“You mean, what did my body have to say about the whole ordeal?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
She grinned coyly. “I’m not quite as good at keeping that part quiet. And it seemed to have a lot to say that night.”
Jamie stopped walking and clapped her hands a few times with giddy excitement. “Oh, this is so great!” she squealed.
Norah scrunched her face up tightly and gestured to the sunlight, which had now encompassed much of the fronts of the nearby tents they passed.
“I know, I know. The sun’s up. This conversation never happened,” Jamie said with clear disappointment in her voice.
“I will deny it and have you hanged for treason.”
Jamie’s pout evolved into a tiny laugh. “If I can just say one more thing…”
“Why did I feel like this was coming?” Norah said playfully.
“Just hear me out. You should try to listen to those other parts of you once in a while. You don’t have to be so perfect all the time, you know. Sometimes, it’s good to make mistakes.”
Good to make mistakes. The concept felt absurd to Norah. But maybe there was something there, some modicum of truthamong the crazy. Isn’t that what Chase was now, anyway? A tiny bit of peace amongst the chaos. A desert mirage. A second chance.
Chase didn’t have a lot of time the next morning to recall the way Norah stood between her open legs, her mouth just begging to be kissed. By the time the sun had come up, Chase was already tying her hiking boots and splashing cold water from a canteen onto her face, ready to find a reasonably fresh cup of coffee to jump-start the day. Norah and John were standing outside Chase’s tent when she exited, speaking in hushed tones, their brows burrowed deep. Something was very wrong.
“What’s going on?”
The two looked up at Chase but did little more than soundlessly gesture for her to approach.
“Stevens is sick,” Norah said, her voice thick with worry. The bags under her listless eyes made it clear to Chase she’d been up all night, just like Chase had seen the morning of so many med-school exams. There were so many parallels to those days, Chase thought. But this was so much darker, like an alternate universe where you finally get everything you’ve ever wanted, five minutes before the entire world explodes.
“Wait. Who’s Stevens?” Chase was still staring at Norah’s lifeless face, her only concern how to fix whatever was breaking her that day.
“One of the privates. He spiked a fever last night, and this morning he’s coughing and not looking great,” John answered, his tone equally as heavy.
“What do you mean, sick?”
“We don’t know. It could just be the flu. Hell, we’d even take some good old Zika right now. But it’s unclear. I’m working on getting the CDC to send us a testing kit down here as soon as possible. In the meantime, he’s been quarantined. We have him inan isolated wing of the medical tent down the road. He’s getting the best supportive care there is,” John said.
Chase felt fear, true, bone-breaking fear, for the first time since their arrival. If this thing had infiltrated their camp, they were all at risk. Norah was at risk.
“So, what now?” She was looking directly at Norah, who sucked in a deep breath and sighed.
“We wait. We follow the rules, we trust the science, and we wait.”
This was hardly the answer Chase was hoping for. Not when Norah’s safety was in jeopardy.
“That’s it? We just sit back and hope this thing doesn’t kill us all?” Chase’s tone of voice rose with each word.
“What choice do we have?” John said.
“What about treatment options? Has anyone heard anything yet?”
Norah took a step toward her in what seemed to be an attempt to comfort her.
“Both of our organizations, and the NIH, are looking into it. There’s been some promising new data about a chemotherapy drug used for high-risk breast-cancer patients, and Pfizer, Moderna, and J and J are all working on a vaccine.”
“That stuff will take months, years even. We don’t have that kind of time! What if you, I mean, what happens if one of us gets sick, Norah?” Chase felt the panic burn its way through her body, choking the air out of her chest.
“Chase.” John put his hand on her shoulder, reminding her of the father she should have had. Norah looked at John warily but, upon seeing the way Chase’s body relaxed at John’s touch, seemed to have decided not to bring up the “personal-space rule.”
