Brandi-with-an-I follows Rich into the laboratory, all eyes. “What are you doing up in here?” she asks, fingers hovering near a rack of test tubes filled with pale pink liquid.
“Don’t touch anything!” Rich snaps.
She pulls back her hand quickly and rolls it in the hem of her T-shirt. “What is it?”
Rich moves toward the far side of the lab, where he has a hot plate set up. He fills a battered teapot from a nearby wash basin and sets it to boil. “Hopefully a cure. I’ve been working around the clock to get things back the way they were before.”
“Before the virus?” Brandi drifts over to him, hands safely tucked behind her back. “So you really are a doctor, even if you don’t have a diploma on your wall or anything like that. You’re trying to fix what nature screwed up.”
Nature had nothing
