you’ve got time, there’s no hurry, I’ve got plenty to be getting on with.’

  ‘Have you taken him to the doctor?’

  ‘No, he’s fine. Just, you know, a kid thing.’

  ‘You have to take him to the doctor. If he’s sick, you absolutely have to take him to the doctor.’

  ‘He’s not sick.’

  ‘Then why would you keep him home? Hell on wheels. Send him to school, come into work tomorrow. Whatever it is, he can tough it out.’ Not even Kate got it. ‘Hannah, we’ve got work to do, we’ve got deadlines. If he’s sick take him to a doctor, if he’s not send him to school. Or bring him in if you must.’

  ‘Don’t give me a hard time, it’s what I have to do. There’s nothing wrong with him, I just have to keep him home. The work will get done.’

  ‘You’re insane.’

  ‘I’ll meet the deadline, which is an age off, and I’ll be in in a few days.’ Liar liar pants on fire. ‘I get more done from here, anyway. I’m not distracted by long lunches.’ As she hung up the phone, Hannah felt like the naughty girl caught skipping school.

  The living room was dark but for the light from the television flitting across Sean’s face. He had the sound turned down so as not to disrupt the delicate ritual of Oscar falling asleep. The silence made the images seem abstract, a random collection of pixels. Two boys, one bigger than the other, sitting on a hospital bed behind a set of glass doors. A nurse swathed in disposable paper clothing carrying a tray with sandwiches, sealed pots of juice. The boys from a different angle, sprawled out on the floor, surrounded by Lego pieces, for all the world like a pair of brothers playing. Quarantined from the fuss they were creating.

  Hannah stood in the doorframe, still holdin
g the phone handset. ‘Can you stay home?’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘For a while, a few days.’

  ‘Is there a reason?’

  ‘It’s just time. Two cases in Sydney. Four, really.’

  Sean didn’t take his eyes from the screen for a second. ‘Literally less than one in a million. Suspected cases. Who are in hospital.’

  ‘And four million nine hundred thousand, nine hundred and ninety-six people who haven’t been tested. The North Shore is only a bridge away. The teacher of those two kids might shop at our supermarket. The children of their doctors or nurses could go to Oscar’s school.’

  ‘Two suspected cases that might turn out to be nothing.’

  ‘It’s here. Manchester was out of control in less than a week.’

  ‘We’re a much bigger city. Your chance of crossing paths with even one person who met somebody who met them is tiny.’

  ‘Someone has to be unlucky. I’m keeping Oscar home until this is over.’

  ‘Fine.’ He pulled his eyes away from the television. ‘He can watch TV and kick a ball around the park, if that’s what makes you happy.’

  ‘He’s not going to the park. He’s not leaving the house. They’re shutting up kids in hospital.’

  ‘To stop it spreading, and it worked, it hasn’t spread.’

  ‘That we know of.’ She put the phone back on the cradle. ‘At least there haven’t been any cases in Canberra.’

  ‘Well, why would your foreigners want to bring their smelly germs to Canberra when they can see the glorious sights of Sydney Harbour. Very discerning, your foreign germs.’ Sean waited for a laugh or at least a smile but Hannah was distracted by the TV and a photograph of a confident middle-aged man with a reassuring face, a neatly trimmed beard and glasses, posed as if for a pass card or an annual report.