Social Distancing

Chapter 17: Moving Forwards

"Maggie," Dr. McKenna greeted me warmly as I stepped into his view. I stood in the doorway of the conference room, where Amy and Tucker were also seated. They looked up and smiled, well as much of a smile as I got from Tucker.

It's nice to see them.

"Where's Adam?" I asked and noticed how their eyes immediately averted mine. I looked over at Amy, who squirmed in her seat and looked like she tried to suppress something.

"He's on leave for a bit," Dr. McKenna said quietly.

My eyes widened at the thought that I'd given someone else the flu. "Is he sick too?"

"He's on some personal leave," was the only reply and the three of them fell silent and somber.

"He'll join us when he can," Dr. McKenna reassured us with a tight smile. "Thanks for coming Maggie, take a seat. Amy?"

I sat next to Amy and gave her a curious glance. She looked at me out of the corner of her eyes, gave me a small smile, then started off the meeting.

"We got the initial clinical trial results. They look good. NHS had instructions on doing weekly blood draws but for some cases they've been doing it more frequently. We got the day seven samples into the lab this morning, I've been looking at them and a few have already developed antibodies. There's four hundred subjects, and I can only look at twenty-five samples at a time, so just getting started but really encouraging."

"Excellent," Dr. McKenna sat back in his seat. "That's the best reaction we could have hoped for. Maggie, help her with whatever she needs. Start comparing those antibodies to those in the database of known COVID-19 patients who've recovered." I nodded silently.

"How are the subjects?" I was glad Dr. McKenna asked that question, as I certainly also wanted to know the answer.

Honestly, the answer about one particular participant was the main reason I'd come into the office. Any shred of information on Noah would put my anxiety as ease after Gram's words had me constantly fearing the worst.

"Well, it's only been a week," she said tentatively. "Generally good, but there's been two fatalities. One unrelated, natural causes, and the other from a combination of pneumonia and flu-A. There's four incomplete cases I need to follow up on." My eyes snapped to her immediately.

No.

My hands tightly gripped into the side of my chair as I fought to keep my composure.

"In three weeks if all looks good, then NHS will start infecting the clinical trial cases with it." I looked at Dr. McKenna horrified.

This meeting is just getting worse and worse, they're going to purposely infect patients?

I didn't remember that being in the clinical trial fine print.

"Infect the blood samples, not the actual patients," he reassured me with another tight smile. "Okay, then. Thanks Amy."

He cleared his throat, then announced, "Last line of business, since we're doubling up on work here with the clinical trials and Adam's out, I put out a feeler for some temporary team members. We'll have two people start, and Paul Rand from the third floor - Maggie you know him - and Alex Sullivan from the second. They'll report to us starting on Friday. It's only for eight  weeks, so we'll have to get them up to speed immediately."

And just like that, I was sucked back into work. After my few days in isolation, I was extremely grateful for any and all mental distractions. I looked forward to feeling productive again, and working with Paul wouldn't be terrible. We could use all the friends we could get.