One
Flu Over
It was
five years later, during the big epidemic, when everyone went about wearing
those face-masks and getting their shots, when we all met again. Jared had contracted the flu and had fallen
deathly ill. And while he was not as
close to me as he was to Kyle, still he had dated my sister and we knew each
other better than most.
The worst
of it was over by then and the airports were open once more, so I caught a
regional to Newark, rented a car, and drove down to Princeton Hospital. Traffic was light and people still tended to
avoid one another. Like soldiers in the
waning days of a war, those lucky enough to have escaped so far had no desire
to become the last fatality. It was,
sadly, the smoothest trip that anyone had ever taken down the Jersey Turnpike.
The
University Medical Center stood on a side street, past an old cemetery, which
struck me as bad feng shui for a hospital. I drove through to the parking lot and walked
back to the main building. It was a
chilly, blustery spring quite in keeping with the mood of the country. The information desk was enclosed within a
Plexiglas shell under positive air pressure so germs would not waft into the
booth. I presented my certificate of
inoculation and passed through the sanitizing airlock into the main
hospital. The UV lamps, air jets, and
gas spray were supposed to sterilize visitors, but I thought they might be only
to reassure them. It certainly cut down
on the number of visitors.
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