Quarantine

QUARANTINE
Dominic E. Lacasse

   I was in a small room. There was a small lamp in the corner, a bed with the white sheets so tight and neatly folded that I was afraid to touch it. I was on a chair in the corner, hugging my knees, my bare feet resting on the cold rung between its legs. I was not scared, because my mother was outside. She was out there somewhere and the circumference of her zone of motherly protection surely enveloped me and kept me safe. So I was not scared, but I was confused. There was something wrong with me. I had woken up with red spots on my skin and they had taken me here and subjected me to the inquiries of several unnaturally clean, shiny, cold things and now I was in a small room and something was wrong with me.

   There was a soft knock on the door. My mother’s voice, too happy, not fooling anyone. “David? I’m going to come in. I’m going to tell you what’s going on. But I’m going to be wearing a costume, alright? Don’t be scared, it’s me, I’m just wearing a costume.”

   “Alright,” I half-spoke. A costume? I wondered briefly whether I was actually awake. But the door opened and there was a thing standing there, a big green thing with a glass face and the mouth of a machine. I recoiled instantly, but the mother voice returned.

   “David, calm down. It’s a costume, remember? It’s just a costume, it’s me in here.” The thing knelt and cast its glass face on me and I saw my mother’s eyes behind the mask. Confusion overwhelmed me and I could only stare blankly at her; subsumed in the unnatural world of a sleep-deprived child, everything seemed to me a circus of dreams. I felt seconds as nauseous waves of half-awareness as I watched my mother find words.

   “David, listen to me. The doctors say you have a thing called measles. It’s contagious, do you know the word contagious?”

   I wearily turned the stone-heavy pages of my mental dictionary and found the word. When you’re contagious it means that people can get sick by being near you. A friend of mine had told me about contagious when his sister’s eye had gotten sick and she wasn’t supposed to touch people until it got better.

   “It means something that people get from other people.” I said.

   “That’s right,” crooned my mother. “Your measles are contagious, but they’re not going to hurt you. The doctors have medicine for you and you’re going to be fine in a few days. But the baby could get sick if you go home now. That’s why the doctors gave me this costume so I could talk to you.” She held out her tarp-monster arms by way of example. “This costume keeps your measles from going home with me.” she said, and the words slogged through the white cloud of exhaustion and then struck home with a vibrant intensity.

   “You’re going home and I can’t?” I asked.

   “Yes, honey. I’m sorry, but I need to take care of the baby. You’ll be fine here; the doctors and nurses are very nice and I’ll visit you every day, just like this. It’s only for a few days, baby.”

   Processing the information was like rearranging stone tablets in my mind. All I could see was my mother at home, her protected territory encircling the house and the road and the backyard, but ending well before the hospital, which was all the way over by the school. It was not horror that gripped me but a kind of numbness. The room was a medium-place between healthy and sick. My mother, healthy. Me, sick. The costume and the drum-tight bed and the ostracization from the security of my mother’s presence was the area in between. My head felt heavy. My skin had red spots. I was contagious because of measles and it was the middle of the night.

   The tarp-monster with my mother’s face was lifting me and then I was on the bed, with darkness closing around me. “I’ll see you in the morning, honey, don’t be scared, I love you.” The words suffused into a dreamy blue mist as sleep overtook me.

   “Will I be different after?” The words floated up from some unknown source within me, but they meant something I couldn’t say and the concept was soon broken apart and annihilated by the empty unease of a troubled sleep.