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“Ha.” A corner of Dr. Donaldson’s mouth lifted. “It’ll certainly take that to get me out of here.” He straightened. “Oh—now I remember. I think your PCR assay is back. How many MLVA markers?”
“Twenty-four.” I couldn’t be sure what the police had done so far in their investigation, but these analyses of the spores from Davis’s letter might be useful in tracing the anthrax to its source. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, they should be back soon. Soon-ish.” He flashed me a weak grin. “Thanks for this. Good talk.”
I nodded and patted his arm again before refocusing on my computer and Davis’s guideline notes. I flipped through the pages—twenty of them, with notes on every single one.
What would we need to present these to the state? Probably more than emailing the finished guidelines. These people would be facing every local Health Department and hospital in the state to justify these changes, some of which would take a huge amount of effort. We’d need to persuade, maybe even dazzle them, get them fully onboard and arm them with all the rationale they’d need.
A PowerPoint couldn’t do all that, but it was a start. If Davis was presenting—which he should be—his charisma would probably take care of most of the heavy lifting. He’d only need a slide deck as a backup.
Still, I was not about to cut and paste the revised guidelines into a standard presentation template and call it good.
I realized, as I sunk into a concentration blackhole, this was me trying to make it up to Davis. It was not the same as an apology—yet another apology. But maybe it could be a start.
I owed him at least this much.
I made it almost twenty-four hours without working, but I still couldn’t get over how empty my place felt—and my life. By Friday afternoon, I had to march myself back into Beaufort just so I didn’t have to hear my own footsteps, my own voice bouncing off the walls.
Although she’d never even known my address, Rittenhouse Square or Old City, I hadn’t been able to escape the memory of Cassie at my new home. But coming into work was worse. We hadn’t spent that much time together in the five weeks I’d worked here, but the stupidest things made me think of her. A stapler reminded me she’d stapled the pages of the guidelines together for me. (I hadn’t even seen her do that; they were just stapled when she brought them to me. For all I knew, Dr. Donaldson or a half-trained monkey had done it.) Donuts on the secretary’s desk reminded me of the meal we’d shared in her break room. Even my office—I’d been here with her after everything went down, where her jokes eased me through the anxiety of anthrax. And this was where I’d typed my alliterative answers to amuse her.
This was absolutely pitiful.
I had only one day to complete the guidelines and the presentation for the State Health Department, but I couldn’t seem to focus enough to pull them up. Instead I fired up PubMed and started looking for the latest research on the effects of loneliness.
Fine, Cassie was right about one thing. There were no other words for it: I was alone. Lonely.
The research had the dual purpose of burning through the hours as well as revealing the startling effects of not having enough friends, beyond the surgeon general’s advisory not too long ago. Loneliness for children damaged cardiovascular health decades after the fact. It raised blood pressure in adults. It predicted death in multiple all-cause mortality studies over several years. Studies had shown loneliness to be associated with coronary heart disease and cardiovascular mortality. Loneliness was associated with personality disorders, suicide, Alzheimer’s and dementia. It increased depressive symptoms.
Loneliness literally killed.
I didn’t need forty years of research to tell me humans withered without company.
To put it lightly, people needed people. With nearly 60% of adults in the US feeling lonely even before the last pandemic isolated us all, and disproportionate effects among low income and minority groups, loneliness was nearly as great of a public health crisis as anything else we’d studied
There had to be something the Division of Urban Health could do.
I determined to find out. After a late lunch, I headed up to Dr. Okafor’s office a little before three thirty. I found the door open and Dr. Okafor aiming a smile, broad, bright and brittle, at a trio of besuited, old white men.
“Ah, Davis.” Dr. Okafor ushered me in. I’d sort of expected her to chide me for coming in so soon, but she introduced me to the three men who looked too familiar. “From the State Health Department,” she finished.
Wait, what? They weren’t coming until Monday. I cast a meaningful glance at Dr. Okafor between shaking the men’s hands. If they were expecting a slide deck today—or actual finished guidelines—we were both in big trouble.
“It seems there was a mix-up at the State Health Department,” Dr. Okafor explained, infusing her voice with extra warmth as if that would simply cover up whatever the mix-up was. “And our colleagues are here to meet with us today.”
I mentally kicked myself for not going over the guidelines first thing. No, I hadn’t come back because I was ready to dive back into the grind anthrax-free-face first, but if it weren’t for that chance decision to come in, Dr. Okafor would be all alone.
And Dr. Croft...
My heart sank. The state Health Department would never have the chance to know Cassie at all. Obviously a single presentation wouldn’t have begun to show them how kind and caring she was, how she worked to connect with her patients, how she was not only good at eradicating disease but also making a person whole.
She’d left a hole in me, not by what she’d done, but by the mere fact of her absence.
And now these guys would never appreciate how much she’d helped with this project.
A knock sounded at the door to Dr. Okafor’s office, and I nearly had to rub my eyes to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. Cassie. Was here.
“Dr. Okafor?” she said, eyeing the men in the room. When her gaze reached me, she straightened and looked away.
