Нора Робертс - Year One

“You did the important work. How are you feeling, Mom?” she asked as she went over to examine Duncan.

“Tired, hungry, grateful, sad, happy. I feel everything. Dr. Hopman was with me when my mother died. She took care of my mother. My father, too.”

“Jonah brought them to the hospital,” Rachel said, glancing back at him. “Ross and Angela MacLeod.”

“MacLeod.” Chicken soup on the stove. The first. Patient Zero. “It’s like a circle,” he murmured.

“We’re looking at two healthy babies.” Rachel crouched down, examining the placentas, the umbilical cords. “Good. Good.”

“How soon can they travel?” Jonah demanded.

“I need to have a look at Katie, and I’m going to try to find somebody in Peeds to examine the babies.”

“She’s fine, and so are they. I can see it, just like I could see her mother wasn’t fine while you were working on her dad. Like I could see you were immune. I had sort of a sense before … before all this. But it’s more now. I don’t expect you to believe me, but—”

“I do,” Rachel corrected. She rubbed her eyes. “I’ve seen things. Things I didn’t believe at first, but you see enough and you’re an idiot if you don’t believe. I’d also be a lousy doctor if I didn’t examine a woman who just gave birth to twins.”

“Once you do, I need to know when they can travel. And when you can be ready to go.”

“Where am I going?”

“I don’t know yet, but I know you’re immune. So are Katie and those babies. You said they’re doing sweeps, taking immunes into quarantined areas, testing them.”

“What?” Katie gripped his shoulder. “‘They’? Like the government? They’re detaining people who aren’t sick?”

Rachel let out a sigh. “Jonah.”

No more bullshit, he thought. No more despair. “She has a right to know. She has babies to think of. You’re a doctor. There are people who don’t have the virus who need doctors. Who need goddamn smart, adaptable doctors. They’re going to try rounding up people like me, too, and I’m damned if I’m going to end up somebody’s experiment.

“It’s a circle,” he repeated. “Her parents to me, me to you, you to Katie, Katie to me. And now the babies. It means something. When can they travel, when can you leave?”

Tired to the bone, Rachel looked at the babies, at the woman weeping silently, at the man who so suddenly looked hard as steel.

“Maybe tomorrow depending on what kind of travel you mean. They have roads blocked.”

“I can get a boat.”

“A boat?”

“Patti—she was my partner,” he told Katie. “She had a boat. It’s not much of one, but it’ll do. We get to the boat, we get in the boat, we use it to get across the river. And we start heading … whatever direction looks best. Stick to rural areas where we can. I’m not sure until we get out. Nobody’s putting those kids in some testing ground.”

“Nobody’s touching my babies.” Like a tap wrenched off, tears stopped. “Nobody. We can go now.”

Rachel held up a hand. “Tomorrow. I’m going to examine you, and we’re going to keep an eye on your babies for twenty-four hours. If there are no complications, we can leave tomorrow. We need supplies. We need diapers and clothes, blankets. We may need formula for the twins.”

“Duncan already breastfed.”

“Seriously?” Rachel let out a laugh. “More good news. We still need supplies. I can get some of what we need here. I’ll go, and clear them to go—if they check out medically—because a woman and her day-old infants could use a doctor. Though Jonah could probably handle most anything. I’ll go because you’re right. This?” She gestured to include the five of them. “This means something. And because maybe, out there, I can start feeling like a doctor again.”

She moved to the bed. “Go hunt up something for the new mother to eat. Maybe a cold drink, definitely some water. And find her something clean to change into. Find us some caps and preemie diapers for the babies. We’ll see how resourceful you are, Jonah.”

“Consider it done.” He rose. “I’ll be back,” he told Katie.

“I know you will.”

“All right, Katie, let’s have a look.”

“Dr. Hopman?”

“Rachel. It’s Rachel, since we appear to have formed an alliance.”

“Rachel, when you’re done, can I hold my babies?”

“Absolutely.” And the spark that had died inside her over the past horrible days rekindled.

ESCAPE

How shall man escape from that which is written;

How shall he flee from his destiny?

—Ferdowsi

CHAPTER SIX

While Katie nursed her daughter for the first time, Arlys Reid decided to take her show on the road. For days now she’d depended on Chuck’s reports, on what she could dig out of the shaky Internet, with the few observations from her quick hikes to and from the studio mixed in.

She’d wanted to be a reporter, she told herself as she checked the batteries in her tape recorder. It was time she went out on the street and reported.

She didn’t check with her producer, her director. Whatever happened, the decision would be hers—and part of that decision, she knew, weighed from holding back the worst of what Chuck had told her that morning.

Help wasn’t coming.

As she got up to put on her coat, Fred looked over from her desk.

“Where are you going?”

“Out. To work. I need you to cover for me, Fred. Just say I’m taking a nap or something. I want to get a man-on-the-street segment. If I can find one who doesn’t want to rob, rape, or kill me.”

“Not going to cover.” Fred stood up. “I’m going with you.”

“Absolutely not.”

Little Fred—all five feet, one inch of her—just smiled. “Absolutely am. I’ve spent plenty of time out there. Somebody’s got to get the Ho Hos and chips, right? And two’s better than one,” she added, swinging on a bright blue jacket covered with pink stars. “There’s a market—well, kind of a hole-in-the-wall place—across Sixth on Fifty-first. It’s boarded up, but some of us know you can pull back a couple of the boards and squeeze in.”

She pulled a pink cap with a tail ending in a bouncing pom-pom onto her curly mop of red hair. “There’s still food, so we can pick up a few supplies. Nobody takes more than they need. We made an agreement.”

“‘We’?”

“It’s like … the neighborhood. Who’s left. You don’t take more than you need so everybody gets a share.”

“Fred.” Arlys shouldered on her briefcase and studied the little redhead with the perky, freckled face. “That’s a story. You’re a story.”

Eyes of soft, quiet green clouded. “You can’t broadcast it, Arlys. Some people, if they find out there’s food they’ll take it all. Hoard it.”

“No address—not even the area.” To seal it, Arlys crossed a finger over her heart. “Just the story. One about people working together, helping each other. A bright spot. Who doesn’t need a bright spot right now? You could give me some details—not names or locations—just how you came to the agreement, how it works.”

“I’ll tell you while we’re out for the MOS.”

“All right, but we stick together.” Arlys thought of the gun in her bag.

“You got that. And don’t worry. I’ve got a way of seeing if somebody’s friendly or an asshole. Well, some assholes aren’t looking to kill you or anything. They’re just assholes because they always were.”

“Can’t argue with that.”

They started out.

“You know, Jim’s not going to like you taking chances.”

Arlys shrugged. “He’ll like if I get a story out of it. There are real people out there, just trying to get through another day. How do they do it? What happened to them? People need to hear about other people getting through. It helps them get through.”