Lost Immunity by Daniel Kalla (free reads TXT) 📕

just as she lifts the sheets and raises her leg, he rolls toward her. She only goes along with him to avoid another post-counseling debrief that she senses might be imminent. She can’t handle another one of those this morning.

The physical release from her orgasm is unexpected and welcome, creeping up faster than usual in their frenzied tangle. But their primal connection has never been an issue. At forty-four, Dominic is in as good shape as he ever was. Though her desire has lessened and the frequency of their sex diminished—it’s been weeks since the last time—Dominic can still find the right touch and pace to help bring her over the top, even when her mind and heart are elsewhere.

Sadly, the act doesn’t bring her any closer to him. And as she lies in his arms, listening to his heavier breathing and feeling his bony chest press against her breasts, she plots her escape. She silently concedes to herself that their counselor’s assessment at yesterday’s session was accurate: she does bear more responsibility of late for the growing chasm inside their marriage. But to her, the momentum feels as unstoppable as feet slipping on a slick embankment.

Besides, Dominic’s utter lack of support for her recent promotion still stings. Much of their strength as a couple came from mutual respect and admiration for each other’s professional ambitions. Lisa has always championed Dominic, especially after he became his hospital’s head of interventional cardiology, the specialty responsible for placing stents into all those blocked coronary arteries that genetics, diet, and lifestyle have made rampant across America. And despite his tendency toward self-absorption, Dominic used to genuinely encourage her, too. That all changed once she was named the city’s new chief public-health officer. Maybe he felt irrationally threatened by her promotion—as if she had surpassed him professionally—or deprived by her longer hours away from home, but neither excused his petulance. And she can’t help but resent him for it.

“I thought we got some good stuff off our chest yesterday, Lees,” Dominic says, startling her.

“Yeah, me too,” she answers quickly, shuffling away from him, trying to ease out of his embrace.

“It’s not quantum physics, is it?” Dominic says, hanging on to her. “Nothing we didn’t know. You could basically draw a line and see where our fertility issues and the problems in our marriage intersect.”

Not this again There’s no way in hell. “Look, Dom, it’s hard to focus right now with this meningitis scare at work.”

“Of course. Work comes first nowadays. Always.”

Lisa ignores the implication. Would it kill you to ask me how I’m coping with the biggest health crisis I’ve ever managed? She rises from the bed without voicing the thought. “I’ve got to be at the office soon. There’s going to be some long hours until this mess is sorted out.”

Dominic only shakes his head and rolls away.

Pushing her marital woes to the back of her mind, Lisa races to get ready, and leaves. She reaches her office by six thirty, but she’s not the first one to arrive. Not even close. The place is abuzz, almost as busy as on a Monday afternoon during flu season.

As soon as Tyra spots Lisa from across the room, the program manager breaks free of her conversation with two public-health nurses and hurries over to greet her. They step into Lisa’s office and sit across the desk from one another.

“Where do we stand, Ty?” Lisa asks.

“On kinda thin ice, if I’m being honest,” Tyra says, but the determined glint in her eyes suggests that she’s stoked by the challenge. “Eleven confirmed or, at least, highly suspected cases of meningococcus. Five deaths. All of them basically kids.”

“And they’re all directly linked to Camp Green?”

“Uh-huh. We haven’t seen any secondary spread to relatives or household contacts.”

“Yet.”

“True enough.” Tyra sighs. “It’s only been thirty-six hours since Patient Zero showed up in the ER at Harborview. And he’s dead.”

“Where are we on the contact tracing?”

“Felix and Yolanda worked the phones all night,” Tyra says of two of her nurses. “Don’t have exact numbers, but we’ve reached well over half the families.”

“Found any links to Reykjavík?”

“Not yet. But we dispensed at least a hundred antibiotic kits so far, or got the prescriptions called in, at least. We still got a ways to go, though.”

“Time is spread.”

“Don’t be wasting your breath preaching to the choir.” Tyra motions to the window behind her, through which Lisa spots several nurses at their cubicles with phones to their ears. “The whole staff is going to spend the day chasing down any and all remaining contacts.”

“Except us. We’ll be bouncing from one meeting to another.”

“No time for all that bureaucratic bullshit.” Tyra hops to her feet. “We got an honest-to-God outbreak to contain. And we only have to look to Iceland to see how high the stakes are.”

As soon as Tyra leaves, Lisa opens her email and weeds through the two-hundred-plus new ones, replying only to the few she deems most urgent. She’s so lost in her work that her shy young assistant, Ingrid, has to rap on the open door to remind Lisa that her seven o’clock meeting is about to begin.

Everyone else is already seated at the long table inside the windowless conference room when Lisa takes her chair at the head of it. The first slide of her brief presentation fills the two flat screens mounted on either side of the room. Even though she didn’t specifically invite Angela, Lisa isn’t surprised to see her there with a bright floral scarf wrapped around her pale head. There are twelve other attendees. Five of them work for her office, including Tyra, and Lisa recognizes everyone else—an assortment of state and local officials—except for the gangly man seated to her immediate left, who reminds her of Abraham Lincoln with his Shenandoah beard.

Lisa initiates roundtable introductions and learns the man to her left is Dr. Alistair Moyes, the lead physician at the Centers for Disease Control for the western United States.

“Thanks, everyone, for coming on such