“Why do you ask me to pray?” she whispered now, hopeful.

He met her eyes and she saw his love for her.

“Because,” he said, “it will comfort you.”

This wasn’t what she’d longed for, but she took his hand and began to pray.

18

Fragile and Exquisite

KIRA

ATLANTA, GEORGIA

236 Days After Patient Zero

Four days after Beau’s birthday, I’d finished putting him to bed—ignoring Rorie, who’d gone to her room, still refusing to speak to me—when Wally called. For months, Atlanta had dodged the metaphorical bullet, and now in the waning days of the last wave, I’d almost—but not quite—been ready to heave a sigh of relief. Other cities had gone down; New York first, certainly, with its population density and its mass transit, but other less comprehensible places too: Laredo in Texas, and Spokane in Washington, and a slew of random small towns in Nebraska. Some places seemed to escape almost unscathed. It was an unfathomably weird virus, but, in the end, it appeared we had it in the grip of a slow strangulation, forcing the R0 ever downward. Not only that, but approval of the first vaccine could be days away. I expected Wally to comment on the vaccine news, but when he spoke, his voice was anything but exultant.

“We’ve got a surge,” he said. “A big one.”

“What? Where?”

“Here. Here, Kiki. I got a call a few minutes ago from the county public health director, who’s been monitoring the situation at Emory. You saw the local admission numbers yesterday.”

“Yes, but—”

He didn’t give me time to finish. “We’ve had dozens of artiovirus admissions in the last few hours.”

I sat on the side of the bed, one hand drifting to my mouth before I yanked it back down again. Why was it so damn hard not to touch your face?

“Dozens? In a few hours? Where?”

“They’re all being directed to the tent hospital.” Most cities had begun doing this, both for safety and to maintain enough resources in the actual hospital for normal emergencies.

“How are supplies?”

“I’m told they’re good,” Wally said, adding, “I also heard we’re supposed to receive a large compassionate-use shipment of Artenivir.”

Artenivir was an experimental antiviral treatment not yet approved by the FDA. The initial data trended toward limited success in adults, but it had been discontinued for children after it had been discovered it caused a massive inflammatory reaction in children with fevers. In any case, Artenivir was a stopgap, useful if you were already quite sick; the country had pinned most of its hope on a vaccine.

“Do I need to come in tonight?”

“Wait until tomorrow, Kira. The team will work tonight, and we’ll have better data by then.”

Hanging up, I crossed the room to the kitchen and helped myself to a tiny pour of Blanton’s. Standing at the darkened window, I sipped the bourbon and attempted to will my mind into blankness. If only I could erase from my thoughts, for even a short while, the sheer overwhelming impact of the events of this year. All the deaths, all the suffering; all the disruption and loss.