She drew herself up before him. This man was starting to annoy her. Did he think she was hiding Callum Ferguson in her back pocket? “I’m sorry to tell you, Dr. Sawyer, that Dr. Ferguson became unwell on the plane en route.”
He actually twitched. As if she’d just said something to shock him. Maybe he was a human being after all.
“What happened?”
“We think he had an MI. He’s been taken to the cardiac unit at St John’s. I heard it’s the best in town.”
She waited for a second while he digested the news. Would he realize she’d checked up on the best place to send her colleague, rather than just send him off to the nearest hospital available? She hoped so. From the expression on Sawyer’s face she might need to win some points with him.
Why did the thought of being quarantined with this man fill her with impending doom?
* * *
Sawyer was about to explode. And Miss Hoity-Toity with her navy-blue suit, pointy shoes and squinty hairdo was first in line to bear the brunt of the impact.
It was bad enough that he was here—but now to find out that the one person in the DPA he absolutely trusted wasn’t going to be here?
The thought of Callum Ferguson having an MI was sickening. Sawyer had almost fallen into the trap of thinking the man was invincible. He’d spent the last forty years investigating outbreaks and coming home unscathed.
Please let him be okay.
He scowled at Callie Turner as she issued orders to those all around him. Did she realize her hand was trembling ever so slightly? Because he did. And it wasn’t instilling him with confidence.
He planted his hand on his hip. “How old are you exactly?”
He could see her bristling. Her brain was whirring, obviously trying to think up a smart answer. She walked straight over to him and put both of her hands on her hips, mirroring his stance.
“Exactly how old do you want me to be, Sawyer?”
He couldn’t wipe the smile from his face. Smart and sassy—if a little young. The girl showed promise.
“So what happened to the hair?”
He’d already caught her tugging self-consciously at one side of her hair. As if she wasn’t quite used to it yet. “Were you halfway through when you took my call?” He took a piece of gum offered by nearby Miriam and started chewing as he watched her. He could tell she was irritated by him. Perfect. Maybe if he annoyed Miss DPA enough, he could get out of here.
Except it didn’t work like that and he knew it. Still, he could live in hope.
She dumped a final pile of papers on the desk from her box, which she picked up and kicked under the desk. Yip. She was definitely mad.
She grabbed the heavily clipped document on the top of the pile, strode over and thrust it directly against his chest. It hit him square in the solar plexus, causing him to catch his breath.
“My haircut cost more than you probably make in a month. Now, here—read this. And it isn’t from me. It’s from Callum. He said to make sure it was the first thing I gave you—along with the instructions to follow it to the letter.”
He pulled the document off his chest. The DPA plan for a smallpox outbreak. All three hundred pages of it. He let it go and it skidded across the desk towards her.
“I don’t need to read this.”
She stepped back in front of him. “Yes. You do. You’ve already broken protocol once today, Dr. Sawyer. You should have contacted the state department before you contacted us. But, then, you know that, don’t you? You don’t work for the DPA anymore, Dr. Sawyer.”
He cracked his chewing gum. “Well, that’s at least one thing we agree on.”
She glanced at her watch. “So, that means, that as of right now—five thirty-six p.m.—you work for me. You, and everyone else in here. This is my hospital now, Dr. Sawyer, my jurisdiction, and you will do exactly what I tell you.” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “And it’s all in that plan. So memorize it because there’ll be a pop quiz later.”
She kicked her navy-blue platforms beneath the desk and started to undo her shirt. “Where are the scrubs and protective clothing?” she shouted along the corridor.
“In here,” came a reply from one of the nearby rooms.
“Let’s go see these kids,” she barked at Sawyer over her shoulder as she headed to the room.
Organized chaos was continuing around him. Piles upon piles of paper were being pulled from boxes, new phones were appearing and being plugged in all around him. He recognized a couple of the faces—a few of the epidemiologists and contact tracers—standing with their clipboards at the ready.
He could hear the voices of the admin staff around him. “No, put it here. Callie’s very particular about paperwork. Put the algorithms up on the walls, in the treatments rooms and outside the patient rooms. Everyone has to follow them to the letter.”
So, she was a rules-and-regulations girl? This was about to get interesting.
He wandered over to the room. Callie was standing in her bra and pants, opening a clean set of regulation pale pink scrubs. Last time he’d worn them they’d been green. Obviously a new addition to the DPA repertoire.
The sight made him catch his breath. It was amazing what could lurk beneath those stuffy blue suits and pointy shoes. The suit was lying in a crumpled heap on the ground, discarded as if it were worthless when it easily clocked in at over a thousand dollars. He could see the label from here. Maybe Miss Hoity-Toity did have some redeeming features after all.
Her skin was lightly tanned, with some white strap marks on her shoulders barely covered by her bra. She was a matching-set girl. Pale lilac satin. But she didn’t have her back to him so from this angle he couldn’t tell if she favored briefs or a thong...
Her stomach wasn’t washboard flat like some women he’d known. It was gently rounded, proving to him that she wasn’t a woman who lived on salad alone. But the most intriguing thing about her was the pale white scar trailing down the outside of her leg. Where had that come from? It might be interesting to find out. His eyes lifted a little higher. And as for her breasts...
“Quit staring at me.” She pulled on her scrub trousers. “You’re a doctor. Apparently you’ve seen it all before.” She tossed him a hat. “And get that mop of yours hidden.”
She pulled her scrub top over her head and knelt in the corner next to her bag. She seemed completely unaffected by his gawping. Just as well really.
Sawyer reluctantly pulled on the hat and a disposable pale yellow isolation gown over his scrubs. She appeared at his side a few seconds later as he struggled to tuck his hair inside the slightly too big cap.
“Want one of these?” She waved a bobby pin under his nose with a twinkle in her eye. She was laughing at him.
“Won’t you need all of them to pull back that one side of your bad haircut?”
She flung a regulation mask at him. “Ha. Ha. Now, let’s go.”
They walked down the corridor where the lights were still dimmed. She paused outside the door, her hand resting lightly on his arm.
“Let’s clarify before we go in. How many staff have been in contact with these kids?”
He nodded. He would probably answer these questions a dozen times today. “Main contact has been myself and Alison, one of our nurses. We’re estimating they were only in the waiting room around ten minutes. One of the triage nurses moved them through to a room quickly as the kids were pretty sick.”
Her eyebrows rose above her mask. “I take it that you’ve continued to limit the contact to yourselves?”
“Ah, about that.”
“What?” Her expression had changed in an instant. Her eyes had narrowed and her glare hardened.
“There’s a problem.”
“What kind of problem?”
“Alison’s pregnant. Eigh
teen weeks.”
She let out an expression that wasn’t at all ladylike. He hadn’t known she had it in her.
“Exactly. I haven’t let her go back in. She’s adamant. Says there’s no point exposing anyone else to something she’s already breathed in anyway. But I wasn’t having any of it.”
He could see her brain racing. There was the tiniest flicker of panic under that mask. “But the vaccine...”
He touched her shoulder. “I know. We don’t know the effects it could have on a fetus.” He shrugged. “I don’t know if you’ve come up with any new research in the last six years, but I wouldn’t want to be the doctor to give it to her.”
She nodded. “Leave it with me. I’ll take it up with the team.” She turned back to the room. “We need to get some samples.”
“It’s already done.”
“What?” She whipped around. “Why didn’t you say so?”
He sighed. “What do you think I’ve been doing these last few hours? I’m not that far out of the loop that I don’t know how to take samples. Besides, the kids were used to me. It was better that I did it.”
She nodded, albeit reluctantly. “And the parents?”
“I’ve taken samples from them too. They’re all packaged and ready to go. Let’s find out what we’re dealing with.”
“I want to see the kids first.”
Now she was annoying him. “You think I made their spots up? Drew them on their faces and arms?”
“Of course I don’t. But, like or not, I’m the doctor in charge here. I need to see the spots for myself. Get some better pictures than the ones snapped on your phone. I need to be clear that you’ve ruled out everything.”
She was only saying what he would have said himself a few years ago. She was doing things by the book. But in his eyes, doing things by the book was wasting time. That was why he hadn’t bothered with the call to the state department. Best to go right to the source.
And this family might not have that time to waste. Just like his hadn’t.
It made him mad. Irrationally mad. And it didn’t matter that the voices in his head were telling him that. Because he wasn’t listening.
“For goodness’ sake. Don’t you have any confidence in my abilities? I’ve been doing this job since you were in kindergarten. I could run rings around you!”
She pushed her face up next to his. If it weren’t for the masks, their noses would be practically touching. “You’re not quite that old, Matt Sawyer. And it doesn’t matter what I think about your doctoring abilities. I’m in charge here. Not you. We’ve already established you don’t work for the DPA any more and I do. You know how things work. You know the procedures and protocols. You might not have followed them but I do. To the letter.” She put her hand on the door. “Now, do your job, Dr. Sawyer. Take me in there and introduce me to the parents.”
* * *
Callie leaned back against the wall in the sluice room. She’d just pulled off her disposable clothing and mask and dispensed with them in line with all the infection control protocols.
She let the temperature of the cool concrete seep through her thin scrub top. Thank goodness. With the air-conditioning turned off this place was getting warm. Too warm. Why couldn’t this outbreak have happened in the middle of the winter, when Chicago was knee deep in snow, instead of when it was the height of summer? It could have made things a whole lot simpler for them. It could also have made the E.R. a whole lot quieter.
Those kids were sick. Sawyer hadn’t been kidding. They were really sick. She’d really prefer it if they could be in a pediatric intensive care unit, but right now that was out of the question.
And even though it seemed like madness, in a few minutes’ time she was going to have to inoculate them and their parents with the smallpox vaccine.
Then she was going to have to deal with the staff, herself included.
There wasn’t time to waste. The laboratory samples were just away. It could be anything up to forty-eight hours before they had even a partial diagnosis and seven days before a definitive diagnosis. She didn’t want to wait that long.
She knew that would cause problems with Sawyer. He would want to wait—to be sure before they inflicted a vaccine with known side-effects on people who might not be at risk. But she’d already had that conversation with her boss, Evan Hunter. He’d told her to make the decision on the best information available. And she had.
She wrinkled her nose, trying to picture the relationship between the man she’d just met and Callum Ferguson, a doctor for whom she had the utmost respect. How on earth had these two ever gotten along? It just didn’t seem feasible.
She knew that Sawyer had lost his pregnant wife on a mission. That must have been devastating. But to walk away from his life and his career? Why would anyone do that? Had he been grief stricken? Had he been depressed?
And more to the point, how was he now? Was he reliable enough to trust his judgment on how best to proceed? Because right now what she really needed was partner in crime, not an outright enemy.
If only Callum were here. He knew how to handle Sawyer. She wouldn’t have needed to have dealt with any of this.
Her fingers fell to her leg—to her scar. It had started to itch. Just as it always did when she was under stress. She took a deep breath.
She’d made a decision. Now it was time to face the fallout.
* * *
“Are you crazy?”
“No. I’m not crazy. I’ve already spoke to my boss at the DPA. Funnily enough, he didn’t want you sitting in on that conference call. It seems your reputation has preceded you.”
“I don’t care about my reputation—”
“Obviously.”
“I care about these staff.”
He spun around as the crates were wheeled into the treatment room and the vaccine started to be unloaded. One of the contact tracers came up and mumbled in her ear, “We’re going to start with a limited number of people affected. The kids, their parents, Dr. Sawyer, yourself and these other four members of staff who’ve had limited contact.”
“What about Alison?”
The contact tracer hesitated, looking from one to the other. “That’s not my decision,” he said as he spun away.
Callie swallowed. She could do with something cool to drink, her throat was dry and scratchy. “Alison will have to make her own decision on the vaccine. There isn’t enough data for us to give her reliable information.”
She saw the look on his face. He looked haunted. As if he’d just seen a ghost from the past. Was this what had happened to his wife? Had she been exposed to something that couldn’t be treated because of her pregnancy? This might all be too close to home for Matt Sawyer.
“Okay.” He ran his fingers through his hair. It hadn’t got any better now it had been released from the cap. In fact, it seemed to have grown even longer. “Do me a favor?”
She lifted her head from the clipboard she was scribbling on. “What?”
“Let me be the one to talk to Alison about it. If there hasn’t been any more research in the last six years, then I’m as up to date as you are.”
She took a deep breath. She didn’t know this guy well enough to know how he would handle this. He was obviously worried about his colleague. But was that all? And would his past experience affect his professional judgment?
“You can’t recommend it one way or the other, you understand that, don’t you?”
She could tell he wanted to snap at her. To tell her where to go. But something made him bite his tongue. “I can be impartial. I’ll give her all the facts and let her make her own decision. It will come better from someone she knows.”
Callie nodded. He was right. The smallpox vaccine came with a whole host of issues. She was already questioning some of the decisions that she
’d made.
Alison was at the end of the corridor in a room on her own, partly for her own protection and partly for the protection of others. She’d been in direct contact with the disease—without any mask to limit the spread of the infection. In theory, because she hadn’t had prolonged exposure in a confined space, she should be at low risk. But she’d also been exposed to—and had touched—the erupting spots. The most infectious element of the disease. Pregnant or not, she had to be assessed as being at risk. “You know I have to do this, right?”
He was glaring at her, his head shaking almost imperceptibly—as if it was an involuntary act.
“We have the three major diagnostic criteria for smallpox. This is a high-risk category. Those parents look sick already. They’re probably in the prodromal stage of the disease.”
The implication in the air was there, hanging between them. If they waited, it could result in more casualties and the DPA being slaughtered by the media for wasting time. That was the last thing anyone wanted.
“Callie? We have a problem.”
Both heads turned to the DPA contact tracer standing at the door. “What is it, Hugo?”
She stepped forward and took the clipboard from his hand.
“It’s the parents. They can’t say for sure if the rash came out during or after the plane trip home.”
“You’re joking, right?” Callie felt the hackles rise on the back of her neck. This was one of the most crucial pieces of information they needed. Once the rash was out, the person was infectious. This was the difference between three hundred passengers on a plane being at risk or not.
Hugo looked pale. “Mrs. Keating is sure they didn’t have a rash before they got on the plane. And she’s almost sure they didn’t have it on the plane, because the kids slept most of the journey. They went straight home and put the kids to bed—she didn’t even get them changed. It wasn’t until the next day she noticed the rash, but it could have been there on the plane.”
Callie cringed, as Sawyer read her mind. “Prodromal stage. Did they sleep because they were developing the disease or did they sleep because it was a long flight?” He put a hand on Hugo’s shoulder. “You have to establish if she noticed either of the kids having a fever during the journey.” He paused, then added, “And make sure they didn’t change planes anywhere.” Sawyer rolled his eyes to the ceiling, “Or our contact tracing will become a nightmare.”
THE MAVERICK DOCTOR AND MISS PRIM/ABOUT THAT NIGHT... Page 3
