The End of Men

by Christina Sweeney-Baird

Do you need to dress up for Halloween if you’re a parent? This has never been an issue before. Theodore turned three a few months ago so until now I’ve just dressed him up as something cute (a carrot, then a lion and then an adorable fireman with a fuzzy helmet) and taken photos of him in the house. I don’t want to be a boring parent who everyone thinks is snooty and above the joy of dressing up. I also don’t want to be embarrassingly keen. Do all the other parents make an effort? Do any of them? Why does no one ever explain this stuff to you in advance?

Beatrice, my only real friend at Theodore’s nursery, said she would rather die than dress up in something flammable, but she works in investment banking and buys £2,000 handbags when she’s “had a bad day” so I don’t think she’s necessarily a good indication of what the other mothers in this quiet part of South London will do.

I’m eyeing up the costumes uneasily. “Sexy witch.” No. “Sexy Handmaid’s Tale Handmaid.” Will get me banned from the St. Joseph’s Parent Teacher Assoc...

If an in-depth understanding of your spouse’s job was a requirement for a long-lasting and happy marriage, no one would stay married.

But I promised in our wedding vows to always listen and never judge. I was twenty-four! I didn’t know anything about how annoying it can be to have to listen when you just want to have a glass of wine.

A lump is in my throat. I rarely cry now about our years of infertility. I try to swallow it down because really, you cannot spend every night crying for two years. It’s too depressing for words.

One of the nurses, though, was the same. Kirsty treated the man from Bute and Fraser McAlpine. Please, God, let Kirsty be a murderer, because that would be so much less stressful than this being a contagious infection or a hygiene problem.

They all have flu-like symptoms. Either they or their wives are concerned it’s something sinister like sepsis—there was a sepsis campaign put out by the government in October. It’s saved around twenty lives in this hospital alone and has also single-handedly increased waiting times. Everyone and their mother are convinced they have sepsis.

I’ve now written to fourteen newspapers around the world. I have sent Health Protection Scotland eight e-mails and called twelve times, not a single one of which has been answered. I’ve e-mailed the WHO in London and Geneva nine times. I. Am. Screaming. Into. The. Void.

I haven’t talked about any of this with my friends, not properly.

Of course, now there is nothing I want more than to be pregnant. I need the safety of numbers. My happiness, my soul, is wrapped up in Theodore and it’s too much. It’s so fragile I can’t bear it. All I want is to know that I’m pregnant with a new life, a safe new life. A girl. I need to be pregnant with a girl. I would inject myself every minute of the day with a thick, stinging serum if I could have a girl now.

For the first time in my life since I was eighteen, I was bold and brave and maybe even a little reckless. I use the example of Stanford versus Ole Miss whenever I need to feel like I’m making the right choices; it never fails me. My parents were so sure they were right and I was wrong. Who did I think I was acting like I was too good for the University of Mississippi? They were convinced Stanford would be an expensive waste of time. They were wrong. I was right. I need to remember that more often.

My boss is expecting me back in three weeks, in time to start work again by January. “The European Plague is going to die out, Elizabeth. It’s clearly got some kind of genetic component.” His arrogance is breathtaking. He’s not a geneticist and neither am I. I aspire to think so much of my own opinion that, having never even seen it under a microscope, I can blithely reassure someone that a virus has a genetic element, using the justification of an area of science I don’t even have a master’s in. I know for certain that this is where I need to be. What’s the point in having spent nine years getting my undergrad degree, master’s and PhD specializing in vaccine development if not to help find a cure for a disease? This is what I did all of that work for. It’s not just to have certificates on the wall.

It’s lucky that I even saw the e-mail from Dr. Kitchen. I had been covering for Jim—who’s such a moron I still can’t believe that he a) got into Yale; b) works at the Centers fo...

Understanding dawns; I’m not here to help, not really. He doesn’t need me. He needs the impression that the CDC is helping. Part of me is completely baffled that, in a time of crisis, the political showmanship that’s endemic in public institutions is still happening. Part of me is impressed he’s so quickly managed to manipulate me without even saying a word.

What I do know, from years of reporting, is that ignorance, incompetence and fear so often go hand in hand with government that none of us should be surprised if the institutions we thought would keep us safe would in fact be woefully inadequate in the face of a pandemic.

I will grant you that we should have clocked sooner that the low recovery rate and the fact it only affects men means it creates unique security concerns. Police, army, navy, fire services, paramedics, security services; primarily male professions each and every one.

Her supervisor was a sexist asshole called David Bird, and if it makes you feel any better he’s dead now, so. There’s that.

And just like that, I’m deputy director of the United Kingdom’s Plague Vaccine Development Task Force. I can imagine my dad saying, “Not bad for a girl from Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Not bad at all.”

I have never felt so powerful. This must be what men used to feel like. My mere physical presence is enough to terrify someone into running. No wonder they used to get drunk on

Emergencies like sepsis, meningitis, appendicitis, pneumonia and kidney infections don’t stop just because the world is in crisis. I wish I could say to all the old women in Glasgow, “Would you stop fucking falling, the lot of you, I only have two orthopedic doctors left in this entire hospital.” Alas, I can’t. Even in the midst of a crisis, I have a better bedside manner than that.

I know it’s irrational to hate someone for their life not being obliterated, but rationality is more than I can bear at the moment.

I tried to read a romance novel a few days ago, thinking it might help. I managed two paragraphs before I slammed it shut, repulsed by the cheery tone. Now, it’s comforting to read about mysteries, death, terror and the eventual resolution of justice. My brain’s capacity for reading about the good fortune of others, even if their happiness is fictional, is currently nonexistent.

Just because lots of people are experiencing something alongside you doesn’t make it any better. If anything, it’s harder because you’re not special. There are no allowances or respect for grief. The whole damn world is grieving.

And the hardest thing about infertility that no one ever tells you about is the hope. It’s not the going wrong that’s the most painful part. It’s the betrayal of hope that this time you had the audacity to think it would be different. It’s the searing pain of hope as you try again and fail again, and try again and fail again, each time knowing you’ll fail and yet hoping you won’t.

Gillian looks at me with an awed expression; it’s rare to see anyone sharing credit for anything in civil service. Jackie’s a good egg.

“You’re looking well, Dawn,” he says. Bernard only knows how to compliment women on their looks. It would never occur to him to comment on anything else.

I can only imagine Bernard’s immune because the Plague took one look at him, heard him spouting pseudoscientific misogynistic nonsense and thought, Oh God no, I can’t be dealing with that. If you want proof that nice guys don’t always win, look no further than the fact that Bernard is one of only three surviving male MPs in his party.

Apparently my predecessors at Health Protection Scotland have been “hands off” leaders, which I think is a polite way of saying “lazy.” I don’t see how anyone can understand health policy in practice, and know what needs to change, without seeing it on the ground. My peers seem to think that’s radical.

I have the newest iPhone and it’s as small as the iPhones of a decade ago because Apple realized that women have smaller hands than men (who knew?) and so the tablet-size monstrosities they expected everyone to buy didn’t fit in women’s pockets or hands. I can now type comfortably with one hand for the first time in years. Women are now 57 percent less likely to die of heart attacks because treatment protocols have changed to recognize the different symptoms men and women experience. The first drug ever to treat endometriosis has been discovered; it is expected to create billions in profit over the next decade. Female police officers, firefighters and members of the armed forces are now less likely to die doing their jobs because they have uniforms designed for them, rather than simply wearing small men’s Kevlar vests, boots, helmets and uniforms that don’t fit.

“Thank you all for being here,” the prime minister says. Somewhat unsurprisingly for a woman who has been successfully leading a country through its worst-ever crisis, she’s absolutely terrifying. The room is at attention.

It’s as though the entire planet has breathed a sigh of relief. Phew. They did it. We’ve all survived. Thank bloody God. I couldn’t handle World War Three before I retire after dealing with a Plague. I. Could. Not.

Iris is nodding furiously along with everything James is saying. Is she a wife or a cheerleader? Perhaps he thinks they’re the same thing.

“You know, the world doesn’t have to remember you for you to matter. We were loved by those we loved. Not everyone can say that,” she tells me softly. No, I don’t suppose they can.