Chapter Five
“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.”
“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. Dallas is 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.
“What?” Timmons mouthed back at her, and Norah repeated herself, this time with a volume that contradicted the quiet serenity of the ICU.
“Name.”
“Hobbs. Jim Hobbs,” Timmons shouted back.
“Mr. Hobbs, can you hear me?” Norah placed a hand gently on the man’s shoulder and immediately thought of the early AIDS crisis, when nurses and doctors refused to touch patients as they died those horrible deaths.
If Mr. Hobbs could hear her, this may have been the only human contact he’d felt in days, and that could go a long way.
“Mr. Hobbs, I’m Dr. Norah Bishop, and this is Dr. Durgin.
We’re here investigating what’s making you sick.
” The man didn’t respond, but Norah saw the tiniest twitch of his left little finger, which made her wonder if he was in there.
There wasn’t enough science to prove he was.
But there certainly wasn’t enough to prove he wasn’t.
In spite of herself, Norah had always been spiritual.
Her faith in something better, a plan preferable to any she could forge, gave her solace when she needed it.
And that was enough of a reason to believe.
She looked up from Mr. Hobbs’s nearly translucent face and into Chase’s soft, warm eyes. With a quiet understanding, an almost telepathy they’d always shared, they nodded together, exchanging a moment of peace and respect for this man neither of them knew.
After enough time had passed, Norah pulled down the starchy bed sheet covering Mr. Hobbs and examined his chest, his fingernails, his eyes, and even the soles of his feet.
The exam felt voyeuristic and cruel, especially since she wasn’t used to actually touching patients anymore.
But learning everything she could about this emerging monster was the only way out.
“Hungry?” Norah had noticed Chase’s unusual silence during the first hour of the drive back to camp.
“Actually, yeah. Starving.” Chase seemed to perk up a little, her shoulders no longer slouching against the window, and the color reemerging to her slightly sunken cheeks.
Norah hated that she knew her well enough to sense exactly what was going on in Chase’s head.
She was replaying the images of Mr. Hobbs, already punishing herself for not being able to save him or countless others.
“I just saw a sign for Tito’s Red Hot BBQ in five miles. What do you say?”
“Well, how can I say no to Tito?”
A few minutes later, Norah pulled the jeep off Exit 19 on Route 145, surprised to be surrounded by nothing but a few streetlights and a sign for a Mobil station.
“You sure Tito’s here? Looks like he may have gone home for the night,” Chase said. It was dark, but not too dark for Norah to appreciate that cunning smile she’d begrudgingly missed so badly during all these years apart.
“No kidding. Talk about the middle of nowhere.”
Against Norah’s better judgment, they kept driving what must have been another ten miles down the dimly lit one-lane highway, following the arrow the initial Tito’s sign had pointed in, until finally, like a giant BBQ mirage, a neon sign reading “TI-O’S BBQ” emerged.
The second T flickered weakly, but mainly, the sign just read “TIO’s.
” The parking lot was cracked and tattered, southern-Louisiana greenery peeking through like tiny caterpillars trying desperately to become something bigger, something better.
A few beat-up Chevy pickups with the tailgates torn off were scattered about, but for the most part, Tito’s looked desolate.
“What do you think? We’ve made it all this way. Might as well see what Ti-o has to offer, huh?” Chase, always up for an adventure, flicked her eyebrows.
“Might as well. And hey, you never know. Could be a diamond in the rough.”
“A diamond in the very rough,” Chase said, laughing and throwing open the passenger-side door.
The inside of Tito’s Red Hot BBQ was only a slight upgrade from the dilapidated brick foundation and peeling siding of its exterior.
There was less than a handful of other patrons, mostly obese men in trucker hats with flannel shirts that oddly matched the place’s “I.” A woman in her late thirties, looking like she’d lived a few extra decades during that time, slowly shuffled to the door to meet Norah and Chase as they waited apprehensively at the sign reading “Please Wait to be Seated.”
“What can I do for you two ladies,” the woman, dressed head to toe in faded black cotton accented only by a red plaid apron splattered with an even redder sauce, asked.
“Two for dinner, please.” The woman eyed Norah in her army fatigues, the look of admiration and curiosity that Norah recognized so easily clear on her face.
“Right this way.” Her drawl was thick, and the “y” in “way” seemed to travel off into the heavy night air.
Tito’s menu, which was just a piece of printer paper that had been laminated at a nearby Staples, was passable, and after very little deliberation, Chase ordered the pulled pork with a side of mac and cheese.
“You still eat like a teenage boy, I see,” Norah said, keeping her tone as light as it had been on the drive up.
“My eating habits haven’t changed as much as my metabolism has.” Chase smiled and patted her stomach, which was still quite flat in spite of what Norah assumed was many meals consisting of Taco Bell and Funyuns.