"It begins with a small lesion in the midsection, an innocent red dot that most would pass off as an insect bite. Around two days later the fever sets in and the patient will take to bed. Chills, nausea, and vomiting follow for around a week as the itchy rash spreads across the body. After the first week, in about half of all cases, the fever gets worse, delirium and convulsions set in, and the patient inevitably dies. In the other half of Endopox victims, the fever gets better and the patient usually recovers, although pneumonia, endocarditis, and permanent scars are common complications."

The doctor read his notes repeatedly as he sat in his candlelit study, occasionally pulling up his T-shirt to check his stomach. When he wasn't reading, he was browsing his phone to see if he could get enough of a connection off of the cell tower to pull down the latest news. None of it was good. The National Guard was barely keeping the peace in face of total economic collapse and massive power outages.

Knock. Knock.

He almost jumped out of his seat at the unexpected sound. Panting, he looked through the peephole, seeing the gaunt eyes of his mother, her hair wet from the soaking rain, drops dripping down over her N95 mask. Cracking open the door, he whispered "Mom, you can't be here! You might be infected!"

"I have nowhere else to go, what do you expect? Now I'm your mother and you're going to let me in."

"Stay there and pull up your shirt." He grabbed his flashlight from the utility closet and then proceeded to scan his mother's bare abdomen, seeing nothing but skin.

He opened the door, turning to grab his own N95 mask as she came in. She's almost certainly infected, having been among all that riff-raff downtown. "Take a seat in the kitchen Mom. Do you want a cup of tea?"

"Yeah," she said, her rain slicker dripping water in puddles on the hardwood floor as she trudged to the dark kitchen.

He carried a candle in behind her and carefully set it on the table, not wanting to get within more than a few feet. "So how's life?" he asked, not knowing a better way to respond to his mother's sudden appearance on his doorstep.

"You know," she said, her hollow eyes looking inadvertently malicious in the soft candlelight.

"I really don't," he went over to the fridge and pulled out a warm plastic bottle of sweet tea, deciding then that he'd hand her the bottle to avoid having her lips on any of his glassware.

"I'm homeless in another pandemic. Lots of people are dying. I'm lucky I haven't caught it yet. And you haven't even come to check on me. Never mind offer me a place to stay."

He instinctively pulled up his shirt, breathing a sigh of relief that there wasn't a lesion.

"You only care about yourself," she said, her face in judgment.

"Look Mom, nobody wants this. If I go downtown I'm probably good as dead."

"Then what does that leave me?"

He didn't answer. There was no excuse for his selfishness other than wanting to survive. He certainly didn't want his mother living with him, as all she'd do is criticize him all day long when he had been a hundred times more successful than she had been. There was no way he would tolerate that. No, he didn't work hard putting himself through school and then med school to become a doctor only to have to shelter the old hag who had made his childhood miserable.

"Look, I need to stay here. At least for a while, OK? You can't let me die out there."

"Mom, we've talked about this. The answer is no. Now and forever."

"So you're really going to condemn me to death? Is this how you treat your patients?"

"You probably already have it, Mom. You know the incubation period is three weeks. Do you know what kind of risk I took letting you in the door? If there's one crack in that mask you could spread it. Why should both of us die?" He looked at his abdomen again, feeling around several times to make sure the skin was smooth.

"You're such a selfish prick, just like your father." She got up and started walking towards him.

"Mom, back away!" he scanned around, realizing he was pinned into the kitchen with nowhere to run.

"If I'm going to die, then guess what, you're going to die. That's what you get for leaving me out in the cold all these years." She ripped off her mask and dropped it on the floor while slowly inching towards him.

"Mom! What are you doing?!"

He climbed up on the counter, hoping to leap off and quickly scoot around her.

She pulled up her shirt. "I've got a secret, son of mine."

He started to jitter with fear, feeling paralyzed for a moment as she stood with her bare abdomen not more than three feet from him. There was no lesion that he could see.

Putting her index finger above her naval she started rubbing until a flat red lesion became visible. "Makeup got me in the door."

Knowing he had to act immediately. he sprung off the counter and ran around her, heading straight for the front door. As he reached the pouring rain he started running calculations in his head as to how likely it was that he had contracted it, concluding that he was probably safe.

His mother didn't follow. He stood there in the downpour for a few minutes to see if she was going to come out, then peaked inside and saw her sipping her tea at the table. Racing past her, he went upstairs to change his clothes.

As he removed his wet shirt he saw a red dot on his stomach in the candlelight.

[WC:991]

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