Ive got an ache in my back and a cramp in my side, though the headache
is still the worst of all. Jared tells me I miscarried a couple of weeks
ago, when I was deepest in my little blue pills, though I didnt feel a
thing and I still dont. My stomach has gone down, though, so I believe
him. It was going to be Isaac if it was a boy, or Anthea if it was a
girl. I was hoping for a girl, but its much better off this way. Were
trapped, and what kind of world is that to bring a child into? I dont
think I could have tolerated the baby; I would be playing games like a
sadistic God, creating a life when I knew it would be thrown aside. 

The doctor came today and looked at me with those unamused fish-eyes he
has, and poked me with his cold metal instruments. "Im working myself
to hell," he says.

"Im sorry to hear that," Jared says.

"I wish there was something I could do to help." If I were healthier, I
might offer to be a nurse, but I cant leave the house. He knows. 

"Ive only got a couple of weeks left, myself," he tells Jared. "How do
you feel?"

"Ive got a headache," I snap. "Ive always got a headache."

"How are the pills helping?"

"Theyre not."

"You want something stronger?"

"I dont want to go crazy."

"You wont go crazy." I wish he were a more comforting doctor. His voice
is harsh and his face droops and he looks like the kind of man who would
wake a rake at children if they played in his yard. "You may have
delusions occasionally, or experience some disor-"

"You explained it to me. I dont want that."

"The pain is only going to get worse."

"Ill be all right."

"This might be your last chance to change your mind. You might want to
get some, just in case."

I still wont take them. I had a grandfather who dissolved into a
raving, hallucinogenic painkiller addict, and that scared the hell out
of me. I dont want to die that way and I dont want Jared to see me
that way. I tell myself that I can get by on pride, but Im very afraid
of that pain. I expect there to be a lot of it.
The doctor tells me that I have a week left.  Of course, he could have
been confusing me with someone else, because I feel as though I have
less than that.  Jared watches over me and tells me that everyone is
fine, but I can see in his eyes that he and Jeffrey are sick, too.  He
won't let me see Jeffrey, and he tells me that it's so that Jeffrey
won't be traumatized by the sight of his dying mother.  I think it's
also so that I won't be traumatized by the sight of my dying son.  
I wonder if I could be wrong. I hope Im wrong. I wonder if Jeffrey will
remember my face or who gave him his pink teddy bear. Jared says he
still sleeps with it. I know I look like hell, losing several pounds a
week now and developing bruises all over my body. The ones on my face
are the worst; I look like Ive been punched a few times. I keep
picturing Jeffrey this way, skinny and sallow and bruised, blue-lipped 
and fatigued. I try not to, but its one of those demented images that
harass me more horribly when I plead louder to be left alone. And then,
almost worse than the image, comes the question: how long does my son
have left to live?

I sneaked the television on last night when Jared was reading Jeffrey
his bedtime story. The doctor told me to do nothing but sleep, because
he says Ill live longer that way, but I dont see how another couple of
weeks will help anything. Theres no cure coming; I know that. The news
was halfway over, but they were still talking about the bombs. They
found three in a silo in the middle of a desert and are looking for
eight more. I hate myself for it, but Ive started to suspect that
everyone is going to die of this, eventually. I wanted to be optimistic.
I wanted to be cheerful for my family. Then again, since I cant even
see the most precious half of it, does it matter? I hate that. "Does it
matter?" Everyone says that lately.

Avarrechi began letting loose the bombs last April, just a few weeks
before our second anniversary.  All of us managed to remain healthy
throughout evacuation, but when we returned in September, people
sickened again.  I caught it this time - Kearne's Disease.  It's a lot
like cancer, from what I've read.  At first, I kept it a secret, visited
the doctor during the day and took lots of uppers to keep myself from
tiring.  Jared noticed anyway. 

Now it's April again, and Avarrechi has let another one fly at the East
Coast, but the government is leaving behind all those who may have been
contaminated.  Which includes the three of us.  Theyre quarantining us,
to wait and see who survives. I dont have a good feeling about that,
either, and it infuriates me that I don't get to have a last summer.  I
missed the one last year and will be dead before this year's summer
begins.  It infuriates me than Jared will be alone for God knows how
long, without me and without Jeffrey and without a doctor to keep away
the pain.  He has been stocking up on morphine, I noticed yesterday. 
The bathroom cabinet is filled with the drug, the tablet form, and I
don't use that one.  Most of all, though, it infuriates me that a
psychotic like Avarrechi has the power to kill my baby boy, slowly and
painfully.  

I heard tonight on the news that Argentina sent a bomb back at the
Middle East.  Finally.  I heard that they used so many explosives that
were so powerful -- Argentina has more firepower than the next three
most powerful countries combined -- that an entire chunk of earth was
blown away.  A big chunk.  Avarrechi was in Canada at the time.  But now
there's a big hole in the side of the planet and, by initial
calculations, we have twenty-eight years until the gravitational pushes
and pulls are thrown off enough to smack us into Mars.  Important math
and science people are still figuring out exactly how hard we'll hit.
