Sheena slid the replacement vial into her white-coat pocket and flushed the contaminated blood from the other one down the lavatory, discarding the empty vessel in the bin marked with a red and yellow bio-hazard sticker.
“Good night, Marcy,” she called to her co-worker, as she slipped the vial out of her pocket and into its intended slot in a tray of identical tubes.
Her heart pounded in her chest, her adrenalin always surged when she did this. She hung her coat on the peg in her locker and left the haematology laboratory for home.
Home. More like a jail cell. It held the bear essentials with only a few mementos to remind them of the life they once had, the life they had lost. Of freedom, sunsets and lazy walks when the air was fresh and flower-scented, air that flowed freely and supported clouds, snow crystals, birds and insects. Even flies were a fond memory now.
Now they were settlers, living in this remote colony for one purpose: Existence.
When the estimated percentage of the world population infected with HIV reached 80%, the Joint Council called for volunteers to populate an orbiting island in an attempt to separate those wretched souls, whose destiny was only to die, from the few who remained uninfected. By the time the numbers reached 97%, most of the remainder were evacuated save for a quota of medical corps and welfare workers. The enlisted served year long stints, doing their best, but failing miserably to alleviate the suffering of the dying. The disease coveted victims like a demon craves souls, and consumed their lives mercilessly. Occasionally a care-giver would succumb to the virus, forfeiting return to the colony.
“Hi, all packed, Sweetie?” she asked her husband, James, as she punched the ‘close’ button to the right of their unit’s entrance. Looking around her, she pondered the similarities of domestic life on this foreign station to their home of the past. Josh abandoned his game of robot warriors and ran to hug his mom. She wished he shared the enthusiasm for the books she loved as a child, books passed from her own mother to her, in the hopes that a grandchild might one day read and cherish them. Peter Rabbit and Jemima Puddleduck just didn’t grab his attention. How does one explain the antics of a duck and a fox to a four year old that has never seen an animal?
She and James had been out here for eight years. Their son Josh was born in the Colony and his parents’ talk of “One day when we go back home…” was too foreign a concept for him. This was his home. He knew no other.
James had received the draft papers a month earlier. A month was nowhere enough time to prepare for leaving your family for a year. He wasn’t a doctor or medic, but orderlies and general handymen were also needed on earth, and many fathers would leave their families to manage the affairs of the terminally ill until the Die Out. Fifteen to twenty years, they predicted. An entire generation would grow up before the mass return to Earth.
Sheena washed two mugs for coffee and a few glasses leftover from the morning’s breakfast. She only realised that she had cut herself when the suds turned red. She stared at her once-tanned forearms, now translucent white, showing purple veins. Meticulously she disinfected the cut, applied an adhesive bandage, and then washed the cups and glasses again, more thoroughly this time.
“I don’t know how to say goodbye,” Sheena told James as they drank a last cup of the awful stuff that passed for coffee out here.
“It’s only a year, it’ll pass quicker than you think,” he replied, as he drew her close and held her tight. They both knew they were evading the subject of his departure, preferring to be stoic in front of Josh than to confront the pain of their imminent separation. Only Sheena knew that he wouldn’t be coming back. Nobody on earth would be willing to cover for him the way she had so many times.