Those Who Remain

Chapter 16

When Ridge and I walked into the doctor's office, we found it empty, so we sat in the waiting room chairs. The office was small and looked like it used to be a storage shed for one of the houses.

"Do you think the doctor is nice?" I asked Ridge, and he look over at me and shrugged.

"I can't imagine him being mean, so I'd really hope so," he said back leaning over to lay his head on my shoulder, "I hope you don't mind. I'm kinda tired."

"I'd really hope I'm not mean," someone said from behind us, and we both whipped our heads around to see an attractive looking man in his forties or fifties wearing a white lab coat.

"I'm sorry," I said, "We didn't mean anything by that."

"I know," he replied smiling, "I'm Dr. Lowes. Are you Ridge and Gemma?"

"We are," Ridge said standing up and holding out his hand, "It's nice to meet you."

"It's nice to meet you too," he said shaking Ridge's hand and turning to me to shake mine, "I'm so glad you guys are here. It's hard to run this place on my own." As an afterthought, he said, "It's not all that busy, but it's hard to keep track of the materials I have available. We had to grab as much as we could and go, so when you guys start working, I would really love it if you would help sort through supplies."

"Do you want us to start now?" I asked him as I walked into the back room to look at what we had.

"You don't have to," he said as he followed me in, "but I won't tell you no."

I laughed at that and said, "We'll start today."

Ridge picked up a box and took it out into the waiting room so we could start looking through it, "Gem, could you get a couple empty boxes so we can sort stuff out?"

"Sure," I said as he walked out. I went over to grab two empty boxes, "Dr. Lowes, can you grab two more boxes?"

"Yup," he said walking over to the shelf, "and please, call me Ryan."

"Alright Ryan," I said as we both sat down next to Ridge to start sorting materials, "Tell us about yourself."

"What do you want to know?" he said back he started putting gauze and medical tape in a box.

"Well, do you have kids?" I asked him, thinking of a place to start off. Usually people could go on and on about their kids.

"I have one daughter named Lila. She lives in Virginia, and she was starting her second year of medical school. She loves the University of Virginia and was ecstatic when she made it in."

"Oh that is just amazing," I said back to him with a genuine smile.

"Ya, she is here, but she goes on medical runs with a scavenging crew to get useful supplies. This is all what she's brought back so far," he said, gesturing to our boxes and the back room.

"She's done a great job," Ridge said as he continued to sort supplies, "Did she raid a pharmacy or immediate care?"

"I think they made it into a CVS and Walgreens," he said as he continued to put gauze in the box, "We were able to get several epipens and some antibiotics. I want them to raid a hospital pharmacy, but at this point, that is wishful thinking. Most hospitals are probably overrun."

"Did you bring stuff from your office?" Ridge asked as he finished sorting the box he was working on, "I'm sure you had a lot of useful things."

"Ya, about half this stuff is from my office. I just hope nothing too major comes in that we can't fix. That is all I ask," he said with a sigh.