Lise held the needle up to the light. A single drop of vaccine nestled between the twin points, glistening amber. She hesitated, hating the cure for the slow ravages of Retiniapox. But she'd seen the horrible devastation the scourge could bring. Entire villages wiped out. Bodies doused with bleach and left to petrify in the sun, as no one would risk the dangers of burial or cremation

Her patient, a young girl, wailed on the cot, held down by her mother. The cot's canvas, once green and now a drab shade of grey dotted with splotches of blood and fluids, groaned under the pressure of two bodies pressing down. The stench of it wafted up, adding to the reek of sweat and fear that permeated the medical station.

The girl's mother wore a bandage over her left eye from her own inoculation. Red and yellow blotches stained the white gauze; the eye would never function again, but her chances of contracting the virus had dropped by sixty-eight percent. Lise had vaccinated the mother only moments before, yet it felt like hours. So many eyes ruined. When she'd signed up for overseas medicine, she had prepared herself for the horrors of makeshift facilities and understaffed clinics, but nothing could have prepared her for Retiniapox. Back in university, medicine had called to her, with its noble pursuits and its promise to help, to cure. Now she felt like a crusader, storming through a new dark age with a bifurcated needle instead of a sword.

"Où est ton Papa?" Lise asked about the father's whereabouts in the hopes of distracting the girl while the Alcaine numbed her eye.

The mother shook her head.

I shouldn't have asked. They come from the northeast, where the last outbreaks were reported. Choosing silence over further reassurances, Lise began the scratching. Two strokes left and right, pressing the serum with both points just below the surface of the cornea. The girl squirmed and shrieked, more from fear than pain. She shouldn't be able to feel the needle. Two strokes up and down and the amber liquid disappeared into the layers of her eye. Lise pressed gauze over a closed lid and taped the dressing down.

Next.

A young man, about the same age as Lise's beloved Rideau, lay down on the cot. She tied his arms in the restraints, sanitized her needle, and gathered another drop of serum.

‡

Sweat poured down Rideau's back. The Hazmat suit made the dry heat unbearable. He leaned over his next patient simultaneously cursing and thanking the layers of PVC separating him from the virus.

The woman's body wept from countless pustules, most concentrated on her face, neck, and chest. Her eyes had liquefied the previous day; always the first casualty. A biological weapon of war, the virus had been designed to blind its victims, rendering an opposing army helpless. Nature, in its random cruelty, had mutated the pathogen to a deadly cousin of Smallpox since its introduction in the battle of Baqa el Gharbiyya.

The woman moaned, unable to scream, throat clogged with erupting sores.

"Bientôt," he said. Soon, it'll end. One in a thousand would survive the illness. About three in ten would succumb despite vaccination, a high price to pay after trading sight in one eye for hope.

He readied a dose of morphine to add to her IV. A seizure gripped the patient in the next cot. Arms and legs flailed, knocking Rideau off balance. He fell onto the woman. His arm brushed across her neck and chest, ripping open a swath of pox. In his haste to push himself back up, he twisted the morphine syringe in his hand.

Pop. Rideau started, stunned, terrified, at the unmistakable sound of a suit breach.

He hurried for the rinsing station, searching for the suit's weakness. The needle had poked through a smear of pus. Contamination. No, I must think positive. Other doctors had endured a suit breach without a hint of infection. Some more than once.

He showered the suit with bleach until the buzzer sounded. Next he stripped, set the bleach to half-dose, and cleansed himself. Caustic welts erupted on his skin and he dared not open his eyes, though they stung mercilessly. At the buzzer, he lunged blindly for the eye wash and rinsed the bleach from his face.

In two hours he would learn the true effectiveness of his inoculation; whether the trade of sight in one eye for his safety had been fair. He headed for the quarantine tent and scribbled a note on the chalkboard outside, "Rideau, needle through suit, Wednesday, 1027 hours."

Inside, he clung to thoughts of Lise, fleeing this room of despair for better times.

‡

He remembered the previous Saturday, bringing the thought to the front of his mind, reliving its exquisite beauty.

He rested on their cot, watching her run a sponge along her arm. She turned to face him and said, "Like what you see?"

She shook her head. "Pardon. I've so much on my mind."

"No. I'm pregnant."

He dropped the sheet and pressed his hands against her belly. "Vraiment?"

He kissed the back of her neck. "We should dress."

‡

"Rideau!" Lise peered through the quarantine tent's plastic window. "What happened?"

"A needle stick through the suit."

She pushed at the tent flap, and poked her head inside.

"Stay out!" he snapped.

"I won't come any--"

"Close the flap, Lise. I couldn't live, knowing I contaminated you."

She backed outside, glanced at the chalkboard, and then her watch. "We'll know in another twenty minutes."

"Twenty-three."

"I'll wait."

"No," he said. "Get back to the clinic. The time will move quickly if you're busy."

She touched the tent fabric with her right hand, willing it to turn into his skin so that she might comfort him. With her left, she pressed at her belly, at the tiny person growing there. Not now. I need him more than ever. Please, God, protect him.

"Go on, Lise."

"Je t'adour," she said.

"Moi, aussi," he responded.

Biting back her grief, she hurried to her work.

For the longest thirty minutes of her life, she vaccinated patient after patient. Every other woman was with child. Her mother had once said to Lise, "When you're pregnant, it seems that everyone around you is, too. That's the way of the world; people making babies, loving along the way in their own manner. Enjoy every minute of this special time. I never felt as much a woman as when I carried you inside me."

A pregnant woman with near-black skin lay on the cot. With her arms at her sides, she waited for Lise to tie her down. Her eyes full of fear, she closed the left one, indicating that was the eye she wanted vaccinated. As Lise moved closer, the vaccine held between the needle's twin points, the woman's belly shuddered. The unmistakable shape of a foot protruded against the skin. Lise laughed, nearly choking on the sound of it. A smile passed briefly along the patient's face and then terror filled it once more.

With careful and deliberate strokes, Lise scratched the vaccine into the soon-to-be mother's eye.

Glancing at her watch, she returned with a kit and a Hazmat suit to the quarantine tent. She stripped to her underwear and tugged at the thick plastic, yanking it over her sweating body. Sebastian had offered to examine Rideau. Though tempted to dodge the duty, she stuck by her resolve to do it herself.

With her suit sealed, she lifted the tent flap and entered the dark space. She touched Rideau's cheek with her gloved hand and stared at the red blotches blossoming in the white of his good eye. Soon it would weep the toxins building in his body.

She choked back a sob.

"I know," he said.

"I brought vaccine. If I scratch your good eye it will reduce the severity of the symptoms."

"I'll spend the rest of my life blind and scarred by the pox. How could you love such a man?"

Tears erupted, a river of sadness. In the suit, she couldn't wipe at them. "I would love you blind and deaf with no legs. I will keep on loving you. Don't make me raise this baby alone."

He was silent for a long time. Lise listened to her breath in the suit, the loud echo of life, reminding her that she was healthy. For now.

While she waited, his empty, vaccinated eye stared out, still clear and unmarred by red blotches. She wanted to kiss it, to press her lips against him and show him that life was worth living. "S'il te plaît."

"Don't beg, Lise. I can't bear it. You're right. I want to be a father."

He sat up awkwardly, and kissed the plastic of her face plate. "Do it."

She kissed him back and then gently pressed him down onto the cot. Two restraints hung from her belt. She pulled the first one free, her hands shaking beneath the thick layers of plastic.

"Tie them tightly," he said. "I don't want to accidentally infect you."

She strapped him down, doubling over the fabric then clipping the clasps together. Welts criss-crossed his body -- burns from the bleach wash. She ran a gloved hand along his skin, hating the way it stuck to his body, agonizing over the barrier between them.

"Don't hesitate. You've done this hundreds of times. I'm only one more patient." With that, he stared at the ceiling, his eye full of resolve and bravery.

Holding her breath for a long time, she let it out and dropped Alcaine into his right eye. While she waited for it to numb, she slowly and carefully opened the vial of serum and dipped in the bifurcated needle. Her skin stuck to the inside of the suit. The smell of her breath, overpowering in the small space, reminded her of the coffee she'd shared with Rideau only hours before. The memory lifted the dam on another flood of tears.

"I'll never forget your beautiful smile." His voice cracked, as though he hadn't spoken in a lifetime. "Je t'adour."

Her vision, distorted by her anguish, turned his face into a streaky blur. She tried to find him through the waterfall, blinking frantically. With time, his blue eye came back into focus and she leaned in close with the needle.

Her every instinct told her to pull away, flee from this madness. Finding her inner resolve, thinking of the needs of their unborn child, she focused all of her energy into steadying her wavering hand. She whispered, "Forgive me."

‡

Rideau picked at the wax in his ears. The long hours, by jeep, then train, then plane, had exhausted him and clogged his remaining senses. He'd never realized how loud transportation could be. Now he stood in the customs line, the last hurdle between him and his family, and listened to the conversations all around. A couple discussed in whispers how much to claim on the duty form. A child complained about the cold. How many of them stared at him, saying nothing? Victims of the pox were rare in Canada, and survivors rarer still. How many times had he brushed his fingers along his pocked cheeks and wondered how hideous he had become?

On that fateful day, after she'd vaccinated his good eye, they'd agreed that, for the safety of their child, she should return to Montréal as soon as possible. So when his fever had broken, they had said their goodbyes. In her absence, he had truly understood the meaning of despair.

The long months in the hospital had passed with sickening slowness. His illness had relapsed four times before he was finally well enough to leave the biohazard tent. Weak from so much time on his back, he had been forced to take even more time to build up his strength for the journey home.

A lifetime had passed, Théophile's lifetime.

When his turn came, his aide led him ahead to the customs officer. Documents were produced and with a loud stamp, he was sent towards his future.

The aide asked, "Is someone meeting you?"

"My wife. Lise."

"Wonderful."

"And our new son, Théophile."

"Will this be the first time you've seen him?" The woman's voice faltered. So many idioms were based on sight.

"Yes," he answered, before she apologized for the comment.

Their shoes clicked on the hard floor, echoing along the narrow corridor. Then the whoosh of automatic doors and the noise of a crowd. All around him, cries of "Pleased to meet you," and, "Welcome home," erupted from a sea of unseen faces.

And then the touch of fingers he remembered and the whisper of her breath against his neck.

"I've never been so happy to see you, my love," she said. "Would you like to hold your son?"

She handed him the baby. Rideau steadied himself for the boy's cry, at the sight of this horribly disfigured stranger. But the boy cooed instead.

"He's been wondering when his father would come home to spoil him."

"I brought presents," he said as he felt the soft nose and chubby cheeks. "For both of you."

She squeezed his hand, then nudged him to take her arm.

"What does he look like?" he asked.

"Healthy and handsome," she said. "Just like his father."

-- The End --