To the man’s displeasure, there was a wrinkle on his analysis document. With a silent scowl, he straightened out the report and compiled it into his cancer research folder. Feeling something heavy in his lab coat’s pocket, the man reached in to pull out a secret farewell note from his son. Without sparing even a glance at the message, he flung it into the drawer where he always threw these daily notes and dashed towards the door. Time was of the essence.
However, as the man turned the doorknob, a voice pulled him back in.
“Why are you leaving again?” The man veered to find his wife with a despondent frown. She seemed more and more uneasy as she stared at his lab coat. “Please, at least stay with us for breakfast. The boys are scared, and they want to–”
“Do you not read the news?” The man interrupted his wife with condescendence before turning back to the door. “The cancer mutation has destroyed all of Europe. Signs of it have already appeared in Maine. If I don’t go to work, who’s going to solve this mess? I don’t have time for this.”
“I have seen the news; it’s exactly why you shouldn’t go!”
The man spun around again, eyes filled with venom. His wife had never dared to raise her voice against him before.
“Is it so hard for you to spend one morning with us after knowing we all might die? Why can’t you think of your family for once and stop working on a stupid, hopeless cure?!”
When the woman looked up, hoping for a look of understanding from her husband, all she found was an empty doorway.
The man seethed as he slammed the door of his car closed. He sped out of his driveway, glowering at a patch of chrysanthemums that his wife planted a few days ago. He continued onto the highway, sneering as he replayed the events of this morning in his head.
“As if they’re more important than what I’m facing right now.”
Throughout the entire workday, the scientist realized that a majority of his coworkers decided to not show up; however, those who did were irritable and short-tempered. As the man rushed to complete his tedious research, the bleak atmosphere of the laboratory infected him with anxiousness. After hours filled with stressed yelling and panicked scrambling for answers, the man wished that he had eaten something that morning. Outside the facility, the night contained only silence. He shuffled into his car, glancing at the still-lit laboratory before driving away. His eyes darted around the deserted highway as he went well over the speed limit. The man pictured his son waiting for him at home to block out the deafening silence of loneliness.
Once he reached his town, his mouth went dry. The grass on the ground had shriveled away to a muddy yellow with scattered plots of dead land everywhere; every tree had shedded, resulting in piles of brown leaves blowing throughout the streets; all the houses lining the roads looked abandoned, turning the neighborhood into a ghost town. The man crawled to a stop at his driveway, gazing at the wilted chrysanthemums on the pathway. His arms felt heavy as he hesitantly unlocked the door to his house.
A suffocating odor flooded his senses before he arrived upon a petrifying scene. The withered bodies of his family were laid lifelessly in the shadows. Their corpses were pale and wrinkled, with the outlines of their bones visible. The wife and son he once knew were nowhere to be found, and the man was left with three skeletons. When his eyes fell upon the despaired expression on his wife’s haggard face, his heart ached with a pang of unavoidable guilt.
If only he hadn’t left them this morning. If only he had spent one more day with them. If only he had one more breakfast with his son. If only he had one more smile from his wife.
If only he had one more chance.