On an early February day, two nurses make their way up a steep dirt road, toward the top of what most locals know as Murder Mountain, to reach the home of Bonnie White. Here they will administer her first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

“I love you,” says White in a singsong voice when nurse Cristine Dean arrives.

“I love you, too. How are you doing?” Dean replies, setting down her medical bag.

White’s husband, Jerry, died almost two years ago. When he was alive, he would take every opportunity to joke around with Dean and her supervisor, Kimberly Becher, the doctor who runs the health clinic in Clay County. Because severe rheumatoid arthritis has largely immobilized White, Dean and Becher have been