Forcing myself to focus on assessing Beau had calmed my panic, but now that I’d run out of interventions, a wild, brittle terror rose within me. He needed a hospital; what if there were no ventilators left in the hospitals? Only one thing in my past compared to this. When Daniel had become ill and died in our village in Chad—ironically with an unidentified febrile illness much like this one—I’d been flooded with grief. I felt now as I had then—worse, even—incapacitated, my heart galloping with dread and terror. Every beat sent another gush of despair into my system until I thought I’d burst from my skin.

My phone rang: Wally. I snatched it up. “What did they say?”

“They can take them both,” said Wally. He was breathing hard. “An ambulance will be there any moment.”

“Thank you,” I cried.

“Mike Zhou is on call and he’ll see them.” I searched my mental database: Zhou was a pediatric intensivist, a short, jokey tube of a man. “Also Gretchen Crosthwaite.” This name I knew professionally: Gretchen was one of the top pediatric infectious disease specialists in the region. “They’ve got one pediatric negative pressure room waiting, and if no one arrives in the meantime, it’s theirs. Kira, listen.” He paused. “They aren’t letting parents in the rooms.”

“No!”

“Hold on. They’re making an exception for any parent who has already survived infection, plus they know you understand infection control measures. You’re not going to tear around like a dumbass and expose the staff. But”—his voice dropped—“if they let you in, you go in there to comfort your kids. You’re not the one who should manage this. Mike and Gretchen know what they’re doing, and they’ll take care of your children as well as anyone in the country could. They know every single option available at this point. You have to let them take on the burden of whatever happens.”

“I will. I promise.”

“Kira, damn, I wish I—”

“They’re here!” I leapt up. “I have to go. Wally—thank you—”

Before I hung up, I heard his last words. “Tell them I love them.”

19

The Grace of a Breathing Machine

KIRA

ATLANTA, GEORGIA

237 Days After Patient Zero

The room in which the children had been placed—white-walled, with cheerful framed cartoon drawings of various animals—had been intended for one patient, not two, but the nurses had crammed in a second bed and turned the space into its own mini-ICU. Rorie, awake and hysterical at first, had been sedated, and now, at nearly four o’clock in the morning, dozed again, pawing fitfully at her oxygen mask in her sleep.