The doctor seemed nice enough, though. Lucy watched her as she busied herself at the countertop behind her desk. An electric kettle whistled. The air conditioner rattled and wheezed. The air tasted metallic. The drone of the generator was just background noise now and hardly registered. Lucy tried to remember what it would be like to live with electricity, but failed. She wondered if the hospital staff listened to music, had dance parties on Saturday nights. It didn’t seem likely.
The two desk lamps felt too bright to her. She was used to the small dancing flames of the lanterns and the steady orange glow of a campfire.
“It’s only instant, I’m afraid,” Dr. Lessing said and turned around with two steaming mugs. “Artificial creamer?”
Lucy shook her head and accepted the cup.
Dr. Lessing sat down behind her desk. “I miss cows, don’t you?”
“I guess,” said Lucy. She missed donuts and her family. Mostly her family. And feeling safe.
She took a sip of her drink. It was searingly hot and very sweet. The doctor had added sweetener without asking her. In the past she drank it black and unsweetened, but coffee, even this chalky, sugary mixture, was coffee. And it was comforting.
She blew on it, watching the woman from behind the rim of the cup.
Dr. Lessing put her cup down on a neatly folded square of tissue paper and opened a drawer to her right. She pulled out a thick folder. Lucy leaned forward. Coffee slopped over the edge of her mug, splashing onto her leg. She yelped. Dr. Lessing looked up momentarily. A little frown creased her forehead and then smoothed itself. Lucy recognized the folder. It was hers, from the nurse’s office at school. And now she remembered Dr. Lessing’s name from the reports inside. The school nurse, Mrs. Reynolds, had sent all the blood tests here.
“Why do you have that?” Lucy asked. The coffee wasn’t waking her up. Just the opposite. She felt like curling up in this soft chair and taking a nap. She forced herself to sit straight. “Did the school send it to you? Why?” She peered at it. There were pages covered in small, precisely written words. It was much bulkier than before.
Dr. Lessing closed the folder and pressed her palms flat against it. She stroked it and smiled. “They did so many tests on you, Lucy. Did you know? A veritable plethora, looking for the usual things: heightened immunity, some kind of increased antibody production, excessive white blood cells, excessive red blood cells. And then they got creative with it. The most far-fetched possibilities were considered, but there was nothing.” Her fingertips caressed the folder as if it were a cat. Her smile didn’t waver. “They died without ever finding out. I can’t imagine anything more frustrating.” Her eyes lingered on Lucy’s face. A spasm flickered across her eyelid.
Lucy swallowed the gulp of coffee she’d been holding in her mouth. She sputtered as it went down the wrong way. A tiny thread dribbled down her chin. Dr. Lessing handed her a tissue from the box on her desk.
“Am I sick?” Lucy asked in a whisper.
Dr. Lessing tapped her lip with a pen.
“Your parents didn’t vaccinate you.”
It sounded like an accusation.
“Yeah, I guess,” Lucy said. “I had an older brother who died from an allergic reaction when he was a baby.”
The doctor’s mouth pursed. Her eyes narrowed. She seemed to be looking at something that was far off in the distance. Lucy shifted in her chair. She finished the rest of her coffee, so hungry she even drank the thick syrup at the bottom, and held the mug in her hands. “You didn’t answer me,” she finally said. “Am I sick?”
“I didn’t believe it at first, but the tests corroborate it completely. You’re an anomaly. You shouldn’t exist.” She slapped the folder so hard, it made Lucy jump. “But you do!”
“What does it mean?”
Dr. Lessing got to her feet in a quick, smooth motion. She walked to the window, pulled the curtain aside. The sun was coming up, flushing the concrete parking lot with pink and gold light. “It means,” she said, “I’ve searched for you for a long time, Lucy Holloway. I almost got you at the Midtown shelter, but you vanished.” She frowned. “And then Del mentioned your name while I was asking her a few general questions about the settlement. Such an unbelievable stroke of luck. I don’t think she likes you much, by the way. It took some convincing, but she eventually saw that it was the right choice to bring you here.”
“She didn’t escape,” Lucy said, suddenly sure of it. “You let her go.”
“She’s a capable girl, that one. A little vindictive, but trustworthy, and her heart’s in the right place.” She swung around. “She’d do anything for the little ones, you know. Quite motherly, although she doesn’t look it.”
“She’s a rat.”
Dr. Lessing laughed. “She was stuck between Charybdis and Scylla.”
“Whatever.”
Lucy didn’t care much about Del anymore.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “The blood tests and all that, that’s in the past.”
“Somehow, within your body, within your blood, you have the ability to withstand a disease that killed almost everyone on Earth. I’d say that’s still relevant, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, but the plague is over.” But then what about Leo? She shifted again, pressing her spine to the back of the chair. Her brain was so slow and her eyes felt gritty. She wanted to close them. “I mean, it won’t ever come back like before. Will it?” She tried to sit up straighter, but her spine felt like a limp noodle.
“You’re missing the point. The answer is what is important. A scientist can’t rest until she has the answer.”
Rest. That’s what she needed. Just a little nap maybe, and then she’d get Aidan and they’d go home.
Dr. Lessing opened the cabinet. It had plain wooden doors on the outside and looked like it belonged in a kitchen to hold plates and dishes, but its interior was more like a refrigerator. Tubes and vials fitted into individual slots and racks. Some were filled with a clear liquid, others with red. There were hundreds of them. She picked up a tube and tilted it. The lamplight turned it into gooey paint.
“What are all those?” Lucy asked. She rubbed her eyes, stifled a yawn. Her eyelids fluttered and then opened again. She was so tired.
“Answers… questions…” Dr. Lessing murmured. She turned suddenly and stared at Lucy. Her smile was gone. “Every answer fits into a box, and that leads to the next question. That is what is so perfect about science. We can be methodical about it. Blood. Plasma. Serums. Vaccines. The answer is in the blood.”
Lucy had heard that before. It was a creepy phrase and it had stuck in her head. She tried to remember who had said it. Her mind was sluggish. She gripped the arms of the chair, tried to clear the fog. Leo! Leo had said the same thing.
“Leo!” she said out loud.
Dr. Lessing was suddenly just above her, so close Lucy could see the large pores on her nose, could hear her breathing, heavy and quick, and smell mint candy. The doctor’s soft brown eyes were now hard as pebbles.
“Everything fits, except for you,” Dr. Lessing said. “You should want to help. With your blood, I can synthesize a vaccine. A synthetic duplicate. Even if the disease mutates, I’ll be able to control it.”