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Today I can hear him waiting for me even before I’ve pulled the keycard out of the loft’s security door. Not a good sign. Soft whisper of Egyptian cotton sheets across skin and pajamas, fidgety creaking of bedsprings, straining lungs… all the sickroom noises I barely heard standing by his bed six months ago, now perfectly clear as I set down my two IV bags and slide the door open. The bags slosh a little as I pull them inside. I catch my breath, hoping against hope that Robert hasn’t heard.
But he has, of course.
“Jan-ice!” His motorized bed whines in the next room, propping him up to greet me. “I thought you’d never get here this afternoon. What kept you?”
Expedited funeral call for my two o’clock, but I’m not about to say so. Waiting alone with that wasted body for nearly an hour was bad enough. Exped funeral teams don’t want their clients left unattended, though they’re quick enough to kick you out once they’ve arrived. I wish I didn’t know why.
“Screwed-up traffic,” I fib, trying not to notice the sun sinking fast beyond the darkening privacy tint of a floor-to-ceiling window.
Hefting both IV bags again, I start across the great room’s collection of antique Turkish carpets. Their mellowed colors and soft textures under my cross-trainers tempt me to dawdle—until I hear Robert’s breathing quicken. No sense risking him getting impatient. He’s probably too weak right now to even stand, let alone do any damage, but there’s always a first time.
Pasting my patented Home Visitor smile across unsteady lips, I try not to react as I step into his bedroom suite. Fullblown CRS isn’t pretty. Robert’s pale, blue-veined arms on top of the down coverlet look noticeably thinner than they did last week. Their surgical shunts jut out near the bend of each elbow. The sunken planes of his face make it hard to remember that he’s only forty-nine… forty-nine not likely to make fifty.
And you’re expecting to? Setting down the IV bags and injection kit, I struggle with my own fears. Yes, I’m CR-positive, but I sure as hell don’t have CRS yet, and maybe by the time I do there’ll be a cure.
Probably the same way the Bangkok vaccine “cured” AIDS thirty years ago. Nobody gets it anymore—at least, nobody newsworthy does—and we’re all just supposed to forget how long it took the last cases to die.
At least AIDS got a little sympathy in this country, endless feel-good charity benefits with celebs eulogizing dead friends and relatives. CRS never made it that far. About six years ago, when the first full-blown cases hit, one CR-positive Hollywood actor did the liberal thing and admitted his status. Forty-eight hours after that interview hit the Net tabloids, the guy’s body turned up in an L.A. back alley. In pieces.
Even the tabloids wouldn’t touch that one.
“You don’t look so good,” says Robert, though his yellowed hazel eyes still target my IV bags. “Was the elevator out?”
We both know his building’s elevator never goes out for more than five minutes. Downtown luxury loft complexes can’t afford problems like that. Robert used to own, maybe still does own, the hottest and wildest nonvirtual nightclub in this city. I used to think it was no wonder he caught CRS, but life’s gotten too short for blame games. After all, it wasn’t my fault I got jumped behind the gallery two years ago, sneaking a breath of fresh air during my first solo show’s evening opening.
“Nothing to worry about,” I finally tell him. “I was just up a little late last night.”
Last night and every night. As I pick my way through the teetering piles of books surrounding his bed, I try to remember the last time I slept for more than an hour before dawn. Or really woke up before noon without popping caff tablets.
A knowing smile knifes across Robert’s face, but the craving in his eyes doesn’t ease. I move to the left-hand IV stand and change its bag. The empty sags on the floor like a small drained animal. Robert’s gaze follows its replacement as I put it up. By the time I’ve repeated the process on the right side of his bed, one skinny hand is snaking out for the needle tube.
“Uh-uh.” I grab the tube and hang it over its stand. “You know the rules. Injection first.”
He lunges for the left-hand needle tube instead, knocking a book off his coverlet onto the floor. I loop back the tempting tube before retrieving his reading material: Dylan Thomas Collected. It’s a real hardback, cloth covers polished with wear.
“Always knew you had good taste,” I murmur.
Robert’s not in the mood for literary discussions. Snatching the book from my hand, he collapses onto his pillows with a nasty wheeze, sounding far too much like my two o’clock client had last week. I turn away quickly for my injection kit.
“Haven’t been taking your pills today, have you?”
He glares up at me, then shrugs. We both know he’d be flat on his back and nearly comatose if he had been. Sometimes I suspect that’s the whole point of CRS chemo.
“Do you take yours?” he demands in a painful whisper.
I hesitate. “Most of the time.” But I haven’t for nearly a week, and something in those discolored eyes knows. Something in them has watched me choke and run for the toilet at the merest whiff of those pills, never mind getting one down my throat.
My prescription isn’t the same as his, but it’s close enough. Very pure essential oil—expensively pure, unaffordable without my Home Visitors program discount.
With it, the cost is ridiculously low, probably heavily subsidized. The feds need us Visitors just the way we are: CR-positive and holding. Any sicker, and we’d be useless. Any improvement (sweet dream!), and we’d be outta here, baby. The program’s stipend for our one day a week couldn’t possibly justify the risks.
But nobody holds at CR-positive forever.
“Having allergy problems?” Robert’s thin smile turns momentarily vicious. “I remember mine. Quit taking the damn pills for nearly a month, felt marvelous.”
His smile fades. “Then the craving started.”
The craving. There’s only one with CRS, and this little former vegetarian doesn’t feel like discussing it. I fish Robert’s preloaded sprayhype out of my kit, take a deep breath, and reach for his arm.
Something between a curse and a growl emerges from his cracking lips. Both arms disappear under the coverlet.
“A neck vein will work just as well, you know.” The black joke dies in my mouth. “It’s your choice. One way or another, I’ve got to give you this…”
“Poison.”
“I’m not here to poison you, Robert. I’m here to help you.” I glance away from the damn sprayhype, trying to focus his attention on those two plump IV bags. “The sooner you get your shot, the sooner I can hook you back up.”
But his attention won’t refocus. Those jaundiced eyes burn into mine like a dying wolf’s, with a predator’s absolute truth.
“Tell you what,” he rasps, lungs straining again. “Take a whiff of it first—then try telling me how much it’s going to help.” The room falls hospital silent as he struggles for breath. “See if either of us believes it.”
My gorge rises just flunking about his suggestion, but I step back from his bed and unsnap the sprayhype’s drug chamber. Raising the open cylinder slowly toward my nose, I fan its scent upward.
Then snap the chamber closed with a curse of my own.
It’s lucky that Robert’s bathroom is only a few steps away. Afterwards, I scrub my hands with Lady Macbeth thoroughness, fine-milled sandalwood soap exorcising the last lingering hint of garlic.
When I emerge from the bathroom, I do not say any more about helping. Robert’s arms are lying outside the coverlet again. Their twin shunts quiver with each breath he takes, but he hasn’t tried another grab for the IV tubes. Maybe our brief argument wore him out too much.
Or maybe he’s decided to trust me. Cursing us both for idiots, I pick his sprayhype off the polished hardwood floor with two fingers and drop it back into the kit.
Then I reach for the looped-back needle tubes and start hooking him up.
“Thank you,” he whispers as his left-hand shunt opens for business. Trapped by the bitter truth of the moment, I wonder what the hell he’s thanking me for. These bags I’ve hung are our program’s largest, the legal limit, and Robert’s been doing two a day for the past month or so. They’re always drained when I arrive. I’m afraid to compare notes with his other Home Visitors to see if they’ve noticed anything different.
Very soon now—maybe tomorrow—the maximum ration won’t be enough. Carpathian Retro viral Syndrome is a uniquely demanding progressive disease.
I start connecting the right-hand shunt, but Robert’s hand snaps up to intercept the IV tube. His burst of energy startles me—until I realize how long I took recovering from that whiff of chemo. It’s undoubtedly full sundown outside. Releasing the tube, I back off slowly, spreading my hands to show them empty and harmless.
Then I realize that Robert’s not even focused on me.
More for my sake than his, I look away as he disconnects the needle plug to put the tube in his mouth.
One-one hundred, two-one hundred, three… After checking out the floor’s hand-pegging for a full minute, I look up to see both needle tubes properly shunted and the right-hand IV bag a quarter low. The scent of whole natural blood curls through the room like incense. Swallowing a mouthful of my own saliva, I wonder what this week’s mandatory donors would think.
Most probably assume they bled for the rich. After all, blood substitute works fine for almost everything from surgical transfusions to trauma. Too bad CRS knows the difference between the real stuff and synth—or animal blood, for that matter.
As it is, some of our cities are bleeding themselves dry. Since NIH pushed the Medical Emergency Act through Congress two years ago, any state that deems it “essential” can call up each qualified donor once per three months, without explaining the actual nature of the emergency. California’s increased that to once per two, and I hear they’re still not keeping up. So much for CRS therapy in America.
China’s using bullets.
“I wouldn’t do that again,” I finally tell him, weaving my way back through the stacks of books. “Won’t last you nearly long enough that way.”
Robert shrugs and picks up the Dylan Thomas. His hands tremble a little, but his color is improving rapidly. Flipping the book’s cover open across his lap, he leafs through its worn pages, almost without looking.
Then taps one finger against a poem until I move closer.
My stomach clenches. “”Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good—‘? Holy shit, Robert; don’t do this to me. Not now.“
Not this week, I mean—not after calling the exped funeral team for my two o’clock. Remembering the muffled thwack of a mallet behind an apartment door—and other, uglier noises—I know I can’t call those people again just yet. Not even if it means leaving a CRS casualty alone overnight.
But he keeps tapping the page until I have to look again.
“This,” he whispers faintly, painfully; “this is what they want. Bastards want us all to go gentle.” The whisper turns to a gasp. “Rage, rage…”
He sinks back then, pulse fluttering under my trained fingers, heightened color from the blood fading fast. I reach for his right-hand shunt and work the tube free, then the needle plug. A little blood smears my fingertips. Pushing those fingertips between his lips, I feel the tiger rasp of his tongue while I’m trying to poke the tube into place.
“Easy,” I murmur. “You’ll be getting enough soon.”
Sharp enamel threatens to replace the sandpaper, but I pull my fingers out just in time. The fluid level of the right-hand IV bag drops abruptly. Robert’s eyelids close. Watching his desiccated lips sucking at that tube, I wish certain East Euro nuclear inspectors could be here with me.
They had their warning way back in ‘86, with those mutating voles around Chernobyl. Supervoles, biologists called them ten years later—before Ukraine started losing their wheat crop to the furry plague. Before said plague developed a taste for live protein. By the turn of the century, outlying farmers were sleeping with their AKs and yelling for chemical warfare.
There aren’t any Chernobyl voles now—one season of gene-tailored bubonic saw to that—but the lesson didn’t stick. When Romania’s substandard plant in the Carpathians went critical later that year, even the Black Death couldn’t save us from what crawled out.
Robert’s eyelids finally flicker back open. His right-hand IV bag sags almost empty. If he gets agitated again, he’ll probably drain the other, as well, so I try reading that damn poem to him softly. Aside from its blunt defiance of death, I can’t see why he’s chosen it. It’s not even about death, really—more about the poet’s beloved father slipping away and him hating every minute.
Beloved father. Yeah, right.
But Robert’s fingertip moves down the page, stabbing at the last stanza. “Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray…” I look at the moisture forming in his yellow wolf eyes, filling papyrus creases at their corners, and the poem evaporates on my tongue.
A few weeks after I got attacked—and about five minutes after I finally told my folks I was CR-positive—my dad asked for the keycard they’d let me keep when I moved out. Last conversation he and I ever had. Mom called me next morning, voice-only, and tried to explain. All I could hear were fresh bruises: Dad doesn’t hit her often (or hard, she claims), but he’s a binge abuser like some guys are binge drinkers.
Mom still won’t leave him, and I’ve got a kid sister living at home.
Which is why I started signing my paintings JanICE, trying to believe it. Trying to stay cold enough.
Almost unwillingly, I touch the pinkish tears on Robert’s cheek. He doesn’t move. Maybe this last, cursed blessing took too much out of him. My own wet fingertips smell faintly of blood and pain and garlic. Government-approved poison. The same stuff I’ve gulped down for months now, fighting to hold off the inevitable—to keep CRS from making me over.
But now Robert is doing his damnedest to show me where that fight leads.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Technically, I guess, his light won’t be dead very long. Funny thing about CRS… which is where exped funeral teams come in. I’ve heard lots of rumors about how and where NIH recruits these, but I sleep better if I don’t remember. And I won’t sleep at all tonight if I leave Robert to them.
The right-hand IV bag hangs like a collapsed lung now. Working quickly, I free his left-hand tube from its shunt and press it to his searching lips.
Then I start sifting the mess on his bedside table. As I dig through months’ worth of nightclub schedules, unfilled prescriptions, and less identifiable things, Robert’s eyes slit open. “What?…” he asks, with all the force of a kitten’s sneeze. “What the hell are you?…”
“Found it.”
I hold the object out to him. It’s a loft keycard: his personal one, not the copy I’ve got to turn in tonight. Shadowy gold holographs writhe across its surface. Some are just pretties, upscale flash to .impress the girls he used to bring up here. Others work as code to disarm the loft’s security system—or a thief’s better judgment. I smile at the sparkling bait and slip it into my pocket.
The ghost of a smile haunts Robert’s face, as well, though his last IV bag is already shriveling.
“Don’t worry,” I whisper, for CR-sharpened ears only. “I’ll send something up for you later.”
Given the early dark of late autumn, the tempting proximity of this complex to less choice real estate, it shouldn’t take long. The only risk might be another CRS victim. One who couldn’t afford “therapy,” or had the street sense to refuse it. There are worse things to be in this world than a faster, stronger, nastier predator.
“Thanks,” he says around the tube in his mouth.
Not a kitten sneeze now, but the cough of a waking tiger. He’s already sliding his feet out of bed. I start backing away, small hairs prickling the nape of my neck, heightened senses on alert. Whoever or whatever tries mat key-card, my gut says Robert won’t be the loser.
Halfway across his Turkish carpets, I realize he’s still just sitting there on the bed in his PJs, watching me leave. The retrovirus shines in his eyes like a benediction.
Or a father’s last blessing.
“See you later, Janice,” he says, very quietly. “Look me up whenever you’re ready, but I wouldn’t wait too long if I were you.”
I let myself out as always, making certain my keycard resets all the loft’s alarms. An elevator waits at the end of the wide plush hallway. This early in the evening, in a haven for hyperachievers and go-getters, it’s still empty. I slip inside and savor the richness of privacy.
Then, for the first time in almost two years, I let myself smile with my teeth showing.
Even the sharp ones.