Society is like a house of cards, a dry, brittle house. With the tiniest of pushes, it wobbles, threatening to tumble. The plague was like an earthquake to it. The house collapsed and burned to the roots.

His father returned very late in the night with a bandage on his right arm.

Ever since he had seen the accident, Rik had felt a deep chord of fear reverberate inside him. He had returned home, mechanically, and gone to his room, as his mother fussed over his lunch.

As he was leaving school, he remembered how the media had swooped in. The students had to exit through the back gate, as the red wreck garnered the entire attention of the city's media. Few of his juniors had even been accosted on their way out by nosy reporters. It was a complete mess.

 He sat in his room, knees folded up to his chin. Despite how many books lay open in front of him, he could barely focus. A loop of the incident kept playing in his mind. The sounds, the man, the attack; all of it. He sensed as if something had entered the air around him, the air of the city. He couldn't see or describe it, but he felt it in his bones. Walking to the balcony, he ran his fingers through his hair, trying to comb out the thoughts from his head. Looking down, he could see his father pull into the garage. He was very late.

Five minutes later, the bell rang. Mother went to open the door, as his father staggered in. Throwing down his bag, he sat down heavily and demanded a cool glass of water. As his father received the glass, Rik saw a bandage on his arm.

"Baba, how did you get that?", he asked incredulously, "that's definitely not an office injury."

"The police medics made this for me", he replied with a rueful smile.

"What?", Rik asked, standing wide-eyed.

With a deep breath, his father began. "An ambulance plowed into a slum tonight. It's all over the news. It got violent really fast. The RAF is on the scene now", he said, "the police vans were blocking the road, and the incoming vehicles were being diverted off. But I couldn't take a turn, got stuck there." Taking a deep drink of the refrigerated water, he continued, "Getting out of the car, I saw that police were in a fight with the angry slum dwellers. The police were armed with batons, yet the dwellers were attacking ferociously; as if they had nothing to lose." The condensed droplets rolled silently down the glass, as they listened to him in rapt attention.

"The police weren't able to control the protestors. They didn't even show mercy to the downed officers. The rest broke through the barriers and charged for the cars" He took another deep swallow, before continuing, "One of them came directly for me. There was something in his face, a madness. He seemed hurt, blood caking his face, but he didn't seem affected by it at all. He started banging on the bonnet of my car, making a growl. I got out to help him when he charged me. And when I brought up my hand to block him, he bit me like a wild animal," he ended with a look of disgust.

"But as I pushed him, he tripped and fell back. The RAF vans arrived in a ringing blaze of red and blue, started cuffing the miscreants, and their medics administered this first aid. Told me to go for check up tomorrow". A sharp hiss of pain escaped him as he brushed his hand against the bandage.

His mother stopped her husband. "Let's have dinner, and then we'll sleep. The story can wait for tomorrow. You certainly had a day today"

After having dinner, his father complained of a headache, and all of them retired for the night.

  ____________________________________  

Rik opened his eyes to the worried face of his mother. "Baba has a high fever", she whispered to him," I need you to cool him off. Get the water from the fridge"

The night was deep and dark. The only illumination was from the lamps outside, throwing the room into tall vertical shadows. Getting a bowl of water in this artificial twilight, he walked into his parents' room. Despite the cool weather of the March night, the room was stuffy and smelled of sweat. The clock rang thrice, as Rik sat down near his father's head. His mother rummaged in the cabinet for stronger antipyretics.

"It's must be some infection from the wound," his mother mumbled, her back turned to him. The wind outside ruffled the curtains but couldn't wash away the smell of sweat. As he sponged his father, he heard him mumbling in a delirium. His skin burned to the touch, yet his body shivered from a cold. Rik felt a rash on his forehead. They extended up from his arm, getting worse down the way and disappearing under the bandage. A spattering of dirty grey pustules on the pale pallid skin, shiny with a sheen of sweat.

Thirty minutes passed with no improvement in condition. The delirium rose and fell. The injury seemed to radiate a cold blackness from under the white bandage, suffocating the warm, yellow glow of the lamp. He heard his mother take a deep breath.

"I'm calling for an ambulance, you try to find an Uber or something", there was steel in her voice.

For the first time in his life, Rik felt truly scared. Never in his 17 years had they required an ambulance for an emergency. His father was always there, to take care, to drive him to the hospital when he had fractured his shin, to drive his mother when she had hurt her head in the kitchen; a pillar of power, of fortitude. For the first time, there was a crisis in the family, and his father wasn't there to fix it. He had to step up now, to take responsibility. The situation had to be fixed.

His father lay mumbling in a delirium, the fever throwing off waves of heat from the skin.

"All emergency lines are busy. I cannot get through to an ambulance", his mother said, with a crack in her voice. 

Glancing at his phone, he saw the flashing message. "No Cars Nearby", it said.

"Grab the keys, let's put your driving to the test.", she replied, her brow creased with worry.

"Okay", Rik said, a sob squeaking through, "But how do we get Baba down?"

"We carry him down", came the reply.

____________________________________ 

While waiting for the lift, his father started choking.

Rik started shrieking loudly to his mother, as he almost dropped his father against the wall. His mother, with glistening eyes, checked the tongue. It wasn't causing the choking. Yet his father gasped like fish in the air. The dark hallway lit up as the door to the neighbors opened. The friendly elderly couple, the Guptas, rushed out.

Mr. Gupta, retired army personnel, pushed Rik aside and laid his father on the floor. He palpated his neck for a pulse and found a weak one. His father suddenly stopped breathing at all. Rik stood on the side, time slowing down for him. Mrs. Gupta had her phone to her ear. His mom sat by her husband's side, his hand in hers, her face a grotesque portrait of the nadir of human misery.

Clearing his mother, Mr. Gupta prepared his father for CPR. Compress, release, compress, release. Nothing worked. The skin at the neck turned white with contractions.

Rik heard sirens in the distance, followed by some shouts wafted up by the wind.

Compress, release, compress, release. His father's face was slowly turning blue.

Mrs. Gupta had got through to an ambulance service. But for some reason, all their cars were busy on calls, there had been a string of violence all across the city.

Compress, release, compress, release.

His father took his last breath in a dark corridor, lit only by the cold, fluorescent light from the lift, on the 14th floor of a nondescript apartment building.

Compress, release, compress, release. Check for pulse. 

The weak pulse finally stopped three minutes later, but to Rik, it felt like an eternity. All he remembered of his father was the last thing he had said to him, "I don't own the electric company, so switch off the bathroom light when you're done." But unlike that time, barely six hours earlier, Rik didn't even feel the slightest twinge of a smile

Compress, release, compress, release. His mother broke down into wracking bouts of sobs.

Rik zoned out of the situation. He felt his mind drifting away from the situation, feeling lightheaded. He remembered hearing a wailing of grief, a morbid cry of pure despair. He remembered his throat cracking, the taste of vomit on his tongue. He remembered the smell of burnt plastic in the wind, mixing with the ammoniacal smell of urine.

He remembered his father sitting up suddenly and biting out the neck of his elderly savior.