Kilburn insisted on paying. After leaving cash on the table, they rushed out to Lopez’s car. She drove them to the waterfront Marriott where Cohen was staying. He stood by the front door of the hotel, waiting for them to pick him up. After exchanging greetings, Lopez asked him whether he had heard the good news about Oraloxin.

“A little,” Seth said as he clipped his seat belt in place. His eyes scanned the interior of Lopez’s car. She wondered whether he was pricing it in his mind, but he made no comment.

During the ride to Harborcenter, Lopez and Kilburn took turns updating Cohen on the specifics of the patient responses to Oraloxin. When they arrived at the hospital, Lopez hurried them inside and up to the eighth floor MRGAS quarantine unit, or “The Unit,” as the entire floor had become known. At the provisional security screening post, a guard carefully inspected Lopez’s ID. After ten minutes of walkie-talkie conversations, Kilburn and Cohen were also granted permission to enter.

Inside the makeshift women’s changing room, Lopez changed into scrubs, mask, cap, gown, and booties. When she stepped onto the floor, Kilburn and Cohen waited, looking like a couple of lost surgeons.

The Unit was divided into two sections. The larger section held several rooms where less-sick patients and carriers were cared for. The other section enclosed a functional ICU with isolation rooms that held four critically ill patients. The place smelled to Lopez of iodine and ammonia-soaked sterility.

The charge nurse, Janice, a gregarious, chunky woman with a throaty Southern drawl, guided them around The Unit. She pointed out the fourteen empty rooms in the ICU section. “We’re still worried we might run out of capacity. Then again—” she laughed heartily—“we’re praying that with this wonder drug Oraloxin, we might not need’em after all.”

Janice led them to the door of one of the rooms. She pointed to the large, double-paned, scored window. “This is Haley Vallance’s room.” She smiled. “That little girl is our number-one success story. The staff are already calling her the Oraloxin poster child.”

Peering through the glass, Lopez saw a cute girl with auburn bangs sitting up awake in the bed. An endotracheal tube led from her mouth but her eyes were open and she moved her arms animatedly. A man and a woman, presumably Haley’s parents, hovered over the sides of the bed. Lopez’s spirits rose just watching the scene. Medical gadgetry aside, Haley looked too well to be in an ICU.

Lopez assumed Kilburn was thinking the same, because he glanced at her; his eyes smiling over his surgical mask. “I’ll bet Haley gets kicked out of the ICU soon,” he said.