“It’s not too late,” Sally says.

Her date doesn’t nod and he just stares at her. It is too late. After the spots of blood erupt onto the napkin, or sleeve, or Kleenex, it is too late.

“That’s why your eyes have been watering,” he says. “It’s happening to you, too.”

“No, it can’t be. I got the vaccination. I should be fine.”

“The vaccination doesn’t sit with everyone though. There is still a small percentage that get the vaccine who still change.”

“I’m not in that small percentage,” she says.

Instead of responding, he slowly rises and says, “You are.”

The watering eyes. The scratching throat. She is. The scratching insides become the itching outsides. She’s seen the video on the news. People scratch their itching skin until it bleeds, and then they scratch until the skin is gone, and after that they continue to scratch past the sinewy tissue of the muscle, down to the bone. Then they bleed to death, but they don’t really die.