Marked

Chapter Twenty-Seven

"Oh, Ray, honey." Simone blew Rachel a kiss across the room.

It'd taken a lot of convincing, but Simone had finally agreed to leave the room for her own safety. Since she hadn't had any direct physical contact with Rachel, it was better for her to quarantine separately until her lab work came back.

"I will be right down the hall. As soon as your test comes back negative-and it will come back negative- I'm coming right back in here, ok?"

"I'll be counting down the minutes," Rachel said with a smile.

"I'll see you in a bit then, my beauty queen."

Simone departed, led by a nurse into an adjacent room while Doctor Everest and Hector stood in a semi-circle around her.

"Hector, I would advise that quarantine separately as well."

"Listen doc, my abuelo, he caught something very similar this back on our farm. I can't be sure what it was, though, since we never took him to a doctor, but my brothers and I took care of him and never got sick. Is that possible?"

"Sometimes, though rare, certain people have natural immunity to certain diseases. The human body is fascinating that way but I think we still need to get you looked at in case you're a carrier, especially if your grandfather passed away from this."

"I've already been exposed which means you'll just quarantine me in another room. Let me quarantine here. I'm not leaving Rachel alone."

Dr. Everest sighed.

He nodded to the nurse that had just finished hooking Rachel up to an IV.

"Keep your mask on and keep your distance," he said before giving Hector and Rachel a meaningful departing glance.

The door hissed closed after them.

An assortment of instruments lay strewn across her body- a cuff over her arm that would inflate every once in a while, cutting off her circulation, a small gadget over her pointer finger, thin plastic tubes sticking from the inner crease of her elbow.

The vents overhead hissed every now and then, filtering the air in the room to prevent disease from spreading, as Dr. Everest had explained.

The steady beeping of her heart on a monitor began to drive her insane and so was the bouncing of her legs which she couldn't seem to still no matter how hard she tried.

Hector reached out, one hand steadying her knees, while his weight indented the mattress by her legs as he sat down.

"Doctor Everest said no contact," She protested.

"He can say it till he's blue in the face. I'm still not leaving you alone. Rachel sighed. A nurse had given her a mask of her own.

"How are you feeling?" Hector asked.

"I don't know, a little numb, I think."

He nodded. "Dr. Everest said he gave you a sedative just in case..."

"I die in a fit of bloody convulsions?"

He grimaced and ran a hand over his face. "You're not dying today."

Rachel studied the lines of his face- how worry was etched into his eyes. Glancing at the clock, she realized it was nearing noon. That meant it had been six hours since Ramos had coughed blood all over her.

She was down to sixty-six hours.

"Can you promise me something?"

"Anything," he replied.