She chuckled. "A most unusual situation, and one I intend to exploit to the fullest extent."
"Do you think you are pregnant?" I said hopefully. "You ought to be, I'm plum wore out trying."
"Well, I'm not ready to take up knitting yet," she joked, "but there are encouraging signs."
All across the continent, virus laboratories were working continuously and almost exclusively with the S-Flu. A number of experiments using convalescent serum were in progress but, as it was not known exactly who had been exposed to virus, and when, the results were hard to evaluate. Now we had proof. We three had been exposed to virus at a known time and yet, two weeks later, there we were as healthy as ever. When the news was published, every blood bank in the country was swamped with volunteers. At first the convalescent serum was given only to the males ... a dramatic reversal of the laws of chivalry ... but the women did not complain. They knew that without fertile men there could be no children and to most of them such a world seemed empty indeed. Gradually, as supplies increased, all non-infected persons living in contaminated areas received weekly doses which, though much less than I had had, were found to give sufficient protection in most cases. It was still not known if there were any ill effects on unborn children so pregnant women were also included in the schedule. Where injections were given, and no new cases reported, the quarantine was lifted after a while, but where the disease had never reached, the population was still isolated, awaiting the day when a permanent vaccine would be available. Sporadic outbreaks of the disease were still to occur, months and even years later, among those who had never had it, but at last the major epidemic was over. The discovery, at the Medical Center of New York, of a protective vaccine, eventually made isolation unnecessary.
Long before that happened, the restriction on our movements was lifted. Only those in the uncontaminated areas were confined to their own locality. The rest of us, provided we took our weekly serum shots, were let loose.
"Now I can make an honest woman out of you," I joked as we walked out of the Lab and breathed gratefully the cool damp air of early winter.
"You don't need to darling," Pat said. "If I am pregnant there's at least a million women envying me right now. When it was easy to get pregnant it was proper to do it only in holy wedlock, as they say, but moral standards are changing already. To be pregnant is an honor, illegitimately or otherwise. I imagine before long there will be a lot of husbands looking the other way or condoning artificial insemination if they can have sons thereby."
"You still want to get married, don't you?"
"Of course, sweetheart," she squeezed my arm, "but I want a proper wedding, not a civil ceremony, and we haven't time for it now."