Hugo nodded and disappeared back through the door.
Sawyer watched her as she fiddled with the clips in her hair. She was consulting the plan again. There seemed to be one in every room he entered. A list of procedures. A multitude of flow charts.
She didn’t like it when things weren’t exactly to plan. Then again, she’d never been in charge of an epidemic before.
He could be doing so much more for her. He could be talking her through all this, helping her out. Liaising more with the team back at the DPA—even if that did mean dealing with Evan Hunter.
He knew all this stuff inside out and back to front.
But he just couldn’t.
It didn’t matter that he was stuck in the middle of all this. There was a line he didn’t want to cross. He had to take a step back. He had to focus on the sick children.
He picked up another disposable gown and mask. “The IV fluids on the kids probably need changing. I’m going to go and check on them.” He paused and turned his head just as he left. “You need to go and make an announcement to all the staff. You need to bring them up to date on the information that you have.” He hesitated, then added something else.
“It’s not only the natives that will be getting restless. We’ve got patients here who’ve been quarantined. They won’t understand what’s going on. They won’t know what to tell their relatives.”
She gave the slightest nod, as if the thought of what she was going to say was pressing down on her shoulders. He almost withered. “There’s a public address system at the front desk—use that.”
His phone beeped and he headed out of the room and down the corridor, pulling the phone from his pocket.
Violet.
He should have known.
No, he should have texted her first. She must be frantic.
He flicked the switch to silent and pushed it back into his pocket. She would just have to wait. He would deal with her later.
* * *
Callie could hear the raised voices as she strode down the corridor. “Why can’t I leave? I’m fine. If I stay here, I’ll get sick. You can’t make me stay!”
It was inevitable. People always reacted like this when there was an outbreak. It was human nature.
The hard part was that Callie didn’t want to be here any more than they did. But she couldn’t exactly say that, could she?
The reality check was starting to sink in. She was in a strange city, in the middle of a possible outbreak of a disease that had supposedly been eradicated. She wasn’t ready for this. If she closed her eyes for just a second, she could see Isabel in the middle of all this. This had been her dream from childhood—to work at the DPA at the cutting edge of infectious disease. She wouldn’t be feeling like this. She wouldn’t be feeling sick to her stomach and wanting to go and hide in a corner. Isabel would be center stage, running everything with a precise touch.
But Isabel wasn’t here.
And that was Callie’s fault. Her beautiful older sister had died six years earlier. Callie had been behind the wheel of their old car, taking a corner too fast—straight into the path of someone on the wrong side of the road. If only she hadn’t been distracted—been fighting with her sister. Over something and nothing.
That was the thing that twisted the most. It was the same argument they’d had for years. Pizza or burgers. Something ridiculous. Something meaningless. How pathetic.
She fixed her gaze on the scene ahead. Isabel would know exactly how to handle a man like Sawyer. She would have had him eating out of her hand in five minutes flat.
Okay, maybe not five minutes.
Sawyer probably wasn’t the type.
But, then, Isabel had been a people person. She’d known how to respond to people, she’d known how to work a crowd. All the things that Callie didn’t have a clue about.
The voices were rising. Things were reaching a crescendo.
It was time to step up. Whether she liked it or not, it was time to take charge.
She pushed her way through the crowd around the desk and jumped up onto the reception area desk. “Is this the PA system?”
The clerk gave her a nod as she picked up the microphone and held it to her mouth. Adrenaline was starting to course through her system. All eyes were on her. She could do this. She pressed the button on the microphone and it let out a squeal from automatic feedback. Anyone who hadn’t been listening before was certainly listening now.
“Hi, everyone. I’m sure you know I’m Callie Turner from the DPA. Let me bring you up to speed.”
The anxiety in the room was palpable. The eyes staring at her were full of fear.
“You all know that we’re dealing with two suspected cases of smallpox. That’s the reason why the E.R. has been closed and we’ve enforced a quarantine. The samples have been collected and sent to the DPA lab for identification. The laboratory tests for smallpox are complicated and time-consuming. We should hear back in around forty-eight hours what type of virus it is—whether it’s a type of pox or not—but it takes longer to identify what strain of virus it is. That can take anything up to seven days. So, until we know if it’s a pox or not, we need to stay here. We need to try and contain this virus.”
“I don’t want to be in isolation,” one of the men shouted.
“You’re not,” Callie said quickly. “You’re quarantined—there’s a difference. Isolation means separating people who are ill with a contagious disease from healthy people. The children who are affected have been isolated. Quarantine restricts the movement of people who have been exposed to someone or something, to see if they will become ill. That’s what we’re doing with all of you.” Her hand stretched out across the room.
She could still feel the tension. Anxious glances being exchanged between staff and patients. She could see the questions forming on their lips. Best to keep going.
She tried to keep her voice calm. “The incubation period for smallpox is around twelve days but it can range from seven to seventeen days. Smallpox is spread person to person by droplet transmission. It can also be spread by contact with pustules or rash lesions or contaminated clothing or bedding.
“A person with smallpox is considered infectious when the rash appears, but at the moment we’re going to consider any affected person infectious from the onset of fever. This should help us control any outbreak. It’s important to remember that only close contacts—those who were within six or seven feet of the infectious person should be at risk.”
She was talking too quickly, trying to put out too much information at once. She was hoping and praying that someone wouldn’t pick up on the fact that they could be quarantined together for seventeen days.
“Should? What do you mean, ‘should’? Don’t you know?”
Callie took a deep breath. She didn’t blame people for being angry. She would be angry too. But as she opened her mouth to speak, Sawyer got in there first. He’d appeared out of nowhere, stepping up alongside her, his hand closing over hers as he took the PA microphone from her.
“This isn’t like some disaster movie, folks. A person with smallpox doesn’t walk, coughing and spluttering, through a crowd and infect everyone around them. For a start, most people infected with smallpox don’t cough anyway. And the last data available from the DPA shows that the average person affected can infect around five to seven people. And those would only be the close contacts around them. Let’s not panic. Let’s keep this in perspective.”
She was watching him, her breath caught her in throat. He was doing what she should be doing. He was keeping calm and giving them clear and easy-to-understand information.
Part of her felt angry. And part of her felt relief.
She was out of her depth and she knew it.
The DPA was a big place. And she was a good doctor—when she was part of a
team. But as a leader? Not so much.
Put her in a room with a pile of paperwork and she was the best. Methodical, good at interpreting the practical applications of a plan.
She could do the patient stuff—she could, obviously, or she wouldn’t have made it through medical school or her residency. Actually, some of it she had loved. But she’d enjoyed the one-to-one patient contacts, patients a physician could take time with, understand their condition and give them long-term advice. Not the hurried, rushed, wide perspective of the DPA.
But, then, the DPA had been Isabel’s dream, not hers. She’d never wanted this for herself.
And now? She was stuck with it.
“So, that’s it folks. We’ll let you know as soon as we hear back from the labs. In the meantime, we’ll have arrangements in place to make everyone more comfortable with the facilities we have here.” He raised his eyebrows at her. “It could be that in a few hours we move to somewhere more suitable?”
She nodded wordlessly. He must have known that Callum would already have put the wheels in motion to set up a category C facility for containment.
“In the meantime, follow the infection control procedures on the walls around you. Take a deep breath and show a little patience. We’re all scared.” He pointed at the figures lining the walls with their clipboards, “It’s important we help these guys out. Tell them everything you know.” He looked back at Callie. She was sure that right now she must resemble a deer caught in a set of headlights. “And if you have any questions, Dr. Turner is in charge. That’s it for now.”
He jumped off the table and headed back down the corridor.
The room was quieter now, the shouting had stopped. Her legs were trembling and she grabbed hold of a hand offered to her as she climbed down off the table. Heads were down, people working away, going about their business. One of the security guards was helping one of the nursing aides carry linen through to another room to help set up some beds.
Callie knew she couldn’t leave this. She knew she had to talk to him. Even though he was trying to put some space between them.
“Sawyer.” She was breathless, running down the corridor after him. “I just wanted to say thank you. For back there.”
His green eyes fixed on hers, just for a second, before they flitted away and he ran his fingers through that hair again. Her heart clenched, even though she couldn’t understand why. He was exasperated with her. “That was a one-off, Callie. Don’t count on me to help you again.” He turned and strode back down the corridor, leaving her standing there.
Alone.
CHAPTER THREE
“YOU NEED TO manage things better.” He couldn’t help it. There were probably a million other ways to put this more delicately, but Sawyer didn’t have time to think about nicer words.
Her head shot upwards. There it was—that rabbit-in-the-headlights look again from her.
He hated it. Because it made his stomach churn. He didn’t know whether to be irritated by it or whether he really wanted to go over and give her a quick hug.
“What on earth do you mean, ‘manage things better’?” She made quote marks in the air with her fingers as she repeated his words back to him. He could see the lines across her brow. She was tired and she was stressed. And he understood that. It was part and parcel of the job at the DPA.
He could feel his lips turn upwards. She looked even prettier when she was cross.
“What are you smirking at?” She stood up from behind the desk. A desk lost under a multitude of piles of papers—no doubt more copies of plans and protocols. A few sheets scattered as she stood.
His smile broadened. He could tell she really wanted to stop and pick them up.
She was in front of him now, her hands on her hips. “What?”
He liked that. Sometimes she just got straight to the point. No skirting around the edge of things.
He gestured to the door behind him. “You need to clarify some things about the vaccination. There are still a lot of questions out there.”
She sighed and ran her fingers through the short side of her hair. “I know. I’ll get to it. I’ve got a million and one things to deal with.” Her eyes flickered in the direction of the hidden desk.
“Then delegate.”
She started, as if the thought of actually delegating horrified her.
“But I’m responsible—”
“And you need to be visible. You need to be seen. You have to be on the floor—not stuck in some office. You can make your decisions out there, not from behind a desk.”
He could see her brain ticking, thinking over his suggestions. Truth be told, she’d been delegating from the minute she’d walked in the door—just not the important stuff.
“And you need to do something about Alison.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I thought you wanted to deal with Alison.”
“And I have—we’ve had the discussion about the vaccine. She hasn’t decided what to do yet, but I think she’ll opt on the side of caution and say no.”
“So what’s the problem?” She’d started to walk back over to the desk.
“The problem is she’s a nurse. She’s stuck in a room at the bottom of the corridor. Isolated. Quarantined—”
“You know that’s not the case.”
He touched her shoulder. “But she doesn’t. You need to tell people, explain to them what the difference is. You explained that to the masses—but you need didn’t explain it to her. She’s in there frightened and alone. You need to communicate better.” He could feel her bristle under his touch. “Alison needs to do something. I understand you think she might have been exposed but you can’t leave her sitting there for hours on end.” He picked up a pile of papers from the desk. “Give her a list of phone calls to make for you. Let her do some of the specialized phone contact tracing.”
“She can’t do that. That’s a special skill. You need of hours of training to do that properly,” she snapped.
He could feel the frustration rising in his chest. “It’s only a list of questions! She’s an intelligent human being. Give her something to do. Something to take her mind off things.”
He grabbed the first random thought that entered his head. “Let her organize the food, then! Something—anything—to stop her thinking that if she hadn’t come to work this morning she wouldn’t have risked the life of her baby.”
He could see the realization fall on her face. And suddenly he understood.
She was a big-picture girl. The perfect person for public health. She didn’t individualize, or personalize, the other side of the job. The things that affected normal people.
He took a deep breath. He wasn’t trying to make this harder for her. He knew she’d been thrown in at the deep end.
Part of him wanted to offer to take over, even though he knew that would never be allowed to. And part of him still wanted to run for the hills.
He hated this. Everything about this situation grated on him. He’d thought he’d be safe.
He’d thought he’d distanced himself enough to never to be in a situation like this again. How often did an E.R. notify an outbreak on this scale? Rarely.
And this type of disease? Well, let’s face it, not in the last thirty or forty years.
No matter what his brain told him, he would not allow himself to be dragged in. Even though he was right in the middle of everything he needed to keep some distance. He needed not to have responsibility for this outbreak.
She was hesitating. He could see it written all over her face. Then the decision was made. It was almost as if he could see a little light go on behind her eyes.
She looked him square in the eye. “You’re right. I can give her something to do. Something that means she’s not at risk to herself or anyone else around her.” She picked up a list fro
m her desk. “She can order the food supplies, linen supplies and any extra medical supplies that we might need. The food’s turned into a bit of a nightmare in the last few hours.” She picked up a hefty manual from her desk, ripped out a few sheets and attached them to a red clipboard. “This will tell her everything she needs to know about how to arrange the delivery of supplies that keeps all parties safe.”
Her eyes swept around the room.
It was almost as if once she’d made a decision, that was it. She was ready. She was organized. The courage of her convictions took her forward. She could be great at this job, if only she had confidence in her abilities. And she would get that. It would just take a few years.
A few years that she would normally have had in the DPA, working with their most experienced doctors.
His thoughts went back to Callum and he glanced at his watch. “I need to make a phone call.”
Her hand rested on his arm. The warmth of her fingers stopped him dead.
“I need you to do one more thing for me before you go.”
She was looking at him with those big eyes. The ones he preferred not to have contact with. This was where his gut twisted and he wanted to say no. Say no to anything that would drag him further into this mess.
There was a new edge to her voice, a new determination. She handed him a file from the desk. “I need you to look over this with an independent eye. You’ve been out of the DPA long enough to make an assessment.”
He was confused now. What was she talking about? Instinctively, his hand reached out for the file.
“You told me to delegate. Everyone thought the next smallpox outbreak would be deliberate—a terrorist act. Nothing we’ve seen here supports that. All the information from the parents and contacts would lead me to suggest this was a natural outbreak—however impossible or improbable that may be.”
THE MAVERICK DOCTOR AND MISS PRIM/ABOUT THAT NIGHT... Page 4
