‘We used to come here all the time,’ I say. ‘Do you remember?’

She nods and smiles faintly, pushing a napkin along the table in ever smaller circles. Somewhere a child laughs and she winces. When the waitress returns with our food I’m glad for the interruption. Simone mushes her food into a fine paste, until it is a slurry, and then she sets it aside.

‘I don’t think I can eat,’ she says, raising her hands up to blot at the corners of her mouth.

This comes as no surprise but it still irritates me. She is never hungry. I cook each night and watch in the dark of the kitchen as she takes little conciliatory bites. She chews the pieces dramatically, chasing them with sips of water, and each night she gives me the same frail smile as if she is expecting a standing ovation, or perhaps my eternal gratitude.

I feel my disappointment rattle through me. I close my eyes and wait for it to radiate out of my body like an aftershock. I try to remind myself that we are both victims. But when I open my eyes I notice she is distracted, staring out of the window at some distant landmark, and my irritation begins to rise up again. My anger burns inside of me, the flames licking at my throat, trying desperately to reach open air. She is sick, I tell myself. She is sick but she makes no attempt to get better.

‘It’s good,’ I say, lifting the food from my plate in great heaps, chewing it with an open mouth to irritate her.

She smiles distractedly and stares off again, this time towards the deli counter, where a small crowd has gathered. They shuffle anxiously as they watch the breaking news. Slowly the murmur of conversation begins to die down, trickling off gradually as people strain their ears to listen to the broadcast.

In Oregon the air is alive with the sound of sirens. The sick are collapsing in the streets, their bodies piling up in clinics and hospitals. The footage looks like a strange fiction.

When someone asks a waitress to change the channel she shrugs.

‘It’s on every channel,’ she says.

Members of the public are urged to contact emergency services if close relatives experience severe headaches, disorientation or a fever that persists for more than two days. Symptoms in the later stages of the illness are said to include a swelling of the face, a reddening of the eyes, auditory and visual hallucinations and a feeling of pronounced euphoria.

Investigators have so far been unable to determine a means of transmission. It’s not airborne, they say. It’s not sexually transmitted. ‘But it’s clearly communicable,’ the telecaster says, ‘given the sheer number of reports we’re receiving.’

Simone wrings her hands. ‘What do you make of it?’ she asks.

I study the troubling images on the television screen. The vast emergency response, the clear severity of the illness. I take an immediate, if slightly shameful, solace in the fact that we are half a country away. That there are thousands of miles separating us from any perceivable threat.