One blink.

Two blinks.

That was all the time I allowed myself to be surprised, and then I was moving. I went to my knees next to the nurse even as everyone behind me reacted.

“Adrionna!”

I took a guess and assumed that was the nurse’s name, so I used it when I leaned over her. “Adrionna? Can you hear me?” I put my fingers against the pulse point in her neck. “Her pulse is erratic,” I said. “And her breathing’s labored.”

“Are you a medical doctor?” Dr. Hoskins crouched down next to me.

“No,” I moved out of his way to allow him to get to her. “My youngest sister is epileptic, and I spent a lot of time babysitting her. I learned a bit more than usual about first aid.”

“Let’s get her up,” Cai said from behind me.

I stood up, letting Cai and Dr. Hoskins lift the unconscious woman onto the gurney someone had found. The doctor pressed his fingers against Nurse Diaz’s neck and frowned. “Her lymph glands are swollen. This is how the kids presented when they first came in.” His face looked even wearier than it had just a few minutes ago. “Does this mean we’re all going to get sick now?”

“Let’s get her into quarantine,” Cai said. “Do you have a mask? We’ll want to do full precautions from here on out, but we need to get her inside with the others and get her stable.”

“Here.” Ms. Bairstow passed around high filtration masks, and we all put them on before moving toward the hallway.

“I’ll get us set up in here,” Pansy said, her voice slightly muffled by the mask. “I won’t be any help in there.”

Cai didn’t even acknowledge her as he pushed the gurney down to the zippered part of the plastic sheeting across one whole section of the floor, and I took my cue from him. Nurse Diaz was the priority. Cai asked Dr. Hoskins questions at such a rapid-fire pace that I could barely follow them, and the expression on the doctor’s face suggested that he was having as difficult a time as I was. I made a mental note to suggest to Cai that Dr. Hoskins get some sleep and some food before he passed out from sheer exhaustion.

Ms. Bairstow unzipped the plastic and allowed us to pass through into the anteroom, a small space between the hall and quarantine. We replaced the mask with higher quality respirators, then quickly pulled on protective jumpsuits, face shields, and gloves. Dr. Hoskins opened the second barrier, and we stepped inside. I had a moment to process two rows of beds, and then we were pushing the gurney into an empty space.

“Oxygen.” Cai gave the instruction even as Dr. Hoskins was reaching for the oxygen tubing.

The two of them worked together to get the mask on Nurse Diaz, and I busied myself with taking inventory in case they needed anything else. Pulling open drawers and cabinets, I was happy to see that they had a lot of basics, which was good, but if we needed anything a bit more obscure, we’d be in trouble. I started a list in my head of all the possible instruments we might need so I could ask Ms. Bairstow before giving Cai the list.

“Do you have access to Ms. Diaz’s health records?” Cai asked as he assisted in inserting an IV and the leads necessary for patient monitoring. “I need to know if any pre-existing conditions may have played a role.”

“We don’t have enough computers to spare one for quarantine,” Dr. Hoskins said. “And we didn’t think it’d be wise to carry one back and forth.”

Cai nodded and watched the monitor as it began to pick up the nurse’s vital signs. “Good call. Until we know more about how this transmits, we’ll need to be extremely careful about what we take in and out of here.”

“Do we have a hard copy of protocols?” I asked as I held out a stethoscope I’d found and wiped down with alcohol preps.

Cai took it without looking at me. All his attention was focused on the patient. “Ask Pansy. She’s responsible for bringing them, making copies, and ensuring that they’re properly distributed.”

Pansy. Great.

“She’s waking up,” Dr. Hoskins said. “Adrionna, can you hear me?”

She nodded slowly, her hands moving across the gurney as if she was trying to figure out where she was.

“Do you think you can breathe without the oxygen mask?”

She nodded again, then tried to sit up. Cai put a hand on her shoulder and gently pushed her back down. “Take it easy. Just lay back and answer our questions.”

“Do I have it too?” Her voice was surprisingly calm. “Whatever it is these patients have?”

“It’s possible,” Dr. Hoskins confirmed grimly. “You were having problems breathing, and your lymph glands are swollen.”

Cai straightened and looped the stethoscope around his neck. “Do you have any pre-existing conditions that might have made you more susceptible?”

She thought for a moment. “Asthma, but that’s about it.”

He nodded. “That would explain the difficulty breathing. How do you feel now?”

“I thought I was coming down with a cold,” she said, glancing at Dr. Hoskins. “My throat’s been sore all day, and my eyes have been dry.”

“We’re going to need to keep you in quarantine,” Cai said. “Just to be on the safe side. We don’t know yet how this bacteria or virus spreads.” He turned to Dr. Hoskins. “We’re going to want to monitor you and Ms. Bairstow. We need both of you to take care of yourselves, so eat, sleep, stay hydrated, but you need to do all of that from the hospital.”

I opened a cabinet and pulled out a hospital gown that looked like it’d fit the nurse.

“What if we were already exposed? Could we have given it to everyone we’ve seen over the last few days?” Dr. Hoskins asked.

“I don’t believe so,” Cai said. “But we’ll want to put together timelines for you, Nurse Diaz, and Ms. Bairstow so we can compare them with the timelines for each of the other patients. Often, that helps us determine the origin of the infection.”

I held up the gown so Adrionna could take off her shirt without embarrassing herself.

“We didn’t get much in the way of histories from the kids,” Nurse Diaz said quietly.

“Were they unconscious?” I asked as I helped her slide the gown on and tie it.

“They’ve been in and out,” she said. “But I think most of it is because they didn’t want to get into trouble. Whatever they’d been doing, it wasn’t something they wanted their parents to know.”

I thought of my younger sisters, Angel and Erin. At ten and eight, they were hardly rebellious tweens, but like most kids, they did things on occasion that they wanted to hide. But as long as they felt like they would get in more trouble for what they’d done rather than lying, they wouldn’t share.

Cai tapped the temporary garments we were wearing. “Our suits are in one of the large cases on the plane.”

“You’ll want to talk to Ms. Bairstow about that,” Dr. Hoskins said.

“All right.” Cai put the stethoscope down on a counter. “Nurse Diaz, we need to run some tests on you to compare to the other patients.”

She nodded. “Do what you have to do, Doc.”

“I’ll draw the blood,” Dr. Hoskins said. “You two should probably keep your exposure in here to a minimum until you get those hazmat suits, right?”

Cai glanced at me as if he was just realizing that I was still there. “Right. Run all the same tests on her as you did on the others. If there’s anything new you want to run, do it, but also do it to the others. We need as many statistics as possible to compare so we can find the pattern.”

Cai and I stripped off the protective clothing in the anteroom and used a healthy measure of hand sanitizer, hoping the precautions had been enough.

When we were finished, we made our way back to the hallway where Ms. Bairstow and Pansy were waiting. The head of the hospital was pale as she chewed the side of her lip. Pansy just looked bored and annoyed.

“Ms. Bairstow, I’m guessing you heard my discussion with Dr. Hoskins.”

“I did,” she said stiffly.

“What I need you to do is remove anything you were wearing when you went into quarantine, take a shower and use the strongest antibiotic soap you have, then change into something clean. Once we have more answers, we’ll be able to tell you if you can have your things back. Continue to wear the mask. It’s as much for others’ safety as it is your own.” Cai’s voice was clipped, but not cruel. Time was precious in situations like this. “Addison and I will also need to use the showers, then we’ll change into our own protective gear from the plane.”

“Your cases are in the other room,” Ms. Bairstow said. “The ones you were asking about.”

Cai nodded, his mouth tight. “Good. At this point, only the five of us will be allowed in that room, and if it’s at all possible, I’d like you to refrain from going in there at all. The rest of us will have suits to use from here on out.”

“The rest of us?” Pansy spoke up. “I’m not a doctor. Why would I be going in there? And she’s not a doctor either. I don’t even see why she’s here.”

I didn’t need to look at her to know she wasn’t referring to Ms. Bairstow.

Cai ignored her. “I’ll need access to your entire system. We need to figure out what this is, but we also need to know where it came from, or we risk another outbreak that may spread faster.”

“Of course,” Ms. Bairstow said. She was still pale but hadn’t freaked out, so that was a good sign.

Cai turned to me. “I need you to organize the information regarding the patients’ relation to each other, when they were brought in, and what symptoms they displayed at the time of admittance. You also need to find out what new symptoms they might have now, and what they’ve eaten since the time they first started feeling sick.”

I nodded. It sounded like a lot of work, but it was compiling information. I’d always had a knack for statistics.

“Pansy, I need you to come up with a complete timeline. Start a full five days before the first patient was admitted and work up until today. I want to know who was where at what time. Be as specific as possible. Put it all on the big whiteboard in the other room.”

“It’s nearly seven o’clock,” Pansy said. “Should we get settled in our hotel room first? The information isn’t going anywhere.”

There was a moment of silence, and then Cai spoke, “Miss Kemyss, you’ve been brought here to do a job, not to be on a vacation. If you’re not comfortable with the work I’ve given you, you’re welcome to return to Atlanta and hand in your two-week notice.”

Two spots of color appeared on her cheeks. “That’s not what I meant,” she mumbled. “I’ll do it.”

“All right,” Cai said. “Let’s get to work.”