with desire. Rafe dripped charisma and a raw sensuality she couldn’t ignore.
“Are you planning to tell her what happened?” Rafe asked.
Jessica was Gemma’s best friend. They told each other almost everything. But Jessica was pinning her hopes on the staff at the Dead River Clinic finding a cure and if she knew how much they had lost that night, she’d be devastated. A blow to her morale was bad for her health.
“No, not today,” Gemma said.
Rafe nodded his approval. Gemma collected the supplies she needed.
Jessica had lost ten pounds since being admitted. She was a tall, slender woman and didn’t have the weight to spare. Jessica smiled when Gemma entered the room. She put the television on mute. “Tell me you have some good news.”
Gemma double-checked that her microphone was off so Rafe wouldn’t hear their conversation. “I dropped off Annabelle with Molly before I came to work. Molly was planning to meet Ellie and Amelia at the library for story time.”
“She’ll love that.” Jessica closed her eyes. Like most of their patients, she’d been chronically tired, sleeping the majority of the day. It was difficult to see Jessica, who was normally active, being so listless. “How is Tom holding up?” she asked.
Jessica’s husband Tom was struggling under the weight of his responsibilities of being a single parent while Jessica was in isolation. Gemma and her cousin Molly had stepped in to lend a hand, but he wouldn’t feel better until Jessica was home. “He’s doing the best he can.”
Jessica smiled a weak half smile. “That bad?”
Tom had confided how scared he was for Jessica and for their daughter Annabelle. He worried about his little girl becoming another of the virus’s victims. His worry wasn’t unique. Some parents had stopped sending their children to school because of that fear. “He loves you and he wants you to feel better,” Gemma said.
“I know. I love him and Annabelle too. I’m trying. But this virus is like a flu that won’t quit.”
Many of the virus’s symptoms were similar to the flu, which was how they had missed the severity with their first case. The flu wasn’t an emergency, not for someone otherwise healthy, as their first virus patient had been. This virus was new territory for them. “I uploaded new pictures for you to look at and a video of Annabelle reading a new book from school.”
“Thank you for everything that you’re doing. Talking to my family and you is getting me through this.” At Gemma’s prompting, Jessica took a sip of the drink at her bedside. “Tell me what’s new with you. You tell me about my family, but you have a lot going on too.”
Gemma rolled her eyes. “It’s a regular revolving door of men at my place. Everyone’s looking to score a date with the plague nurse who works all the time. When I can, I’ve been visiting Theo, Ellie and baby Amelia. She’s getting big so fast and I love spending time with her.”
“They do that. One minute, you’re cradling them in your arms, the next, they’re grown and rolling their eyes at you. What about that new doctor? He’s worth a second look.”
“Rafe? He’s not new exactly,” Gemma said, feeling the heat rush to her cheeks.
Jessica hadn’t attended high school with Gemma. Tom had moved to town to work on Theo’s ranch, bringing his pregnant wife with him and Gemma had hit it off with Jessica immediately. They’d been fast friends ever since. “Oh, come on, you said you thought he was cute in high school. What about now?”
Still cute, although seeing him now brought entirely different feelings. She didn’t feel like giggling and blushing when she saw him. She felt like seeing if he was as incredible a kisser as he was a doctor. “He is. I’m not blind. But I’m also not interested in an affair. He’s only here until we find a cure for the virus, then he’s heading back to New York City. His dream job awaits him.”
“His dream job, but maybe his dream girl is right here.”
Gemma laughed. “No way. I dated a doctor once and you know how that went down. Badly. Like a ten-mile-long-train-wreck badly.”
Jessica sighed. “I do. But that was one person, one time. You can’t judge the whole lot of doctors over one jerk.”
Gemma waved her hand. “I’m too busy, anyway. I’ll worry about finding a boyfriend when men can come and go freely in this town.”
“Valentine’s Day is right around the corner.”
A day Gemma didn’t like much. Being single for the majority of Valentine’s Days in her life gave her a different perspective. The perspective that she didn’t need another excuse to drink wine and eat chocolates—that she bought herself—in her home alone. “Not right around the corner. It’s not even Christmas yet.”
“You know as soon as those Christmas decorations are put away, the red hearts and boxes of chocolates come out,” Jessica said.
Gemma nodded, but she thought of the bare shelves at the grocery store and shops along Main Street. If the quarantine wasn’t lifted, nonessentials like seasonal items wouldn’t make it on the shipments into town.
She couldn’t imagine this dragging on for that many months more, but what if it did? What if every person in Dead River succumbed to the virus?
Dr. Colleen Goodhue said she had only seen rare cases where a virus obliterated an entire town, usually in third world countries. The Dead River virus was proving to have staying power. It was stronger and stealthier because it kept its human host alive long enough to infect many others.
With her grandmother and best friend sick, Gemma had plenty of reasons to devote everything she had to finding a cure. Knowing so much was on the line only drove her harder.
At the end of her shift, Gemma found Dr. Goodhue and Rafe in the lab. Dr. Goodhue seemed shell-shocked as she looked through some notebooks, but as usual, Rafe worked like a man on a mission.
“It’s hard to believe someone would do this,” Dr. Goodhue said. “I called the home office and they said they’d send more supplies, but it will take time. How will our research continue without a proper lab?”
Gemma didn’t like to hear Dr. Goodhue sounding distraught. She was the most experienced in this type of work and while the break-in and fire were upsetting, they didn’t have the option to quit.
“We’ll work with what we have left,” Rafe said.
Rafe wouldn’t let time pass while they waited for a shipment and forgo possible progress. From the beginning, he had been driving them hard, urging them to work more and longer. He had good reasons, but sometimes Gemma thought breaks and time away could give them a fresh perspective.
What did Rafe do with his free time? Did he have free time? Gemma didn’t go out often, and rarely now that she worked so much. What would it be like to have a social life again and how would she feel if Rafe was part of it? Her conversation with Jessica had given her something to think about.
“What
