CHAPTER 20  Joel sat in the buggy as it rode off into the night, with Mary, both of them silent. He turned to look at her and saw a curious expression on her face; her brows were furrowed and his expression serious, her expression serious.He was thinking about the whole day’s incident- something he had gone over and over again without much satisfaction.First of all, there was the fact that Mary had brought up why there had been so many men outside from an accident when it wasn’t as though the mine had caved.The second was the theory that it could be a widespread infection, something he had been contemplating over. He had been truthful to Mary when he said he hadn’t seen anything like this ever. If it was an infection, what kind were they dealing with, and what was the source? And why the cuts and gashes? Had they struggled to leave the mine in the throes of pain and had caused some form of secondary accident

CHAPTER 22Joel yawned loudly, his hands outstretched as he walked out of his room the following day. He had, after the night, gone to bed and had surprisingly slept well considering the day they had.The sun was coming out from behind the clouds, but his thoughts were already occupied.He had woken up, and the first thing he thought about was the previous day, the events of how he and Mary had worked together to treat the injured miners, the brief moment they had shared at the river, and the lightness that had filled the air despite the tension they had begun on. He had been surprised at the turn of events, he admitted to himself.When they had gotten into the buggy, the air had hummed with tension and words unsaid. Then Mary had broken the spell when she talked about needing a bath. He chuckled to himself as he remembered how scared she was to walk into the river, scared that something in the water woul

CHAPTER 24 “What do you suggest we do?” Joel asked Mary. He had been confused about which medication to administer and had, at that moment, remembered a time she had told him about the influx of patients they had gotten with no foreseeable diagnosis insight. All the patients had survived at the end of the day. So, he had turned to her and asked the question he had been dreading all day. But, he had to trust her. It was the only option, the only way they could work. “We give them pain relief medication that will put them to sleep. It will stop all the jerky movements till we can figure out what is going on,” Mary explained. “Are you sure-“ Joel was about to ask but stopped halfway, seeing the look on Mary’s face. “Okay, let’s do that, then.” Grabbing the medical supplies needed and the drugs, they walked out of the storag