At quarter to five, Jack got up from the bed and told the girls he’d be right back. A Disney cartoon about little round robots was on T.V., and they didn’t even look up as he left the room. Jack walked down the hospital corridor toward the elevator. The hospital had three stories and he had visited Lauren here enough times to know the layout pretty well. Although she ran a small family practice in Prescott City, once word of her credentials got out the doctors at the Midland General often called her to consult on cases. With a medical degree from Stanford and post-doctorate research at Johns Hopkins and UCLA, she was a medical celebrity in the mountain towns of Western Maryland. Midland was only a half an hour from Prescott City, so Lauren didn’t mind making the drive. Jack guessed it also helped keep her sane to treat more than just swollen tonsils and bee stings day in and day out.
He got off the elevator on the top floor, where the long term in-patients were kept. The floor was a reverent quiet, partially because Midland wasn’t a very busy hospital and most of the rooms were empty, but also because the patients here tended to be old and very near their natural end. The corridor was like a library at two in the morning; the kind of place where you just knew to be quiet.
A nurse sat behind the oval desk across from the elevator. She made no effort to hide the book she was reading. He couldn’t see the title but saw the distinctive mark on the cover designating it as an ‘Oprah’s Book Selection.’
“Can I help you?”
“Hi, my name is Jack Tremont—”
“Oh, you must be looking for Dr. Tremont. Let me page her.” She started to pick up the yellow phone on her desk.
“No, I know where she is. I’m actually looking for a patient. Huckley. Nate Huckley.”
The nurse pursed her lips together and shook her head. “Terrible what happened to him, isn’t it? Drunk driver, I heard.”
Jack felt an ice ball in his stomach. He fought back the urge to correct her. It would only make it harder for him to accomplish his mission. “Yeah, it’s terrible. I wanted to check in on him. Dr. Tremont asked me to.”
She arched her eyebrows at him. “She asked you to check on a patient for her?”
“Yeah. Just wanted me to pop my head and make sure everything was fine. You know how she is.”
The nurse hesitated, then pointed down the hallway to the right. “Room 320. You know not to touch the equipment, right? Maybe I should come with you.”
“No need. I’ll only be a second.” He pointed at her book, “Looks like a good one.”
The nurse smiled, “Oprah never lets me down.” She lowered her voice and glanced up and down the halls, “This one has sex scenes.”
Jack grinned and pretended to look at the page she was reading. The nurse shooed him away with a giggle. Jack whispered, “I’ll let you get back to it then. I won’t be long.”
He strode down the hall without waiting for an answer. A quick glance over his shoulder confirmed that the nurse was settling back into her chair, book in hand. Good. He wanted to do this alone. Jack walked down the hall until he came to room 320. He rested his hands against the heavy wood door of Nate Huckley’s room and turned his head to listen for any sounds coming from inside. He heard nothing so, with a deep breath, he pushed on the door.
SIXTEEN
“Hola Felicia. Que Pasa?” Lauren said, pulling back the curtain from the bed.
The little girl gave her a weak smile. “Your accent is getting a little better. Could still use some work though.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I think it’s pretty good,” she said. “So tell me, how are you feeling?”
“Sore. I’m sore everywhere,” Felicia said.
Lauren leaned forward and smoothed back a few strands of loose hair on the girl’s forehead. She was a pretty thing, ten years old, with dark skin and long black hair. Over the last week Lauren had grown attached to the girl. Even though Lauren wasn’t a pediatric specialist, Felicia’s condition had immediately attracted her attention. “I’ll get you something to make you more comfy, all right?”
Felicia nodded and watched Lauren write in her file. “Dr. Tremont?”
“Yes?”
“I’m gonna die.”
The little girl’s matter-of-fact tone caught Lauren off-guard. It was as if the girls had read Lauren’s mind. Lauren stared down at her notebook while she thought of the best way to answer. She had never lied to a patient before, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell the girl the truth. Before she could say anything, Felicia reached out and touched her forearm.
“It’s O.K. Dr. Tremont. You don’t have to lie to me. I mean, I’m scared a little, but I don’t…I don’t want to feel this way anymore.”
Lauren swallowed hard and put her notebook on the bed. “You listen here young lady. There will be no more talk like that. We’re going to find a way to beat this thing, all right? But I need your help. I need you to fight.”
Felicia smiled but looked away toward the window. “Mom told me I would see my Nana in heaven. That’ll be nice.” She closed her eyes as she spoke, her voice winding down like a toy that needed a new battery. “She was always so nice to me.” Seconds later Felecia was back asleep.
Lauren sat on the edge of the bed and rested her hand on the little girl’s shoulder. She had grown close to Felicia. Her clinical detachment was gone, replaced by a maternal need to protect the sick child however she could. It was impossible for her to look at the little girl and not see her own daughter in the bed, her own daughter sick with some mysterious disease that she, despite all her education and skill, could not stop. This was no longer medicine. It was personal.
Lauren circled the tests she wanted done on Felicia Rodriguez’s blood work. The symptoms read like a med school multiple choice test. Open sores on the skin, hair loss, abdominal cramps, weight loss, heart arrhythmia, erratic pulse, fever, and so it went. It was like her body was giving up on her. The young doctor who first admitted the patient had worked hard to fit the symptoms into anything in the literature, but had come up empty. Lauren worried that she would come up against the same brick wall.
When she was first told of the case, the litany of past terrors ticked off in her head: Ebola, cerebral encephalitis, anthrax, hemorrhagic fever. The sores, especially, raised a concern. They were dark purple, like bruises, and drained yellow pus when ruptured. But the interview with Felicia’s father reduced Lauren’s initial fear that some strange contagion was at work. None of the high risk behavior was present in the patient nor her family. No travel out of the country. No interaction with livestock. No intravenous drug use. The backwoods of western Maryland hardly seemed a likely site for a terrorist attack. The only high-value target was the presidential retreat of Camp David, but that was more than fifty miles away.
Lauren knew these factors only reduced and didn’t eliminate the possibility of a highly contagious virus. Her work at Johns Hopkins on West Nile Virus taught her that mosquitoes were nature’s most efficient disease transmitter, better than any man-made device for germ warfare. As were ticks, fruit flies, bad water, mold, tainted meat. The list was endless and frightening in its banality. The most important fact she learned from the interview was that the Rodriguez’s had six other children and all had had close contact with Felicia since she became sick. None of them showed any symptoms.
Her father, Raoul, had lowered his head in shame when Lauren asked how long Felicia had been ill.
“Three weeks. She sick bad for three weeks.”
Frustrated, Lauren asked why it took him so long to bring her to the hospital.
He had turned red and stammered, “I bring in. Downstairs give me pills. Tell me make her sleep and give water. No money, you know?”