She grimaced. “Didn’t sleep well last night. All that albuterol in my system had me hyped up. Barely got a couple hours of sleep.”
“That sucks,” I said. “Maybe today will be better.”
She hummed as she shoved her stuff into the cubbies in the small break room. “Maybe. What do you have there?”
I told her.
She looked intrigued. “You’re helping him?”
“I mean, he doesn’t know that I am.” I laughed. “But yeah.”
I explained what I was looking for and what had been found so far, giving her a little more information than Gentry would probably be comfortable with by the time I was done.
Odin had walked in sometime in the middle of our conversation, adding his two cents on the matter when he could.
Bernice smiled when the clock rang out nine o’clock, signaling the start of our day. “Let me know if you need any help. I’d be happy to do some internet sleuthing with you.”
I took the phone off automatic answer that sent them straight to voicemail, and the damn thing immediately started ringing.
“We need a receptionist,” I told Odin.
“Constance is coming in to help around ten once she gets her daughter to school after their breakfast date,” he said. “Know anyone that needs a job?”
I didn’t know anyone in this town other than the Dixie Wardens and their family, which I told him in the next moment.
He groaned. “That’s what everyone keeps telling me. You women are no help.”
I patted him on the back as I passed to unlock the front door. “We’ll figure it out.”
Constance arriving to answer the phone helped immensely.
It allowed me to unchain myself from the desk and actually get some work done.
The files I pulled this morning were a long-ago memory.
By the time our first break in the day rolled around, it was nearly five o’clock.
Luckily, we had no more scheduled patients for the day, meaning I finally got the chance to look at the case files.
For a whole five seconds until the door jingled, announcing another patient had arrived.
All three of us groaned.
Odin placed his hands over his face and cursed softly.
The first few patients of the day weren’t anything special. Just general checkups.
But as the day progressed, the cases were all a bunch of flus and colds, practically drowning us in germs.
The one that’d come through the door as the clock struck five was no different.
Two women had arrived with their son, who was sick and feverish.
“It’s not too late, is it?” the mom asked. “We came from fifty miles away.”
I froze as my entire being went still in shock.
Professor Wood.
