Elise

"24 hours?!  Are you kidding me?  He could be dead by then!”

“Miss, please, calm down.  I’m sorry, but I have to go by the book, and the book says we can’t open a missing persons case until 24 hours have elapsed from the time they were last reported seen.”

The officer’s patience was obviously wearing thin now. 

“You have to understand how often this happens.  It’s tragic, but we can’t afford to start investigating missing people the minute they disappear.  We’d bankrupt the city!”

She must have sensed my outrage at the notion that this was simply a matter of dollars and cents.  That, despite the dramatically increased suicide rates, sky-high abduction rates, and frequency of abuse and harassment of men, some councilwoman had relied on a cost-benefit analysis to set the bar on who lives and dies. 

When she came back, her tone was more mollifying.

“Look, are you sure he didn’t just leave on his own?  You said he owns a vehicle, and that it’s missing, right?  And that you two had a disagreement? 

Evidently he took the car, so maybe he just went to visit a friend.  Is there any place you think he might go if he needed space?”

She was trying to be helpful, and it wasn’t her fault, but I didn’t care.  This wasn’t going anywhere, and I needed help, not lip service. 

“Forget it!  I’ll deal with it myself!!”

“Miss-“

Stabbing the button on my smartphone to end the call, I continued to wear out the carpet in my bedroom. 

What a load of BS!  ‘Standard operating procedure’?  What the hell was standard about a virus-compatible infected man missing for over 12 hours?  Without a woman to look after him, he was essentially a pork chop dangling before a pack of starving dogs!

Dammit Alex, you infuriating man!  I was equal parts angry and terrified from the way he left without even a note.  For all I know, he really might be with a friend.

But I doubted it.  My anxiety flooded back as my anger receded; I knew he wouldn’t have done that to me.  It wasn’t like him.

Think, Elise!  He might be needing you right now!  Forcing myself to calm, I mentally reviewed.

I got home yesterday around 5:30, and both he and his car were gone.   His tablet and overnight bag were still here in my room where he had left them. 

Mom didn’t know anything; she got home after I did.  I knocked on a few doors to check with the neighbors, but it wasn’t much help.  Only one lady was able to tell me anything: she hadn’t seen a man’s car on the street when she got home from her shift at around 2:30pm.

There were really only two possibilities: he left deliberately, or someone came to the house and took him and his car.  A stolen car would be just another loose end for a kidnapper, so I ruled that idea out for now.

But where would he have gone?  He was pretty upset with me yesterday before work, so I couldn’t completely discount the notion that he might have visited a friend for the evening.  Or maybe even go back to school early?  No, his bag was still here.  Wherever he went, he was planning to come back.  And no note probably meant he intended to do so before I returned from work; he wouldn’t have wanted me to worry.

Damn! If only his car had one of those tracking devices.  I had just been thinking about making him get one after he told me about his job hunt outings.  Looks like it wasn’t soon enough.

Looking at my watch, I realized it was nearly 9am now.  I decided to blow off school for the day since I’d gotten hardly any sleep last night.  Besides, there was no way I would be able to focus on my studies right now. 

Spending the next 45 minutes making phone calls, I had exhausted most of the low hanging fruit, and was really no closer to finding him. 

Lena told me she hadn’t heard from him in a week.  I politely declined her offer to help.

Few of his friends were local, and I only had contact info for Eric.  No answer there, but it was unlikely Alex would have seen him anyway – they had kind of fallen out of touch when Eric started seeing that new girl.

I wasn’t getting any further here at home, so I decided to hit the street and see if I could at least find his car. 

The brilliant blue sky and crisp fall weather somehow made me even more morose as I drove about town.  Autumn was always Alex’s favorite season.  Why hadn’t I blown off work yesterday to spend time with him?  Or at least gone home to visit him at lunch.  This whole thing could have been avoided. 

No.  This wasn’t my fault.  I needed to keep reminding myself or I would go mad.

After nearly an hour searching, I had visited the few places I thought me might have gone.  The coffee shop where we started dating.  My school, where we hung out to study when he was in town.  Even the bookstore, where he liked to sit and read or check out photography magazines. 

Nothing. 

Getting desperate, I even drove by Alex’s parents’ old house on the other side of town.  They had moved away a year ago, claiming it was the neighborhood that had driven them out.  The real reason was obvious though – they were worried the virus would split them up.  Their fear was certainly not unfounded. 

Alex’s dad had taken a job that allowed him to telecommute, and after severely cutting back their expenses, they moved to an isolated spot in the country.  They would never cut Alex out of their lives, but they wanted to limit their exposure to infected as much as possible.

As I looked out the window of my car now, I saw the old, abandoned neighborhood for what it was – a used up relic that society had literally outgrown.  A monument to how things used to be when men and women were equals – or close enough to it.  Regardless, Mother Nature didn’t discriminate, and was happily reclaiming it for her own. 

It brought back some powerful memories though.  Smiling a little, I thought of how I used to wait for Alex to get his butt out the door in the morning so we could walk to the bus stop together.  Playing baseball together with the neighborhood kids in the field next to the Shermer place.  Movie night Fridays in Alex’s room, complete with popcorn and laughter. 

The memories brought home just how close we had always been.  The virus had changed our relationship in many ways, but I had loved him no less then than now. 

My eyes welled up with barely contained tears as I hung my head and prayed that I would get the chance to hold him again.