Excerpt: Vaccine

Had she not been so engrossed in thoughts about work, she might have noticed the mass of people, the cars parked two thick along the side of Old Farm Road, or at least the police sirens and choppers slicing the sky above. As was, Diane functioned on auto-pilot as she made the turn toward her isolated home tucked among oak trees and corn fields. She just could not stop thinking about Mrs. Alexander.

As a hospice nurse, Diane had seen more than a normal person’s share of deaths. She had never bothered to keep count, even she thought that to be a bit macabre, but ten years of work in the business of guiding terminally ill people and their families across the threshold added up to hundreds, if not more. Mrs. Alexander, however, had been remarkable. The old woman had clung to life months beyond what anyone had expected, given the aggressive cancer that had begun devouring her lungs and then moved on to the rest of her body in a methodical and tedious progression that robbed her first of each of life’s simple pleasures little by little. For weeks, Mrs. Alexander had been in a semi-coma, awaking only to moan and cry out when her meds wore off or when Diane or one of the other nurses had to move her to change the bed sheets, give her a bath, or perform some tedious and ultimately unnecessary medical procedure mandated by the hospice physician or insurance company.

Today, however, Mrs. Alexander’s eyes had flown open when Diane got close to the bed. With alarming clarity, the old woman had said, “Come here Diane. I have something to tell you.”

Diane, never truly shocked by anything her patients did or said had smiled and knelt next to the bed. “You’re up, Mrs. Alexander! How nice to see your eyes open. Can I get you anything?”

“Listen.”

“OK. I’m listening.” Diane had let her weight shift, sitting her rump on the backs of her calves. “What do you want to say?”

“A man came in her a little while ago.”

“Your son? He’s been here for about two weeks. You have a wonderful family.”

“Not him,” Mrs. Alexander had seemed to struggle to maintain her patience with her nurse- an ironic turn, as usually the nurses were the ones struggling not to become annoyed. “The... that doctor. The one who just came in here. Right before you.”

“Doctor?” Diane knew none of her physicians would visit on a Monday afternoon. “You saw a doctor?”

“Dr. Walker. He walked right in that door and he just left.”

Diane became concerned. Mrs. Alexander had not seemed to be experiencing dementia. Her eyes had shone clear and her voice and demeanor seemed calm and lucid. “Dr. Walker? I’ve never heard of a Dr. Walker. Did he bother you?”

“It’s not that,” Mrs. Alexander grunted and pushed herself up on one impossibly thin elbow. “He told me something I’m supposed to tell you-” Here Mrs. Alexander’s line of thought got interrupted by a debilitating cough attack. The severity threw her back down flat on the bed and made the poor old woman gasp for breath. Diane had clicked into action, administering medicines quickly and smoothly. The sound of the attack, however, had alarmed Sandy and Richard, who came running into the room, both wearing emotions that straddled worry and hope at the same time.

“Is she-? Is it time?” Sandy had spoken in a quavering tone.

Diane had smiled up at them in a way she hoped looked comforting, “No, no. I don’t think we’re ready for that yet. In fact, Mrs. Alexander was just awake and talking to me. Guess she overdid it!”

“Mom?” Richard had seated himself at the edge of the bed.

“I’m ok, sweetie,” Mrs. Alexander had croaked before submitting to another salvo of hacking coughs.

Working to calm Sandy and Richard, to ameliorate the cough attack, and to perform her regular duties, Diane had almost forgotten the odd assertion about the mysterious Dr. Walker. But then, just as she was about to leave, the old woman again attempted to push herself up in the bed.

“Don’t start that again, Mrs; Alexander,” Diane ad warned. “I think that moving too much can start you coughing again. You don’t need to get up. Just tell me what you need and I’ll make sure you get it.”

“Dr. Walker.”

“Hm. We don’t have a Dr. Walker. Could it have been a dream?” Diane again knelt before the bed. “Sometimes the meds and being sick and being tired can all work together to make your dreams seem realistic.”

“No. Dr. Walker was here. And he wanted me to tell you.” Her eyelids had seemed to grow heavy then, as Mrs. Alexander began to feel the effects of her medications and her effort to converse.

“Tell me? Tell me what?”

“Tell you. Not to believe it.” The old woman’s eyes closed, but she had said it again, “He wants you to know that. Don’t believe. Don’t.”

Diane patted Mrs. Alexander’s hand and demurred, “Well that’s good to know. I won’t, then. I won’t believe.”

Mrs. Alexander’s eyelids fluttered as though the old woman had wanted to open them but couldn’t. Her breathing became ragged and labored. “No. Is real. Is real. Not just a crazy old woman. Don’t you believe it. For Bug’s sake. For Bug.”

Diane’s smile had disappeared. “What about Bug? How do you know about Bug?” But Mrs. Alexander had fallen back into her deep sleep.

After meeting briefly with the family to go over Mrs. Alexander’s vitals, her med plan, and to set up the next appointment, Diane had allowed herself to go back to wondering about what her patient had said. Had Diane even talked about Bug around this family? She must have, although she usually made a point not to discuss her private life with patients and their caretakers. In fact, Diane rarely talked about Bug with anyone. Her omission and secretiveness stemmed from what could only be called a superstition, so scared was she about the possibility of Bug being taken from her life.

So how had the old woman known about Bug?

The curious reverie snapped when she had to brake hard to avoid running over a well-dressed woman in high-heeled suede boots running across Diane’s bumper. The woman, whom Diane immediately labeled as an angry ad exec, teetered across the road, carrying a squalling child under each arm.

“What’reya.... nuts?!” Diane leaned on the horn for emphasis. The woman did not turn, nor did she acknowledge the fact that she had almost become roadkill. Instead, she crunched unevenly along the gravel shoulder of the roadway.

The strangeness of the scene now began to set in for Diane as she expanded her focus and noticed several people running in the same direction, weaving in and out of the two solid lanes of honking traffic. Others, men and women, trudged slowly in that same direction, many pulling or pushing strollers. Somewhere ahead sat a cop car, as evidenced by the constant, distant pulse of a flashing police car light alternating between red and blue. Other people, now absent, had abandoned their cars along the side of the road, creating a makeshift parking lot of the recently tilled acres of corn field
leading to Diane’s home, where Bug probably sat anxiously awaiting her return and wondering nervously about the strange parade outside.

The thought of Bug there, waiting with Ruta, gave Diane a sense of urgency as she waited and wondered in the strange traffic jame. It wasn’t that Ruta, the latest Polish nanny, was particularly bad or cold- but Bug didn’t feel safe when things happened outside of her routine. And Diane was the only one with a shot of calming the little girl down when she entered a full-on freak out.

“Come ON,” Diane pounded her steering wheel. Spotting an older woman walking along the road, Diane rolled down the window. “Excuse me. Can you tell me what’s going on here?”

“There’s no more parking.” The woman marched on without looking back, as though that answer made any sense. Traffic inched forward every few minutes and eventually Diane could see the edge of her property. Cars, SUVs, and trucks seemed to have parked all over her lawn. Great. Not only would she have to deal with a Bug melt-down, but her lawn would be covered in muddy ruts from her impromptu mystery guests. A man walked by, hoisting a curious looking boy to his shoulders as he passed.

“Excuse me, sir. But can you please tell me what is going on?”

The man stopped and peered into the window with a smile. “Didn’t you hear? They’re giving out free vaccines at the elementary school up there.”

“At the elementary school? And people are walking there from here?” She couldn’t believe it. Union Elementary sat almost eight miles down Old Farm Road. Surely all these people were not walking all that distance.

“Not much choice, ma’am. Not much choice.” The man offered a little half wave and marched off with his shoulder pirate shouting, “Look daddy! HELICHOPTERS!” Just then, her cell phone rang. She looked at the caller ID and saw Ruta’s name.

“Ruta!”

“Where are you?”

“I’m about 1/2 mile away. Is everything ok?”

“It’s Bug.”

“She’s scared.”

“She’s hitting her head against the window and won’t stop.”

“She’s scared. Turn on her music.”

“I do.” Ruta sounded tired.

“Good! That’s good, Ruta. I’m close. Real close.”

“I tell her.”

Clapping her phone shut, Diane again hit her steering wheel, this time also yelling and honking the horn. She could now see state troopers ahead actually guiding people to park in her lawn. Noticing the “helichopters” overhead had news logos on them, she clicked on the radio and switched to the news station.

“...clinics across the region report overcrowding. Many have run out of needles and dosages for certain age groups...”