“Exactly,” Mercer said. “They told the guards they were taking Francie for some tests, and the hallway had to be cleared. So the officer and the fed were chased back downstairs to the lobby, and the head doc took responsibility for the patient’s—well—for the patient’s safety.”
“Francie’s corpse was removed,” I said, “and no one saw that happening.”
“Correct. And now there’s one of those anatomically correct vinyl dolls, brought in by the orderlies—all blown up and lying beneath a sheet in the room across the hall.”
“Being bodyguarded, by officers who have no idea they’re watching over a dummy,” I said. “And you know this—let me guess—because Vickee told you?”
“Nope. I got it from the commissioner himself,” Mercer said. “The cop and the fed are backup for us, to make sure Lucy’s safe here. But we’ve only got twenty-four hours to decide what you’re doing with Lucy, or he’ll direct you to get a material witness order to hold her in some crappy cheap hotel that takes the city’s daily rate until she testifies.”
“That’s what we do with snitches,” I said. “She’d be treated like a prisoner. Let’s figure out something better.”
He tapped my shoulder and told me to go back in and distract Lucy while he went to get the drinks.
When Mercer returned, Billy Feathers was with him, helping to carry the sodas.
“Thanks, Billy,” I said. “You must have better things to do than this.”
“Not a problem,” he said. “I just came back on duty and it’s my last shift of the week. Bad news is that you’re stuck with me, because I can’t go across the hall to the other wing.”
“Why not?” I asked, before opening the door to the room.
“Serious case was brought in this afternoon,” Billy said. “A man became terribly ill on a flight from Africa. Jamaica Hospital sent him to us. This time the quarantine sign is on the entrance to the other wing, and it’s for real.”
“What is it?” I asked.
Billy paused, then said the word. “Monkeypox.”
“You’re joking, right? That sounds like a name a kid would make up.”
“It’s nothing to joke about,” Billy said. “It’s a very rare, very deadly disease. Mostly in African populations, usually transmitted to humans by rodents, though it obviously starts in places with dense monkey populations.”
“This man—?”
“He broke out with fever on the flight, and then the rash was visible by the time he made it through customs.”
“Is it infectious?” Mercer asked.
“Yes, extremely so. In much the same way smallpox was, back before vaccines. It spreads through respiratory droplets from the patient—usually those are airborne—or from actual contact with his lesions. The last time we had an outbreak in the States was 2003.”
“Oh my God,” I said. “What are we exposing Lucy to?”
“This is what we do,” Billy said, putting his hand on my arm to calm me. “This is the reason Rockefeller Hospital exists. Lucy will be fine—and so will all of us.”
“But—”
“The patient is in isolation, in a negative air pressure room in the other wing.”
“Negative air pressure room?” I asked.
“It’s an isolation technique that we’re equipped for, specifically to prevent cross-contamination. It’s a ventilation system, with the patient all enclosed in plexiglass. Air is pumped into the room, but can’t escape from it—it’s sucked out by special pumps—so it prevents contagion from spreading.”
I could feel my skin crawling already. “That really works for a deadly virus?”
“Don’t freak out,” Billy said, with a grin. “We use negative air rooms for Ebola and all the other deadly poxes. It’s a very effective technique to control and contain the spread of the infection.”
“If that’s supposed to make me feel better,” I said, “you’ve failed miserably.”
“What’s the deal?” Mercer asked. “Your Rock docs have the cure, so the patient gets transferred to you?”
Billy shook his head. “Sadly, there is no cure for this virus. But that’s what they’re working on here at the university, and we’re uniquely equipped to find it.”
Mercer turned to me and held out a finger toward my lips. “Not a word to Lucy about this.”
Chills were running up and down my arms. I wasn’t squeamish. Medicine was too much a part of my upbringing for me to worry about something bad happening to me in a great hospital.
But the thought of our proximity to a deadly virus with no cure spooked me and set me on edge.
“Make a plan, Mercer,” I said, about to pull the handle to open the door of the room. “We need to get Lucy out of this place.”
FORTY-FIVE
“Tonight’s Final Jeopardy! category is ‘Islands,’” Alex Trebek said, sounding flatter than usual—like he was as glad to get to the end of his week as I was.
Mike was taking bites out of his ham and cheese sandwich as though he hadn’t eaten in days.
“Why do you all watch this show?” Lucy asked as the three of us crowded around her narrow bed and the show went to commercial break.
“Just to prevent Coop’s head from swelling,” Mike said. “She likes to think she knows a lot, so Mercer and I try to keep that in check by taking her money whenever she misses a beat.”
Lucy looked up at me, furrowing her brow.
“He’s pulling your leg,” I said. “They both know far more than I do about anything that counts.”
“Here’s my twenty,” Mike said, and now it was Mercer’s time to up the ante.
“I’ll see that and hit you for double,” he said.
“You’ll never get lost if you hang with Mercer, Lucy,” I said. “He used world maps for wallpaper when he was growing up.”
“If Coop’s in for forty,” Mike said, “I’ll go for it, too.”
“Reluctantly,” I said. “Very reluctantly, but count me in, and if I win, I split the proceeds with Lucy.”
She gave me a thumbs-up and laughed.
I took a few bites of my sandwich and washed it down with water.
“Tonight’s Final Jeopardy! answer is,” Trebek said, revealing the giant blue board, “‘First colonized by the Dutch, home to the extinct dodo bird.’”
Mike high-fived Mercer. “We might just have a tie,” he said. “What is New Zealand?”
“I hate to call you a loser, my friend,” Mercer said, “but New Zealand was settled by the Polynesians, long before the Dutch ever sailed on in. The whole Maori culture was in place centuries before Europeans arrived. How about you?”
I looked at Lucy. “Any ideas?” I asked.
She shrugged. “The only dodo I ever knew about is the one in Alice in Wonderland, but there’s no island connected with that.”
“Good thinking,” I said. I was happy to get her in the game. “I’d forgotten about him.”
“None of you ever heard of Mauritius?” Mercer said. “What is the island of Mauritius?”
Trebek congratulated the winning contestant while Mike gathered our bills and gave them to Mercer.
“Where might that bit of land be?” Mike asked.
“About twelve hundred miles off the southeast coast of Africa, out in the Indian Ocean,” Mercer said. “And it’s those Dutchmen who killed off all the dodos, by the way, back in the seventeenth century, because the poor birds couldn’t even fly.”
“Flightless birds,” Mike said. “Kind of oxymoronic, isn’t it?”
Lucy had buried her nose back in a magazine, ignoring our chatter.
“Stop scratching yourself, Coop,” Mike said. “You’re giving me the itch.”
Mercer was gathering up his things, getting ready to head out for the night. “I’ll see you at eight tomorrow. I expect you two
to come up with an idea.”
“I’ll walk you down to the lobby,” I said, rubbing my left forearm.
“Did you rub against a pot of poison ivy on your way here?” Mike asked as I was about to follow Mercer out of the room.
“Just a psychosomatic thing,” I said, not wanting to let Lucy know about the man with an incurable virus on the other side of the nurses’ station. “Maybe it’s just in my head that there’s a mosquito lab across campus.”
Mercer and I walked past the guards who were stationed outside the door of the dummy. “You’re sleeping here?” he said.
“It seems to make Lucy more comfortable, and I guess I’ve got just one night to go.”
“We’ll figure it out,” he said. “Clearer heads tomorrow morning.”
“Where’s your car?”
“Just before the entrance gates, in one of the campus parking spaces.”
We walked down the front steps, and I took a deep breath of fresh air, reaching my arms up high and then bending down to touch my toes. I repeated the stretches three times.
“I feel like I’m tied up in knots,” I said. “This was my first week back and it seems as though the stress level is higher than ever. The second week will probably have me in a straitjacket.”
“Sometimes you make me laugh,” Mercer said. “You’ve stared down death a lot of times, Alexandra Cooper, and here you are, getting some imaginary vibes about a disease you are no more likely to catch than—”
“Don’t say it. I’m extremely superstitious, as you know.”
I took a few steps forward and looked up at the sky. The campus was dark, but the city lights still made it impossible to see the stars.
“What are you looking for up there?” Mercer asked.
“One star,” I said. “A lucky star, just to make a wish upon, like I used to do when I was a kid.”
“Forget the lucky star,” Mercer said. “You’ve got a full-on hunter’s moon tonight.”
FORTY-SIX
“Okay with you if I wander next door to my bed?” I asked Lucy, after the late news came on at eleven P.M. “I’m fading fast.”
“It’s been so long since I’ve had television in my own room,” she said. “If it doesn’t bother you, I’ll probably watch a while longer.”
“Suit yourself.”
Mike was in the hallway, trading war stories with the cop sitting outside the room with the dummy corpse. When he’d first arrived, I told him about the swap for Francie’s body—which the cop and agent didn’t know, I’d been told—and also gave him the news of the newly admitted patient with the deadly African virus.
I stayed in my shirt and jeans and lay down on top of the bed, pulling the thin hospital sheet over me. The door was ajar and the light over my headboard was on. I was checking messages on my iPad.
About ten minutes later, Billy Feathers knocked on the door and asked if he could come in.
“Of course you can. I’m just resting,” I said. “Starting to count sheep soon. Everything okay?”
“All good,” Billy said. “We like it when the late shift is quiet. I’ve been asked to distribute some masks and caps and gowns—just a routine safety precaution.”
He put down a handful of syringes on my nightstand and handed me the hospital gear.
I immediately forgot about the sheep. “What kind of precaution? Against the pox? You told me—”
“Nothing at all is going to happen to you,” Billy said. “This is a hospital for infectious disease, Alex. We take precautions. That’s what we do. Human-to-human transmission of monkeypox occurs through contact with respiratory droplets, like I said. A particle discharged from a sneeze or a cough. But the droplets only travel a few feet—not the length of a corridor and not under the closed door of the quarantined wing. They’re out of business within seconds.”
“So why this?” I asked, holding up the white surgical mask and hospital-green cap that would tie behind my neck if needed.
“Worst-case scenario,” Billy said, heading for the door with his arms full of masks, caps, and gowns.
“What scenario would that be?” I asked. “Poor Mr. Pox decides to escape from his negative air cubicle and come over to chat me up?”
“Don’t flatter yourself, girl,” Billy said. “He’s not moving so fast—not even in your direction.”
“And the syringes?” I asked. “What are those for?”
“You watch too much TV,” he said. “Saline flush, that’s all that is.”
I knew from time around my father in hospitals that saline flushes were used to clear intravenous lines, to ensure that all the required medication had passed through, and to lower the possibility of blood clots.
“Another precaution?” I asked.
“Don’t shoot me, Alex,” Billy said, mocking my serious tone. “I’m just here to deliver them to the nurses’ station.”
“Billy,” I said, getting up to go to the door. “Let me take Lucy’s mask and gown. I don’t want you going into her room to rattle her about things at this hour of the night.”
“Rules are rules,” he said. “I’ll just set them down on her chair and go.”
He turned to leave, forgetting the saline syringes. I’d give them to him when he returned.
I stood in the doorway and asked Mike to come back to my room. He held up a finger, telling me to wait. Both the cop and the agent he was talking to seemed riveted by whatever war story he had launched into.
When he walked into my room, his clothing was covered by green scrubs, and a mask was tied at his neck, but not pulled over his face. “Who do I remind you of?”
“Not a clue,” I said.
“I’m thinking George Clooney,” Mike said. “ER.”
I put my hand up to his forehead and laughed. “Fever, maybe? You do sound delusional, Detective.”
“Made you smile, didn’t I?”
“I’m thinking that maybe you should call Commissioner Scully and have someone pick us up and take Lucy and me—and you, Dr. McDreamy, if you’re ready to go—over to my apartment right now.”
“Now? It’s almost midnight.”
“Francie’s at the morgue—”
“Her bodyguards seem a little dim about that fact,” Mike said.
“And I’m not willing to expose Lucy to the chance of getting some incurable disease, from that monkeypox virus that’s taken up residence down the hall.”
“You’re a little overdramatic, don’t you think? The odds are—”
“Maybe so, but will you call the commissioner?”
“Anything you say, Coop. Is that the answer you wanted?”
I put my hands on Mike’s shoulders and reached up to kiss his cheek. “That works with me every time.”
He put his hand on the door and opened it so that he could walk out. I took a step behind him, to poke my head into Lucy’s room and see if she had gone to sleep yet.
But the corridor had an eerie feel. For the first time since I’d arrived at Rock U Hospital, there was not a person in sight on this hallway. Both the FBI agent and the NYPD cop had left their posts at the same moment. Their chairs were empty. And no one was guarding the room where Francie Fain had died.
Mike ripped the scrubs off and grabbed my wrist. “Get in with Lucy and stay there,” he said. “I’ll be back for you both in five.”
FORTY-SEVEN
Lucy was on the bed, knees drawn up and her arms around them, hooked on a rerun of a sitcom I didn’t recognize. She didn’t even notice that I had come into the room.
There was a soft knock on the door and I almost jumped at the sound.
“Who is it?” I asked, noticing that there were no locks on the doors.
“Billy,” he said. “It’s me.”
Lucy turned her head for a minute but went right back to her show.
“Where’s Mike?” he asked.
“He went down to the lobby,” I said. “We can’t figure why those two guards disappeared, and he’s trying to find out who’s on duty from the security staff.”
“Oh, it’s nothing serious,” Billy said. “We told them they had to put the masks and gowns on—just like I told you—and since the shift change was happening, the two of them told us to give the gowns to the new team that’s coming on now. They’re in the restroom getting suited up.”
I smiled with relief.
“Anyway, the reason I wanted Mike is because there’s a guy at the front gate,” Billy said. “You know, the entrance on York at Sixty-Eighth Street?”
“Yes.”
“Well, security just called the nurses’ station because he claims that he’s Francie Fain’s father—up from Texas—and he wants to come in to see her.”
My nerves had already been jangling about our proximity to the pox. Now I was really jumpy.
“I’m pretty sure Francie’s father is dead,” I said. “It can’t be her father, I’m certain of that. And what is anyone doing showing up here at this hour?”
“That goes on all the time when family arrive from out of town to see patients who aren’t doing well. He knows she’s on life support,” Billy said. “He wants to see her before anything worse happens.”
“Let me call Mike and tell him to hold the man down there at the gate,” I said. “Find out who he really is.”
Billy took his phone out of his uniform pocket. “I’ll call the lobby and tell them to block him, too, in case he gets past security while you find Mike.”
I ran ten feet down the corridor to speed-dial Mike from the privacy of my room.
“Yeah?”
“Where are you?” I asked.
“I’m on my way to the front gate.”
“You know there’s a man—?”
“Claiming to be Francie Fain’s father,” Mike said.
“Her father died when she was a kid,” I said. “And her adoptive mother never married.”
I suddenly had a thought. “What if it’s Judge Corliss?” I asked. “He’s old enough to be her father. He might be saying he’s her dad just so he can get access to her room. We can’t let him know about Francie yet.”
Blood Oath Page 27
