Chase flashed her a look that asked if she needed her to come along, but Norah shook her head just once, signaling for Chase to stand down.
She tried not to jump to all possible worst-case scenarios as she forced herself to walk calmly away from the group. But the second she was out of view, she began to sprint, running toward Jamie’s tent. Norah was great in a crisis, except when it involved someone she loved. And she’d really grown to love Jamie.
“Jamie?” Norah reached the barracks in thirty seconds flat, not that it was all that far away. “Jamie, are you in there?”
Silence.
“Jamie, it’s Cap… It’s Norah. No one’s seen you in a while, and we’re worried. Are you okay?”
Maybe she wasn’t in her tent. Maybe she’d needed a break from the fear and stress and chaos of it all and took off for the Gulf or something. Or maybe she’d simply gone back home. But a painful moan coming from inside the tent abruptly shattered all those speculations.
“Jamie? I’m coming in.” Norah fumbled with the zipper to the tent and finally yanked it open violently. On the cot lay Jamie, appearing pale even from the entrance, her hair matted in sweat, her breath visibly rapid. She moaned again.
“Oh my god.” Norah forced herself to keep from taking another step, reaching into the pocket of her cargo shorts and pulling out a wrinkled paper mask. If Jamie was sick, they’d all been exposed anyway. But she felt foolish doing nothing to protect herself, not when so many people were depending on her. Not when Chase was depending on her.
In another second she was at Jamie’s bedside, rubbing her knuckles hard across her sternum in an attempt to wake her. Jamie moaned again but didn’t open her eyes, and Norah noted the bluish tint around her mouth.
“Norah? Are you in there?” Chase’s voice echoed from outside the tent, a beacon in the darkness of Norah’s panic.
“We’re here. Get the jeep, Chase. Jamie’s in bad shape.”
Norah kept her tone level, but inside she was trembling. All her years of medical and combat training had never prepared her to lose someone she was close with. She hadn’t known Jamie long, but the proximity of the camp and the unwitting trauma bond had made her feel like they’d been friends forever.
“You’re okay. You’re going to be okay.” Norah whispered through clenched jaws, feeling for Jamie’s pulse, which was rapid and weak.
“Captain?” Jamie opened her eyes with such effort it looked like her lids weighed ten pounds each. “I’m sick. I’m…I’m sorry.” She let out a sputtering cough and closed her eyes again.
“Shhh.” Norah gently stroked Jamie’s damp hair. “Just rest. We’re going to get you to the hospital. You’ll be fine.”
It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes before the rumble of the jeep outside cut through the somber silence, but it felt like days. Norah hated nothing more than feeling helpless. Being a doctor and unable to do anything to fix someone was bad enough. But ever since she lost her brother, feeling helpless had become nearly impossible for Norah. She’d been minding her own business, living her best life, when Davey was blown to pieces by an IED a million miles away. It wasn’t as if Norah could have actually prevented his death—but that didn’t make the guilt any less heavy.
“Ready?” Chase poked her head in, her face lined deep with worry.
“She won’t be able to walk. We’ll have to carry her.”
Before Norah could finish her sentence, Chase was at Jamie’s side, sliding one arm under her legs and the other around her shoulders and hefting her up into the air. Jamie wasn’t exactly big, but Chase picked her up effortlessly, her biceps stretching under her sweat-stained T-shirt, and for one incredibly inappropriate second, Norah couldn’t help but feel her knees sway a little. She opened the rear door, and Chase delicately placed Jamie in the backseat.
“I’m sorry,” Jamie mumbled as Chase buckled her in.
“Stop that. You’re being absolutely ridiculous,” Chase shot back. “You’ll be fine.”
But the glance shared between Norah and Chase as Chase shut the door said Jamie would be anything but fine.
The adrenaline had nearly burned off by the time Norah returned to her tent that night, alone. She and Chase had dropped Jamie off at the ER hours earlier. They knew they wouldn’t be allowed to stay. The hospitals had essentially gone into lockdown since the outbreak, and visitors, even visitors with military clearance, weren’t allowed. Norah probably could have made some calls and pushed her rank, but she didn’t want to break her own rules. Chase sat with Norah in the parking lot in silence, their fingers gently interweaved, until they received a call from the attending physician saying that Jamie was stable. Her oxygen was dangerously low, and they were close to having to intubate her. But she was more awake now, and her heart rate and blood pressure had improved. If Stevens had recovered, Jamie could too, right?
Norah found it nearly impossible to leave Jamie there and return to base. But she couldn’t do anything more. The cicadas sounded as loud as a full symphony orchestra, and she suddenly longed to be home in Atlanta, sitting in the audience at the Pops Holiday Show in a beautiful black dress, Chase smiling next to her, the world safe and uncomplicated again. At rare moments like this, Norah realized just how fucked up everything around her had become. And now Jamie was sick.
Norah sipped black coffee out of her thermos and rubbed the bridge of her nose, re-reading the same ten-page fax about the Birtamimab trial for the sixth time. She needed to talk to Chase about it but just couldn’t yet. The documents were highly classified, but apparently some very early data showed good results from one specific monoclonal antibody. The problem was, it wasn’t near ready for a true clinical trial, at least not by standard FDA timelines. There was some talk in congress about passing some emergency bills to forego some of the needed red tape in order to have a few specialized treatments expedited in attempts to treat H7J1, but the process was still up in the air. Such a move was risky on so many levels. More than just the bureaucraticbullshit that would come from it, the drug was dangerous. The one study that had been done so far showed a 73% cure rate, but 60% of those patients had side effects bad enough to kill them on their own. They knew spontaneous recovery was not only possible in many cases, but likely. Yet then Norah reminded herself that Stevens was the exception, not the rule. He should be dead. The chances of surviving H7J1 after having to be placed on a ventilator were somewhere around 1%. And Norah didn’t like those odds for her friend one bit.
It was nearly two a.m. in Atlanta when Norah picked up her cell phone and called Paul Gill. She knew he would be up at all hours, like her, combing through data and scratching his head as he tried to decide if this clinical trial was worth pushing.
“Paul, it’s me.”
“Norah? Jesus Christ. How are you? I’ve been thinking about you guys down there. Is it awful?”
Paul was an old friend from college whom Norah had stayed in touch with over the years. He’d been the one to send her the fax about Birtamimab. If anyone could tell her the right thing to do, it was him.
“It’s… Yes, it’s pretty bad.”
