The Maverick Doctor and Miss Prim. Scarlet Wilson

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СКАЧАТЬ stuffy blue suits and pointy shoes. The suit was lying in a crumpled heap on the ground, discarded as if it were worthless when it easily clocked in at over a thousand dollars. He could see the label from here. Maybe Miss Hoity-Toity did have some redeeming features after all.

      Her skin was lightly tanned, with some white strap marks on her shoulders barely covered by her bra. She was a matching-set girl. Pale lilac satin. But she didn’t have her back to him so from this angle he couldn’t tell if she favored briefs or a thong …

      Her stomach wasn’t washboard flat like some women he’d known. It was gently rounded, proving to him that she wasn’t a woman who lived on salad alone. But the most intriguing thing about her was the pale white scar trailing down the outside of her leg. Where had that come from? It might be interesting to find out. His eyes lifted a little higher. And as for her breasts …

      “Quit staring at me.” She pulled on her scrub trousers. “You’re a doctor. Apparently you’ve seen it all before.” She tossed him a hat. “And get that mop of yours hidden.”

      She pulled her scrub top over her head and knelt in the corner next to her bag. She seemed completely unaffected by his gawping. Just as well really.

      Sawyer reluctantly pulled on the hat and a disposable pale yellow isolation gown over his scrubs. She appeared at his side a few seconds later as he struggled to tuck his hair inside the slightly too big cap.

      “Want one of these?” She waved a bobby pin under his nose with a twinkle in her eye. She was laughing at him.

      “Won’t you need all of them to pull back that one side of your bad haircut?”

      She flung a regulation mask at him. “Ha. Ha. Now, let’s go.”

      They walked down the corridor where the lights were still dimmed. She paused outside the door, her hand resting lightly on his arm.

      “Let’s clarify before we go in. How many staff have been in contact with these kids?”

      He nodded. He would probably answer these questions a dozen times today. “Main contact has been myself and Alison, one of our nurses. We’re estimating they were only in the waiting room around ten minutes. One of the triage nurses moved them through to a room quickly as the kids were pretty sick.”

      Her eyebrows rose above her mask. “I take it that you’ve continued to limit the contact to yourselves?”

      “Ah, about that.”

      “What?” Her expression had changed in an instant. Her eyes had narrowed and her glare hardened.

      “There’s a problem.”

      “What kind of problem?”

      “Alison’s pregnant. Eighteen weeks.”

      She let out an expression that wasn’t at all ladylike. He hadn’t known she had it in her.

      “Exactly. I haven’t let her go back in. She’s adamant. Says there’s no point exposing anyone else to something she’s already breathed in anyway. But I wasn’t having any of it.”

      He could see her brain racing. There was the tiniest flicker of panic under that mask. “But the vaccine …”

      He touched her shoulder. “I know. We don’t know the effects it could have on a fetus.” He shrugged. “I don’t know if you’ve come up with any new research in the last six years, but I wouldn’t want to be the doctor to give it to her.”

      She nodded. “Leave it with me. I’ll take it up with the team.” She turned back to the room. “We need to get some samples.”

      “It’s already done.”

      “What?” She whipped around. “Why didn’t you say so?”

      He sighed. “What do you think I’ve been doing these last few hours? I’m not that far out of the loop that I don’t know how to take samples. Besides, the kids were used to me. It was better that I did it.”

      She nodded, albeit reluctantly. “And the parents?”

      “I’ve taken samples from them too. They’re all packaged and ready to go. Let’s find out what we’re dealing with.”

      “I want to see the kids first.”

      Now she was annoying him. “You think I made their spots up? Drew them on their faces and arms?”

      “Of course I don’t. But, like or not, I’m the doctor in charge here. I need to see the spots for myself. Get some better pictures than the ones snapped on your phone. I need to be clear that you’ve ruled out everything.”

      She was only saying what he would have said himself a few years ago. She was doing things by the book. But in his eyes, doing things by the book was wasting time. That was why he hadn’t bothered with the call to the state department. Best to go right to the source.

      And this family might not have that time to waste. Just like his hadn’t.

      It made him mad. Irrationally mad. And it didn’t matter that the voices in his head were telling him that. Because he wasn’t listening.

      “For goodness’ sake. Don’t you have any confidence in my abilities? I’ve been doing this job since you were in kindergarten. I could run rings around you!”

      She pushed her face up next to his. If it weren’t for the masks, their noses would be practically touching. “You’re not quite that old, Matt Sawyer. And it doesn’t matter what I think about your doctoring abilities. I’m in charge here. Not you. We’ve already established you don’t work for the DPA any more and I do. You know how things work. You know the procedures and protocols. You might not have followed them but I do. To the letter.” She put her hand on the door. “Now, do your job, Dr. Sawyer. Take me in there and introduce me to the parents.”

      Callie leaned back against the wall in the sluice room. She’d just pulled off her disposable clothing and mask and dispensed with them in line with all the infection control protocols.

      She let the temperature of the cool concrete seep through her thin scrub top. Thank goodness. With the air-conditioning turned off this place was getting warm. Too warm. Why couldn’t this outbreak have happened in the middle of the winter, when Chicago was knee deep in snow, instead of when it was the height of summer? It could have made things a whole lot simpler for them. It could also have made the E.R. a whole lot quieter.

      Those kids were sick. Sawyer hadn’t been kidding. They were really sick. She’d really prefer it if they could be in a pediatric intensive care unit, but right now that was out of the question.

      And even though it seemed like madness, in a few minutes’ time she was going to have to inoculate them and their parents with the smallpox vaccine.

      Then she was going to have to deal with the staff, herself included.

      There wasn’t time to waste. The laboratory samples were just away. It could be anything up to forty-eight hours before they had even a partial diagnosis and seven days before a definitive diagnosis. She didn’t want to wait that long.

      She knew that would cause problems СКАЧАТЬ