Photography by Rachel Woolf

Tracy Scott opened her family medicine clinic, Next Door Health Care, in Bennett, Colorado, in November. The nurse practitioner has short dark hair and speaks with a tinge of Oklahoma. She shares a red double-wide with a chiropractor and behavioral therapist in a lot beside a Chinese restaurant. But lately shes been alone in the building, because hers is the only service deemed critical.

With cases of COVID-19 rising in Colorado, Gov. Jared Polis issued a stay-at-home order on March 25, and quiet Bennett became downright silent.

The town of just 2,500 residents sits 40 miles due east of Denver amid open horizons, farmland and grass. In the past week, Scott has only seen her neighbors in line at the King Soopers grocery store, and fear of the virus has kept even her regular patients from making their appointments.

I am worried about them, especially the older people, she said. I have one patient who lives alone. Hes about 70. I told him to keep a phone by him.