“Any of ’em any good?”
“Oscar Junior can beat his dad six games outta ten. Beats me about half the time. We’ll give the others a handicap. It ain’t like we’re stealin’.”
They sat in silence then, Kane reading his magazine, Forrest tapping a pen on the counter.
After a full minute of tapping, Kane said, “Man, I got this. You don’t have to be in here. And by the way, Wayne said to tell you there’s a big pile of dog shit in tunnel two.”
“I saw it,” Forrest said, tossing the pen aside. “Stepped right over, in fact. He’s right, it’s pretty big.”
Kane sat staring at him.
“What?”
“Go find somethin’ to do, man.”
“Hey, Thanksgiving’s just around the corner, you know? It’s going fast.”
“You haven’t said nothin’ about the turkeys to nobody, have you?”
Forrest shook his head. “Seen those kids running around out there today?” He laughed. “It’s a friggin zoo.”
“Yeah, and Tonya’s not your biggest fan right now.”
Veronica poked her head into the room.
“Either of you guys know where Sean is? Melissa’s got a bad headache and there’s no aspirin left in the common area.”
“He’s not in medical?”
“Nope.”
Forrest had a look at his watch. “I’ll come unlock the cabinet,” he said, getting up. “He and Taylor might be on an afternoon tryst. Care if I leave you alone a minute, Marcus?”
Kane took a semiexasperated look around the room. “Jack, man, it ain’t like we’re sittin’ on missiles down here. Get him out of here, Ronny. He’s makin’ me nervous.”
Forrest got some aspirin from the medicine cabinet in Medical, then he and Veronica went to see Melissa in the second common room. The children were still rough-housing, screaming and laughing as they burned off the sugar, and Laddie was jumping around with them, chasing his ball and barking with excitement. A trio of mothers sat about, watching to make sure no one got hurt, a couple of them giving Forrest a collective you’re gonna get it look as he crossed into the room.
He offered them an innocent smile in return. “What’s got these little rascals so wound up today?”
“Like you don’t know,” Jenny said.
Veronica slapped him on the shoulder. “You’re asking for it.”
He went to the corner and knelt beside Melissa, who lay back on her bedroll looking very tired. “Got a headache, kiddo?”
“Uh-huh. Dolar en la cabesa,” she said, recalling the words from one of Maria Vasquez’s Spanish classes.
“As I recall, you weren’t feeling so hot yesterday either.”
“She’s working too hard on that cipher,” Veronica said, kneeling and sitting back on her heels. “Why don’t you take a little break, honey? Go back to it with fresh eyes in a week or two.”
“I will,” she said, taking the aspirins from her and sitting up to swallow them with some water. “But I feel like maybe I’m onto something. I’ve been assigning different letters and words to the sequences. Nothing fits yet, but the more I experiment with it, the more I feel a pattern. I can’t explain it, but it’s in there.”
She lay back down, massaging her neck with her hand. “I’m stiff today too.”
“Well, get some rest,” Veronica said, kissing her on the forehead. “Let someone know if you need anything.”
“Okay. I just need some sleep.”
Veronica walked with Forrest down the hall back toward Launch Control. “Think she’s really close to breaking that code?”
“I don’t know,” he said, scratching his head. “The chances are millions to one, but Wayne says it’s probably not a complicated code. So who knows? I just wish she wasn’t so obsessed with it. That’s almost all she’s been doing for the past couple of months. I saw her playing with the kids a few days ago but that’s been it.”
Taylor and Dr. West came around the corner laughing and holding hands.
“Hey, you two,” Taylor said happily.
“Hey,” Forrest said, extending them the rare courtesy of not teasing them about where they were coming from. “Sean, would you have a look at Melissa? She’s got a bad headache. I’m worried she’s been driving herself too hard with that damn code.”
“She’s still got that headache?” West said, surprised.
“And a stiff neck.”
“Was her neck stiff before?”
“I don’t know,” Forrest said. “We’re going to have to keep her busy with something else for a couple weeks.”
“I’ll think of something,” Veronica said. “Maybe we can start making Christmas decorations.”
“Speaking of that,” Forrest said, opening the door to Launch Control, “I’ve got an artificial tree in the cargo bay. Don’t tell anyone else, but I was thinking to set it up the day after Thanksgiving. Get all the juice we can out of the holiday.”
“Good idea,” West said. “I’ll look in on Melissa.”
“Talk to you guys later,” Forrest said, giving Veronica a kiss. “I’m supposed to be on duty.”
“No!” Kane called from inside the room. “Ronny, man, don’t let him back in here!”
Forty-Two
Dr. West at first believed Melissa’s headache was a symptom of the flu, which had been troubling enough, but after she began to run a fever on the third day, her complaints of a stiff neck made him think it might be something much more serious. So he asked for her and Michael’s permission to perform a painful spinal tap so he might look at her cerebral spinal fluid under a microscope.
Having brought along as much in the way medical equipment as was humanly practical, he was able to run some basic tests, and though he was unable to diagnose Melissa’s affliction with absolute certainty, the elevated number of white blood cells in her CSF gave him cause to believe she was suffering from bacterial meningitis, and he could have named a hundred diagnoses he would have preferred.
He stepped out of Medical into the corridor to talk with Michael and Forrest, leaving Veronica inside with Melissa, who lay in bed covered with blankets.
“So what is it, Sean?” Forrest asked, seemingly even more concerned than Michael.
“I think it’s serious,” West said. “I’m not absolutely certain but I believe she has bacterial meningitis. And if so she needs intravenous antibiotics; penicillin or vancomycin, possibly even cefotaxime—none of which I’ve got.”
“Wait, you told me you brought every antibiotic you thought we could possibly need.”
“In capsule form.”
“Why won’t those work?”
“Because you can’t pick away at an infection this big,” West said. “You have to hit a hammer blow, and pills won’t do that. I’ve got her on a broad spectrum of oral antibiotics now to try and slow the infection, but that’s not likely to save her.”
“So she could die?” Michael asked.
“In all likelihood she will die, and I want you both to prepare for that.”
“Now hold on a second!” Forrest said. “Four days ago she was chasing the kids and the dog up and down the tunnels. And now she’s in there dying? How does that happen?”
“Some of the children have been passing ear infections back and forth for the past couple of weeks,” West explained. “It’s possible that Melissa picked up a streptococcus infection from one of them and it spread to her cerebral spinal fluid via the ear. Unfortunately, meningitis is most commonly seen in people between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four—which makes Melissa a prime candidate.”
“So are the children at risk or not?” Michael asked, worried about an epidemic.
“It’s possible, but they’ve all had their vaccinations, so we may get away with it. As a precaution, I’m going to put them all on penicillin for a week.”