I laughed, weakly, a laugh that hurt my ribs. Ed laid me on the backseat of the cab, Cady in the front seat, where she’d passed out as soon as Lou strapped her in.

Peppy jumped in next to me and kept licking my face and hands. Ed climbed into the truck bed while Lou started the engine. Someone ordered Ed and Lou to stop—a cop or FBI, or maybe someone from the army, because suddenly soldiers seemed to surround us.

Lou said, “You’ll have to shoot all of us, because these women aren’t going anywhere but straight to a doctor. You want to talk to them, that will be when the doc says you can. No, don’t go flashing that badge at me, because I’m not impressed.”

And then we were bumping across corn stubble, driving away from the convoy. I was asleep before we reached the main road.

59
Entertaining Visitors

Sleeping, waking, sleeping, a beeping near my left ear. I opened my eyes and saw a monitor, green lines on a charcoal screen. Seven a.m.

“No, it’s too late, the shift is changing.”

I choked out the words and tried to sit up. My legs were so heavy that shoving them over the edge of the bed exhausted me. By then I was surrounded by women wearing masks who were pushing me back into bed.

I was flailing in panic, lashing out.

“Victoria! Victoria, be calm. You’re safe. Lie back, I’m here.”

“Lotty? Lotty! How did they trap you? We have to leave now!”

“Liebchen, I’m your doctor, I’m keeping you safe. You’re in the Lawrence hospital. You’re in an isolation ward until we’re sure you’re free of plague. These nurses are taking good care of you. Lie down, you’ve pulled out your IV lines.”

My breathing slowed; I was looking at nurses in masks, not Roswell’s criminal army.

“Cady, is she okay, is she ill? I gave her hard news. Birth mother. Not Jenny Perec.”

Lotty sucked in a breath. “I see. She keeps crying, wanting to know if her grandmother is still her grandmother. What is the name? Gertrude Perec? I will seek her out.”

I was back in the cocoon of sleep before the IVs were back in my arms, but Lotty’s presence was a tonic. I started waking, sitting, drinking fluids, and by Saturday, when my blood work came back clean of any Y. pestis, I was allowed out to the visitors’ waiting area. Lotty was keeping the law at bay for another day, but she thought I should talk to Nell Albritten.

The old woman was in an armchair, the Reverend Bayard Clements next to her, Lou and Ed standing nearby.

“Turnabout is fair play, young woman,” Albritten said when I thanked her for making the trip. “You saw to me, my turn to see to you.”