Pill Pill

There is neither red pill nor blue pill. Only the white pill. We take it once a day. And then we do not die. My days run in this order: queue, pill, sleep, queue, pill, sleep. That is a summary of my new life, such as it is. The pill brings no happiness or relief, only a twenty-four-hour extension. Is it an antidote or an addiction? Would it help to know the answer?

A man was killed in Waiting Chamber 3H last week. It was the first time I ever saw someone die by violence in real life and not in the televised beatings.

“Don’t involve yourself,” whispered the man sitting to my right.

As if I could have willed my legs to move. He must have mistaken my trembling for an intention to intervene.

“Don’t do it,” he said, trying not to move his lips. “I’ve seen it before.”

“Does this happen often?” I murmured.

“Every few weeks.”

The smell of bleach lingered in my nose all day after they sluiced away the blood and … and how would it help for me to write the other things down? I’d only been ‘infected’ for a month by then. Out of work and always into the future. Just in case I am contagious even though this ‘disease’ is not transmissible.

It began when two armed soldiers arrived at my door at 6:30am one morning. They wore camouflage chemical suits and respirators, their rifles gripped in thick blue rubber gloves. A transit van sat outside, engine revving, marked with a stencilled yellow biological hazard sign. I stood there in pyjama bottoms and a bed t-shirt.

“Fintan Kelleher. In accordance with the Infectious Diseases Act, you have been designated a Contaminated Person for the purposes of the regulations. You must report to your nearest Waiting Hall by 8am today for treatment. If you fail to do so, you will be taken into custody on the grounds of public safety.”

His words spilled like water. His performance perfected.

“How do you know I’ve been …”

They were already halfway down the gravel driveway, their boots crunching, before I could finish my question. As if an answer would have helped me.

My life fractured into three paths. Death, an Isolation Camp, or the Waiting Hall. Was it cowardice that drew me automaton-like up the stairs and into the shower? I examined my body in the mirror to see if anything had changed. I checked between my toes and under my arms. I used the camera on the phone so I could see my back and behind. There were no marks of sickness. Did the ‘disease’ come after the first pill or before? Did it matter when the outcome was the same?

I sat naked on the edge of the bed looking at a framed family photo from the windowsill. It’s me, my wife Yvonne, and my two kids, Jacob and Andrea, in front of the Puppy in Bilbao. It’s from the Bygone, but I think you can see in my eyes a trepidation, like our old lives were slipping away. They’d already been in Australia for three months while my visa was under enhanced processing. I lay back to smell Yvonne’s perfume on the pillowcase. I had never washed it, but the scent was almost gone.

She would normally call at around 8am, to catch me before work. I unlocked my phone, tapped the keys, searching for a tone that would not scare her.

“I’ve an early Zoom call I’ve to get ready for,” I typed. “Completely forgot about it. All quiet here. Will try buzz you later.”

Would that do? It would have to. There had been an unspoken acknowledgment between us that the visa was never coming. It was enough for me to know they were safe. Was it enough for them?

I knew where the Waiting Hall was; everybody did. They had paved over half of the Phoenix Park to build it. Each morning, when I left for the government office where I worked, I’d see those wretched men and women trudging along the North Circular Road. It was best to ignore them lest your eyes might get snagged on the absence that was their gaze.

I dressed in an old grey hoodie and tracksuit bottoms for I knew it would be a long day. That my future was one of waiting. I had an old Sherlock Holmes paperback that I could squeeze into my pocket as electronic devices were prohibited inside the halls.

A light drizzle fell, so soft the wind could blow it right into your face. I pulled the laces of my hood tight together, fearful somebody might see me walking in the wrong direction. There was no other reason to go this way apart from infection. The wrought iron white gates of the park entrance seemed quaint against the backdrop of the brutalist Waiting Hall and its chambers.

There was a sign that read ‘Treatment Initiation,’ and it was towards that building I headed. There were ten of us on the line there, seven men and three women. Who knows what they had done wrong? Did they even know themselves?

“Is this for new people?” one of them said to me, the panic dancing in his eyes.

“I think so.”

“Shut it,” said the soldier that was guarding the entrance, casually beating his left thigh with a telescopic baton.

We stood there one hour. There was a canvas roof above us, but it made little difference as the rain began to teem, squalling in from every direction. We were drenched when they at last opened the door. We entered a large reception room. An armed guard sat on a chair in the corner overlooked by CCTV. There were no other seats, so we were left with the linoleum floor. The air soon grew stale as our wet clothes turned damp in the warmth.

I took out my book, read a few pages. The guard stood over me, slapped it from my hands.

“This is a medical facility, not a library,” he said.

We waited two hours more and I probably do not need to say it felt much longer. Every so often, someone would break, start whimpering, or whispering to the person beside them. The guard would look over, tick a box on his clipboard. I tried to keep count of what he was doing, a way to pass the time. It seemed like each of us were allowed two transgressions before the baton was produced.

Three of the others were bleeding by the time we were ordered into the next room. Two more hours passed sitting on another linoleum floor. A man panicked and tried to go back through the door we came from. We didn’t see him again after two more soldiers arrived, truncheons twirling. A woman began to drift off, somehow. Perhaps she had not slept at all during the night. Each time, her eyes would lower, the guard would crack his stick against the metal leg of his chair, and she would jolt awake.

There was another room, then another, sometimes seated, sometimes standing. It was 4pm when we at last arrived in the treatment area. Ten medical trolleys were arrayed along the wall, two sets of shackles dangling from their stainless-steel guard rails.

A uniformed soldier arrived, two crossed swords on his shoulder insignia. He wore no mask so that his slant smile could be seen as he spoke.

“Apologies for any delay,” he said. “I realise you are all very anxious to get your treatment started. There is a bed for each of you and I’m sure you will be glad of a rest. The physician will be with you soon as.”

We lay down, a hand, a foot cuffed to the side of the trolley, our nostrils brim full of the smell of antiseptic. If anyone slept, they were not woken and, in the background, a classical radio station played softly. The doctor did not come for ninety minutes.

He arrived harried, wearing disposable scrubs and a loose surgical mask that kept slipping down from his nose. As he jabbed the needle into our arm, he never asked for permission, or which side we would prefer. It went sharp into my left bicep, my good side, and that hand has not been the same since.

I think it was worse to see the others convulsing, vomit running from their mouths, spines and limbs arching and distending so that it seemed they might break. At first, I felt only an unnatural warmth as if my blood was simmering on a gas stove. Then, the pain came, not in waves but in a torrent. How many seconds or minutes passed I cannot say. I was held down by two orderlies, the doctor opening my mouth like a dog. The small white orodispersible pill dissolved on my tongue, metallic sweet to taste. And with it, came instant relief.

The ranking soldier returned, pleased with himself.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “it is difficult to come to terms with this dreadful infection. But. We will do everything we can to ensure your continued good health. As you are, I am sure, aware, you will require daily medication from now on. One pill, once every twenty-four hours or else. Well, let’s not talk about the else. You must report to the Central Waiting Hall at 8.30am tomorrow. And the day after that too. And the one that follows. And so on. Et cetera. Ad nauseum. Ad infinitum. And such like.”

It was pitch dark when I began the walk home, the rain still widdling. There were so many things I should have been thinking about. How I would pay my bills. What would happen to our house. Whether I could tell my wife. But a chasm had taken the place of those questions. Not hopelessness but the absence of anything resembling hope. Was it the medication that made me feel this way?

Does it make a difference?

When I got home, I sank into the Chesterfield fabric couch in our living room. I turned on the TV, lowered the volume so I could hardly hear it, let the moving images refill my mind. It was a nature programme, predators and prey. When my phone rang, the sound seemed almost of a different world. I looked down, could see a picture of me with my family on a beach.

“Daddy,” my kids said in unison from the far side of the world.

“Hey you two? What you up to?”

“Getting ready for school,” said Andrea.

“What time is it?”

“It’s eight,” said Jacob.

“That’s nice.”

I turned the video off on the call so that I could only hear their voices.

“Daddy, we can’t see you.”

I didn’t want them to.

“It’s the connection, I think,” I said. “I can still hear you though.”

“Okay. Mammy says we have to go and will ring later,” Andrea replied.

“Love youse.”

“Love you too daddy.”

Each of them blew me a dramatic kiss.

It’s been thirty-seven days now. I arrive at the Central Waiting Hall at 8.30am. The doors open an hour later. From the main hall, I move to Chamber 2D, then 3H, then 4P. The pill is dispensed at 6pm. Will I go again tomorrow? Maybe it’s better not to think about that question.

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Ken Foxe

Ken Foxe is a writer and transparency activist in Ireland. He is the author of two non-fiction books based on his journalism and a member of the Horror Writers Association. He has had around three dozen short stories published in a wide variety of journals, magazines, and anthologies