The streets of Rivertown were silent but for the soles of Meli's boots slapping the pavement and the explosion of his steaming breaths. The temperature dipped below freezing after sunset but he didn't notice with his little Alessandra clutched to his chest, shivering beneath the blankets and damp with sweat. Her fever raged.
When Meli had come home it had been the old routine: Sarah asking where the hell he'd been, him wordlessly brushing past her, eager to see his daughter. Alessandra had been struggling with a fever for over a week but she always managed to greet him with a hug. He found her in bed, a pale, trembling creature that bore no resemblance to his gleeful child. He shouted at Sarah Why hadn't she gotten anyone? and she shouted back Who was there to get? She told the alderman first thing that morning and spent the rest of the day by the girl's bedside forcing her to drink and eat. What more could she do? She had no special privileges. She wasn't an officer in the MPD. Without another word, Meli gathered his daughter in his arms.
The doctors in Summerland fell over themselves barring the entrance when they saw him coming. "This facility is for officers wounded in the line of duty," one said. "You'll contaminate the clinic," another shouted through the window.
A third held up a torch and his mouth fell open when Meli turned the girl's face to the light. "Does she have the flu? She could contaminate the whole settlement." he cried. "What's your house number? We need to sequester—"
But Meli was already gone.
He ran without purpose at first, but then remembered an experimental medical facility in the Western Reaches. It was over two miles through the heart of Rivertown Central in the dead of night, but what other choice did he have? As he ran in the shadow of the wrecked freeway, he wondered how many eyes tracked their passage and whether in one brilliant, flashing moment of gunfire they would meet their end together, he and his Alessandra. It was only after they had crossed the river without seeing a soul that Meli allowed himself to believe they might actually make it.
When they reached the facility he smashed the entrance buzzer with his palm and reported his name and rank to the wary intercom operator. "Why are you here, Officer Meli?" the operator asked. In gasps, Meli explained Alessandra's ailment: vomiting, sweating, red blotches, progressively and then rapidly worse over the course of one week. There was an excruciating silence, then a side door cracked open and they were greeted by six medical workers in hazmat suits who bustled them inside.
They tore Alessandra from his arms and forced him into a containment cell, ordered him to strip, and doused him in a chemical bath. He stood naked and trembling as they performed blood and skin analysis as he shouted obsenities and demanded of the silent black walls to tell him the status of his daughter.
"Officer Meli," the doctor said, peeling off her plastic facecover and gloves.
The doctor, a young woman who appeared to be slightly older than himself, perhaps 40, would not meet his eyes as she motioned for him to sit. Meli felt a strange numbness descend, as if he were a marionette being drawn to the chair. He hadn't slept since being released from the containment cell. He had been offered no food or water. His brain swam.
"Did you send for your wife?" the doctor asked but Meli shook his head and motioned for her to continue. She sat composing her thoughts. Meli saw the deep bags under her eyes and realized that, in the deep windowless bowels of the facility, he had no idea whether it was day or night. Had he missed an entire shift yet?
"It's not the flu," she said, but quickly continued as she saw his face brighten, "But your daughter is seriously unwell. We've made her as comfortable as we can—"
"What is it then? Can you help her?"
"She's about four years old, I'm guessing?"
He didn't like her dodging his question. "Five. Can you help her get better?"
The doctor met his eyes. "I don't think so. You said she was recovering from a fever. Did you give her any medicines? Any aspirin?"
He shook his head dully. He had no idea what Sarah had or hadn't done in his absence. Every day he was gone before sunrise, back just before her bedtime. Meli watched himself sitting there in that chair, eyes glazed over, paralyzed as the doctor talked about a few possible causes. "Though it will be small comfort, it's not a new strain of the virus so the settlement is safe. But I'm afraid your daughter is too far gone."
The words sunk deep into his skull. He had seen dozens of children living in the squalor of Grudow, the filth of the city, yet they struggled and survived. It made no sense. Why his little girl?
The doctor showed him to Alessandra's bedside, where she said he could stay as long as he liked. He nodded, his head bobbing on a string, and followed on shambling feet to a room with ancient equipment crowded into the corners. In the middle of an enormous bed lay his little girl. Her breathing was shallow, and he watched with blank comprehension as the doctor smoothed the hair of his Alessandra. He watched himself take her hand and whisper the bedtime stories he had memorized through countless readings. Time compressed into a single instant, merging from the moment he scooped her from the crib to now, where he crushed her stilled body with his hulking, shuddering form.
Before he could be discharged they performed a second chemical bath, a scond blood and skin analysis, and issued new clothes. They had him sign forms authorizing stipend withdrawal, and then a series of suppressing orders preventing him from speaking to others about the facility, the procedures performed, and any medical conditions disclosed during the debriefing. He watched his hand sign them unthinkingly, nodding when they told him that violating the order would lead to instant incarceration. Yes yes yes, he muttered and signed anything they put in front of him. He would have signed his own execution papers, uncaring, because what none of these fools understood was that he was already dead.