“We will do everything we can to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Ava said, forcing conviction into her voice.
Lindsey nodded and walked toward the elevator. Ava sifted through the papers again, looking for any numbers that would appear hopeful, but they didn’t look good.
“Good Morning, Doctor Grant,” Ava heard Lindsey say as she stepped onto the elevator. She forced herself to focus on the papers, not looking up as Elizabeth crossed the room.
“Good morning,” Ava said without looking up.
“Good morning,” Elizabeth said and leaned over her shoulder. She placed a hand on the small of Ava’s back, and her skin began to tingle. Ava pressed her lips, trying to ignore the sensation. “What are we looking at?”
“The staggered treatment isn’t working,” Ava said, finally looking up from the papers. “Lindsey tried several antivirals, but none of them are fast enough to take out the virus, and every time we allow it to come out of the dormancy, it makes the patients worse.”
“Damn,” Elizabeth said.
“That’s what I said,” Ava turned to Elizabeth with aslight smile. Elizabeth pulled back slightly and Ava tried her hardest not to react. They were at work, they needed to focus, people’s lives depended on it.”
“Do we know for sure what the virus is?” Elizabeth asked and walked away from Ava.
“I had techs and med students digging through every piece of information they could find on viral infections, but they couldn’t find anything to match it. We know it came from the rats, and it is similar to rabies, but it doesn’t look like anything we’ve encountered before, anywhere.”
“So we are dealing with something completely new,” Elizabeth said, more to herself than Ava.
Her eyes followed Elizabeth as she walked around the lab. She was amazed at how well Elizabeth was responding to her. She was perfectly professional. Ava wanted to lean her over the lab table and kiss her like they had kissed last night, and she wondered if Elizabeth was having similar thoughts.
“Doctor Jackson?” Elizabeth’s voice ripped her from her thoughts.Damn it, I need to focus. The sting of using her professional moniker made her flinch.
“Sorry,” Ava said and turned her eyes back to the paperwork. “We seem to be keeping it at bay at least with the rabies vaccinations, but I don’t know how long those will last.”
“Did they find anything that falls dormant like this?” Elizabeth asked.
“I don’t… I don’t think so,” Ava answered. She flipped through some other paperwork on the tables, one of the stacks looked like notes from the medical students.
“Are they still here?” Elizabeth asked.
“Probably in the conference room, if I had to guess,” Ava said.
Elizabeth nodded, but her eyes lingered on Ava for an extra second before she turned and left the lab. Ava took a breath she didn’t realize she had been holding in since Elizabeth came into the room. She couldn’t let her feelings for Elizabeth get in the way of the case. Somehow she knew that would only serve to annoy Elizabeth. She was the truest of professionals and if Ava’s romantic inclinations were to get in the way of saving those patients, she wouldn’t be able to live with herself, and she knew that Elizabeth would probably lose all respect for her.
She turned back to the stack of papers and started sorting them in the order of their progress, two of the antiviral drugs they had tried were almost completely unsuccessful, but one of the others aside from the rabies vaccinations showed promise. They just had to figure out how to kill the virus once it fell dormant.
This was not getting anywhere at the moment, so she pulled out a notebook and started writing down points that she would need to make at tomorrow’s press conference. This would not be the first one she’d done, but the others had been for studies or treatments where she knew all the details. Things that she had been working on for months, sometimes years, before presenting them to the public. She had even won awards for some of her treatments, especially for some of the degenerative diseases like Parkinson’s, but this was untested waters for her. She didn’t know how to speak to the public with the most common answer to any question posed to her would beI don’t know.
She considered going to find Elizabeth but thought better of it. She was certain that she didn’t need Elizabeth’s help and was just looking for an excuse to be near her. She couldn’t let that interfere with her work. She focused again on the page in front of her. She called Dr. Mars’s office.
Doctor Mars picked up on the second ring. “What is it?”
Ava blinked in surprise at the curt answer but took a beat and spoke. “Did they get the site cleaned up?”
“Sandra’s office?”
“Yes,” Ava answered. “Is this something we need to be looking for in the other buildings or is it contained?”
“As far as I can tell, it’s been contained, but I can’t say for sure,” Doctor Mars answered. She heard Dr. Watson in the background.
“A CDC team is sweeping all the buildings in the downtown area looking for other possible locations, but nothing has come up yet,” Doctor Watson added.
“Thank you,” Ava said. “I was coming up with some points for the press conference.”
“Welcome,” Doctor Mars said. “But it would be best if we could let the public know that we have a way of fighting this virus.”
