Never-ending dance

“What did you say?” he asked absently, bent over the papers, as usual. His glasses hanging low on his nose, ordinary, ugly plastic frames, the kind you might call “economy-class glasses”—the ones you wore only around home. He was wearing old, torn sweater and even more worn out pair of sweatpants, although he knew Milena was repulsed by ripped clothing and that she avoided looking at him because of it. Outside, the gray autumn sky was signaling an imminent storm, darkening more and more with every passing minute. Because of it, the light in the room had been harshly intensified, even though it was only just past noon. A few flashes of lightning flickered in the distance. They would both be trapped in the apartment this afternoon, as one of the peculiar spells of an unstable autumn sky. The apartment was not small, and yet sometimes she felt suffocated by the feeling of being trapped, by finality, by predictability which, instead of being comforting, was frightening.

As far as Milena was concerned, this was her first attempt at living together with a partner. She was no longer very young, so adjusting to couple-living was difficult for her, even though they had already been together for four years before moving into the shared apartment. Even so, she still didn’t have a firm opinion about whether this was what she wanted for the rest of her life. In time, she stopped caring. After all, with the rent on their shared apartment and their joint loans, she was practically tied to Will forever. Unsure of what are the rules of living with someone, she tried to present herself in the best way possible, occasionally making clumsy efforts to impress him or arouse his interest, and quietly did all the chores that needed to be done and paid for everything that needed to be paid. Sometimes they didn’t speak for days. There hasn’t been a single sexual encounter in that shared apartment since they moved in, and even before that their sex life begun to wither away far too quickly, because there was never much chemistry between them to begin with. In a nutshell, the only things connecting them now were the rent, shared bills and loans, and years slipping away, whispering ever more loudly the dreadful truth that there were almost no further possibilities for romance left. And this was called love! Who said that marriage papers ruin everything? You could do it without the papers, too.

“Hemosclerotic syndrome. More cases have appeared in China. That means it wasn’t a genetic problem affecting that unfortunate man from Lake Tai, as they thought.”

She continued reading:

“Patient N.N. was transferred to hospital following a sudden loss of consciousness. Tests established that the patient’s red blood cell count had fallen dramatically below normal levels and that the level of serum iron and ferritin in his blood had dropped so severely that the body was deprived of the oxygen it required. Following the initial shock and organ failure, the patient was given a massive blood transfusion. Afterward, N.N. went into shock, and the transfused blood began leaking out of his body through his skin. While preparations were being made for another transfusion, the apparently weakened N.N. grabbed prepared transfusion blood and drank it as though it were chocolate syrup. Despite the continued decline in his red blood cell count, the patient visibly revived and his vital signs improved. Darkening of the sclera and dilation of the patient’s pupils were observed, for which no cause could be found, so he had to be immediately and strictly protected from light in order to prevent blindness. No parasites or abnormalities of the bone marrow were found in N.N.’s body. The cause of the deterioration in his blood count remained unknown.”

Will glanced at her, boredom plainly visible in his eyes, then went back to shuffling through his papers. On the right sleeve of his sweater, the wool threads had been torn apart, making a fairly large hole, which disgusted Milena. She turned away. How many times had she wished she could throw away all those torn and stained clothes? How would Will react? Would he be angry? Surely he would. He was so devoted to saving money that it bordered on stinginess. He did not like children because they “cost money,” and he did not want contraception because it was “expensive.” Was it then any wonder they never had sex anymore? She wondered what attracted her to him apart from desperation, which in this relationship, probably motivated him too. Several large drops of rain began striking the windowpanes. Despite the light, the room seemed to have grown darker.

“If more cases have appeared” she would not let it go “then it isn’t an isolated genetic problem, as they thought, like some kind of mutated porphyria. In that case, it’s an infectious disease. They don’t know what causes it, they don’t know how it is transmitted, but the number of people affected is growing. If it continues like this, it will spread toward other countries.”

“There’s always some disease spreading in Asia,” he snapped, irritated, finally throwing his papers onto the table.

“There was bird flu, then swine flu, there was that necrotizing fasciitis, then MRSA, then Lyme disease, then swine flu again, covid... what haven’t they scared us with? They all came and went away.”

“That is just a speculation. And none of it has ‘gone away,’ as you put it.”

“Whatever. Parts of Asia have high population densities, so transmission is easiest there. It doesn’t mean it will get here. Are you obsessed with another disease again?”

“I’m not obsessed. Hemosclerosis is fascinating in a way. So many details about the disease are unknown, and what is known is incredible and unlike anything that appeared before. They don’t even have a clear clinical picture, just this awkwardly worded description of the ‘complete disappearance of blood from the patient’s body while patient remains alive.’ What does that even mean?”

“You’re ALWAYS obsessed with some disease. You have a problem with your fascination with death and illness. It’s so typical for hypochondriacs. Have you found some symptom on yourself yet?”

She fell silent. She stopped caring about him some time ago, so this didn’t hurt her either. Besides, he was right. She was obsessed with diseases. Not so much fascinated by them as obsessed with the fact that any tiny malfunction in human body could cause terrible damage, and that consequences could be horrific. One wrong gene, a cluster of mutated cells, and you might die in agony, slowly losing your mobility, your tissue, and the remnants of your human dignity. If we were less complex, we would suffer fewer illnesses. The more complex the machine, the more vulnerable it is to malfunction. Perhaps she too carried some faulty gene, a small timed bomb that would one day explode, with terrifying consequences for her.

Perhaps her hair would begin to fall out, pus-filled sores would open on her skin and refuse to heal, and then her face would become deformed beyond recognition. She imagined the horrors she might have to endure. Was it normal to think about that? She was certain it wasn’t, at the very least, such way of thinking was as unhealthy as constantly being aware that one day we will all die. But that was inevitable, wasn’t it? Death, and imagining the disintegration of that perfect system we call the human body. Why have people always been fascinated by diseases, traffic accidents, death, mutilation, public executions? Was it so they could peer more deeply into the complexity of that mechanism, and into the amount of damage it could withstand? How deeply could tissue be cut, how much blood could be lost, how many organs could be removed while there was still life left in a human being?

Nothing is as perfect as life, and unfortunately, nothing is as irretrievable. That was the problem. A person as a whole could never be restored; each one of us is a one-time occurrence. A perfect uniqueness.

She continued stumbling through web pages, following the word “Hemosclerosis” from search engine. There was almost no real information about the disease itself, and even less about the first patient, since he was anonymous. There were only brief reports about spreadding and the appearance of new cases. Because the problem was being presented so ignorantly and casually, there were still just faint traces of panic around the world. Nobody was alarmed by isolated occurrences in distant countries.

Will hated irrational panic and pessimistic, worst-case scenario debates about what might happen. He was a practical man who lived sensibly and in a controlled manner, assuming that life would not offer him any major surprises or unpleasantness. He was happy within that mental framework, and Milena could only envy him for that. The problem was that he couldn’t tolerate the fact that she was not as rational and stable as he was.