When it was done, Katie lay back, said nothing while Jonah wiped the sweat from her face. Then she gripped his hand.
“You said you could see life, not death. Light, not dark. And when you did, when you said that … you were different. I could see something different.”
“I was a little caught up in the moment.” He started to step back, but she tightened her grip, looked at him.
“I’ve seen things in the last weeks. Things that don’t make sense, things out of books and fantasy movies. Are you one of them? One of what they’re calling the Uncanny?”
“Look, you’re tired, and I’ve got to—”
“You brought my son and my daughter into the world. You gave me a family again. You gave me…” Tears streamed out as her voice quavered. “You gave me a reason to go on living. I’ll be grateful to you every day for the rest of my life. Grateful every time I look at my children. I have children. If part of the reason I have them is you having something, being something, I’m grateful for that, too.”
When his eyes teared, he found himself clinging to her hand like a lifeline. “I don’t know what I am. I don’t know. I can see death coming in someone, or injury. I can see how it’ll happen, and I can’t make it stop.”
“You saw life in my babies, and in me. You saw life. I know what you are. You’re my personal miracle.”
He had to sit on the side of the bed, to gather himself. “I was going to kill myself.”
“No. No, Jonah.”
“If you’d driven up five minutes later, I’d be dead. I didn’t think I could take seeing any more death. Then you drove up, and I saw all that life. I guess you’re my personal miracle, too.”
Katie eased herself up. “Can you hold on to me a minute?”
“Sure. Sure, I can.”
She laid her head on his shoulder.
He heard footsteps coming fast and brisk—heard Rachel call his name.
“In here. Doctor,” he told Katie. “Better late than never.”
“Who needs a doctor?”
Rachel came to the door, looked in at him, over at the warming units. “Well, look here. Did you do this?”
“She helped a little,” Jonah said.
“It looks like excellent teamwork. I’m Dr. Hopman,” she began, then Katie turned her head. “Katie? It’s Katie Parsoni, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Dr. Hopman.” Tears spilled faster now. Katie held out a hand even as she clung to Jonah. “You’re alive.”
“Yes, and so are you and your babies. I’m just going to take a look at them, and you.”
“Duncan—six pounds, two ounces,” Jonah told her. “Antonia—five, ten. I forgot to get their lengths.”
“You did the important work. How are you feeling, Mom?” she asked as she went over to examine Duncan.
“Tired, hungry, grateful, sad, happy. I feel everything. Dr. Hopman was with me when my mother died. She took care of my mother. My father, too.”
“Jonah brought them to the hospital,” Rachel said, glancing back at him. “Ross and Angela MacLeod.”
“MacLeod.” Chicken soup on the stove. The first. Patient Zero. “It’s like a circle,” he murmured.
“We’re looking at two healthy babies.” Rachel crouched down, examining the placentas, the umbilical cords. “Good. Good.”
“How soon can they travel?” Jonah demanded.
“I need to have a look at Katie, and I’m going to try to find somebody in Peeds to examine the babies.”
“She’s fine, and so are they. I can see it, just like I could see her mother wasn’t fine while you were working on her dad. Like I could see you were immune. I had sort of a sense before … before all this. But it’s more now. I don’t expect you to believe me, but—”
“I do,” Rachel corrected. She rubbed her eyes. “I’ve seen things. Things I didn’t believe at first, but you see enough and you’re an idiot if you don’t believe. I’d also be a lousy doctor if I didn’t examine a woman who just gave birth to twins.”
“Once you do, I need to know when they can travel. And when you can be ready to go.”
“Where am I going?”
“I don’t know yet, but I know you’re immune. So are Katie and those babies. You said they’re doing sweeps, taking immunes into quarantined areas, testing them.”
“What?” Katie gripped his shoulder. “‘They’? Like the government? They’re detaining people who aren’t sick?”
Rachel let out a sigh. “Jonah.”
No more bullshit, he thought. No more despair. “She has a right to know. She has babies to think of. You’re a doctor. There are people who don’t have the virus who need doctors. Who need goddamn smart, adaptable doctors. They’re going to try rounding up people like me, too, and I’m damned if I’m going to end up somebody’s experiment.
“It’s a circle,” he repeated. “Her parents to me, me to you, you to Katie, Katie to me. And now the babies. It means something. When can they travel, when can you leave?”
Tired to the bone, Rachel looked at the babies, at the woman weeping silently, at the man who so suddenly looked hard as steel.
“Maybe tomorrow depending on what kind of travel you mean. They have roads blocked.”
“I can get a boat.”
“A boat?”
“Patti—she was my partner,” he told Katie. “She had a boat. It’s not much of one, but it’ll do. We get to the boat, we get in the boat, we use it to get across the river. And we start heading … whatever direction looks best. Stick to rural areas where we can. I’m not sure until we get out. Nobody’s putting those kids in some testing ground.”
“Nobody’s touching my babies.” Like a tap wrenched off, tears stopped. “Nobody. We can go now.”
Rachel held up a hand. “Tomorrow. I’m going to examine you, and we’re going to keep an eye on your babies for twenty-four hours. If there are no complications, we can leave tomorrow. We need supplies. We need diapers and clothes, blankets. We may need formula for the twins.”
“Duncan already breastfed.”
“Seriously?” Rachel let out a laugh. “More good news. We still need supplies. I can get some of what we need here. I’ll go, and clear them to go—if they check out medically—because a woman and her day-old infants could use a doctor. Though Jonah could probably handle most anything. I’ll go because you’re right. This?” She gestured to include the five of them. “This means something. And because maybe, out there, I can start feeling like a doctor again.”
She moved to the bed. “Go hunt up something for the new mother to eat. Maybe a cold drink, definitely some water. And find her something clean to change into. Find us some caps and preemie diapers for the babies. We’ll see how resourceful you are, Jonah.”
“Consider it done.” He rose. “I’ll be back,” he told Katie.
“I know you will.”
“All right, Katie, let’s have a look.”
“Dr. Hopman?”
“Rachel. It’s Rachel, since we appear to have formed an alliance.”
“Rachel, when you’re done, can I hold my babies?”
“Absolutely.” And the spark that had died inside her over the past horrible days rekindled.
ESCAPE
How shall man escape from that which is written;
How shall he flee from his destiny?
—Ferdowsi
CHAPTER SIX
While Katie nursed her daughter for the first time, Arlys Reid decided to take her show on the road. For days now she’d depended on Chuck’s reports, on what she could dig out of the shaky Internet, with the few observations from her quick hikes to and from the studio mixed in.
She’d wanted to be a reporter, she told herself as she checked the batteries in her tape recorder. It was time she went out on the street and reported.
She didn’t check with her producer, her director. Whatever happened, the decision would be hers—and part of that decision, she knew, weighed from holding back the worst of what Chuck had told her that morning.