Viral

by Robin Cook

  “I’m sure you are right; she won’t want to go. She can be very willful. It’s very generous of you to offer help, which I sincerely appreciate, but why are you, if I might ask without sounding ungrateful?”

  “To be entirely honest, it’s mostly because I feel for you having just lost your wife yesterday,” Jeanne said. “I have a visceral idea of what you are going through because of my own recent grief. I don’t know how you are coping as well as you are.”

  “Like I said in Megan’s office, it’s with a lot of denial, but I’m also one of those people who needs to be doing something, and Juliette needs me to support her and hold together what I can of our life.”

  “I understand,” she said, getting to her feet. “Let’s see if we can get her to cooperate without too much difficulty.”

  At that moment his cell phone rang. He answered as he got to his feet, motioning to Jeanne to hold on for a moment. It was Aimée calling from the O’Briens’.

  “Emma’s wake is about to start,” Aimée said. “Hannah asked me to call because she wants to know when you and Juliette are going to come over? I know you sounded reluctant earlier, but she thinks it is important for Juliette to say goodbye to her mother and maybe leave something for her in the casket.”

  “A problem has arisen,” Brian began, wincing at the whole idea of the wake, particularly in relation to his daughter. He had forgotten all about it with his rising concerns about his daughter’s health status. “Juliette seems to have a fever and doesn’t feel great, making us worry she might have coronavirus.”

  “Oh, no!” Aimée exclaimed. “Mon Dieu! What are you going to do? Are you going to have her tested?”

  “Yes, I think we must, as it could have dire consequences if she’s positive. We’re going to take her to the MMH Inwood ED.”

  “You and Camila?”

  “No, with Jeanne Juliette-Shaw, the woman I mentioned earlier,” Brian said. “I called her because Juliette hasn’t been talking, and Jeanne came over and has been very helpful. She was able to get Juliette to open up. That’s how we know Juliette’s not feeling well, because up until then she wasn’t talking. Luckily, she doesn’t have any cough or breathing issues, but what can I say? We can’t ignore it. I tried to call her pediatrician, but he’s on vacation.”

  “Oh, goodness, mon fils,” Aimée said empathetically. “I’ll let Hannah know so she can perhaps hold things up. If Juliette is positive, we’ll have to cancel the wake since we’ll all have to quarantine. This could be a disaster on top of a disaster. Can you call me as soon as you know? Hannah’s going to be really upset. All this planning activity is what’s holding her together.”

  “Of course,” Brian said, feeling a tinge guilty with his reservations about the wake, especially whether Juliette should be subjected to seeing her mother’s body. He wasn’t even sure how he felt about it himself.

  As they headed for the stairs with Brian in the lead, Jeanne asked: “What was the name of the chief medical officer who encouraged your wife to be discharged before she probably should have been?”

  “Dr. Kathrine Graham,” he called over his shoulder.

  “I thought so,” she said irritably. “What a lousy ambassador for the medical profession! She was also the one I blame for MMH Inwood not being all that motivated to find a heart for my husband. Of course, the real fault really falls on Charles Kelley, who’s responsible for the culture and hiring her. Doesn’t it all irritate you to death when you think about it?”

  Brian paused at the top of the stairs and waited for her. “It makes my blood boil,” he admitted angrily as she gained the landing. “I even stormed into Kelley’s office right after Emma died, and I would have done the same for Heather Williams’s if it had been handy. But I can’t think about this kind of stuff right now. I’ve got to concentrate on Juliette and finding a way out of this mess.”

  CHAPTER 22

  September 1

  Reaching into his pocket, Brian took out his phone and checked the time. “Shit,” he whispered. “We’ve been here almost two hours.” He was talking to Jeanne but didn’t want Juliette to hear, which was unlikely because she had earbuds in and was watching cartoons on his laptop. The three of them were sitting relatively by themselves in the corner of the ED waiting room.

  Getting Juliette to come to the hospital hadn’t been easy. At first, she downright refused, but Jeanne used the same tactic she’d used to get Juliette to talk in the first place. She spoke extensively to Bunny, explaining to the toy why she had to go to the hospital for a Covid-19 test. Then when Bunny finally agreed, Juliette did the same. Camila drove them and also agreed to come and pick them up after Juliette had been seen.

  “I’m starting to think they are definitely being passive-aggressive and making us wait,” Brian said, still speaking softly. “I’m not as confident as you that there is the disconnect between the business side and the clinical side here in the ED. It doesn’t seem that busy for us to have to wait almost two hours with a sick four-year-old.”

  “Let’s avoid jumping to conclusions. They’ve been busy enough with the three ambulances that arrived since we got here. And the clerks and the triage nurse couldn’t have been nicer. Plus, we have no idea what’s going on back in the treatment rooms.”

  “I’m surprised that Juliette hasn’t complained,” Brian said, glancing over at his daughter.

  “She’s been an angel,” Jeanne agreed. “Let’s give the ED team the benefit of the doubt and hope she’ll be seen shortly.”

  “I have another question for you as a school psychologist. When we were in my office, it was my mother who phoned. She was calling me to say that my wife’s wake was about to begin and wanted to know when I would be bringing Juliette. I don’t know how I feel about subjecting a four-year-old to her mother’s wake. What’s your opinion?”

  “Probably like your mother, as an outsider of sorts I’ve developed a lot of respect for Irish funeral traditions, including wakes. There was a wake for my husband, and I was surprised by how many children showed up, including a nephew of ten and two nieces about Juliette’s age.”

  “But it’s her mother, not an aunt or uncle. I’m worried that forcing her to see the body will just add insult to injury. I mean, she already had to witness her having two seizures.”

  “My advice is to ask Juliette what she wants to do. Spell it out as an opportunity to say goodbye but remind her that her mother will not speak to her or even respond in any way at all. Just be totally up front and let her decide.”

  “Really?” he questioned skeptically. It seemed beyond him to turn such a decision over to a four-year-old.

  “In my experience, children are capable of making a lot of decisions for themselves,” Jeanne said. “More than a lot of people give them credit for. Anyway, that’s my advice.”

  “Okay, thanks. I’ll think about it.”

  “What about the viral illness your wife had? Is it at all contagious?”

  “No, eastern equine encephalitis needs the mosquito vector,” Brian said. “I’ve learned the mosquito has to bite an infected songbird, which is the normal host, and then bite a human or some other animal.”

  “Why is it called ‘equine’?”

  “It first showed up in horses.”

  “Thank God it at least doesn’t spread like Covid-19,” she said.

  “You got that right,” Brian said without a lot of enthusiasm. He had too many other things to worry about.

  “It’s terrifying to think you can get a fatal disease attending a summer barbecue. What’s amazing to me is that I’ve never learned so much about viruses until this year.”

  “We healthy human beings have no real appreciation of how close we are to the precipice at any given time,” he said. “It’s especially disturbing when the institutions you count on to help when you need it, like hospitals and health insurance, can’t be depended upon.”


  “It’s a scary situation on so many levels.”

  “How much did MMH Inwood sue you for?” Brian said. “I hope you don’t mind me asking.”

  “No, I don’t mind at all,” Jeanne reassured him. “It was a bit over four hundred thousand dollars.”

  “Yikes,” Brian said. “How did your bill get that high?”

  “It’s easy,” she said. “There were multiple admissions involved, several stays in the cardiac intensive care unit, and the surgery to implant the ventricular assist device. It adds up quickly, especially for people like you and me with lousy health insurance.”

  “That’s what I’ve been learning,” he said bitterly.

  “The four hundred thousand–plus was before I got Megan Doyle involved. She’s cut it down almost in half.”

  “That’s encouraging.”

  “Yeah, but it’s still about a quarter of a million dollars,” Jeanne said. “That’s enough to bankrupt most Americans except the top one percent. What excuse did Peerless give for not paying any of your hospital bill? It couldn’t have been the preexisting excuse they used for us.”

  Brian gave a short, disgusted laugh. “No, they didn’t claim Emma’s problem was a preexisting condition. There were two parts to their strategy. The first part was the ED bill, which they said they weren’t going to cover because Emma was ambulatory and should have gone to a GP who could have arranged admission. They said they were trying to rein in the overuse of hospital Emergency Department visits. It was just a bogus excuse, and they invited me to sue, the bastards. With the hospital bill it was a unique way of interpreting the deductible. I won’t bore you with the details. But even if they were going to pay, it would have only been a thousand dollars a day, which, when my wife and I were in the market to get health insurance we could afford, we mistakenly thought was a significant contribution. We had no idea how pitifully inadequate it is.”

  “We were duped in the same way.”

  “How long ago did your husband pass away?” Brian asked. “If you’d rather not talk about it, I understand.”

  “It’s all right. It was just a little over a year ago.”

  “Did MMH Inwood sue you right away like me?”

  “No,” Jeanne began. “Stupid me tried to pay them the original amount. There was some cash in the business, so I gave them sixty-five thousand up front and agreed to pay twenty thousand a month for two years. I’d made several monthly payments, but then the pandemic hit, and everything shut down, and the alarm business mostly dried up. That’s when they sued me.”

  “Did they have something to do with your company’s bankruptcy?”

  “Of course,” she said. “They also garnished any income I might have earned from the business if I’d tried to keep it going. But to tell you the truth, with my husband’s passing, I wasn’t all that interested in running the company even though I had learned a lot about alarm technology and business in the three years I’d spent involved. While he was alive it made sense because he was a techie, not a businessman, and he had been paying someone much too much to run the business side of the operation.”

  “I can understand. I’m already wondering if I have what it takes to try to make a go of Personal Protection LLC without my wife. I’m probably more like your husband, since Emma handled the business side along with Camila. I’ve already wondered if I should try to get my old position back with the NYPD ESU.”

  “I’m going to go back to school psychology as soon as the legal dust settles,” Jeanne said. “The only reason I’ve held off is because I certainly don’t want MMH Inwood garnishing my wages.”

  “I want to go home,” Juliette said suddenly, taking out her earbuds.

  “I’m sure you do, sweetie,” Brian agreed. “I do, too. I think I’ll see what is holding things up.” As he started to get up, Jeanne reached out and gripped his arm.

  “For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’ll get any satisfaction making a fuss,” she said. “And you could make things worse. Just a suggestion.”

  He hesitated, looking over at the information desk, which was always a beehive of activity. When they’d first arrived two hours earlier, a triage nurse had listened to their story about Juliette’s symptoms, noted she was a patient of Dr. Rajiv Bhatt, whose records were available if needed since she had been a preemie, checked Juliette’s vital signs, and told them they’d be seen shortly. That was the last contact they’d had without any apology or explanation. At the same time, he knew Jeanne was correct and that raising a ruckus could very well be counterproductive.

  “I’ll be a perfect gentleman,” Brian promised. “I just need to make sure we haven’t been forgotten somehow.”

  CHAPTER 23

  September 1

  Juliette Murphy!” a nurse in gown and mask called out after emerging from the depths of the Emergency Department.

  “God! It’s about time,” Brian mumbled as he got to his feet. It had been more than three hours that they had been waiting. Mercifully, Juliette had fallen asleep about a half hour earlier.

  “It’s been a long wait,” Jeanne agreed. “But, again, try not to act angry, for Juliette’s sake.”

  “It’s going to be difficult for me not to point out that we’ve seen a number of people arrive, be seen, and leave while we’ve been sitting here with a sick four-year-old.”

  “I can’t imagine you’ll get any satisfaction if you act irritated,” Jeanne said. “And try to remember that at least she’s going to be seen, and you’ll get the Covid-19 test out of the way.”

  “Okay, okay,” he said, taking a deep breath to calm himself. “You are right. I’ll try to be nice.” He then reached down and picked Juliette up. “Come on, Pumpkin!” he urged. “We’ll get you checked out and then get you home.” She mumbled a brief complaint but fell back asleep almost immediately in Brian’s arms with her head on his shoulder. While he reached for Bunny, he added to Jeanne: “No matter what you say, I’m convinced they’ve been keeping us waiting because of the outstanding bill I owe. I’m sorry, but it’s the only explanation.”

  “You don’t know that for sure,” Jeanne said.

  “I feel it.”

  “Feeling it and knowing it are two different things.”

  “Maybe,” Brian said. “Can you get the rest of the stuff?”

  “Leave it! I’ll watch it. No worries.”

  “You’re not coming with us?”

  “I’m not family and with the pandemic rules, we’re lucky they let me even in the waiting area. I’ll be here when you’re done. Good luck.”

  “You’re probably right,” he said. “Okay! We’ll try to at least make this part quick.”

  With the sleeping Juliette in one arm and Bunny in the other, Brian walked the width of the waiting room and approached the nurse who’d called out Juliette’s name. She was wearing a face shield as well as a mask.

  “Well, well,” the nurse said good-naturedly. “The sweetie seems to have fallen asleep. I think that is a good sign, maybe she’s feeling better.”

  “We’ve been waiting more than three hours,” he said, struggling to keep his voice neutral.

  “Sorry about that. We’ve been busy as usual. My name is Olivia. Would you please follow me?”

  Still carrying the sleeping Juliette and Bunny, Brian trailed the nurse back to a tiny ambulatory examination room with an exam table, a sink, two chairs, and a built-in desk with a monitor. Olivia patted the exam table, asked him to put Juliette down, and then washed her hands. At first Juliette resisted, but then became cooperative in the new surroundings when Olivia gave her a hemostat to hold. In a gentle and kind fashion, Olivia took Juliette’s vital signs while keeping up a conversation about Bunny, which Juliette had taken from Brian.

  “What’s her temperature?” Brian asked.

  “Ninety-eight point six,” Olivia read off the number. “Ni
ce and normal.”

  “Really?” he questioned. “Last time we took it at home it was almost 101. Are you sure of your reading?”

  “I’ll take it again,” Olivia offered happily. She was using a thermal scanner. “Yup! Normal.” Addressing Juliette, she asked: “And how do you feel now, love?”

  “I want to go home,” Juliette said.

  “I’m sure you do,” Olivia responded. She looked briefly at the tablet she was holding and then asked, “But what about your sore throat, and headache, and upset stomach?”

  “I’m okay now,” Juliette said.

  “Are you sure?” Brian asked, butting in, shocked at the reversal of Juliette’s complaints.

  “Yes,” Juliette insisted. “And Bunny feels better, too.”

  “I’m so glad,” Olivia said. “Okay, Dr. Kramer will be in to see you, Miss Juliette, in just a few minutes. Is that okay?”

  Juliette nodded, handing back the hemostat before Olivia left the room.

  “Are you sure you don’t have a sore throat any longer?” Brian asked, mystified.

  Juliette nodded and then started to climb down from the exam table, but Brian stopped her and sat down next to her. Taking a cue from Jeanne, he talked more about her symptoms using Bunny as a go-between. She continued to be insistent that Bunny’s throat, head, and stomach were fine.

  It was almost twenty minutes before an extremely youthful Dr. Mercedes Kramer came swooping ebulliently into the tiny exam room along with Olivia. Now bored, Juliette answered all the doctor’s rapid-fire questions with a curt no: no sore throat, no congestion, no headache, no coughing, no vomiting, and no generally feeling bad. Maintaining a happy chatter, Dr. Kramer quickly washed her hands and then rapidly but thoroughly examined the child, even allowing Juliette to listen to her own heart. When she was finished, she said: “Miss Juliette, I think you are in fine shape.” She then gave Juliette a reassuring shoulder squeeze.