He doesn’t move. His last job must have been with the Queen’s Guard.
“Listen, I’ll have you know that I am a very sexy doctor, with a robust…immune system.” My voice has taken on a slight edge of hysteria, but I hope it comes off as seductive. “If you let me out of here, I’ll unzip that vinyl suit, rip off that mask, and show you just how uninfected I am.”
The suggestion doesn’t tempt him, so I try a more obvious approach.
“Oops. My top just fell off. I’m naked right behind this glass window. Sooooo naked. Naked as the day I was born—but sexier.”
“Daisy, he has headphones in,” Lucas says from behind me.
I scowl. “How do you know?”
“I saw them.”
Somehow that is the last straw for me. I turn from the window and start pacing the small exam room. “Are you kidding me?! We’re stuck in this room with nothing to entertain us and he’s out there listening to a podcast?”
“Could be an audiobook…”
He is amused.
He is stuck in this room with me for the next 24 hours and he is wearing a little smirk and reclining on the exam table like he is on a beach in Ibiza.
“Wait.” A panic-inducing thought spirals through me. “How are we going to survive for 24 hours without food?”
“They gave us food.”
He points to a small Tupperware on the counter and I go over to inspect it. There are a few granola bars. Bottles of water. MREs. I keep rifling through our rations until I come up with a chocolate chip cookie they must have dropped in to keep morale up. I slip it into my pocket when I’m sure Lucas has closed his eyes again.
I look around the room and the walls seem to have contracted an imperceptible amount. I spy the small bathroom attached to the exam room and shudder.
“You mean I have to pee with you five feet away? Are you kidding me?”
“Or you could hold it."
A small, pitiful noise comes from the back of my throat.
“Are you losing it? Because if you are, you should let me know so I can restrain you.”
I shoot him a glare. “I’d like to see you try.”
Movement out in the hallway distracts me and I leap toward the door. “Hey! Yoohoo!”
The official has pulled a chair over to the door so he can sit down, and I’ve grown desperate—so desperate, in fact, that I shout through the door that I am starting to exhibit symptoms of TB. It’s a lie, I hope.
“You know what?” I cough-cough like Karen from Mean Girls. “I have chest pain, chills, and a fever. I think you’d better take me to Houston too.”
He finally turns to face me.
“Oh thank god!”
I can taste freedom. He will let me out. He has to listen—I am a doctor after all. When the tests come back negative, we’ll all laugh and I’ll be on my way with the chocolate chip cookie still stuffed in my front pocket. Lucas will be back here eating cold survival porridge.
“She’s lying. She just wants out,” Lucas warns, bored. He’s found a stress ball somewhere in the room and is throwing it up over his head and catching it. Over and over and over.
“Lying?” I shout, all too aware that I’ve exceeded the volume of an inside voice. “I’m not lying!”
The official shakes his head; he’s sick of my shit. He turns the volume up on his iPhone and I catch a glimpse of his audiobook: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. It’s ironic, and I can’t help but feel a kinship with Sirius Black—except instead of being locked away with thousands of soul-sucking dementors, I’ve only got one, and he’s currently staring at me.
“You might as well relax,” he says. “We’re not getting out of here before our skin tests are negative.”
He’s still tossing around that damn stress ball, and I’ve reached my limit. Without hesitation, I storm across the room and snatch it out of his hands. In a feat of superhuman strength, I rip it down the middle. Tiny pieces of foam float down around us; for a few seconds, we live inside a shitty snow globe.
“Well, you’ve officially lost your mind,” Lucas says.
“How much longer do we have?”
He checks his watch. “22 hours and 35 minutes.”
I won’t survive it.
“Lucas.”
“Yes?”
“I think you should restrain me now.”
HOUR 2
To distract me from my crumbling sense of sanity, Lucas agrees to do a quick inventory of the room. We have the following items to entertain us for the next 22 hours:
- 5 Highlights magazines, 3 of which have already had their differences spotted
- 1 Sharpie, 1 pen
- 6 boxes of gloves, 87 tongue depressors, 55 Q-tips, and 164 cotton swabs
- 1 box of paper drapes
- 7 one-size-fits-all gowns
- CDC-issued blankets and cot
- a bunch of other medical supplies that don’t help me forget that I’m a prisoner