“That’s not Rocky Mountain spotted fever,” Andrew said. Drawing back from the bed, he wiped his hands fervently on his pant legs. “I don’t know what the hell he’s got, but it’s not that.”
“Will you stay with him?” she asked. “Just for a few minutes, until I can find Suzette?”
“Suzette?” Andrew blinked in bewildered surprise.
“She’s a doctor,” Dani said. “Look at Thomas. He needs medical attention.”
“Alright,” Andrew said, not because he particularly wanted to—because the only thing that might have made him more anxious than the prospect of exposure to anthrax, ebola or other weapons-grade germs was that of another confrontation with Suzette—but because Dani had asked it of him, pleaded for it.
“I’ll hurry, I promise.” Dani leaned over and stroked O’Malley’s close-cropped hair, speaking as much to him as to Andrew, even though the young corporal was pretty much incoherent now, oblivious to her.
Dani rushed from the room, leaving Andrew standing beside the bed, uncertain. Semi-lucid, O’Malley moaned weakly. Not only did his breathing sound strained, but Andrew realized it sounded moist, sodden somehow, like maybe when he’d vomited, he’d aspirated some of his own bile and now it churned and frothed with every labored inhalation.
“It’s going to be okay,” Andrew told him, feeling obliged to say something at least remotely comforting, if only for his own benefit.
O’Malley turned his head weakly to one side. As he did, a thin stream of frothy, pale foam dribbled out of his mouth, down his cheek and onto the bedspread.
“Oh, hey,” Andrew said, eyes widening in abrupt panic. He darted to the bathroom and grabbed the first towel he found. Rushing back into the bedroom, he crammed it against O’Malley’s mouth, trying to tuck it beneath his head without getting any of the vomit on his hand.
O’Malley groaned. This turned into a low, warbling croak, a nasty, visceral sort of belch, then he convulsed sharply on the bed, spitting out a sudden, thick spray of bile all over Andrew.
“Shit!” Andrew recoiled in disgust, holding his arms out impotently in the air, watching as more of that mucous-like emesis dripped from his now soaked sleeves. The front of his shirt clung to his chest, sopping and stinking. “Shit.”
O’Malley uttered another of those throaty cawing sounds, ending abruptly in a gulp as he spewed again, this time splattering Andrew’s shoes.
“Jesus,” Andrew said, seizing a waste can from across the room and shoving it unceremoniously beside the bed. “Here, man. Get it in this.” He tried to get his arm around O’Malley, the sour stink of stomach acid making his own gut roil. He could feel more of those weird, knot-like growths on the Corporal’s back through his shirt. What the hell are those, boils or something? Tumors?
“Lean over the side of the bed.” Grunting, he tried to lug O’Malley closer to the edge of the mattress. It was like trying to drag a fallen telephone pole out of the middle of the road. “Help me out here.”
When O’Malley hurled again, this time he hit the can, much to Andrew’s relief. He also seemed to emerge somewhat from the haze of semi-consciousness into which he’d lapsed, and he blinked up at Andrew, vomit hanging in dangling, thick strands from his chin, his eyes glassy and dazed.
“Hurts,” he groaned, spitting weakly, trying to dislodge those tenacious strings of phlegm.
“It’s alright.” Moved with sudden pity, Andrew pulled the towel loose from beneath him and tried to wipe his mouth. O’Malley’s skin felt like molten wax, blazing with heat, sticky with sweat and spattered bile. “Hang on.”
Andrew left the bedside, hurrying to the bathroom sink. Turning the cold tap open full blast, he stuffed the towel into the basin, letting it soak up the water. Carrying it, soaked and dripping between his hands, he returned to O’Malley, mopping his face with it.
“What’s…wrong with me?” O’Malley whimpered.
Andrew shook his head. “I don’t know.” He had a sudden, horrifying flashback in his mind—his sister Beth, lying in her hospital bed on the day she’d died. She’d had that same glazed look in her eyes, that frightened, helpless, hopeless sort of light.
Hey, Germ.
The door to Dani’s room flew open wide and she rushed in, followed closely by Suzette.
“He threw up again,” Andrew said, stupid and unnecessary, considering the smell was ripe and thick in the air, and he was still pretty much soaked from the chest down with puke. If he’d been expecting animosity from Suzette, he was surprised when instead, she was the portrait of consummate professionalism. Brushing past him without as much as a glance, she hurried to O’Malley’s bedside, rolling the younger man onto his back.
“Can you hear me, Corporal?” Suzette asked, leaning over. Using the pad of her thumb, she gently peeled back O’Malley’s eyelids, looking down into his eyes. “How long has he been unconscious?”
“Not long,” Dani said, shied near Andrew, her eyes enormous and glossy with tears. “He was awake when we got him out of the bathroom. He passed out right before we helped him into the bed.”
“He woke up a little bit before you got here,” Andrew said. “He told me he was hurting.”
“Look at his skin,” Dani said. “He’s got some kind of rash all down the left side of him, those bumps.”
“Erythema marginatum,” Suzette said. “It’s a type of skin inflammation, pretty characteristic of rheumatic fever.”
“Rheumatic fever?” Dani asked.
“He had it as a child,” Suzette said. “I talked to him earlier, when he first started feeling bad, and he told me. It can recur throughout your life once you’ve had it, an uncommon complication of a streptococcus infection. Strep throat.”
Andrew cut Dani a surprised and dubious glance. That’s caused by strep throat? he thought, staring back at the stricken Corporal. He hadn’t smelled any alcohol on Suzette’s breath—surprising in and of itself—but he wondered now if she wasn’t drunk after all, as crazy as her diagnosis sounded.
“Once you’ve had it, you’re prone to recurrences in adulthood,” Suzette said. “It’s rare, but it happens. I’d suspected this was the cause and gave him some antibiotics from the infirmary. I should have tried something more aggressive, stronger.”
She awarded Andrew a brief once-over. “The strain of streptococcus that can lead to rheumatic fever is contagious. You might want to change your clothes, take a shower.”
She said this with a brittle edge to her voice, the sort that clearly imparted she’d just as soon have him catch whatever ailment had affected O’Malley, if only so she could enjoy letting it go untreated.
To Dani, she added in a far more amiable tone, “Specialist Santoro, you’ll want to wash your hands, too, and see me later on. I’ll get you started on some preventive antibiotics, just in case.”
“I’m sorry,” Dani said to Andrew at the doorway to her room. Suzette had gone to the infirmary long enough to get a rolling stretcher, the sort carried in ambulances, and return with it in tow. Andrew and Dani had both helped drag O’Malley from the bed to the litter by grabbing handfuls of the bedclothes beneath him and using them as a rudimentary sling.
“These will need to be burned anyway,” Suzette had remarked of the sheets and comforter. “It’s all contaminated now. You two go get cleaned up.”
“I need to let Major Prendick know what’s going on,” Dani had said, but Suzette had shaken her head.