“You’re talking about for humans?” Kevin asked.

Juan choked back a retort. “Of course, humans.”

“Sure, there’s some dual-gas measuring devices in our supply storage. It’s the kind you blow hard into, like you would a spirometer, but it measures gas percentages. I’ll have to dig around, but I can probably be back here with one in… fifteen or twenty minutes.”

Juan turned back to Nate. “I’d like to leave in about fifteen to twenty minutes.”

Nate’s eyes widened, and he pulled out his phone. “Then I guess I’d better make some calls.”

As Nate strode away, speaking in hushed whispers on his phone, Juan felt a small sense of accomplishment. He might be able to get some people out of quarantine, and thus save their lives.

Closing his eyes, he wracked his brain, trying to imagine if there was anything he could do for those who were infected.

As he focused on the desperate nature of what he was facing, his shoulders drooped. Hopelessness washed over him.

With just about nine days left, Juan knew… there was no way he’d be able to undo what had already been done.

###

Kathy sat with her dad in the mess hall at Camp X-Ray. As he spoke with some of the other “inmates,” as she thought of them, she tried to stomach another lukewarm bowl of beef stew.

“All of you folks had cancer as well?” a scrawny middle-aged man with a strong Spanish accent asked through a mouthful of cornbread.

Everyone at the table nodded, and one man said, “Yes, but thank God, it’s gone now.”

Dad asked, “Is that true with everyone? You’re all cured?”

Another round of nods.

“It’s an absolute miracle,” one woman exclaimed from the far end of the table.

A woman sitting at a table behind Kathy announced, “It did more than just that. For the first time in my life, my psoriasis is totally gone, and it’s been over six months.”

An older man said, “Truly, we’re all blessed to still be alive. I heard about someone who went through the trial we did, but they died. Evidently, their MS interfered with the treatment.”

“I heard the same thing,” someone else said.

Feeling a surge of emotion, Kathy pressed her cheek against her father’s shoulder and whispered, “We are blessed, you know. I’m really happy you’re still with Mom and me.”

A man with a thick brown beard asked, “Hey, has anyone else noticed that you’re not using as much deodorant? I swear to God, either my sniffer is broken or I just don’t stink like I used to.”

“No, I noticed the same thing…”

“Me too! Weird, ain’t it?”

Kathy caught her dad sniffing at his armpits. She chuckled. “I’d have told you if you stunk.”