Weapon of Choice (29 page)

“Thank you,” Laura managed to answer, as she watched the drug finally flow from the disposable syringe into the plastic tube inserted into Natalie's arm.

“Please, God,” she said aloud, followed by a silent prayer, the Memorare, “Remember, most gracious Virgin Mother, that never—”

When the nurse left, Laura sat on the cot beside Tim, both watching the rhythmic rise and fall of Natalie's chest.

Tim held her hand until someone wearing a gown, mask, and the rest of the mandatory garb, opened the door to announce that he had breakfast, but they'd have to leave the patient's room to eat. “Bacon and eggs and toast, orange juice, and a pot of coffee.”

Laura was about to decline when Tim said, “You need your strength. We're going out there. You are going to eat something.”

She did. The coffee perked her up.

Laura went to check on the remaining patients in the ICU. When she'd left them three and a half hours ago, two still had been alive, the younger woman with the colectomy for ulcerative colitis and an older man. They were infected with the staph, but their infection had started several hours after the first cases and so far had not been as severe. Why? she wondered. Especially the older man with heart disease.

This time, while away from Natalie's room, she wanted to personally check on her chief resident Michelle, on Bunnie the cleaning lady, and the other patients in the makeshift ICU. This was the second of seven rapidly assembled ICUs, Laura had been told. The number of staph disease cases continued to escalate.

Laura really didn't want to know the latest count, the CDC was
tracking the epidemiology. But what had Bunnie tried to tell her in the E.R.? Less than twenty-four hours ago? Felt like a lifetime. The cleaning woman's words haunted her. What had she seen? Something that might shed light on the disaster in the ICU? Was Bunnie still alive?

Hampered by a sky-blue suit and the rest of the protective gear the CDC had provided, Laura made her way down the near-empty corridors. She thought about Tim. How she was leaning on him. How willing he'd been to step in, almost as a surrogate father. For all these years she'd been fiercely independent, but did she need somebody? Did her children deserve somebody, a man in their lives?

S
ATURDAY
, N
OVEMBER
30

Alone in her P3 lab in the early hours of Saturday morning, among banks of sophisticated state-of-the-art gene sequencers and gas chromatograph-mass spectrometers and low-tech incubation baths and autoclaves, Stacy was free to experiment. On her own, unsupervised.

However reluctant she'd been to leave the epidemiology drama in Tampa, now back in her lab, she was in her element. The only thing she hated about her lab was the fastidious entry-exit process and the cumbersome garb. She might as well be experimenting in outer space, contending with the full-body cover and controlled airflow through a mask that she'd never get used to.

Today, seclusion was her ally as she went about collecting a series of samples from the CDC's staphylococcal culture bank. She had set the Tampa culture to run on autopilot while she gathered cultures that she hypothesized should show similar characteristics to Tampa's. Stacy selected six specimens from the archived culture bank; two from the NIH's discontinued research—one dating from earlier in their program and one from just before the program had been discontinued. And to the chagrin of the NIH, the research had been transferred to the CDC. If she recalled correctly, that was about the same time that Keystone Pharma had hired Norman Kantor. The other four specimens, she chose at random.

And the CDC had taken NIH's staph research further, as Stacy well knew. Her staph cultures were indeed resistant and more virulent. If her strain ever got into the population, by the time those infected
were able to get to medical treatment, their organs would already be liquefying—and Keystone Pharma's ticokellin would be completely useless. The thought made Stacy shudder. She loved her work and though she realized the endgame for developing such potent strains was to facilitate the development of new families of antibiotics, in her heart of hearts, she believed that such lethal research should be conducted exclusively by USAMRIID at Fort Detrick, Maryland, where biodefense was the mission and where security was ironclad.

Once Stacy had her selected cultures all set up on automated equipment, she thought about calling home. She should be sitting around Mom's living room gabbing with her sisters. That prick Charles Scarlett had been scheduled to work today. She'd counted on the four-day holiday weekend off. Too bad she'd had to leave so abruptly. Mom had wanted her to talk to her youngest sister Katie about her boyfriend. What had that been about? Stacy thought about calling home, but she knew that as soon as she got into the family chitchat, an alarm would go off and she'd have to attend to one of her machines.

Besides, there were only fifteen minutes left for the Tampa culture. And then she could plug the data into her computer program and get an early idea of comparative results. Don't forget to delete the results, she reminded herself. The culture that she was testing had not officially arrived in Atlanta yet.

In the meantime, she did have time to go into the CDC culture database and prep everything in advance of replating her own, routine cultures. As things worked out, Charles's absence today meant she had the lab to herself and could test the covert Tampa culture unobserved. Had Stan Proctor actually said he intended to fire Charles? An appropriate step, but would he be able to? Charles was a government employee. And he did know the lab backward and forward. The thought of training a replacement made Stacy groan.

Stacy hated wasting time, and though she had to wait for the equipment to finish running her clandestine experiment before she went into the incubators, she logged into the tracking program that she and Charles shared. Immediately, she noticed that the timing
seemed odd. Yesterday, Charles had been in that incubator longer than usual. Stacy idly wondered why.

Nothing she could do now but wait. Wait for her experimental results. Wait to get into the incubator. Then she remembered—that banquet tonight. No way would she would finish here in time to attend. And thank goodness for that. Her hair and nails were a disaster. She had nothing to wear. She was dead tired, too.

S
ATURDAY
, N
OVEMBER
30

“Dr. Nelson, is that you under the moonwalker disguise?” Michelle Wallace asked, her voice low and hoarse from the endotracheal tube, now removed. “Everybody looks like they're from outer space.”

Laura found Michelle alone in a room with four beds, two empty. Her chief resident sat propped up, a tray of clear liquids in front of her: orange Jello, brownish broth, a mug of tea. An IV bag hung over her bed, she still had a Foley catheter draining her urine, and nasal prongs clamped under her nostrils.

“Michelle,” Laura could hear the relief in her own voice. “You're going to be okay.”

“I think so. I was the first to get the antibiotic. I told them I knew the risks, I had just researched the drug for you. If you hadn't given me that assignment, I don't know what I would have done.”

“The ticokellin worked. Thank God,” Laura said, thinking as much about Natalie as Michelle. But had Natalie gotten the drug in time? She'd been given the last available dose, but what about all the other patients? Keystone Pharma had to send more.

“From what they say, it starts working within the first four hours. I just wish Bunnie—” Michelle glanced to the empty bed next to hers. “She was too sick to give informed consent and her family was too scared of the side effects and she—They took her away a few minutes ago. And the lady in the other bed, she died too. You know her. She was the ICU clerk on duty when the patients in there started getting sick.”

Laura felt her heart plunge. The amiable desk clerk—the one she'd warned not to eat the apple—dead, too. And she never would get any more information from Bunnie.

“Michelle, do you remember when I came down to the E.R. just after you and Bunnie got there?”

“No, they said I was delirious. They told me you were there, though. I've been so worried about you, Dr. Nelson. You were there from the beginning, too. We all were so vulnerable. Even the woman who found Bunnie and brought her to the E.R. has it. They said she's still waiting for ticokellin. But I don't know; there are so many rumors. I can't tell you how glad I am that you didn't get it. And thankful that I got ticokellin in time. Now I just hope I don't get aplastic anemia.”

“Michelle, you're doing fine, and we'll be back in the operating room soon,” Laura said. “But we have to find out what happened here. Do you have any idea how a staph like this could take over the ICU? Any idea at all?”

“No, Dr. Nelson, we've had a stellar infection control record. We were worried about AIDS since we'd not seen it in Tampa. So little is known about how the virus is transmitted, how to test for it, but staph—”

“There's just one connection that I can think of, but it's so bizarre.” Laura decided that Michelle was alert and oriented enough to bring this up. “Matthew Mercer, our AIDS patient. His father—different last name—comes charging in here, demanding that we get ticokellin, claims it's his drug, from his friend at Keystone Pharma. He was not successful, nor was I when I tried. Reasonable, since the trials had just been terminated.” Laura suppressed a chill—her daughter and Michelle had been subjected to this unsafe investigational drug.

“But Matthew responded to the usual antibiotics for staph, didn't he?” Michelle asked.

“Yes. And Victor Worth took Matthew home in a medical jet on Thanksgiving afternoon.”

“Good thing,” Michelle said, “with his compromised immune
system, he'd be dead for sure. I really liked Matthew, but I dread what's in his future.”

“There's one more thing,” Laura said. “I've been so distracted that I haven't given it any thought. But that friend of Worth's at Keystone Pharma. Turns out he had retired, and he was a patient in the ICU. Not our patient, but an overflow patient from the medical service. They were treating him for arrhythmias triggered by a pulmonary embolus. Name was Norman Kantor.”

“I remember him,” Michelle volunteered. “A bit of a jerk, and his wife was a super bitch. What happened to him?”

“A victim,” Laura said. “He's dead.”

“Holy shit. I mean, don't you think that's strange? Dying of a staph infection when that's been your life's work?”

“Even stranger, with his former staph researcher colleague onsite?”

Then Laura told Michelle that Natalie had been infected and that she was about to go back to her, check on whether the ticokellin was working.

“I had no idea,” Michelle said. “The rumor mill isn't perfect. This must be so difficult for you, don't spend another minute here.”

“Her boyfriend, Trey Standish, is dead, and I have to tell her. Michelle, that terrifies me, having to tell her.”

“Oh my God, I had no idea—about him and your daughter. He seemed like a good kid. Nice parents, too. I spoke to them a couple of times, but I never saw your daughter with him.”

“Long story,” said Laura. “On my way to Natalie's room, I'm going to stop by the ICU to check on the two patients there. I keep wondering why they survived and the other five did not.” Could their cases help explain what had started this horrible epidemic?

“Dr. Nelson, please get some rest. You look so tired. Almost as bad as I do, and I've been in a coma.”

“Time for your lunch,” Laura said. “Too bad they didn't give you the cherry flavored Jello.”

“Thank you, Dr. Nelson, and thanks for coming to see me in the E.R. even if I can't remember. All I remember about that night
was Bunnie—hallucinating about some ghost doctor feeding all the patients in the ICU. ‘Evil doctor,' she kept raving.

Laura shook her head. She couldn't ask what “evil doctor” had crossed paths with the cleaning lady in the E.R. Or, know for sure whether Bunnie had been hallucinating on her deathbed.

“Excuse me, ladies.” A voice from the bed across the room, weak but familiar. “Have you forgotten about me?”

Laura turned about, then bolted across the room, stopping at the edge of the bed. “Oh, Ed,” she cried. “Thank God. I was so worried. I hadn't heard. I am so, so glad to see you. You're going to be okay?”

“I tried, Laura. How many dead?”

“I don't know, Ed, but you are the real hero here—”

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ATURDAY
, N
OVEMBER
30

Charles had heard nothing from Banks. He liked the idea of leaving his parents a puzzle-type clue as to where he'd be, but without a hint of where he would end up, he was helpless. Banks was smart, Charles knew, and would try to protect The Order from just such a leak. Banks was ruthless, too.
What were The Order's plans for Charles?

Nothing to do but wait. Just wait until three o'clock when he'd leave for the Palace. He'd been told specifically to leave at three. So he would. Until then he'd pace, too keyed up to read or to eat or to think or to do anything but breathe in and breathe out.

Practical person that he was, Charles had written a last will and testament when he turned twenty-one. His only heirs: his parents. His trust fund, his estate, his art collection, his fleet of cars, all would revert to Chas and Rosabelle Scarlett. Not that they needed the money. They epitomized wealth. He had no one else, no other heirs. Should anything happen to him, when would they find out? How? Would Will Banks make good on his promise to let them know about their son's heroic sacrifice? Would his mother turn his mansion into a shrine?

All for you, Dad, to make you proud. Finally
.