This Is How We Say I Love You
by Audrey Ference
We're disease people, always have been. My first love was rabies. Uninventive, I know, but I was just a kid. It was the summer that I was eight, and I refused to go outside or touch the cat or touch anyone who'd touched the cat in the last few hours because I was convinced I'd contract the disease. I drank water constantly to prove to myself I wasn't suffering from hydrophobia. Mom wasn't impressed.
"There's a cure for rabies, it's curable," she said.
"But it involves painful shots with really long needles into your tummy," I said.
"Still," she said.
She wasn't interested in small potatoes. My sister would come to her with a cough or a fever, allergies or chicken pox.
"You're fine," she'd say, "Take some antibiotics." Dad was a doctor and kept our medicine cabinet well stocked, so we always had a loose hand with the prescription meds. Sure, she'd put you on a loratadine/nasalcrom/beclovent regimen or measure you out some amoxicillin, but you could tell her heart wasn't in it.
Ebola was our next love. It had everything: hemorrhaging, a 90% fatality rate, and an obscure African pedigree. Plus of course there was no cure. We'd talk about how close we'd come to an outbreak with the Reston, Virginia monkey incident, how quickly the virus could spread, how easy it would be to give yourself an accidental jab in one of those level four biohazard suits. How we'd probably have to turn schools into makeshift hospitals, and the autopsies that showed nothing but a liquefied soup where victim's internal organs had been.
"I think I pulled my shoulder," my brother would say.
"Ice it, and take some Advil," Mom would reply.
After that movie Outbreak, the hemorrhagic fevers were sort of passe. Sure, there was Marburg and Machupo, but seeing Dustin Hoffman on the big screen clomping around in a hazmat suit like a monkey with a hangover sort of robbed the whole thing of its glamour.
Like a typical rebellious teen, I thought Mom's interest in potential biological warfare agents was lame. I was really into superflus. I rolled my eyes when she wrote to the military asking if we could get the experimental Anthrax vaccines they were giving the soldiers.
"Um, hello? It's a bacteria? Ever heard of antibiotics?" I'd say.
"Its flu-like symptoms are difficult to differentiate in the early stages. Don't come crying to me when you're asphyxiating on your own black pus, young lady, because I won't want to hear it."
Though we fought sometimes, like any mother and daughter, leaving home for the first time wasn't easy for either of us. I was going to a college thousands of miles away, hours by plane from my mom's stockpiles of canned goods and small-denomination assayed silver coins. If civilization collapsed, I'd be on my own.
I got all the usual vaccines before I left: Hep A, Hep B, meningococcal meningitis, MMR booster, yellow fever, Japanese encephalitis, typhoid. Hugging me goodbye, she pressed a bag of just-in-case ciprofloxacin cycles into my hand. I could see her holding back tears.
"I can't believe they discontinued voluntary smallpox vaccinations. By 2010, we'll be a planet of organisms with no smallpox antibodies at all," she said.
"I know, Mom. It's a frightening scenario, bio-weapons wise."
"You know I'm proud of you sweetie, but I'll worry about you so far away. Do you still have that evacuation map I gave you?"
Smiling and crying at the same time, I pulled it out. A red line stretched from my new Pennsylvania home back to San Antonio.
"Pay for gas at the pump, wear gloves, don't talk to anyone, and no back roads. Leave at the first reports of unusual or unexplainable illnesses in the area," I recited, hugging her tight.
Now I live in New York, and those influenzas I was into so many years ago are getting trendy again. At home for Thanksgiving last year, I was talking to my mom about it.
"I can't believe flu pandemics are back in style," I said. "It makes me feel old."
"You'd better get used to it," she said. "Everything you liked as a kid is going to be retro pretty soon. I still couldn't believe that bellbottoms came back in fashion."
The doorbell rang, and I went to answer it.
"Is that the UPS man?" Mom asked. "There's a little something in there for you." I tore open the box, and found four twenty-count boxes of surgical masks. "They're field quality, rated to filter down to two microns," she said.
"Perfect for viral outbreaks!"
"Just pick up some surgical gloves and some eye protection, and you and Frank will be set for the pandemic. Don't forget to buy extra drinking water."
She was just teasing, of course. She knows I'd never be without extra drinking water.