Chapter Seven #3
As they approached the service station, they eyed each other, neither of them wanting a repeat of their earlier run-in.
Before they could decide who would go in (which Chase knew would be Norah, because she’d insist on it), a woman in her late sixties with a well-lined face highlighting a sweet smile exited.
She had long, silver hair that she kept back in a loose ponytail and wore an LSU T-shirt and a pair of beaten-up work boots.
Chase exhaled loudly, feeling her shoulders lower from their resting place around her ears. She watched as Norah did the same.
“Hello. Can I help you?” The woman didn’t have an accent, at least not one you’d expect in these parts of the bayou.
“Yes, ma’am,” Norah shouted, her posture becoming military-straight.
Chase was fascinated by this side of her.
In so many ways, Norah was every bit the woman she’d left behind in Providence way back then.
But there was this new piece of her—strong, confident, precise.
It was almost like the army had taken the beautiful piece of clay that was Norah and, almost impossibly, sculpted her into an even more perfect being.
“Our car broke down a few miles down the road. Do you think we could use your phone?”
The woman eyed Norah’s fatigues, raised a single eyebrow, and then smiled again. “Of course, dear.” She turned to lead them inside, and Chase felt Norah reach over and give her hand one single squeeze.
Business as usual. Norah knew it had to be.
A pandemic was raging, and it was Norah’s job to stop it.
Or, at least, control it. She didn’t have time to think about the kiss she’d shared with Chase the night before that had taken her clear off this planet and to somewhere else entirely.
Now that they were back at the barracks, Chase Durgin was her colleague, and that was it.
“First things first. I want to lay out some new guidelines,” Norah said.
John, Jamie, and the others had gathered around their largest folding table (which Chase had dubbed the Situation Room) later that afternoon.
The army’s camp was buzzing as CDC virologists, epidemiologists, and soldiers eagerly shared their theories and data.
“This is a respiratory illness. The CDC’s latest data looks like it travels in large droplets.
And some of our preliminary work is showing it can travel up to ten feet. ”
The group nodded silently in agreement.
“We need to be wearing masks. All the time. The worst thing we can do is get sick ourselves. Masks and handwashing are a must. Oh, and please, for the love of God, no touching each other. No handshakes. No fist bumps. And absolutely no hugging.” Norah felt the heat rising in her cheeks as she remembered all the ways in which she and Chase had broken her own rules the night before.
“Are you for real?” Jamie asked, “I mean, are you for real, ma’am?” She looked at her feet as Norah shot her a scolding glance.
“Yes, Marshall. I am very much ‘for real.’ I know this sounds extreme, but fomites are going to be the death of us. And I don’t want to end up meaning that literally.
My job is to protect this country, and the world, from this virus.
But my number-one priority is all of you.
So please, follow the rules. Stay safe. Masks.
Don’t touch each other. And for Pete’s sake,” she rolled her eyes and smiled, “wash your damn hands.”
“Captain Bishop is absolutely right,” John said.
Norah was grateful for his backup and knew his words held an authority hers simply couldn’t yet.
“You’re no good to anyone if you’re sick.
Also, I just want to say that the CDC has a preliminary PCR test in the works.
It’s much better than the ones we’ve been using in the hospitals.
It looks like its false-negative rate is only about 3% right now, so if all goes well, we’ll have testing in the next couple of days. ”
“That’s great. Isn’t it?” One of the epidemiologists who’d been nervously standing in the back inched his way forward.
“It is.” John gave Norah a small nod, indicating for her to continue for him.
“It is,” she said. “But the difficulty is going to be mass production. We need companies to mass-manufacture the test, and then we need enough lab personnel and equipment to run the tests. We’re going to have to answer the hard questions. Who gets the test, and who doesn’t?”
The small crowd grumbled in unison.
“And that’s what I’m going to be working on,” Chase said.
She moved to Norah’s side, bringing Norah a gust of strength she hadn’t known she needed.
“The way things are going, we’ll have only enough to test the most vulnerable populations first—the old, the sick.
If we’re lucky, we might be able to test health-care workers.
But for a while, we’re going to have to depend on mask-wearing and handwashing, and hope to God we can educate the public to follow our lead. ”
“I’m not sure God has much to do with it,” John said, a cynical grin on his aging face. “This one’s all up to us, kid.”