ASCENSION: THE SYSTEMIC SERIES (13 page)

As the lukewarm morning slid into the balmy afternoon, we took a break from our searching and renovating of our new home for a brief lunch created from some of the items we’d managed to scavenge.  The canned meat we’d found had gone bad and smelled terrible, so we tossed it out, but the other items were still good. 

Our biggest concern however, once again became water. 

With the vast Atlantic Ocean just outside our doorstep, the problem of finding drinkable water seemed somewhat absurd, but it was there nonetheless.  While we were eating, I asked the group for volunteers to go up to the rooftop after lunch and set out some pots, pans, buckets, and any other water-catching objects upon which they could lay their hands.  Will and his family happily volunteered as it would get the kids away from what had become the macabre work of apartment scavenging.

Claire and I had been so busy with getting other things set up that we hadn’t had time to even go through and lay out our own packs of belongings that we had lugged to the apartment building with us.  Therefore, after lunch, getting ourselves personally organized in our new home became our next order of business.

The apartment Claire, Jason, and I had selected, and in which my father and Claire’s mother stayed in the adjoining bedroom, had apparently previously been owned by a middle-aged Hispanic couple.  And judging by the pictures with which they had adorned several of the apartment walls and tables, they had one daughter who had definitely graduated high school, and by the scrub work attire she was wearing in later pictures, had apparently been employed within the healthcare industry or at least in a healthcare-related field.

I sat down on the edge of the bed in the bedroom we had selected and picked up a picture that sat on the nightstand.  It was a snapshot of the family together in better days.  The parents looked young, maybe in their mid-30s, and I guessed the daughter to be age six or seven.  It was a photo of them on the beach, smiling and happy, a picnic lunch laid out on a blanket behind them.  I wondered who had taken the picture – a friend maybe or a passerby. 

I sat for a moment, thinking about what had become of them.  They certainly hadn’t died in the apartment.  I pondered whether any of them had survived the flu, and if so, where they were now and what they were doing.  The thoughts made me sad. I set the picture frame face down on the nightstand.  I didn’t want to see them and find myself constantly rehashing the same depressing questions.

Claire was rummaging in a bag behind me, setting stuff out on the floor, trying to put some order to the mess our supplies had become along our journey here. 

I sat for another moment, staring at the overturned picture on the nightstand.  I realized that just seeing the frame – even with the picture face down – would have me revisiting those same sad thoughts regarding the family’s fate.  Therefore, I picked up the picture, opened the nightstand drawer, placed it inside, and closed the drawer.

I knew that we needed to get away from all this and that while some of the others in our group had questioned our coming to Miami, our plan was justified and necessary.  Our children – our families – needed to escape this horribly depressing and dangerous world, at least for a while.  In a year or two maybe, we could return and see what society had made of itself.  Maybe it would begin to reorganize and even begin to thrive.  Or maybe it would continue to eat itself alive.  But I wanted no part of it right now; if not for myself and Claire, at least for Jason.  Our little boy had done nothing to deserve all this, and I wanted better for him…for all of us.

“Oh my god,” I heard Claire breath behind me.  “Oh no…no…no…no.”

I knew instantly that something was wrong; not just wrong, but terribly wrong.

“
What?
” I said, sternly, wanting, no,
needing
an immediate answer.  I swiveled on the bed so that I could see her.  She couldn’t use that tone and then leave me hanging.  Those few words left my stomach churning, my chest tight, my breath short and panicked.  I knew instantly, not from the words, but from the way Claire had said them, that something was very wrong.  And I had a feeling – a gut-wrenching foresight – that I knew exactly what her words related to.

“My insulin,” she said, confirming my worst fears.

I exhaled, angry that I was right, angry at her for letting something happen to this critical supply, angry at myself for letting her let something happen to the one thing that kept her alive and with us and that we couldn’t easily replace.  Food was attainable, water was attainable, shelter and clothing were attainable, but manufacturing insulin for her was the one thing we couldn’t do.

“How many vials broke?” I asked, and then waited. 

Her silence was driving me crazy.  It infuriated me because it scared me.

“HOW…MANY…BROKE?”
I urged forcefully, standing and walking around to where she sat on her knees upon the floor.  

She looked up at me, tears in her eyes, her bottom lip quivering.  “I think…all of them,” she cried, holding up the small padded bag in which she had placed her vials of insulin.  There was the sound of tinkling glass inside as she did so.

“
How?
” I asked incredulously.  “How did you manage to break
all
of them?  Christ, were you
trying
to break them?”

She shook her head, tears running down her checks, “I…I don’t know,” she gasped, starting to panic at the realization of what had happened.  “I thought they were fine.  I was so careful with them the whole trip.  They were fine when we left the house back in Hialeah.  I just don’t…don’t know what happened,” she sobbed, dropping the bag to the floor and covering her eyes.  “I must have set the pack down wrong or dropped it too hard or something,” she continued.  “I don’t know.  Maybe I put something heavy on top of them.  I’m not sure.”  She hung her head, uncovering her eyes as tears dropped onto the floor beside the bag of hopelessly broken glass vials.

The anger that I felt at this horrifying realization faded as I watched my wife, and it quickly turned to compassionate sympathy and determination to somehow resolve the situation.  I instantly flipped from fear to emergency mode in which I channeled this fear and converted it into a honed focus on the problem at hand.

“Okay,” I knelt and wrapped my arm around her, pulling her close.  Jason toddled in from the living room where the others where finishing lunch.  “Not now!” I barked at him, a little more harshly than I’d meant to.  He quickly scuttled back into the living room.

Everything had changed in a blink of an eye, and I was rapidly trying to process what it all meant and how best to deal with this new and extremely dire situation that we now faced.

I took a minute to shut my angry mouth and instead just comforted Claire.  If anyone should have a reason to be upset, it should be her; and I felt I’d been selfish in my initial reaction.  But my whole reason for being angry was selfish.  I wanted to keep my wife alive, not just for her sake, but for mine, and Jason’s, and Emily’s, and everyone else’s in the group.  So yes, I was being selfish, but I felt somewhat justified in my self-centered motives.

“Don’t worry.  It’ll be okay,” I soothed, rubbing her back softly.  “So what about reserves?”  I asked.

“What reserves?”
she said in frustration.  “These
were
my reserves.”

“Yeah…but what about shots?” I said, not completely getting it.

“Those syringes don’t come fully loaded with insulin,” Claire shook her head.  “I have to load them…with that,” she gestured at the bag of broken vials.  “Without insulin, the syringes are useless, they’re just empty syringes.”

I took a deep breath, processing the magnitude of what she was saying.  “Shit,” I breathed.  “So what about your blue bag?”

Claire always kept a tiny blue zipper-bag close at hand with a vial of insulin, her blood tester, some test strips, and a couple syringes.  It was her “daily use” bag where she kept the supplies she’d need on a regular basis. 

“How long do you have with the insulin that’s in there?” I prodded.

“A week or two,” she said, wiping the tears away.

“Okay,” I nodded, feeling some slight relief at our growing timeline.

“When it’s full,” she added.

I took another deep breath, concerned again.  “When did you refill it last?”

“Last week,” she answered.

I tilted my head back.  “So we’ve got, what, a week, right?”

“Yes,” she nodded sullenly.

I pulled her up closed to me and hugged her tight.  “Okay,” I said. “It’ll be alright.” 

I couldn’t help questioning the words as they came out of my mouth, but I had to say them, for both of us. 

“Your job from this second forward is to regulate your blood sugar levels as best you can and maximize what little insulin you have left,” I told her.
              “That’s what I’ve
been
doing,” she said, the fear evident in her voice.

“I know,” I said calmly. “But now you have to push it to the max.  Buy me a little more time.  Okay?”

“Okay,” she agreed.

“Now I’ve got to go get some stuff organized and ready.  We’re going to the market downtown tomorrow and I need to gather as many things as possible to barter with.”

She nodded.  “You stay here and take a nap or eat a snack.  Whatever you need to do keep your blood sugars stable, you do it or you let someone know what you need.  Got it?”

“Okay,” she said somewhat meekly.

“No,” I shook my head.  “Not okay.  You
do
it.  Don’t be afraid to ask…whatever it is.  There’s no feeling guilty about putting someone out with a request or being a burden.  You ask.  Okay?”

She nodded with vigor and looked at me with a sweet smile, pulling me close and giving me a big hug.  “Thank you,” she said softly into my ear.  “I love you.”

I pulled away, not because I wanted to but because I was in a hurry to get started. I didn’t need words to tell her that I loved her too, I wanted to do so with actions, but I said the words anyway as I stood up to get started.

I gave the rest of the group a quick rundown of the situation and then recruited everyone who wasn’t assigned to getting our water supply set up – since without water, none of us would be able to help Claire – to assist me.

By nightfall, we’d collected a nice stash of items from the surrounding third-floor apartments.  We continued working, taking shifts throughout the night, using flashlights as we moved our search down to the second floor.  By morning, while exhausted, I felt better about our prospects of being able to trade for certain supplies we needed, which I prayed would include insulin for Claire.             

As morning broke, dad and I began to bag up some of the items we hoped to trade at the market.  We had several trash bags full of stuff.  We put everything we
thought
might be tradable into them as we had no idea of what the hot items at market might be.  From sets of knives, cigarette lighters, candles, and batteries, to certain clothing items, toiletries, medicine, pain relievers, ammunition, guns, fishing poles, and more, we tried to pull together everything that might be worth something to someone – with the exception of food and water – to take with us.

I asked dad to accompany me downtown.  I wanted Will to stay with the family just in case something happened while we were away.  I had no idea what the environment downtown would be like, and I was aware of the prospects that we might not return from our trip. 

We decided to take half the stuff we’d accumulated to trade.  This way we could hedge our bets.  If we got robbed or something happened, we wouldn’t be completely out of luck and there’d still be things to barter for a chance at saving Claire, even if dad and I weren’t around.

The next step in our efforts to get downtown involved finding a vehicle.  With all the abandoned cars in the area, the task at first seemed simple; however, it took a bit more work than I initially expected.  Since we weren’t car thieves, and we didn’t know how to hotwire a vehicle, we needed to find keys and match them up with a corresponding vehicle. 

Therefore, we started casing apartments in a search of car keys. 

We decided to start with the apartments that still had occupants – albeit dead ones – figuring the odds were better that their vehicles were likely still parked somewhere nearby.  I had seen a row of garages behind the apartment building and that were painted the same color as the building itself, so I assumed they served as parking for the property.

After going through six apartments, we came up with three sets of keys.  We took them outside and around back with us and started going from garage to garage in an effort to match up the manufacturer logos on the key rings with the correct vehicles.  As we did so, we checked the vehicles for fuel.  Unfortunately, it appeared as though someone had beaten us to the punch and siphoned nearly all the vehicles empty.  After about 20 minutes of searching, we managed to locate two of the vehicles to which we had corresponding keys.  The problem was that after nearly a year of sitting unused in a garage, the batteries to both were completely dead and we had no way to recharge or jumpstart them.

“Looks like we’re walking,” said dad.