“Doctors. I’m Jeff Timmons. Please, come on in and have a seat.” The smile he offered was far softer and more genuine than seemed fit for someone in his position, but Chase relaxed a little.
“Mr. Timmons.” Norah began speaking, and Chase realized she’d been looking at her to take charge of the scene.
“Please. Call me Jeff.”
Norah smiled and sat down, Chase following her lead. “I’m Dr. Norah Bishop with the army, and this is Dr. Chase Durgin with the CDC.”
Timmons reached his hand out cheerfully to Norah, but Norah just smiled politely.
“We better not.”
Chase realized that things like shaking hands had just become a casualty of the outbreak. It was epidemiology 101—source control. Fomites, what happens when humans touch their faces on a regular basis, are one of the biggest vectors for disease. Why hadn’t Chase thought of that? Maybe she needed Norah even more than she thought.
Chapter Five
Norah would never let Chase or Jeff Timmons see it, but she was terrified. Not just morning-coffee-turning-in-your-gut nervous either. This was a kind of fear she’d previously reserved for the combat tents in Afghanistan after a raid. Then again, the long walk down the hallway to the Tulane ICU probably wasn’t all that different. Norah wasn’t scared of H7J1, at least not on a personal level. She was young (-ish), and healthy (again, -ish), and would probably come out of it landing in the 40–50% survival group they were currently estimating. And if she didn’t, she wasn’t leaving behind a whole lot besides a feral cat and a geriatric best friend.Jesus. When did I become so morbid?Norah couldn’t help but follow the thought with a glance over at Chase, who was keeping step just behind her, eyes narrowed straight ahead. She let herself remember, if only for just a second, a simpler time. At Brown, in their cramped apartment, where nights of protein-synthesis review and colored-pencil diagrams so often led to laughter and unexpected joy and ended with their naked bodies wrapped in bed sheets, quietly whispering about how they were going to change the world.
“Here we are.” Norah was grateful when Timmons redirected her mind to the present, and she briefly reminded herself that things might have started simply with Chase, but they certainly hadn’t ended that way.
“What’s your PPE situation?” Norah said, stiffening and placing her hands on her hips, a pose she often took when she needed an extra jolt of confidence. The fear was still there—fear of failure, fear of letting the country, even the world, down. But it was abating with the straightening of each individual vertebrae in her spine.
“Over here is one of our standard precaution carts. Each one has paper gowns, surgical masks, face shields…” Timmons looked at the ground, his cheeks growing pink in a way that seemed out of character for the brief time Norah had known him. “And I guess that’s it.”
Silently, Norah opened each drawer of the plastic cart, taking out first a gown, then a face shield, and after carefully inspecting each item for signs it had been sitting in a supply closet since the 80s, she returned them.
“This will do. How many do you have?”
“In the hospital?” Timmons asked. Norah nodded impatiently. “I’m not sure exactly. I’ll have to ask my supplies manager. But if I had to guess, I’d wager about 10,000 masks on hand and 7,000 or so gowns?”
“What about N95s?” Chase took a step toward them and angled her body in a way that told Norah she was ready to take at least one of the reins.
“That’s a great point.” Norah tried not to notice the tiny smirk that curled its way onto Chase’s lips. “Our data right now shows that these virus particles are pretty big. Your standard masks are okay for quick trips in and out of rooms, but any kind of close contact will need more.”
“We have a lot fewer N95s. Maybe half? But I’ll see about getting some more shipped in from out of state. Clearly we have the biggest need for them.”
“For now,” Chase grumbled so softly Norah was sure she was the only one who’d heard her.
“Dr. Durgin’s right again. I’m worried about this thing not just on a state level, but a national one. Maybe even global. Dallasis already reporting a couple of cases that sound a lot like H7J1, and since testing isn’t widely available yet, we can only speculate how many cases there already are around the country. Supplies are going to run out, and they’ll run out quickly. Just prepare yourself for that inevitability. Protect your staff, Mr. Timmons.”
Jeff Timmons nodded, his eyes now glossy with fear. It wasn’t a surprise to Norah that Timmons, and so many others, weren’t taking the outbreak seriously yet. No one would, until it was already too late. Unless Norah and Chase could make them.
“Let’s get to it then.” Norah opened the PPE cart once again and removed three yellow paper gowns, handing one to Timmons and then Chase. She tied each of theirs before securing her own and then removed three masks with attached plastic face shields. In the cart she found a package of paper hairnets, which she insisted they wear as well. And when everyone looked like something out of a Robin Cook novel, each of the three pulled nitrile gloves from boxes on the wall, coming out strung together like a clown’s handkerchief.
Timmons led the way, his ID badge initiating the soft hiss of the ICU doors sliding open.
“In bed five here, we have a fifty-six-year-old man who became ill about ten days ago, I believe.” He gestured to the patient, who was still behind glass, but made no move to go into the room.
“Symptoms?” Chase asked, creeping past Timmons to get a better look at the man who was being ventilated by an endotracheal tube, his arms limply at his sides, too tethered by IV lines and tubing to move even if he were strong enough to try.
“Cough, high fever, then shortness of breath. By the time he arrived at the ER, his oxygen levels were very low, and he was intubated.” Timmon’s lack of medical education was evident not just by his clear discomfort around sick people, but by his laymen’s understanding of the body and hypoxia.
“Has his test come back yet?”
“Yesterday. Positive. Along with three others here in the ICU and ten others on the medical floor. Many of them are on oxygen, and a couple are looking like they may need to be transferred to the ICU if they don’t start improving.”
Norah moved to the glass door of the man’s room and opened it. She was less than surprised when Timmons took several large steps back. Chase, however, was at her side nearly immediately.
“What’s his name?” Norah asked through the now-closed door.
