Chapter Text
The alarm reverberated like a klaxon inside Sarah’s head. She jumped noticeably, too engrossed in what she saw on the microscope slide to anticipate that this could happen.
Charlie met Sarah’s eyes, his own widening at the knowledge of what would happen next. He lunged for the glass door to the lab, desperate to take hold of it and pull it open before it locked them in. When the click sounded, the tips of his fingers hadn’t yet even grazed the metal handle.
The door locked.
They were trapped.
Charlie rested his head against the cool glass for a moment, taking a breath, before pulling himself upright and turning to face Sarah. She stood, barely a step behind him, so close to freedom. Yet so far.
“Great,” Sarah murmured, before turning and getting to work. There was no time to waste. She would worry about being stuck in here later.
“Is this a problem?” Charlie asked, eying the sample that had somehow become exposed to the air, the Petrie dish and slide Sarah was swiftly moving to the containment unit. She handled it like it was a bomb about to go off. Maybe it already had. Bacillus anthracis had been found in the lungs of a recent victim. Anthrax. Human cases were rare in Canada, unheard of in Newfoundland, but an earlier history lesson from Sarah had given him the rundown on past cases in North American Bison. It was more than he had really needed to know. The sample Sarah had been studying had showed no evidence of anthrax. In fact, the blood work from someone they were treating as a potentially related victim had been showing elevated white blood cells – the opposite, she had told him, of what one would expect to find in an anthrax victim. She had barely finished getting the words out that the two victims actually seemed unrelated when the alarm had sounded, and the door had locked.
“We need to treat this - us - like possible cases of infection,” Sarah replied, closing the door on the unit and sealing the sample away from them. “But there’s really no evidence the sample was infected." She gestured vaguely to her microscope. As she did so, her gloves caught her eye and she peeled them off and tossed them in the containment unit before Charlie could even blink. Moving to the basin, she scrubbed her hands clean. "We’ll need to take antibiotics and be tested. I can run the tests.” She dried her hands off on paper towels and turned back to face him.
Charlie blinked in disbelief. “How long are we stuck in here?”
Sarah’s lips parted in hesitance. “At least until the sensors deem it safe to unlock the door. Could be twenty minutes. Could be twelve hours.”
Charlie turned and looked at Rex, who sat outside the lab on the corridor linoleum, eying them both anxiously. “At least Rex is safe.”
Sarah nodded. “And we’re fine. There's bottled water in the fridge, and I have snacks in my desk drawer.” The for moments like this went unsaid, but they both heard it.
A tight smile ghosted across Charlie’s lips. “Of course you do.”
“And Jesse will look after Rex.” Sarah nodded over to the glass, where Jesse now stood beside Rex, looking in at them with sad eyes. “We’re fine,” she called to him.
Jesse scratched the top of Rex's furry head. “Joe is working on getting the antibiotics, but he said to be patient because—"
“It’s Christmas Eve.” Realization zipped through Sarah like cold water through a straw, chilling her to the core. She didn’t perform autopsies. There was no need to have antibiotics on hand in the lab. And of all the days for this to happen, they couldn’t have picked a worse one if they’d tried.
Jesse nodded. “You guys need anything?”
Sarah dropped, boneless, into her chair, exhausted already. “Coffee,” she said, knowing they couldn’t get it to her and his question had been out of politeness more than anything else.
Charlie merely shrugged. “Look after Rex for me,” he said, like he expected Rex would be anywhere else but right outside that lab, sitting in the corridor, waiting for his master.
Jesse looked back and forth between his friends, absently rubbing one of Rex's ears. “You guys are gonna be fine, right?”
Sarah sighed. It really depended on how fast the antibiotics found its way to them.
It really depended on what their blood work said.
She snapped on a new pair of gloves, retrieved a couple of syringes, and then held out her hand to Charlie. "Let's get this part over with."