“This is unacceptable!” Dune knew that voice. She tried to turn it up, but it was as high as it could go. “The Sick already overwhelmed the hospitals, the crisis centers, I mean, there’s not life support equipment like that in the city! The mayor’s wife is on life support. Half the Pistons and Tigers are on life support. That’s it! What about us? Even with other places sending they machines—got Amtrak full of defibrillators. But people who don’t have healthcare aren’t even eligible for the life support options. And we’re supposed to be grateful they just now quarantining us? And they only quarantining us now because Alice de Costa is sick. No offense to the mayor, I don’t diminish her grief in anyway. I am so sorry her wife is sick, I truly am. But it’s like—now you believe in it? Now? No! No quarantine, who does that protect at this point? If this was New York or LA they would have quarantined us in July and who knows, maybe it could have been contained. Too late. Shit, if this was happening in Kenya they would have stopped allowing Kenyans to travel to this whole country at all the very first day. Emergency management? Man, y’all don’t know what it is, or how it’s spread, and you’ve just let everyone go everywhere. And no one, not one person who has gotten sick, has recovered. We are dying in here! We overwhelmed the morgues too! We need a cure. Everyone’s going to need a cure.

“Somebody needs to help us, this is a total crisis!”

A host came on, voice like a fire pit. “With us in the studio this morning, community activist Elouise Knight. Mrs. Knight, what kind of help can people give? What can normal Detroiters do about this crisis?”

“For one thing we need to believe us. People seem to think we been making this whole thing up—I honestly can’t believe the National Guard is just now being called in—and I don’t even want some military solution but at least that is a step of taking this seriously. We need our water tested. We need our air tested. We need data on where people are getting sick, and when. Stop the misinformation! It’s only Black people getting sick. We know! People need information. We are holding a meeting tomorrow at the St. Regis, 3pm, to talk about this National Guard stuff, and all of this. If you are well, you need to come through. We are fighting for this city’s soul right now, we really are!”

Dune’s eyes crept over to Mama Vivian with guilt or, more precisely, a desire to be absolved of guilt.