Day 2 of 30: Denial

Stage One: Denial

It was a mottled purple night, the January moon reflecting off the freshly fallen snow. It was breathtaking in an awful sort of way; too cold, too dark, too frightening for humans to really live like that. Angie liked it from the short, crucial distance. She could glimpse it from her living room. Seeing it from the bedroom window would scare her too much.

They were stocked up on the essentials of life: home-made soup, cookies, bread. They had leftovers stocked away in the freezer: ham and turkey and other assorted meats, labelled and put away in case they got snowed in. It wasn't likely, but it didn't hurt to be prepared.

Angie had baked and cooked since Thanksgiving, it felt like. She could sit back and feast. She didn't have to move at all. She was on her winter break between classes. She had the week off work from Saint Esmeralda's Hospital. She had little to no responsibilities for the first time in months. She could just relax and read.

Angie was glad for her apartment's gas fireplace, for its idea of comfort more than anything it truly provided. She was in her formal flannel pajamas, a quilt wrapped around her. She had a stack of paperbacks and magazines by her chair, cocoa and cookies on the coffee table a short reach away. She was going to spend as much time in her little nest as she could until classes started again.

Angie, a nursing student in her late twenties, was wishing she lived anywhere but the Midwestern United States. It got too cold. It got too hot in the summer. She was discontent with her life. She loved being in school, she loved her domesticated partner Matt, she loved the idea of being a registered nurse, a nurse practioner, of helping people. She was at the lowest point of her own energy levels, as far away from the peaks of the summer as her little apartment was in the dying winter.

Sometimes, it could be beautiful.

Matt knew what he wanted to do, and he was there. He was in Quality Assurance for a software company. Angie didn't entirely understand his job, but she knew he wore khakis and polos in the summer, and flannel-lined khakis and sweaters in the winter. His salary was almost three times what she was making as a nurse aide; she'd be making more when she became a nurse practitioner. He wasn't the macho "my wife can't make more money than I do" type; he was looking forward to her increased earning power. They weren't in lean times; it was just an extended period of transition.

She heard something outside. She'd opened the blinds to watch the snow fall. She wanted to see a suburban fox, but not up close. She liked animals, but not up close.

"Matt?" she said.

"No," he said reflexively from the couch.

"Matt," she continued anyway, "I heard something outside."

"Too bad."

"Matt, you're the alpha of this tribe."

"Pack," he corrected her.

She rolled her eyes to herself. "Anyway, go check."

"Why should I?"

"Because I don't feel like getting up."

"Poor baby."


The power cut out then, effectively ending their conversation. The fire and the moon through the blinds gave them some light to see by.

Angie carefully dog-eared the page of her book. She took a deep breath, and counted to ten.

"You think your mystery noise did that?" Matt asked her.

"I know it did," she lied.

"You don't know."

His disembodied voice started to gain a location, a body, as her eyes adjusted to the darkness.

There was the fire, there was the moon, there was the snow reflecting it all. There was Matt's silhouette against the blinds. He was looking out into the world.

Angie didn't want to do that. She didn't know what was going to look back; she didn't want to find out.

"We should call the complex," she said.

Matt sighed his long-suffering sigh. He was the voice of reason. "We don't have to; someone else would have already."

"What if everyone else is saying that?"

"They're not," he said.

He was steadfast and solid. He knew what reality contained, what could and could not happen. He knew that the sun would come up in the morning, and that he would have to go to work. He was her anchor, her tether to the world.

However, he was not the one who kept up the stockpile of first aid kits, food, and medication. That was all Angie and her paranoia of being cut off from the world. She was afraid of many things. She was going through school to become a registered nurse. She was learning all kinds of new things to be afraid of.

"What if the power doesn't come back on?"

"Madness and anarchy."

"So long as we're clear on that," Angie said.