An Ordinary Epidemic (5 page)

Light spilled from Natalie's side of the fence, escaping through the glass doors that spanned the back of her house. Hannah could hear voices—they had friends over, again. The sounds were reassuring, other lives going on, completely independent of her own. She couldn't make out words but the voices rose and fell, sometimes interrupted by an outbreak of laughter, maybe four people in all. From time to time she heard Ella squeal. Hannah was happier to sit in the quiet of her own garden listening to the sounds of Natalie's dinner party than to be at it. It seemed odd to Hannah that a doctor would have people over now, with the case in Newcastle and everything happening overseas.

A thought drifted across her mind. ‘How was your sister?'

‘My sister? Oh, I couldn't get on to her.'

Hannah sat up. ‘Did you try?'

‘It was late there when I got to work, so I missed their day. I tried just now when you were reading, but no answer. I'll try her again before bed.'

‘Did you ring work and home? She'll be at work by now.'

Sean shrugged. ‘I checked the time. I rang work, she wasn't there so I rang home.'

‘Why wouldn't she be there?'

‘Because she's on her way to work? Because she didn't
go home? Because she drank too much last night and slept through the phone? I don't know.'

‘It doesn't bother you?'

‘No, it doesn't bother me. She's hundreds of miles from Manchester. Her biggest risk is being scared to death by fearmongering tabloids. She's in no more danger than us.' He rubbed the back of her hand. ‘Which is none, right? Which is as much danger as Zac is in.'

‘You and the doctor. You should get together and take turns telling me I'm imagining things.'

‘Doctor? Did you have an appointment I forgot? You didn't say anything this morning.'

‘You don't need to know about every appointment.'

‘Everything all right?'

‘Fine. Some young doctor that knows everything. He thinks I'm a hypochondriac.'

‘You're paranoid, that's very different from hypochondria.'

‘You're very funny.'

‘I know,' he gave her a goofy grin, ‘it's my only skill.'

The noise was muffled, irritating, persistent. She tried not to think about it, tried to go back to sleep.

It was still there. But it wasn't in the room and it wasn't coming from the street. She turned over and hoped it would wake Sean. He could deal with whatever it was.

He didn't.

It invaded her sleep, some kind of an alarm. It wasn't her phone, or a car, or even a burglar alarm. She pulled the pillow around her ears, waiting for it to stop by itself. Hoping. But if anything, it was getting louder. There was no possibility of sleep for her and no chance that Sean would wake. She got out of bed, wrapped her dressing gown tight and followed the noise.

To Zac's room. And his clock, still set in the absence of its owner.

She whacked it on the top to make it go away. It took a moment for the numbers to make sense. She rubbed her face. Six o'clock. His alarm from yesterday, set early to get to the bus. Why couldn't he have turned it off before he left?

Sean bustled into the kitchen an hour and a half later, wellrested. ‘Oscar not up yet?'

‘You should ring your sister.'

‘And good morning to you.'

‘Ring her now, it will be getting late there.'

‘I have, in fact, already rung her. I'm surprised you didn't
hear me. I'm surprised Oscar slept through. We had a terrible line. I had to yell.'

‘So why didn't she answer yesterday?'

‘She overindulged at her birthday celebrations and turned off the phone. Then forgot she turned it off.'

‘And the epidemic?'

‘Is literally hundreds of miles from her. Did you make enough coffee for me?'

‘I drank it, I've been up for ages.'

‘You shouldn't get up so early.'

‘Did you tell her to be careful?'

‘I told her not to drink so much. London to Manchester's the same distance as Sydney to Canberra. She's fine, she's safe.' Sean contemplated her. ‘Zac's safe in Canberra.'

‘Says you.'

‘My sister and Zac are a long way from anybody who is sick. As are we. Breathe.'

‘It will come here. It will get to London, probably before it comes here. In fact it's almost certainly already in London.'

‘There'll be warnings, first cases and second cases, and we'll do all the sensible things when the time comes. If you go on like this, you'll be a mess before anything even happens.'

‘It will come...'

‘Yes, it might, and we'll be ready. But that's not yet. I'm not saying ignore it, but you only need to be ready.' He put his arm around her shoulder and rested his head on her hair. ‘You taking Oscar to school today or is it my turn?'

‘I'll take him. I'm working from home.'

He straightened and threw his hand up in exasperation. ‘You didn't go in yesterday. This is what I mean...'

‘It's Tuesday, I work from home on Tuesdays. I didn't go in yesterday because I had an appointment. It doesn't mean I have to go in today. I'll go in tomorrow.'

‘Then I'll do the school run tomorrow.'

They got to Oscar's school seconds before the bell. The pavement was crowded with children in white polo shirts and blue track pants drifting randomly like atoms in a gas. She wove her way between them to the gate, Oscar clutching the towrope of her sleeve.

The bell rang and the atoms ricocheted around, more vigorous but no more purposeful than before. Oscar hugged her around her middle, and she kissed him on the head.

‘Bye Mum,' and he was off. She watched him run into the crowd surging towards the school doors until she couldn't tell which blue and white back was his.

Hannah turned on the computer with every intention of reading emails, easing herself into work. It wouldn't hurt to have a quick look at
The Herald
and
The Times
, maybe the World Health Organisation and Centers for Disease Control websites. And the weather in Canberra. Fifteen degrees maximum, four degrees minimum. She thought about checking if his fleece was still in his room, but it wasn't as if she could take it to him. She brought her email to the front, and looked for something from Zac. Nothing but work.

Mr Moon jumped onto the keyboard and rubbed himself along the monitor. He registered a nonviolent protest by going limp in her hands as she dropped him on the floor and used the momentum of his fall to spring back up. ‘Go and bug someone else.' Half an hour gone and the most riveting information she'd found was that parliament was recalled for an emergency sitting to pass legislation allowing quarantining of individuals. One of the minor parties was calling for a proper debate.

She typed in ‘Manba' and scanned down the page of results. The little snippets didn't tell her anything she didn't know.

Manba Respiratory Distress Syndrome - Wiki...

www.medical.wiki…/Manba

Manba Respiratory Distress Syndrome (also known as MRDS or Manba) is a recently identified disease...

Manba Symptoms and Treatment

www.info.medical.manba....gov/Symptoms_and_treatment

The symptoms of Manba include coughing, fever, headaches and diarrhoea progressing to...

Is Manba God's wrath?

www.trueanswers...org/lessons_from_manba

Is Manba a punishment from God? All around us we see an increase in crime, lawlessness and immorality brought about by...

Wow! Grandmother discovers this weird cure for…

naturalhealth.simple…/blog/medicine/manba_cure

Doctors won't tell you this simple cure for Manba. They make their money from selling you cures invented by Big Pharma for...

She'd read all of these. Somewhere, if she searched hard enough, there had to be something else, some new information, something to tell her what was happening right now.

She clicked on a blog at the end of the first page—‘An Aussie in Paradise'. The last entry was yesterday.

Just back from helping at the hospital. Taking two minutes to let you guys know I am still hanging in there. Sleep, eat and back again as soon as I can. Two of my students are helping out. I told them helping the sick was more important than classes. They told me they could do both. So now they know how to say
I would like a cup of coffee
and
This patient has a
purpuric rash and must be isolated
. I'll post again when I can, don't worry about me.

Hannah looked back through the previous entries. One was on the right way to haggle in the local market, another about the students laughing at her attempts to speak Thai, and a light-hearted complaint about the traffic in Bangkok.

She had to stop, clear this from her mind, think about something else. Time to work. As she clicked the little red cross on each tab, she tried not to look at the page that appeared below, but as one disappeared, its screaming headline caught her eye. ‘First Local Cases—Family Quarantined'. Her fingers fumbled on the keys to reopen it, and there was the headline, stamped across the top of her screen. She skimmed the article for what she really needed to know—where.

The North Shore. So much closer than Newcastle but still with a harbour between them. A harbour and three hundred kilometres between the disease and Zac. And there at the bottom, another reason she should put this out of her mind—they were as yet unconfirmed.

She read the article again, more carefully. Under the headline was a photo of a couple and two boys, a posed family shot in a leafy backyard. Eight and ten it said. No travel overseas, no contact with any known cases. The parents were sick and the boys had been placed in isolation, just in case.

All those details couldn't calm her. It could be Manba or it could be the flu. It might be a one-off case, but they don't come from nowhere. These people had to have caught it from someone, someone who wasn't currently in hospital, someone who was wandering around coughing, touching door handles and coins and other people's hands. And the people that person had touched in the last few days were touching their children, their children were going to school. Germs had a chain of custody, however invisible it might be. They don't
appear spontaneously.