“They tell me I need counseling. It’s normal to feel traumatized at the site of a trauma, they say, especially when you have to return to it over and over,” she said, mumbling into Baby Walter’s hair. “All true. In my case I find it more than a little ironic I work in a place that’s literally called the trauma bay.”

Baby Walter sighed in his sleep and squirmed in her arms. She shushed him, rocking back and forth.

“I guess pretty soon we’re going to have to start calling you something else,” she murmured. “You can’t be Baby Walter forever. It was never the most original nickname, anyway. Toddler Walter doesn’t roll off the tongue, though, does it? I wonder what your daddy would say.”

Baby Walter’s lower lip drooped open, revealing four of his ten teeth. Like Rose, he was fair, with a silky cap of hair curling at his temples and rosy, cherubic cheeks. Compton’s arm was about to fall off, but she couldn’t bear to shift him. She nuzzled Baby Walter’s head and breathed him in. He smelled like warm sweet milk.

“Ellis,” she whispered. “Ellis, I miss you.”

Ellis, predictably, did not answer. Something else grabbed Compton’s attention, however; she leaned forward and stretched her hand as far as it would go to retrieve the remote so she could turn up the volume on the television. The bitchy frenemy show had paused for commercials. The current image on the screen—a white farmhouse set in a meadow and backed by a hillside of spectacular fall foliage—dissolved into an aerial view of a row of redbrick buildings along a river, all of them nestled between two lovely, low mountains. Big letters appeared on-screen, hovering above the buildings.

KENT, CONNECTICUT

Compton knew she was seeing a series of curated photographs from a tourism ad, not a posthumous message from Ellis. Still, she couldn’t tear her eyes away. The river view gave way to a pedestrian’s-eye glimpse of charming main-street storefronts, complete with dormers and front porches and sidewalk cafés. Then a lane leading up to an old-time covered bridge. A New England clapboard church topped with a steeple. A horse barn with a detached silo.

A woman and a little child in a field, chasing a golden retriever.

“Ellis,” she whispered again. “You’re being really fucking unsubtle.” This time the tears clung to her eyes but didn’t fall. Gently, she placed Baby Walter into a corner of the sofa and sat beside him, clutching her iPad.

Google came up, offering all the information in the world.

Hospitals near Kent, Connecticut, she typed.

21

Triage

KIRA

ATLANTA, GEORGIA

240 Days After Patient Zero