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Callum nodded. “It was him.” He stood up slowly, obviously still in thought. “I guess that means he’s all right, then.” He touched Callie’s arm. “Get ready, Dr. Turner. This could be the experience of a lifetime.”
“I’m on the team?” She could barely contain her excitement. It was only made slightly better by the look of disgust on Donovan’s face over the other side of the room.
Callum smiled at her. “You know the rules, Callie. You took the call—of course you’re on the team.”
“I’ll be ready in half an hour. Let me get the updated plans.” She rushed off, her heart thumping in her chest.
First official day on the job and she was on the outbreak team investigating an apparently eradicated disease. Isabel would have loved this.
Callie shoved her bag in the overhead locker and sat down next to Callum. Everything was happening so fast. She hadn’t even had time to think.
The doors of the plane were already closed and they were starting to taxi down the runway. The cabin crew was already in their seats—the safety announcement forgotten. The normal rules of aviation didn’t seem to apply today.
This was the biggest team she’d ever been part of. There had to be around thirty people on this plane. Other doctors, epidemiologists, case interviewers, contact tracers, admin personnel and, most worrying, security.
Callum had the biggest pile of paperwork she’d ever seen. He was checking things off the list. “Vaccines—check. Protocols—check. N95 filtered masks—check. Symptom list—check. Algorithm—check. Three-hundred-page outbreak plan …” his thumb flicked the edges of the thick document “… check.”
He leaned back in his seat. “And that’s just the beginning.” A few minutes later they felt the plane lift off. Ninety minutes until they reached their destination.
“What have you done about containment plans?”
He nodded at her question. “I’ve identified a suitable building for a Type-C containment. Arrangements are currently being made to prepare it. In the meantime we’ve instructed Chicago General to switch their air-conditioning off. We don’t want to risk the spread of the droplets. They don’t even have suitable masks right now—only the paper ones, which are practically useless.”
He shook his head. “Those spots were starting to erupt. These kids are at the most infectious stage of this disease.”
Callie shuddered. A potentially deadly disease in an E.R. department. Her mind boggled.
It didn’t matter that she was a completely rational person. It didn’t matter that she specialized in infectious diseases. There was still that tiny human part in her that wanted to panic.
That wanted to run in the other direction.
The strange thing was that there were colleagues at the DPA who would kill to be in her shoes right now. Her very tight, uncomfortable shoes. Why hadn’t she changed them before they’d left? Who knew how long she would be on her feet?
She hesitated. “Who are you relaying the instructions to right now?”
His eyes fixed on the papers in front of him. He didn’t look so good. “The chief of staff at Chicago General is Max Simpson. He’s following our instructions to the letter. Or rather Matt Sawyer is following our instructions to the letter. He’s the only one with any experience down there.”
There were small beads of sweat on his brow. He reached into his top pocket and pulled out some antacids.
“You okay?”
He nodded as he opened the packet and popped three in his mouth.
Callum was the calmest, most knowledgeable doctor she’d ever worked with. She’d worked side by side with him through lots of outbreaks. She couldn’t ask for a better mentor. But even he looked a little scared. Maybe it wasn’t just her after all?
Or maybe it was something else entirely.
She lowered her voice. “He was your protégé, wasn’t he?”
“My what?”
“Matt Sawyer. I heard he was your protégé.”
Callum grimaced and shook his head. “Do me a favor. Don’t let Sawyer hear you call him that. That would tip him over the edge that I presume he’s currently dangling on.”
“What do you mean?” During all the frantic preparations Callie hadn’t had any time to find out more about Matt Sawyer. Only a few whispers and hurried conversations here and there.
This was her first real mission. She’d been out as a danger detective before—when she’d been completing her specialist residency training. But this was her first real chance to prove herself. To prove that she was a worthy member of the team. To prove to them—and herself—that she deserved to be there.
It didn’t sound promising if the doctor who’d made the initial call was unstable.
She looked at the pile of papers on Callum’s lap. The outbreak plans, the containment plans, the paperwork to use for contact tracing, the algorithms. A plan for everything. A piece of paper for every eventuality. Just the way she liked it. Just the way she’d learned to function best.
Rules and regulations were her backbone. The thing that kept her focused. The thing that kept everyone safe.
Callum followed her gaze. “This could get messy.”
“What do you mean? With the disease? The casualties?” She hadn’t even stopped to think about that yet. She still had her public health head on, the one that looked at the big picture. She hadn’t even started to consider the individuals.
Callum looked kind of sad. “No.” He gave a little grimace again. “With Sawyer.”
“Sawyer? Aren’t you happy to see him again?” She was confused. Hadn’t they been friends?
“Under any other set of circumstances I would be. But not here. Not like this. This will be his worst nightmare. Sawyer walked away from all this. The last thing he wants to do is be involved in another outbreak. I can’t imagine how he’s feeling.”
“He’s a doctor. He has responsibilities. He has a job to do.” She made it all sound so straightforward. Because in her head that was the way it should be.
He sighed. “Things change, Callie. Life gets in the way. Sawyer doesn’t live by anybody’s rules but his own. He didn’t even follow protocol today. He should have notified the state department first but he didn’t. He just called the DPA. He called you.” He emphasized the word as he placed a hand on his chest.
She’d missed that. Miss Rules and Regulations had missed that. In her shock at the nature of the call it hadn’t even occurred to her that Sawyer should have contacted the state department first and they should have contacted the DPA.
How could she have missed that?
She didn’t need anyone to remind her that things could change—that life, or lack of it—could get in the way. She was living proof of that.
Seeds of doubt started to creep into her mind. She’d missed the first rule of notification. And if she’d missed that, what else would she miss? Should she even be on this team?
Rules were there for a reason. Rules were there to be followed. Rules were there for everyone’s safety.
Then it really hit her. What was happening before her very eyes.
The last thing she needed to do right now was look at the wider picture. She needed to concentrate on the picture right before her.
Callum was turning gray, with the slightest blue tinge around his lips. His skin was waxy and he was still sweating. His hand remained firmly on his chest.
“Callum? Are you okay?” She unfastened her seat belt and stood up, signaling to some of the other members of the team. “That’s not heartburn, is it?”
He shook his head as she started barking out orders to the rest of the team. “Get me some oxygen. Find out how soon till we get there. Can we get an earlier landing slot? Speak to the pilot—it’s a medical emergency.”
They literally had every piece of equipment known to man on this plane. Unfortunately, most of it was in the hold. And none of it was to treat a myocardial infarction.
She cracked open their first-aid kit, monitoring his blood pressure and giving him some aspirin. She pasted a smile on her face. “Things will be fine, Callum. We’ll get you picked up at the airport and taken to the nearest cardiac unit.”
His hand gripped her wrist. “I’m sorry, Callie. I shouldn’t be leaving you to deal with this. Not with Sawyer. You two are like oil and water. You won’t mix. Not at all.” His head was shaking.
Callie’s stomach was churning. The thought of facing the legendary Sawyer herself was not filling her with confidence. But right now she would do or say anything that would relieve the pressure on Callum. Anything at all.
“Everything will be fine. You’ll see. Don’t worry about a thing, Callum. I can handle Sawyer.”
Famous last words.
CHAPTER TWO
“WHO ARE YOU and where is Callum Ferguson?” Not waiting for an answer, the man with the shaggy hair pushed past her and looked behind her. With his broad frame and pale green eyes, on another occasion she might have looked twice. But she didn’t have time for this.
Great. The welcoming party. And he was obviously delighted to see her.
She struggled to set the box down on the reception desk. There was only one person this could be. And she intended to start the way she meant to continue. This was business.
“Here are the N95 masks. Make sure anyone that goes into the room with those kids wears one. And make sure it’s fitted properly, otherwise it will be useless.”
He hadn’t moved. He was still standing directly in her path. “I asked you a question.”
She almost hesitated but that would do her no good. She needed to establish who was in charge here. And it was her.
“Matt Sawyer? I’m Callie Turner and I’m leading the team.” She turned towards the door as the rest of the team fanned in behind her, carrying their equipment.
It was like an invasion. And the irony of that wasn’t lost on her.
She tilted her head. “I’d shake your hand but you’re already an infection control hazard, so forgive me.”
Did she look confident? She certainly hoped so, because her stomach was churning so much that any minute now she might just throw up all over his Converses.
She walked around behind the desk and started pulling things out of the boxes being deposited next to her. “Lewis, Cheryl, set up here and here.” She pointed to some nearby desks.
“I’m only going to ask you one more time. Where is Callum Ferguson?”
He was practically growling at her now. And that hair of his was going to annoy her. Why didn’t he get a decent haircut? Wouldn’t long hair be an infection control hazard? Maybe she should suggest he find an elastic band and tie it back, though on second thoughts it wasn’t quite long enough for that.
She drew herself up before him. This man was starting to annoy her. Did he think she was hiding Callum Ferguson in her back pocket? “I’m sorry to tell you, Dr. Sawyer, that Dr. Ferguson became unwell on the plane en route.”
He actually twitched. As if she’d just said something to shock him. Maybe he was a human being after all.
“What happened?”
“We think he had an MI. He’s been taken to the cardiac unit at St John’s. I heard it’s the best in town.”
She waited for a second while he digested the news. Would he realize she’d checked up on the best place to send her colleague, rather than just send him off to the nearest hospital available? She hoped so. From the expression on Sawyer’s face she might need to win some points with him.
Why did the thought of being quarantined with this man fill her with impending doom?
Sawyer was about to explode. And Miss Hoity-Toity with her navy-blue suit, pointy shoes and squinty hairdo was first in line to bear the brunt of the impact.
It was bad enough that he was here—but now to find out that the one person in the DPA he absolutely trusted wasn’t going to be here?
The thought of Callum Ferguson having an MI was sickening. Sawyer had almost fallen into the trap of thinking the man was invincible. He’d spent the last forty years investigating outbreaks and coming home unscathed.
Please let him be okay.
He scowled at Callie Turner as she issued orders to those all around him. Did she realize her hand was trembling ever so slightly? Because he did. And it wasn’t instilling him with confidence.
He planted his hand on his hip. “How old are you exactly?”
He could see her bristling. Her brain was whirring, obviously trying to think up a smart answer. She walked straight over to him and put both of her hands on her hips, mirroring his stance.
“Exactly how old do you want me to be, Sawyer?”
He couldn’t wipe the smile from his face. Smart and sassy—if a little young. The girl showed promise.
“So what happened to the hair?”
He’d already caught her tugging self-consciously at one side of her hair. As if she wasn’t quite used to it yet. “Were you halfway through when you took my call?” He took a piece of gum offered by nearby Miriam and started chewing as he watched her. He could tell she was irritated by him. Perfect. Maybe if he annoyed Miss DPA enough, he could get out of here.
Except it didn’t work like that and he knew it. Still, he could live in hope.
She dumped a final pile of papers on the desk from her box, which she picked up and kicked under the desk. Yip. She was definitely mad.
She grabbed the heavily clipped document on the top of the pile, strode over and thrust it directly against his chest. It hit him square in the solar plexus, causing him to catch his breath.
“My haircut cost more than you probably make in a month. Now, here—read this. And it isn’t from me. It’s from Callum. He said to make sure it was the first thing I gave you—along with the instructions to follow it to the letter.”
He pulled the document off his chest. The DPA plan for a smallpox outbreak. All three hundred pages of it. He let it go and it skidded across the desk towards her.
“I don’t need to read this.”
She stepped back in front of him. “Yes. You do. You’ve already broken protocol once today, Dr. Sawyer. You should have contacted the state department before you contacted us. But, then, you know that, don’t you? You don’t work for the DPA anymore, Dr. Sawyer.”
He cracked his chewing gum. “Well, that’s at least one thing we agree on.”
She glanced at her watch. “So, that means, that as of right now—five thirty-six p.m.—you work for me. You, and everyone else in here. This is my hospital now, Dr. Sawyer, my jurisdiction, and you will do exactly what I tell you.” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “And it’s all in that plan. So memorize it because there’ll be a pop quiz later.”
She kicked her navy-blue platforms beneath the desk and started to undo her shirt. “Where are the scrubs and protective clothing?” she shouted along the corridor.
“In here,” came a reply from one of the nearby rooms.
“Let’s go see these kids,” she barked at Sawyer over her shoulder as she headed to the room.
Organized chaos was continuing around him. Piles upon piles of paper were being pulled from boxes, new phones were appearing and being plugged in all around him. He recognized a couple of the faces—a few of the epidemiologists and contact tracers—standing with their clipboards at the ready.
He could hear the voices of the admin staff around him. “No, put it here. Callie’s very particular about paperwork. Put the algorithms up on the walls, in the treatments rooms and outside the patient rooms. Everyone has to follow them to the letter.”
So, she was a rules-and-regulations girl? This was about to get interesting.
He wandered over to the room. Callie was standing in her bra and pants, opening a clean set of regulation pale pink scrubs. Last time he’d worn them they’d been green. Obviously a new addition to the DPA repertoire.
The sight made him catch his breath. It was amazing what could lurk beneath those stuffy blue suits and pointy shoes. The suit was lying in a crumpled heap on the ground, discarded as if it were worthless when it easily clocked in at over a thousand dollars. He could see the label from here. Maybe Miss Hoity-Toity did have some redeeming features after all.
Her skin was lightly tanned, with some white strap marks on her shoulders barely covered by her bra. She was a matching-set girl. Pale lilac satin. But she didn’t have her back to him so from this angle he couldn’t tell if she favored briefs or a thong …
Her stomach wasn’t washboard flat like some women he’d known. It was gently rounded, proving to him that she wasn’t a woman who lived on salad alone. But the most intriguing thing about her was the pale white scar trailing down the outside of her leg. Where had that come from? It might be interesting to find out. His eyes lifted a little higher. And as for her breasts …
“Quit staring at me.” She pulled on her scrub trousers. “You’re a doctor. Apparently you’ve seen it all before.” She tossed him a hat. “And get that mop of yours hidden.”
She pulled her scrub top over her head and knelt in the corner next to her bag. She seemed completely unaffected by his gawping. Just as well really.
Sawyer reluctantly pulled on the hat and a disposable pale yellow isolation gown over his scrubs. She appeared at his side a few seconds later as he struggled to tuck his hair inside the slightly too big cap.
“Want one of these?” She waved a bobby pin under his nose with a twinkle in her eye. She was laughing at him.
“Won’t you need all of them to pull back that one side of your bad haircut?”
She flung a regulation mask at him. “Ha. Ha. Now, let’s go.”
They walked down the corridor where the lights were still dimmed. She paused outside the door, her hand resting lightly on his arm.
“Let’s clarify before we go in. How many staff have been in contact with these kids?”
He nodded. He would probably answer these questions a dozen times today. “Main contact has been myself and Alison, one of our nurses. We’re estimating they were only in the waiting room around ten minutes. One of the triage nurses moved them through to a room quickly as the kids were pretty sick.”
Her eyebrows rose above her mask. “I take it that you’ve continued to limit the contact to yourselves?”
“Ah, about that.”
“What?” Her expression had changed in an instant. Her eyes had narrowed and her glare hardened.
“There’s a problem.”
“What kind of problem?”
“Alison’s pregnant. Eighteen weeks.”
She let out an expression that wasn’t at all ladylike. He hadn’t known she had it in her.
“Exactly. I haven’t let her go back in. She’s adamant. Says there’s no point exposing anyone else to something she’s already breathed in anyway. But I wasn’t having any of it.”
He could see her brain racing. There was the tiniest flicker of panic under that mask. “But the vaccine …”
He touched her shoulder. “I know. We don’t know the effects it could have on a fetus.” He shrugged. “I don’t know if you’ve come up with any new research in the last six years, but I wouldn’t want to be the doctor to give it to her.”
She nodded. “Leave it with me. I’ll take it up with the team.” She turned back to the room. “We need to get some samples.”
“It’s already done.”
“What?” She whipped around. “Why didn’t you say so?”
He sighed. “What do you think I’ve been doing these last few hours? I’m not that far out of the loop that I don’t know how to take samples. Besides, the kids were used to me. It was better that I did it.”
She nodded, albeit reluctantly. “And the parents?”
“I’ve taken samples from them too. They’re all packaged and ready to go. Let’s find out what we’re dealing with.”
“I want to see the kids first.”
Now she was annoying him. “You think I made their spots up? Drew them on their faces and arms?”
“Of course I don’t. But, like or not, I’m the doctor in charge here. I need to see the spots for myself. Get some better pictures than the ones snapped on your phone. I need to be clear that you’ve ruled out everything.”
She was only saying what he would have said himself a few years ago. She was doing things by the book. But in his eyes, doing things by the book was wasting time. That was why he hadn’t bothered with the call to the state department. Best to go right to the source.
And this family might not have that time to waste. Just like his hadn’t.
It made him mad. Irrationally mad. And it didn’t matter that the voices in his head were telling him that. Because he wasn’t listening.
“For goodness’ sake. Don’t you have any confidence in my abilities? I’ve been doing this job since you were in kindergarten. I could run rings around you!”
She pushed her face up next to his. If it weren’t for the masks, their noses would be practically touching. “You’re not quite that old, Matt Sawyer. And it doesn’t matter what I think about your doctoring abilities. I’m in charge here. Not you. We’ve already established you don’t work for the DPA any more and I do. You know how things work. You know the procedures and protocols. You might not have followed them but I do. To the letter.” She put her hand on the door. “Now, do your job, Dr. Sawyer. Take me in there and introduce me to the parents.”
Callie leaned back against the wall in the sluice room. She’d just pulled off her disposable clothing and mask and dispensed with them in line with all the infection control protocols.
She let the temperature of the cool concrete seep through her thin scrub top. Thank goodness. With the air-conditioning turned off this place was getting warm. Too warm. Why couldn’t this outbreak have happened in the middle of the winter, when Chicago was knee deep in snow, instead of when it was the height of summer? It could have made things a whole lot simpler for them. It could also have made the E.R. a whole lot quieter.
Those kids were sick. Sawyer hadn’t been kidding. They were really sick. She’d really prefer it if they could be in a pediatric intensive care unit, but right now that was out of the question.
And even though it seemed like madness, in a few minutes’ time she was going to have to inoculate them and their parents with the smallpox vaccine.
Then she was going to have to deal with the staff, herself included.
There wasn’t time to waste. The laboratory samples were just away. It could be anything up to forty-eight hours before they had even a partial diagnosis and seven days before a definitive diagnosis. She didn’t want to wait that long.
She knew that would cause problems with Sawyer. He would want to wait—to be sure before they inflicted a vaccine with known side-effects on people who might not be at risk. But she’d already had that conversation with her boss, Evan Hunter. He’d told her to make the decision on the best information available. And she had.
She wrinkled her nose, trying to picture the relationship between the man she’d just met and Callum Ferguson, a doctor for whom she had the utmost respect. How on earth had these two ever gotten along? It just didn’t seem feasible.
She knew that Sawyer had lost his pregnant wife on a mission. That must have been devastating. But to walk away from his life and his career? Why would anyone do that? Had he been grief stricken? Had he been depressed?
And more to the point, how was he now? Was he reliable enough to trust his judgment on how best to proceed? Because right now what she really needed was partner in crime, not an outright enemy.
If only Callum were here. He knew how to handle Sawyer. She wouldn’t have needed to have dealt with any of this.
Her fingers fell to her leg—to her scar. It had started to itch. Just as it always did when she was under stress. She took a deep breath.
She’d made a decision. Now it was time to face the fallout.
“Are you crazy?”
“No. I’m not crazy. I’ve already spoke to my boss at the DPA. Funnily enough, he didn’t want you sitting in on that conference call. It seems your reputation has preceded you.”