"Monster"

Last year, The Herald-News invited WriteOn Joliet to share fictional pieces of what the pandemic would look like a year into the future.

Those pieces were then sent out each week over a period of two months to subscribers of the publication's LocalLit newsletter.

Here is the piece I wrote. If you haven't read any of my fiction, well, here you go.

If you have, again, here you go.

Either way. I hope you enjoy it. 

Guest column by Miranda Jane Cooper for The Munsonville Times

My father has always said “medicine is messy,” but I never fully understood how messy until a stranger with a cold heart and a big mouth invaded our space, demanding answers that weren’t his to know.

But that was back in the summer of 2020, just after my token graduation from high school, when the COVID-19 pandemic was still terrorizing anyone in the world who believed in it. I guessed we in Munsonville believed in it, too. But since we were the last place in the world without a single case, we only experienced the fallout of the virus, not any actual sickness.

Strange as it sounds now, I really wanted to get sick. But sickness eluded me; it eluded all of us.  To my knowledge, no one in Munsonville, a forgotten fishing village in Northern Michigan, ever got sick. That’s because we had what no one else had.

We had Dr. Arnold Hartgerd. But everyone here just called him Arnie.

Arnie practiced hematology at Jenson Memorial Hospital where Dad was chief of neurology and Mom oversaw the medical records department. But Arnie also had a home office on Bass Street.

That’s where he kept his side practice. That’s where he kept all of us healthy, one appointment at a time.

On the last Saturday of every month, I’d leave our saltbox at the top of Pike Street, cut across the yards to Blue Gill Road then over to Arnie’s with my bookbag slung over my shoulders for my monthly appointment. The appointment lasted several hours, so I always came prepared. When I was little, I brought books and handheld games. As I grew older, I brought homework.

Arnie lived about halfway down the hill in a small two-story with a gabled roof. He had the quietest yard of anyone in Munsonville. The houses near his were full of life: birds tugging worms out of the ground, rabbits dashing across lawns, and squirrels chasing other squirrels from tree to tree. But at Arnie’s, nothing.

He always left the back door open when he had a patient coming, so I never knocked. I just opened the door, and let myself in. Arnie’s laboratory was in the basement. I knew the way, even though the way was dark because light shone from the lab, which was white and sterile and full of machines that hummed and beeped. Unlike other doctors who hung all their framed awards on the walls, Arnie displayed only one item, a framed piece of needlework, a verse from the Bible, all worked in various shades of red thread: “For the life of the flesh is in the blood.” Leviticus 17:11.

Arnie was usually writing notes when I arrived. He was a short little man, scarcely taller than me, with disheveled red hair, neatly trimmed auburn beard and mustache, and a slight stoop to his frame. And even though he couldn’t get away with it at the hospital, Arnie often smoked a beautiful old pipe of dark polished wood as he worked. The pipe had a large bowl with a gold lid, gold trim, and gold mouthpiece, and these golden pieces flashed under the bright lights as he moved about the lab.

After I settled into a white vinyl chair and arranged my books on my lap, Arnie would hook me up to an IV. For the next two hours, red fluid dripped into my arm, where it would gradually seep its way throughout my body. That red fluid contained antibodies to all the known viruses and bacteria in the entire world, as well as some cancer-causing tumors and germs that no one had yet discovered except Arnie. From influenza to typhoid to Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever: a two-hour dose kept me free, kept anyone in Munsonville free, from anything that could make us sick.

“What’s in this stuff?” I asked him once.

Arnie puffed reflectively a moment. Then he removed his pipe.

“A lot of planning,” he finally said. “A lot of knowledge.”

I didn’t mind losing two hours of my Saturday because I kept myself occupied. And like I said, I didn’t mind the needles. But I DID mind not getting sick. All my friends in Jenson, where I’d always gone to school, occasionally caught a cold or the flu or a stomach bug. They’d stay home from classes and play on their phones. But me? I never sneezed. I never coughed. I never ran a fever. I never had a scratchy throat. I never had a stomach pain or threw up.  I was the kid who earned the perfect attendance award with its accompanying gift card every year, the only time my best friend Ashley was ever jealous of me.

“It’s because your dad is a doctor,” she’d say with a sniff.

But it wasn’t. It was because of Arnie.

So when COVID-19 burst into the world, I was excited. This virus had caught the entire planet by surprise. No way could Arnie have an antidote to this! Finally, I could be sick like all my friends!

I didn’t get sick, well, not at first. But my universe changed just the same.

My parents decided that what happened in Jenson ought to stay in Jenson. So they rented an apartment in Jenson, just in case. If, somehow, they caught the virus, they didn’t want to infect all of Munsonville. So. I had to live with my grandparents in their tiny apartment above Sue’s Diner, which they still owned and ran. I couldn’t go to remote school with my friends because I was out of district. Funny how I wasn’t out of district when classes were in-person. So the pastor’s wife tutored me, a class of one. That was how I spent my senior year.

I didn’t get a virtual prom or virtual graduation. I didn’t get to wear cute masks or have to social distance. I DID still have to see Arnie once a month, everyone did. I guess my parents got their blood treatments from him at the hospital. They didn’t mention it, and I never asked. So, yeah, I was pretty grumpy about the whole thing, especially when I got into trouble for wearing a mask.

It was during a video chat with Mom. Ashley had sewn a dozen different masks and kept texting me pictures, pestering me to send photos of my masks. So I started making them, too, and taking selfies of me showing them off.

Like the defiant teen I was, I left one of the masks looped over my ears during the video chat.

“Take that off,” Mom said sternly.

“I think I’m sick,” I felt my cool forehead and slumped my shoulders to prove it.

Mom wasn’t amused.

“Miranda Jane Cooper, people are dying all over the world.” Mom mostly called me “Randi,” so I knew she was really angry. “Pretending to be sick is not funny.”

I wasn’t trying to be funny. I was trying to be normal. But I couldn’t tell an old person that. Of course, I didn’t want to get sick enough to die. But why couldn’t I get just a little headache and a tiny cough, maybe even a low-grade fever?

Even Ashley tested positive for the virus and had to quarantine for fourteen days. But she never had any symptoms, just a fourteen-day vacation of watching online videos. ME, I was quarantining forever, for no reason at all.

One time after a blood treatment, Arnie showed me a real  SARS-CoV-2 through a special microscope he invented. The virus looked like a spiky ball, and I told him so.

“It’s a monster,” Arnie said as he reached for his pipe.

I looked at the spiky ball again and then back at him.

“It doesn’t look like monster,” I ventured.

Arnie puffed a few moments and then said, “But what is a monster if not a force that threatens, that takes, that has no regard for life. This coronavirus isn’t alive, but it isn’t dead, either. It can’t live without a host. And once it claims the host, it takes over the host.”

A prickle crawled up my back, and I actually shivered. Still, I mentally crossed my fingers waiting for the headache, the sneeze. But – nope.

Arnie had one last remark.

“Look again, Miranda,” he said as he slid the microscope closer to me. “See how small, so imperceptible this ‘spiky little ball’ is. One can’t even detect it under an ordinary microscope. And yet…”

He stopped to relight the pipe.

“And yet – what?” I asked, wary.

He grinned – or was it a leer – and a strange glint appeared in his eyes, as green as those of a cat.

“And yet,” Arnie said, “The entire globe is paying attention to it.”

After that, I paid more attention to the news. I paid more attention to what this virus actually did to some people. I decided Arnie was right. SARS-CoV-2  WAS a monster. I felt glad Arnie was protecting us from its attack. I stopped feeling jealous.

Then “HE” came to town.

Somehow, word got out in June 2020 that Munsonville had zero cases of the coronavirus. Who leaked that piece of information? Heck, if I knew. Probably a tourist. Our economy depended on tourists, especially rich ones that needed to hide for a while. We had a steady stream of tourists all year. They stayed in our fishing cabins on Lake Munson. They fished for cod in the summer and walleye in the winter.

It must have been a tourist that told, I thought. As much as we needed tourists, I hated nosy tourists and wished they’d all stay home.

So here I was that day in June, sitting at Sue’s Diner, taking a break. Even before I was living with them. I often helped my grandparents in the diner. Sometimes I waitressed, sometimes I cooked. I’d do anything to pass the time. But by 2020, it really wasn’t much fun. If Munsonville was slow before the pandemic, it was nearly at a standstill now.

Now the HE that walked into Sue’s Diner was a journalism student at Jenson College of Liberal Arts. You remember, the intern at the old Thornton Times, the one who made national news for, well, you know. He just strolled into our diner with his patched jeans and taped glasses like he had the right to hurt us.

Chef Brian came out of the kitchen. He fumbled in his apron pocket for a mask, and he stayed six feet away from HIM. He told the stranger to put on his mask or leave.

But the stranger only laughed at Chef Brian as he sat right on a tabletop and propped his dirty sneakers on the cushion.

“I’m not going to get sick,” the stranger said. “And I’m not going to get anyone here sick. No one gets sick in Munsonville, right?”

But Chef Brian was already calling the police. The stranger just grinned.

“I’m not leaving,” the stranger said, taking out his own cell phone and tapping a few times, “until I talk to HIM.”

The stranger pointed to the far corner, where Arnie was drinking a cup of coffee and scanning The Munsonville Weekly. He didn’t seem the least bit ruffled by the stranger’s bravado as he took another sip and tuned another page.

“You are Dr. Arnold Hartgerd?”

“I am.”

“Hematologist at Jenson Memorial Hospital?”

“Correct.”

“With a side practice in Munsonville?”

“Incorrect.”

I started at what appeared to be a bold lie, and the intern jumped all over it.

“You deny having a practice here?”

“I don’t deny the practice. I deny the ‘side.’”

The intern’s ears turned pink, either because he was flustered or he was angry, I couldn’t decide. But he stammered out, “Why does a hematologist ‘practice’ in a dying fishing village?”

“Because I live here, and no other doctor provides care. Jenson is thirty minutes by car…”

“That’s not the end of earth!”

“…for those who own cars,” Arnie tapped his mug. “Pity Jenson College stopped teaching deductive reasoning.”

“Fine! Let’s cut to the chase. I don’t think you are who you say you are.”

“Then who am I?”

“You tell me. You appear to have no lineage, no family background, no hometown, and no one who’s heard of you outside this section of Michigan. Don’t you find that odd?”

Odd? I never considered it until now. Arnie never talked about his past. But why would he? He was my doctor, not my family. I saw him for medical reasons, not Thanksgiving dinner. But the intern’s question made me regard Arnie in a fresh light, as if he was a stranger.

Arnie still appeared unruffled. He just calmly took another sip and said, “The concern here is the fact you find it odd.”

“I think you’re Dr. Abner Rothgard. I think you’re the Shelby mad scientist who got put away in 1980 for stealing blood samples from Jenson Memorial Hospital and storing hundreds of freezers full of blood in your house.”

“Because I’m a hematologist who practices in Munsonville?”

“Because you’re a hematologist who practices in last place on earth with no cases of COVID-19! Because you’re a hematologist whose patients never get sick! Do you deny it?”

The intern gazed triumphantly around the diner. But not a patron was supporting him. They just looked a little confused at the intrusion and a little sad at this loud disruption of their meals. Many of the villagers didn’t even have phones; they caught up with local gossip at the diner. I wished the intern would leave. But, apparently, he wasn’t leaving until he got…what? What exactly did he want from us?

“You’re asking for a tour of my basement?” Arnie closed the newspaper and settled back in his chair, smiling.

He’s enjoying this, I thought. He’s finding the entire incident droll and entertaining.

But the intern just snorted. “Oh, I don’t think you’re that stupid. Someone as cagey as you doesn’t survive by replicating his mistakes. But if you’re really from around here, then you’d know Dr. Rothgard not only escaped on Christmas Eve 1995, he killed three orderlies and drained their blood. How do you explain that?”

“I don’t explain it. Neither does anyone else. The case is still open.”

“The case is still open because Dr. Rothgard is sitting right here! One of those freezers, as you might recall, was filled with the blood a well-respected Jenson respected music professor. A professor who died under extremely mysterious and sketchy circumstances. And his widow is now remarried - to the pastor of this only church in town, whose most likely hiding you!”

I almost laughed aloud. Pastor Jason’s wife? Hiding a criminal? If the intern had ever met this old mousey woman, he’d never think anything so ridiculous.

“Dr. Rothgard was an old man in 1995. It’s now 2020. What you’re presupposing…”

“What I’m presupposing is that someone who can manipulate blood to protect his patients against this coronavirus can somehow manipulate blood to rejuvenate himself, too!” He slid off the table and pointed his finger at Arnie. “And I’m going to expose you!”

With that, the stranger spun around and stalked out of the diner.

Arnie motioned for me to bring him more coffee, which I did, lost in thought. I wanted talk to him about the experience, just to see if he’d found it weird and off-putting, too , but he’d resumed reading the paper. Everyone else dove into their cold meals and their chatter.

As far as anyone knows, the stranger never returned to Jenson because no one ever saw him again. However, his disappearance did make national news, mostly because he vanished after promising several outlets a “whistle blowing” story on Arnie that he never delivered.

Except for the couple times a few college students staged protests by our “Welcome to Munsonville” sign, demanding answers, the whole thing died down in a few weeks.

But that isn’t nearly as important as what happened afterwards.

The day after HE left, I slung my backpack over my shoulder, gingerly took the rickety steps down from my grandparents apartment and headed over to Bass Street for my monthly appointment with Arnie.

The houses on the street were full of life: birds tugging worms out of the ground, rabbits dashing across lawns, and squirrels chasing other squirrels from tree to tree.

Even at Arnie’s.

Full of trepidation, I walked up the driveway and around the yard to the rear door. I hesitated, afraid of this variation, afraid of the possibility of a locked door and what a locked door could mean. My fingers reached out once, twice, but I always drew them back. Finally I did it. I grabbed the knob and turned it. The door was open, as it was always open when I had an appointment. I stepped inside the dark and silent house and snapped on the basement light.

“Arnie?” I called out. “Arnie?”

I slowly crept down the stairs. No light shone from the lab, no sounds of machines humming and beeping. When I reached the room, my fingers felt along the wall until they touched the switch. I took a breath and pushed it up. Light flooded the empty room.

No furniture. No white vinyl chairs. Even the framed piece of needlework with “For the life of the flesh is in the blood” worked in various sheds of red was gone. I could only stand, frozen, and gape in shock. Then I went back to my grandparents’ apartment and called Mom.

Two weeks later, I was sitting at Sue’s Diner, taking a break. We’d had more tourists than usual, mostly because of the hullaballoo over the stranger, and my feet were tired from trotting up and down the diner all morning,

I was, in fact, enjoying a plate of spaghetti (Chef Brian makes the best spaghetti). I remember this detail because I was twirling pasta around my fork when I heard a sound that nearly stopped my heart.

The sound was the most chilling, the most terrifying sound I’d ever heard in my life. It changed my life. It changed the lives of  everyone who lived in Munsonville.

Then I heard it again.

Cough, cough, cough.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Illustration by Kathleen Rose Van Pelt for "Bryony."