Once upstairs, Cooper returned to offering what comfort he could to Elena. A fluffed pillow. A wet cloth. A kiss on her forehead. The day passed like this until the late afternoon.
Without warning, her fever broke and the frantic thrashing ceased. The immobility, wracked now by bouts of coarse coughing fits, was much worse to watch. Each new outburst was worse than the one before. Her body was tortured by each round, which grew longer and louder. Still, she remained unconscious.
As the light gave way to dark, Elena fell silent. Mercifully the coughing abated. Their room remained lit by the glow of the orange streetlight. Neither father nor the son bothered to turn on a light. Cooper moved so he could sit on the edge of the bed and grasped Elena’s hand. He motioned Jake to her other side. Jake laid in the bed, next to his mother, and grasped her hand tightly with both hands. He looked at his father with glistening eyes, wide open in grief and fear.
“Tell her whatever you want, son. I think it is time.”
“Mama, you can’t die. You just can’t. Not yet. Please, mama, no!” Jake’s voice shifted from soft whimpering, to a high pitched whine, to a plea laced with anger. His plaintive wail cut Cooper’s heart to ribbons. Tears filled his eyes. He leaned across Elena and embraced Jake.
“OK, son. OK. I don’t want her to go either.”
Jake pushed his father away and stared back at him, eyes alive with rage, “No. She can’t die! I won’t let her.”
Elena let loose with a rattling cough that sounded like her lungs had come adrift and were hurtling around, loose, inside of her chest. They both looked at her with a mix of shock and fear.
Cooper lowered his voice, “I know, son. I know. If there was anything we could do, we would be doing it. But there just isn’t.”
“Why haven’t you taken her to a hospital? You haven’t even tried!” Jake hissed sharply in a half whisper and punched his balled fists into his father’s chest.
Cooper pushed him back, grasping his fists, “The hospitals are full up, and you can’t get there. Besides…”
“You didn’t even try,” Jake interrupted.
Cooper held up his hand, palm out, “Now, listen. The doctors don’t have anything, anything that works on this bug. I wasn’t going to have your mother die in some overflowing hallway or parking lot in some hospital gown!”
Cooper’s crescendo surprised Jake and he remained silent as Cooper continued, lowering his voice again, “I love your mother as much as any man can love a woman. But, I love you more. I don’t want you to do something you’ll regret later…not saying to her while you have the chance.” The bitter sting of his own last words with his father bubbled up. “The one thing we control, right now, is how we say goodbye.”
Jake began to utter a protest, but Cooper’s sharp look belayed him, “It is time to say goodbye, son. Say goodbye to her now and you can protest to the heavens later. I know she wants to hear you tell her just how much you love her and…” His throat tightened, eyes filled with tears, and he could not continue.
“And how much I’ll miss her,” Jake finished for him. He looked his father, his eyes soft in sympathy.
“Yes, and how much we’ll miss her.”
Cooper and his son spent the next hour telling Elena goodbye. They alternated between tearful goodbyes and happy reminisces. She drew her last breath with her husband and her only son holding her tight and kissing her on the forehead and cheek.
Elena died at 8:07 in the evening. Cooper’s heart was rent asunder and he cried unabashedly. His deep sobs contrasted sharply with his son’s high pitched weeping.
Cooper didn’t know that his troubles were only just beginning.
Chapter 8
A few hours later, just before midnight, Dranko found them asleep. Elena’s corpse lay on the bed. Cooper and his son were in the bed next to her, collapsed in exhaustion from grief. Jake lay curled up to against his father in the fetal position.
Dranko stepped quietly to them and then nudged Cooper awake.
“What’s up?” he asked groggily.
“Nothing. Just wanted to check on you. I’m sorry brother,” Dranko said, his eyes drifting to Elena’s body.
Cooper looked confused, momentarily, and then remembered. He gazed longingly at his wife. His lower lip firmed, “Thank you. I’ve grieved as much as I can now. More will come, I know that. But, right now, I’ve got to put it all aside.” He paused and took a deep breath, reaching down and grabbing her cold, stiff, hand, “I promised her I’d protect our boy. And, that is what I have to do. It starts now,” he said as he placed her hand on her chest and looked determinedly at Dranko.
Dranko squeezed Cooper’s shoulder hard, “Right. He does need you now, more than he has his entire life.”
Cooper rose from the bed, stretched his arms out wide, yawned and then asked, “In the morning, will you help me take her to the funeral home?”
“Sure thing. If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to stay here tonight and keep an eye on things. Your house is better positioned to survey the neighborhood than mine. From what I’ve been hearing, I think it’d be a good idea.”
Cooper suspected that his friend also wanted to keep an eye on him, so he smiled and nodded in return. They just don’t make friends like Paul Dranko anymore. “Sounds good, but you wake me for second watch. You need to sleep, too.”
“Deal.”
“Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, brother.”
Dranko made his way downstairs. Cooper heard every squeak and groan from the wooden steps. He made a makeshift bed on the ground with pillows and blankets and then gently laid Jake down on the floor to sleep. He didn’t want his son to wake up next to his dead mother. He lay down next to him. Within minutes, he was fast asleep as well.
As first light rose, Cooper went into the living room and turned on the TV, looking for news. He kept the volume low to prevent waking Jake. He quickly found CNN. He noticed immediately the absence of graphics and bottom-screen scrolling news updates that had been omnipresent for years on newscasts. The sound was off-kilter. The announcer’s makeup and clothing were makeshift, as well. I guess everything is a bit ragged now. He was quickly fixated by the deluge of new developments.
“…stated Doctor Jake S. Simpson, Deputy Chief at the Center for Disease Control here in Atlanta. The reports of deaths from the plague continue to come in to our news center from the CDC. The latest report, now six hours old, is of over five million people in the United States who have succumbed to this disease.”
Involuntarily, Cooper took a step backward and gasped. Five million! He couldn’t believe it. He began walking automaton-like backward until his legs brushed the sofa. Then, he softly collapsed into it.
“We have only scattered reports from around the world. The best estimates are that between one hundred and two hundred million dead. The Chinese government has not released any firm numbers of their casualties, but reporters on the ground indicate that they have been only mildly affected by the Brushfire Plague thus far. They have taken aggressive quarantine efforts, including reports of blanket arrests of anyone who recently travelled outside their borders. In addition, much of Africa has been spared the worst from this onslaught. While the Plague appears to have simultaneously broken out across the world on every continent, Africa has appeared to only have had limited secondary exposure from travelers. However, we have received the first reports out of Australia of the plague’s outbreak there.”