“What are you doing out here?” Amanda asked coming up behind her.
“What are you doing here?” Emily answered back.
“You know you’re not supposed to be out here, and why aren’t you using the cane?”
“The only way they’ll let me out of here is if I can walk, so I’m walking.”
Amanda smiled for the first time in days. Emily was a true force of nature; on the surface, she was a carbon copy of her brother: rude, loud, and opinionated. But whereas he justified his behavior with some fanciful notion of inherent superiority, Emily had earned the right to be loud and opinionated. She had been a sociology professor for more than four decades, and at the center of every academic circle that she had ever found herself within. Even her critics — and she had quite a few — listened respectfully when she spoke. She championed the unpopular view that individuals had become too reliant upon society for their welfare, and now, here she was in subfreezing temperatures living her philosophy. “Aunt Em, it’s cold out here, let’s go inside at least.”
“Might as well, no one has taken the time to properly clear the ice off of these damn sidewalks, and in front of a hospital no less,” Emily said while wheeling around and heading back to the door, a four-post cane tucked firmly under her arm. The pair silently walked back to Emily’s hospital room; along the way, she didn’t spare any of the nurses or aides a good long glare.
“All they do at night is laugh and talk on their cell phones. .” Emily noticed the concern on her niece’s face. “Why are you here, Amanda?” Her voice became serious, her frustration over petty matters forgotten.
“I’m going back to Colorado Springs.”
“Why?” Emily asked sharply.
“Greg called me a little over a week ago.” Amanda hesitated; Emily knew about her infection and some of the subsequent events, but she didn’t know everything. Amanda had hidden the most important consequence of her infection because she didn’t know how Emily would react. “I’m fairly certain that a version of the virus that I contracted in Honduras has found its way to Colorado Springs.” The one thing Amanda did know about Emily was that she was an excellent intellectual sounding board; she would examine Amanda‘s reasoning and logic and dispassionately pass judgment.
“The flu that everyone is talking about; don’t we have a health department to deal with that?” Emily studied Amanda. ”Are you planning on turning yourself in? Are you going to sacrifice your freedom to help them? Or is it that you are responsible?”
“I’m not responsible, and I’m not really sure what I’m going to do.” Amanda said weakly.
“Then why are you going?” Emily waited for an answer, but only silence filled the room. “Amanda, we’ve never discussed this because you’ve never wanted to, but now the time has come when we have to. Something happened to you in Honduras; when you came back, you were a different person. I can only imagine what you went through down there, but it doesn’t explain everything. It doesn’t explain what you’ve become.”
“No, it doesn’t.” Amanda began to fidget with the straps of her purse.
“I think I have a right to know,” Emily said firmly.
Four years after her father died, Amanda’s mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. She didn’t put up much of a fight — it wasn’t her style — and mercifully the end came quickly. Amanda was thirteen; her brother William was turning eighteen, on his way to college, and didn’t require a guardian. Amanda was shipped off to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she would become the burden of her only surviving relative.
Amanda met her Aunt Emily for the first time at her mother’s grave site. Her world had been turned inside out. Her mother was gone; her brother was gone; the three-bedroom apartment that she had called home for three years was gone. Even her bed was gone, sold to some stranger for fiftyfive dollars. All that she had in the world fit into two small suitcases, and, with the exception of her older brother, no one in the world cared. She was nothing more than a “disposition issue,” as one social worker had phrased it. Aunt Emily’s disposition issue, to be exact.
“They wanted to put you into foster care, and I’ll admit I thought long and hard about it,” Emily said as the pair left the grave site. “After all, what’s the difference if you live with a family you’ve never met or an aunt you don’t know? If there had been a reasonable chance of you being adopted, I would have left you here. At least you’d still be close to your brother and friends, but no one adopts thirteen-year-old girls, at least not for the right reasons. So, I guess we’re stuck with each other.” Emily made no attempt at hiding her emotions from her new charge. “I’m not your mother, God rest her soul, and I’m nothing like your father. He may have been my brother, but the man never worked a hard day in his life, and it showed in what he made of himself. I don’t mean to speak ill of the dead, but you are half him, and if you think you’ll skate by on good looks alone, you’re in for a rude awakening. Only with an education can you hope to escape your family’s legacy of unrealized potential. They don’t give scholarships for being pretty.”
Her Aunt’s ground rules clearly established, Amanda was ushered into the car by large rough hands; before the door closed, she waved to her brother; tears streamed down both their cheeks.
“Do you think that was the most appropriate way of introducing yourself?” Amanda challenged her Aunt as the car pulled away.
“I make no apologies for how I communicate,” returned Emily.
“It’s unworthy for an educated person to speak with complete disregard for another’s emotional state. It’s an abdication of personal responsibility,” Amanda fired back, her grief now being focused into anger.
“Impressive. Do you actually know what you said, or are you simply mouthing someone else’s words?”
“I’ve been able to read since I was three, and had independent thoughts before that.”
“I must remember that,” Emily said while breaking out into a smile of respect.
“So tell me about yourself; what should I know about you?”
“I’m an orphan,” Amanda answered, managing to be both sullen and defiant at the same time.
“You do have a right to know. I’m just not sure you want to know,” an older Amanda said to her aunt.
“I do want to know. I’m not a very emotional person. .” Emily’s eyes began to tear.
Amanda smiled again. “You told me that the first day we met.”
“There’s some salt on that table, if you’d care to rub it into the wound.” Emily dabbed at her eyes and smiled back at Amanda. “God, I was such an ass that day. If I had bothered to spend five minutes talking to you, I would have realized that you were not the self-absorbed, lazy thirteen-year-old girl I had expected.”
“You’re different now.” It had been nearly twenty-five years, but the memory was still fresh. “I’m still an orphan, only a different kind,” Amanda finally said. “The infection did change me, and probably not for the better.”
“Greg told me what you’ve done. Seven people?” Emily’s voice betrayed her conflicting emotions.
“It was more than that.” She waited for a trace of guilt or shame, but those emotions had disappeared long ago. ”I can do things that others can’t. I can feel your horror, and revulsion, but also your love and understanding. I can put names on the things that you’re feeling even when you can’t.”
Emily stared back at her niece, bewildered.
“No, it’s not a mental illness; and no, it’s not related to the terrible things that have happened to me.”