It is not love or lust; it is not in fact the slightest bit romantic at all. It comes down to the convenience of trust. In this new world they've been birthed into, this is perhaps more treasured than all loves at first sight of their past lives.
The cruelest first blow is when they realize how very unprepared they were. He'd always fancied himself an athlete, with his mile run a day, an hour in the gym every other one, and the occasional pickup game of basketball. Turk, he thinks, felt similarly, even with the disadvantage of his diabetes.
All those pickup games aren't worth shit in this new world. They adapt though, because that's humanity's greatest gift, even as the rest of society goes insane around them.
The pandemic destroys and destroys, at first appearing to kill indiscriminately, then striking the young, and then, most improbably the women.
Carla – sweet, sweet Carla, the last person he would've suspected – succumbs first to the disease, taking Christopher Turk Jr. with her.
Turk deals with it remarkably well, throwing himself into the never ending work (there were diseases before the illness, and there will be diseases after it), and spends the rest of his time of the time with his daughter.
Two weeks later he buries Jack beside them in the makeshift cemetery behind the hospital.
Jordan disappears shortly afterward, gone without a word. He's disappointed but not surprised by it. She's never dealt well with crisis behind her cool exterior – hell, if he didn't have responsibilities to his patients, to the community he would've packed up Jenny and gone with her.
He wishes he had something to tell Jenny when she asks about her mother though. It's not like Izzy, where a simple explanation of "Mommy is up in heaven with your baby brother" will do. For one he's not even sure if Jordan would go to heaven –
In the face of widespread panic, death and despair, with ever shortening supplies and tempers as more and more people die over a disease they can barely name – let alone cure – the government declares martial law.
JD packs up Elliot, Sammy and Quinn and swears he's going off to join some resistance group – that the government has gone too far and not done enough. He and Turk are too tired to argue and wish him the best of luck –
Soon enough they wish they'd gone with him. They are already in a critical triage situation, and the new mandates the government hands down ties their hands even further. Patients die of things they could have fixed easily last year, even six months ago, as all their energy goes into treating and curing female victims of the pandemic, even if it is a fruitless cause.
The president speaks of hope over the radio, and the importance of looking to the future, and new life – the important sacrifices that women will be expected to make to ensure their survival.
He and Gandhi look at each other, then at their little girls lying curled up together on the cot, and make plans to flee the next day.
On the road, on the run with their little girls they are acutely aware that there is no one they can trust. They move from town to town, city to city, bartering their services in exchange for food and fuel. It's a lonely existence, with only the company of themselves and the girls, but it is life.
When night sets and the girls are asleep and the isolation becomes too much they'll reach for each other – the dark allowing them to pretend that the licks, strokes and touches come from people long since past.
Like he said, it's not love, its trust – something far more valuable nowadays.