Red Photo Frame

“We should have known it was coming. Looking back now… it’s almost laughable we didn’t see it. But we didn’t. We sat back. Watched idly as neighbors disappeared, accepted it as curfews were enforced. And now we want to sit here and complain and cry about the unfairness of it all. The world was taken from us because we didn’t deserve to have it in the first place.” he pauses, looking around the room as if just noticing it for the first time. He holds up the picture frame in his hand. “Do you know how often I stare at this picture? Do you know how many times I’ve traced her face with my fingertip?”

The man stops talking as if he wants me to actually answer. I look up from the fire, squint at his figure around the burn in from the light.

“….How many times?”

“More than I ever looked at her when she was here. Before all this shit, parents would talk about how they would just sit and watch their kid sleep, and that was enough for them. You remember that? Remember when there’d be a new baby and you’d go see it and you’d have that silence where everyone just sat and stared at the kid, doing absolutely nothing?”

He’s paused again as if he wants me to respond. “Yeah I know what you mean.”

He shakes his head. “I didn’t feel that. I’d sit there, bored as shit, wondering when the kid had been asleep long enough for me to move without seeming like I didn’t care. It was all a fucking act. My daughter… she cried. A lot. All the time. She was a terrible baby. And I just didn’t like her." He stops, takes a shuddering, wheezing breath. His voice quiets, defeated. "So of course I lost her. I lost her ‘cause I didn’t deserve her, just like we lost the world, ‘cause we didn’t deserve it."

The man looks at the photo again, the cheap red plastic frame worn away from holding it the same spot, day after day.

“So, did she die the day of the outbreak?” I ask him. The silence was getting too heavy, the man just sitting there looking at his photo.

“I don’t know. She was at school, 9th grade. I worked on the other side of town. By the time I realized what was happening, by the time I clued the fuck in, they’d shut down that side of city. No one in, no one out. They thought they could contain it but even that didn’t work. I can only assume she’s dead. How could a kid survive that? My wife told me to keep her home that day too, she was a nurse and had seen the first preliminary cases come in, said she had a bad feeling, but had to go in early for a double shift. I didn’t even hear her. I think I was looking at my phone. Drove the kid to school just like any other day. Left her there. Drove away. That night my wife came home, you could tell she was already sick. I don’t know how she made it all that way, but she did. She fought through God knows what hell; because she wanted to be able to tell her daughter goodbye. She died on the other side of the bathroom door, sobbing her eyes out. Back then we didn’t know how it spread, you know? I swore I’d go find our daughter. Swore to her over and over, our fingers touching underneath the bathroom door. I’ve been looking ever since.”

I look at the man, his sallow skin, his limp sweat-soaked hair. His eyes are blood shot and his fingertips are starting to blacken.

“Can I see the photo?” I reach my hand out, hovering in the air between us until it falls limply back down to my side.

The man stares at the photo, looking as if it’s his lifeline to the world. And I guess it is at the point, his guilt the only thing tethering him to this place. We sit quietly for awhile longer, his head slowly starting to droop. He makes a grunting sound, then feebly raises the picture off his lap and gestures it toward me. I take the photo.

“Look for her.” He whispers to me. He sighs heavily, and then stills. I sit for a moment, listening for any faint breaths. I pat his booted foot next to me, feel for his pulse on his wrist.

I look down at the photo. It’s a dark haired blue-eyed girl, maybe 8 or 9, her finger outstretched to the camera with a tiny butterfly perched on top. Her face is slightly out of focus, but the butterfly is crisp in the forefront of the photo. Something itches at the corner of my mind. I hold the photo closer to the fire, my eyes snagging on a small heart shaped locket around her neck. My breath catches in my throat. I turn the frame over, quickly undo the clasp at the back and pull the cardboard off.

“Anna, age 8” is scrawled on the back of the photo.

I stand up, dizzy. I run from our quarantine room to our main bunkhouse, bursting through the doors. I stop in front of her, hold the photo out.

“What…?” She says, confusion on her face.

“The sick guy, in quarantine…” I pause. “Anna, it was your dad.”