Operation Wormwood

by Helen C. Escott

“At first Keating was like the father we never had. He gave us candy and toys. He always gave us extra attention. I thought the other boys were jealous, because they teased us so much. They called us ‘Kissing Cousins.’ Afterwards, I realized they were warning us not to get so close.” He hung his head. In telling his secret, this massive man had reverted to a five-year-old boy. His body changed. His shoulders slouched, his head hung, and his big hands were shaking.

  “It started with my brother first. I noticed he was changing a week after we got there. He started to get violent. Lashing out at everyone. Even when Mom came to visit. He would beg her to take us home, and when she refused, he would attack her physically. Screaming things at her that I never heard him say before. She would leave, crying, and Keating would reassure her she was doing the right thing.

  “He changed overnight.” Cousin sighed. “I didn’t know why. One night Keating came into my room. In the orphanage, the rooms were divided up according to age. My room was the five-to-seven-year-olds. My brother was in the eight-to-twelve. Keating often came into the room late at night and tucked the boys in. Sometimes he would sit by their bed, and sometimes he would take them out for a walk. I didn’t know why.”

  The tears had dried on Cousin’s face, and his speech had slowed down, like he was describing a picture he could see out the window. “One night he sat by my bed. He asked me about my day. How school was. All the while he was rubbing the blanket on top of me. I remember feeling uncomfortable. Then his hand slid under the blanket. That’s when my brother came running toward me. He grabbed Keating by the arm, and he was crying. Keating threw him to the floor, but he got up and grabbed his arm again. Other boys started to wake up. Keating jumped up and grabbed my brother by the arm and dragged him out of the room. The next day his eye was black, and he was limping. He said he fell over the stairs, but the rumours were rampant. He had stood up to Keating, and he took a good beating for it. It was the first of many.”

  Jermaine Cousin turned toward Luke. “Years later, I went to counselling and told the psychologist that story. It was the one memory I had that was as real as the day it happened. I didn’t realize until she pointed it out. My brother was trying to save me. He knew what Keating was up to. At nine years old he stood up to a monster and tried to protect me. Just like Mom told him to do.” The tears came back to his eyes.

  Luke thought back to his conversation with Jack. Hearing him say that Mr. Duffy had grown tired of him and asked Jack to bring Luke around still sent shivers down his spine. Jack’s refusal to follow his orders may have saved Luke from the same life Jermaine was describing. These two young boys had shown more courage than all the adults around them, Gillespie thought.

  “The abuse started the next night. Keating was vicious and cruel. Other Christian Brothers who were so nice in the daytime, when the staff were around, would change into animals in the nighttime. The boys would beg them to stop. There were some decent ones who would try to stop it, but they wouldn’t last long at the orphanage. Sister Pius suspected something bad was happening. I don’t think she knew the extent of the sexual torture that we were subjected to, but she knew something wasn’t right. She would comfort me when I cried at school. She asked me over and over again what was happening. I didn’t know how to tell her. At one point she asked Archbishop Keating if my brother and I could stay at the nuns’ house to help with the chores, but he said no. Our mother finally took us out after two years, but the damage had been done.”

  Gillespie hadn’t expected to hear this kind of story from Jermaine Cousin. Despite the morbidly warm temperatures on the ward, Luke’s whole body was shivering. A bead of sweat was running down his back. A lump formed in his dry throat, and he fought back against the tears welling in his eyes. “What happened to your brother?”

  Cousin wiped the last remaining tear off his cheek. “He killed himself.” He looked through the glass pane at the sleeping archbishop. “The molestation lasted two years, but the torture lasted a lifetime. He couldn’t get over his hate for Keating and those like him. The hate he felt for himself and the guilt of not protecting me. Even though we left the orphanage, Keating still came into his room every night for the rest of his life. The abuse never stopped in his mind.”

  “And you?” asked Luke.

  “I don’t know how I got through it. I tried to put it out of my mind. I went through counselling when I got older, but I never got past it. I never married like my friends. I was afraid to have children. I am afraid the monster lives in me, too.”

  Cousin’s eye pierced the window that separated him from Keating’s sleeping body. “Every time I stand here, I am five years old again. I can still smell his breath on me. I want to go in and put my hands around his throat and watch his eyes bulge as I squeeze the life out of his body. But I have no strength in my arms. I’ll never be free until he is dead.”

  Cousin looked at his watch. “I’m late. I have to go.”

  He started to walk toward the door. They were both surprised to see Sgt. Nicholas Myra standing behind them. Neither had heard him come in. The policeman said nothing. As Jermaine walked past, Myra reached into his pocket, took out a business card, and handed it to him. “I would like to talk to you at your convenience,” Myra whispered.

  Cousin took the card, put it in his pocket as he opened the door, and left the room.

  10

  Mrs. Furey had arranged Dr. Gillespie’s video conference for the next morning at 11:00 a.m. She had given her assistant strict orders that the only people allowed in the room were Dr. Gillespie, herself, and the hospital’s disease specialist. An email invitation followed up by a phone call confirming their attendance was sent to all specialists in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Ottawa with the same strict regulations. Only doctors were allowed in the room—no interns, and no technical people to operate the phones. In total, thirteen specialists accepted the invitation.

  Mrs. Furey started by making introductions. Nova Scotia and Ottawa had four doctors attending, New Brunswick had two, and Prince Edward Island had one. She thanked everyone for attending, then referred to Dr. Gillespie, again explaining that he had come across a situation and was looking for advice and guidance from his counterparts throughout the country.

  “Dr. Gillespie will take the floor now.”

  Gillespie had been up since 5:00 a.m. trying to come up with his first line, but he couldn’t find one that didn’t make him sound crazy. He cleared his throat and decided to present the cases as he had outlined them in his notebook.

  “I have three patients,” he began. “My first patient came in through the emergency department. He is sixty years old and was unconscious at times. He complained of an unquenchable thirst, but each time he was given water, he would spit it out, complaining it tasted like vinegar. He is in constant pain and has extreme nosebleeds. He is presently in our ICU under observation.”

  Gillespie could see the other doctors on the video screens were talking among themselves and taking notes.

  “My second patient is also male, approximately sixty years old, with the same symptoms. He died within hours of entering the emergency. The third patient is a fifty-three-year-old male, same symptoms.”

  Gillespie put the notebook down and looked directly into the camera. “Information gathered from their medical files shows that all three men report an unexplained weight loss over the past year, cold or flu symptoms, fever, enlarged and swollen lymph nodes, unusual white spots in their mouths, heavy nosebleeds, and chronic pain. They also complained of an unquenchable thirst and that water tastes like vinegar.”

  Luke could see the other doctors were chatting at a furious pace with the colleagues sitting next to them.

  “I have tested all three for a variety of diseases, and they all tested negative. I am at a complete loss to find any similarities in these men.” He paused, knowing there was one similarity that he couldn’
t speak of. He could feel Mrs. Furey’s eyes on him. He did not look toward her.

  “The one who passed away was a businessman. The second man in the ICU was a child psychiatrist, and the third man is the archbishop for the province. The archbishop and the businessman knew each other, but I have no indication that the psychiatrist knew either one of them.” He took a deep breath.

  “Morphine seems to give them relief from the pain, but not for long. Nothing seems to stop the nosebleeds. They come on quick and heavy, and they complain there is no relief from the thirst.”

  Luke let out a deep sigh. “I am asking my colleagues from across Atlantic Canada and our national’s capital to help me put a name on this condition and to inform me of any similar cases you may have. I will open the floor for comment now.”

  Doctors from all four provinces had their mics open and ready to jump at the chance to be the first to talk. Mrs. Furey pressed the master control mic, which muted everyone else. “Let’s start with Ottawa, then work our way east.”

  “Good morning, everyone. I am the head of Infectious Diseases Unit at the Ottawa Regional Hospital. My colleagues and I thank you for organizing this video conference. We were discussing doing the same thing.” She opened a file on the table in front of her. “We have seen similar cases. We have had sixty-three cases in the past twelve months. We have twelve in care now. All with the exact same symptoms. They don’t get better, no matter what the treatment. They all die.” She paused, then added, “Very slow, painful deaths.”

  “Have you taken any action?” Dr. Gillespie asked.

  “We have tried to track this disease back to an original source so we can isolate it and keep it from spreading, but we can’t find one. We have notified the Department of Health that we have some sort of an outbreak, but they want us to pinpoint a source before going to the media and public.”

  “Do any of the patients know each other? Did you find they participated in a common activity that could have led to them being infected?” Gillespie knew he was on a fishing expedition with this line of questioning.

  “There are a couple of similarities. They are all male. All professionals: teachers, priests, a lawyer, and one was a gymnastics coach.” She took care when saying the next sentence, as if she, too, had been warned about what she could and could not say. “Out of the sixty-three cases, fifty-five were either under investigation or charged with sexual assault on a child. The other eight did not have any criminal background, to our knowledge. A lot of the victims either did or do know each other, but they were not sexually active with each other. So, this is not a sexually transmitted disease situation. We are at a loss as to how it is spread. I will pass the mic to our colleagues in Nova Scotia for their input.”

  She muted her mic, and Luke noticed her hand was shaking when she reached to touch the button. She nervously exchanged nods with the other three doctors sitting around the boardroom table.

  “Okay. Nova Scotia, can you add to that?” Gillespie moved on.

  “Hello from Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre in Halifax. We have forty-seven cases with the same symptoms. Ten are still in care. We are wondering if anyone thinks this disease is contagious. We are worried about our health care workers interacting with these patients. We’ve taken precautions and ordered everyone who cares for them to wear protective masks, gloves, gowns, etc. Just because the nosebleeds are so severe.”

  Dr. Gillespie unmuted his mic to say, “We don’t think it is contagious, but we are taking the same precautions with our health care workers as well.”

  “Thank you,” the doctor from Nova Scotia continued. “It’s funny you mentioned the criminal background of these men, and yes, all our victims are male, also. Out of the forty-seven cases, forty had known criminal records for child molestation. We know because the Halifax police department disclosed this information to us about nine months ago. They were noticing these symptoms in a pedophile ring they targeted. They thought that an epidemic was hitting the city, but we found the same results that you did. The patients didn’t test positive for any of the known diseases.

  “Many of the victims do know each other, but all have said they are not sexually active with those they know. Our victims are also mostly professional men. Most are married to women and heterosexual. We have asked the police if we can test some of the children who were victimized by these men. Some are now adults, and five allowed us to take their blood to test, but all results came back negative.”

  The Nova Scotian doctor nervously looked around the table at his colleagues. “From what we can tell, those accused of being pedophiles have these symptoms, but it is not transferred to their victims. Having said that, we do not have any proof that the seven without criminal records are pedophiles.”

  The doctor muted his mic and sat back in his chair. Luke could see he was relieved to have that over with. “Let’s go to New Brunswick,” he said, anxious to keep the conversation going.

  “Bonjour from Dr. Everett Chalmers Regional Hospital in Fredericton.” The new speaker pushed the file folder in front of her away and began. “We have fifty-one cases like yours. All male, all with the same symptoms. Many do have criminal backgrounds that include child molestation; a few don’t. We met with the RCMP, who notified us they also thought we were facing an epidemic, and instructed all their officers to use protective gloves, masks, etc. when dealing with or interviewing pedophiles or suspected pedophiles. We have instructed our health care workers to do the same. I am just wondering, have any of you spoken to colleagues in other parts of the country about this? Surely it’s not only happening on the east coast. Has the World Health Organization been notified?” She leaned back in her chair and muted the mic to let others speak.

  They all spoke among themselves, shaking their heads. The doctor from Nova Scotia pressed his mic. “I did speak to a colleague in Vancouver. They have cases, too. She told me they notified the federal Department of Health.”

  “Thank you. That’s all we have to add right now,” the doctor from New Brunswick said before muting her mic.

  Luke looked over at Mrs. Furey. She was white as a sheet. Her mouth was open, but she said nothing.

  Luke’s hand trembled as he unmuted the mic. “My esteemed colleagues. Do we all agree we have a health crisis on our hands? If anyone disagrees, please voice your opinion now.” All the doctors nodded. “Why haven’t we received anything from the federal Department of Health yet? Why hasn’t it leaked to the media? It seems impossible to me that so many cases exist but no one knows about it or made a connection.”

  The doctors stared solemnly into their screens.

  “Can we agree that we all believe this disease, whatever it is called, seems to only affect a certain group of people?” Gillespie asked.

  “Wormwood,” the doctor from Ottawa replied, unmuting her mic. “The disease, according to police officers, is called Wormwood. They tell me it is what the pedophiles call it.”

  Luke almost fell off his chair. He couldn’t believe he’d heard someone say it out loud. It seemed like they were all waiting for someone to say it, because within seconds they all unmuted their mics to confirm that Wormwood was the name they had heard from police and the victims of the disease.

  “We can’t say it only affects pedophiles, because there are victims with no known criminal histories. We have to be careful,” Luke warned. “Now, what do we do?”

  He stared blankly at the video conference screen. All the doctors seemed to chime in at once, and their words were swirling around in his head. Lack of resourcing. Who takes the lead? What if the media finds out and reports on a disease that kills child molesters? There were more questions than answers.

  Mrs. Furey muted everyone’s mic at once. “As the hospital administrator and the one who organized this group, I will immediately write to the provincial Health Department and ask them to notify the federal departme
nt, in turn setting up a national investigative committee ASAP. We need to get this under control. We need to trace this back to see when it first appeared, who had the first symptoms, and where they lived. We also need to find out if anyone has been successful in containing it or curing it.”

  The doctors were busily taking notes. “The federal Department of Health may already be aware of this. It will be their job, obviously, to track the disease on a national level. No one hospital would have the resources, human or financial, to do this. They may already have a computer database of cases across the country, and maybe the world. I suspect there are lots of cases that have gone undiagnosed. We can’t be the only ones wondering what’s going on here.” If there was an epidemic, Mrs. Furey wanted to be at the forefront of it.

  Furey closed off by saying, “We need to keep track of all new cases, and the nosebleeds seem to be the one thing that sets it apart from other diseases. We will form our own east coast committee and stay in touch with one another. We may be looking at a pandemic here. Who knows? What I ask you all is to go back to your existing patients and question them, as well as any new patients. In addition to when their symptoms started, ask what their profession is. Take notice if there are any pedophile investigations or charges against the person. I realize we are all just grasping at straws here, but let’s document our own cases as well as we can. If this is an epidemic or a pandemic, I would like us to be the world experts on it. Thank you all for coming, and keep in touch.” She muted the mic, then ended the call.

  Luke knew what she was thinking. A new disease discovered by this hospital would bring financial resources through grants and donations. But would people give money to cure a disease that killed pedophiles? Luke highly doubted that. He also knew Furey was resourceful and would come up with an angle to frame this like a good-news story. That’s what hospital administrators did.

  The call had gone longer than expected. He still had rounds to do, so he decided he would call Nick Myra in the morning.