Pathogen

by Jessica L. Webb

  Andy walked to the door and called for assistance. Two people Kate didn’t recognize came in and pulled Serena’s bed easily out from under her grasp. She watched Serena get wheeled away, wanting to fight to stay with her patient but knowing she didn’t have it in her.

  And suddenly the room was empty. No more patients or suspects. No more gun. No more cops. Just Kate and Andy.

  Andy walked towards her and Kate met her eyes. They were very beautiful. Even this worried, even with the lines of stress making light folds in the delicate skin, her clear eyes were absolutely beautiful. Andy raised a hand and touched her, fingers drawing a soft line across her cheekbone. Kate felt the weight shift with that touch, with the memory of Andy touching her like that for the first time, with the feeling of peace that threatened with that touch. Kate wrestled with it, fought the desperate urge to lose herself in that touch.

  “Are you all right?”

  Such a loaded question. There was only one answer that would be acceptable.

  “No,” Kate said and watched as Andy pulled every possible meaning from that simple answer.

  Andy’s radio squawked on her belt, and she reached back and pulled it out. Kate barely understood the message, something about squad cars and suspect transport. She wasn’t listening, didn’t want to listen, too intent on the inevitable crashing about to occur. She almost had a sense of relief in that thought. She knew without a doubt she could no longer hold it together.

  “Kate, I’m the arresting officer, so I have to take Chris Ozarc down to Whistler. I’ll be a couple of hours at least, but I’ll be back as soon as I can. I’m going to get Jack to stay with you at the hotel, and he’s going to run you through a statement and some paperwork. Can you handle that?”

  Paperwork, yes. Everything else, no. She met Andy’s worried eyes and nodded. Andy pulled Kate closer and wrapped her arms around Kate’s exhausted, shaking body. Kate leaned her forehead against Andy’s chest, letting herself feel protected, committing to memory exactly how this felt. Because soon there would be no protection. Soon it would just be her and the contents of that precariously balanced weight. Kate closed her eyes, fighting the waves of fear and sadness. Not yet. She couldn’t let it go yet.

  Andy’s radio squawked again and Kate pulled back. As Andy spoke into the radio, Kate slowly took off her gown and pulled at the tough Velcro straps around the soft body armour vest. Andy helped her lift it over her head, let it dangle from one hand.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Andy repeated as Jack walked in, his laptop bag slung over his shoulder. Andy looked up and pinned him with hard eyes. “Take her back to the hotel. We need her statement and her signature. After that…” Both Andy and Jack looked at Kate. She wondered what they saw. It couldn’t be good, but Kate didn’t have the will to hide it anymore. “Just take care of her, please,” Andy pleaded with her partner.

  Kate walked through the hospital in deadened silence. She saw familiar faces, shocked faces, wary expressions, a look of awe, of thanks, and relief. Lucy, Dr. Doyle, Michael Cardiff, the ER staff, Paul Sealy from the newspaper. Kate couldn’t sort through which expression belonged to which face. It didn’t matter. None of it settled on her, none of it seemed relevant. She kept her feet moving, down the stairs, across the lobby, and out into the night air. She took a deep breath, and it felt so good, she took another. And that felt so good, she cried. Just a few tears escaped and she breathed through it, fighting the constriction of her throat. Kate sat in the rental car beside a silent, concerned Jack. She closed her eyes instead of watching the now familiar route between Valley General and the Sea to Sky Inn. It didn’t matter anymore. Almost none of it mattered.

  “My patients…” Kate croaked out, like it had been days since she’d last spoken, not just a few minutes.

  “Harris Trenholm showed improvement one hour post dive. Serena Cardiff should be landing in Saskatoon in a couple of hours. The rest are in isolation in the ER, everyone stable,” Jack reported. “They’re all being taken care of, Katie. You can relax.”

  Kate closed her eyes again as she thought about that word. Relax. It didn’t fit, didn’t make sense. That wasn’t her goal. So she let it drift out into the night air. She let herself drift as Jack pulled off the highway, pulled up outside the hotel door. Kate walked into the empty, cold hotel room, her things scattered across the room, Andy’s neatly folded or tucked away. Kate sat on the edge of the bed, pulled off her shoes, and let them drop heavily to the floor. Jack watched her carefully, and then he brought the desk chair near the bed and opened his laptop.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  Kate started to speak. This was easy. She chronicled every step of the last several hours. She referenced times, medical charts, interactions, movements, and decisions in precise details. She excised each piece, slowly and painstakingly putting Hidden Valley behind her. There was no pride in what she’d accomplished, only a satisfying closing up, one last stitch in a soon-to-be-healed wound. But it was Hidden Valley’s wound. Her own was huge, raw. The crashing of that ever-present weight would cause bodily damage. And there would be fallout. Innocent bystanders. Andy. Kate squeezed her eyes shut. Andy. How could she even consider it? How could she even imagine walking away from her, let alone do it?

  Kate stood suddenly, ignoring the pins and needles in her legs from sitting still for so long. It was hard to breathe suddenly. Her body felt jumpy and on edge. She pictured leaving Andy again, and the pain hit her so hard in her chest that Kate wrapped one arm protectively around her body. Breathe, focus, breathe.

  “Katie?” Jack’s voice was alarmed.

  “I need to pack,” Kate said suddenly. She pulled her bag out from the corner and threw it on the bed. Then she walked into the bathroom, sorting through their shared collection of toiletries, pulling out her own, not letting herself think. Back into the main room and Jack was on the phone, speaking furtively into the phone, presumably to Andy. Kate wanted to tell him not to bother. She was fully aware of her alarming behaviour, the dead expression on her face. She was so close to losing control, she almost wanted to hurtle herself towards it. Get it over with.

  Jack was off the phone, watching her warily. “Please just wait until Wylie gets back, okay? Please,” Jack begged.

  Kate stopped what she was doing and looked up into his earnest, panicked brown eyes. Of course she would wait. What did he think she was capable of? What did Andy think she was capable of? Kate felt a piercing in her chest, an understanding that brought no comfort. They knew better than she did what she was capable of. Kate no longer had a clue. But she would wait for Andy. That was the point of this. To tell Andy that she’d been right.

  “I’ll wait,” she said to Jack, aiming for a neutral tone to reassure him she was not yet completely broken. Only fractured. “But will you do something for me?” Knowing he would do anything for her.

  “Sure I will, Katie. What is it?”

  “Will you drive me home tonight? When I need you to, will you take me back to Vancouver?”

  Heartbreak in his eyes as the understanding sank in. Kate averted her gaze and looked down at the uniform brown of the carpet. She couldn’t take that, not now. She couldn’t explain to him how necessary this was.

  “I can do that,” he said softly.

  Kate nodded her thanks. She finished her packing, pulled on her shoes again and sat on the bed. She listened to her heart in her chest, tested the strength of her resolve, compared it to the massive proportions of the weight above her. It wasn’t hard to convince herself that this was vital. Necessary. That didn’t make it any easier.

  But what would she say? How could she form her disordered, chaotic thoughts into words? She repeated the same words over and over in her head. I love you, I love you, I love you…I’m lost, I’m lost, I’m lost.

  Kate sought the ring that was always on her right hand, but her finger was bare. She’d left her sister’s ring in the on-call room at the hospital. Kate felt the last vestiges of control splinter a
nd fall away. She put her head in her hands and cried. Jack came to sit beside her on the bed, but she was so far from being comforted. She had so far to go and nothing to go on. Even as she pulled herself together one tiny piece at a time, enough to stop the wracking sobs in her body, Kate felt only empty.

  Minutes stretched and tumbled into hours, the blood in Kate’s body pooling in her core, leaving her fingers and feet frozen. Then the sound of the key in the lock. Kate zeroed in on the door, every sense suddenly heightened, drawn to Andy walking in through the door. In that moment she wished Andy could understand everything without Kate having to witness the impact of her own words as they sank in.

  Andy flicked her eyes to Jack, who walked quickly to the door; a brief look at Kate and then he was gone. Andy moved away from the door, her shoulders rigid with strain. It was a deliberate action, telling Kate she would not hold her here. That she wouldn’t fight this, whatever it was. Kate hadn’t expected her to do that, but the understanding still caused sadness to blossom in her chest. The silence stretched, Andy waiting for Kate to speak. Kate waiting to find the words.

  “I need some time,” she said finally, her voice thin. Wavering.

  Andy said nothing to this, just a curt nod of her head. Kate took a breath. It wasn’t enough.

  “I need some time…to figure things out.” It would be no comfort to Andy that she’d been right. No comfort at all.

  Andy nodded again, pain flickering in her grey eyes. There was a question though, too.

  How long?

  The question hovered silently in the room between them. Kate wanted to know, too. How long? How long had she been lost? A month? Four? A year? Since she took the Chief Resident job which she could now admit that she hated? Since her sister died? Before? Was there a mathematical equation, a computer-generated algorithm she could use to predict how long? She wanted to believe it could be that easy. She knew it wouldn’t be. Not with all the shit that she’d spent years shrugging off. The accumulation was too great. And now, with Andy standing before her, so close to heartbreak, the stakes were too high for Kate to do anything but face it head-on. And no choice but to do it on her own.

  Kate stood shakily, willing her body to make it down to the car before she lost it completely.

  “I love you, Kate.”

  The smell of pine trees in the rain, Andy’s voice in my ear, arms holding me so tightly.

  Kate locked her eyes on Andy, infusing everything she had left in her next words.

  “I love you, too, Andy.”

  They both knew that wasn’t the problem. And they both knew it wasn’t enough. Kate wrenched her eyes away first, then her body, feeling the emptiness, the loss almost immediately. She forced herself to walk to the door, pull at the handle, and step outside. And as Kate closed the door behind her, she forced herself to hold two images in her head. One was of Andy watching her go, pain and hurt in her eyes. And the one in her memory, that perfect moment on the porch in Montana. She held them there fiercely, promising herself that she would get back there. That she would do whatever she had to. That she would never be responsible for that look in Andy’s eyes again.

  About the Author

  Jessica Webb spends her professional days working with educators to find the why behind the challenging behaviors of the students they support. Limitless curiosity about the motivations and intentions of human behavior is also a huge part of what drives her to write stories and understand the complexities of her characters and their actions.

  When she’s not working or writing, Jessica is spending time with her wife and daughter, usually planning where they will travel next. Jessica can be found most often on her favorite spot on the couch with a book and a cup of tea.

  Jessica can be contacted at jessicalwebb.author@gmail.com.

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