The Dreamers

by Karen Thompson Walker

When one’s life seems broken beyond repair, there remains one last move: a person can at least shut her eyes.

This is how the sickness travels best: through all the same channels as do fondness and friendship and love.

Questions are being raised: Why didn’t the CDC respond sooner? Are the health workers wearing the right protective gear? And how could the authorities lose track of twenty-six kids being held in quarantine?

The man behind the counter is surprised, and disappointed, maybe, that anyone, at a time like this, would be working on a problem so ordinary.