by Jeff Gunhus
Lauren swallowed hard and put her notebook on the bed. “You listen here young lady. There will be no more talk like that. We’re going to find a way to beat this thing, all right? But I need your help. I need you to fight.”
Felicia smiled but looked away toward the window. “Mom told me I would see my Nana in heaven. That’ll be nice.” She closed her eyes as she spoke, her voice winding down like a toy that needed a new battery. “She was always so nice to me.” Seconds later Felecia was back asleep.
Lauren sat on the edge of the bed and rested her hand on the little girl’s shoulder. She had grown close to Felicia. Her clinical detachment was gone, replaced by a maternal need to protect the sick child however she could. It was impossible for her to look at the little girl and not see her own daughter in the bed, her own daughter sick with some mysterious disease that she, despite all her education and skill, could not stop. This was no longer medicine. It was personal.
Lauren circled the tests she wanted done on Felicia Rodriguez’s blood work. The symptoms read like a med school multiple choice test. Open sores on the skin, hair loss, abdominal cramps, weight loss, heart arrhythmia, erratic pulse, fever, and so it went. It was like her body was giving up on her. The young doctor who first admitted the patient had worked hard to fit the symptoms into anything in the literature, but had come up empty. Lauren worried that she would come up against the same brick wall.
When she was first told of the case, the litany of past terrors ticked off in her head: Ebola, cerebral encephalitis, anthrax, hemorrhagic fever. The sores, especially, raised a concern. They were dark purple, like bruises, and drained yellow pus when ruptured. But the interview with Felicia’s father reduced Lauren’s initial fear that some strange contagion was at work. None of the high risk behavior was present in the patient nor her family. No travel out of the country. No interaction with livestock. No intravenous drug use. The backwoods of western Maryland hardly seemed a likely site for a terrorist attack. The only high-value target was the presidential retreat of Camp David, but that was more than fifty miles away.
Lauren knew these factors only reduced and didn’t eliminate the possibility of a highly contagious virus. Her work at Johns Hopkins on West Nile Virus taught her that mosquitoes were nature’s most efficient disease transmitter, better than any man-made device for germ warfare. As were ticks, fruit flies, bad water, mold, tainted meat. The list was endless and frightening in its banality. The most important fact she learned from the interview was that the Rodriguez’s had six other children and all had had close contact with Felicia since she became sick. None of them showed any symptoms.
Her father, Raoul, had lowered his head in shame when Lauren asked how long Felicia had been ill.
“Three weeks. She sick bad for three weeks.”
Frustrated, Lauren asked why it took him so long to bring her to the hospital.
He had turned red and stammered, “I bring in. Downstairs give me pills. Tell me make her sleep and give water. No money, you know?”
Lauren had patted him on the arm and assured him that she would take care of his little girl and that ‘no money’ wasn’t a problem. Downstairs meant that he had brought the girl to the emergency room. Lauren had seen it a hundred times, especially in California. Migrant workers with no insurance using the emergency room for general care and getting the blow-off by over-worked doctors.
She’d argued the case on more than one blue-ribbon panel of medical experts, for all the good it did. The system was broken. The best care went to the highest bidder, to those who could afford a lawyer if something went wrong. The directors of the hospital could afford benefit dinners at the Ritz Carlton, but pro bono services to the neediest were targeted for cuts at every budget review. She knew that emergency room doctors were good and they did their best, but limited time, resources and sleep made for snap judgments, and snap judgments led to mistakes. Someone made a mistake with Felicia Rodriguez and hadn’t taken the time to properly diagnose her. Now the little girl sleeping in front of her was paying the price.
“What do you think?”
She jumped from the edge of the bed with a start, holding the chart against her chest like a shield.
Dr. Stanley Mansfield stood in front of her. He was the chief of staff at Midland General and had been so for as long as anyone could remember. Tall and lean, with salt and pepper hair, he didn’t look older than mid-fifties though the older nurses assured Lauren that he had to be well into his sixties by now, maybe even early seventies. The doctor knew the staff liked to speculate about his age so he kept it a closely guarded secret, saying that it would be revealed only at his funeral. His way of making sure people showed up, he liked to joke.
“Stanley, you scared me to death.” Lauren laughed. She had not only learned to respect Dr. Mansfield’s judgment in the short time they’d been colleagues, but they’d developed a friendship as well. He ran a tight ship at the hospital but the medicine always came first and he supported his doctors no matter what happened. When nurses and patients weren’t around, he and Lauren felt comfortable enough to call each other by their first names.
“It’s O.K. to be a little jumpy after the day you’ve had. In fact, I can’t believe you’re still here.”
“We’re taking the kids home in a little bit. I just wanted to check on Felicia first.”
“And?”
“And I’m stumped. I’m not sure what to think. I want to send some blood to Atlanta. What do you think?” Atlanta was home to the CDC, the Center for Disease Control. Between the facilities there and its military counterpart at Fort Dietrich every virus capable of destroying the world population was stored and experimented on. The best testing technology coupled with the brightest medical minds protected the public from devastating outbreaks and helped doctors around the world understand the illnesses they were fighting in the field. Lauren didn’t know where else to turn.
Stanley made a soft humming sound behind pursed lips. Lauren smiled since she knew this was the doctor’s habit whenever he was thinking something through.
“Yes, let’s send blood to CDC and see what they come up with.”
“The CDC tests should help the determination. This might be something no one has ever seen before.”
The older doctor turned to Lauren and said seriously, “You know what I’ve never seen before?”
“What?”
“You getting out of here when you’re supposed to.” Lauren started to protest but he raised his hand to stop her. “Listen, I’m working tonight. I’ll spend some time with Felicia here. I’ll take the samples myself and make sure they are expedited to Atlanta. You need to take your family home and spend some time with them.”
Lauren looked at her watch and shook her head. “I am running late. You don’t mind?”
“Get out of here. I’ll take care of everything.”
Lauren handed him the chart. “Call me if anything changes,” she called out over her shoulder. Stanley didn’t acknowledge her. He was standing over the bed, humming as he flipped through the chart. Lauren headed out to gather her things. She just needed to track down Jack and the kids and they’d be ready to go.
SEVENTEEN
The door creaked as Jack applied just enough pressure to make it move. Inch by careful inch, he opened the door, ready to let go on the first indication that anyone was inside. A faint thunk-thunk of a respirator and the electric buzz of monitors were the only sounds in the room. Dim lights cast a pale orange hue over everything. From the door, the room opened up to the left after a short hall with a doorway for a toilet. For someone standing at the door, the angle cut most of the room from sight. Designed to provide patients with a higher degree of privacy, it also hid Huckley’s face from view.
Jack stayed close to the wall as he slid further into the room. He could see the lower half of the hospital bed extending from the left side of the room. Huckley’s legs were a hump under the grey hospital blanket. Two more steps into the room and Jack would be a
ble to see his face.
He stopped and steadied himself against the wall. His heart pounded in his chest and he was suddenly short of breath. What was he doing here? What was he trying to prove? He knew what happened last night and seeing the man wouldn’t change anything.
But Jack had to see him. He lived by confronting the challenges that stood in his way, the physical ones anyway. He purposely pursued his fears in order to overcome them. He feared heights, so he took up skydiving. He feared public speaking, so he spoke at college campuses and to business groups. Most of all, he feared failure, so he forced himself to pursue the most difficult challenges and took the greatest risks.
Something happened inside of him last night, something he didn’t like. In a few seconds, his entire world had nearly been blown apart by a maniac and he had been powerless to stop him. All the security he spent a lifetime building for his family was laid bare at that moment, and an awful truth was forced on to him, the same truth that haunted him from the day of the car crash in California, the day Melissa Gonzales died on the hood of his car. The unsavory truth that everything he loved could disappear in a heartbeat.
There were no rules, no fairness, no breaks for good conduct. Life could turn to death in a matter of seconds and you never knew when something could lash out and strike you down. Like the lightning bolt that burned a hole through Albert James’ head. Acts of nature. Freak accidents. Wasn’t that enough to deal with without having to add a deranged psychopath to the list?
Jack believed that through sheer diligence he could somehow protect his family from the bad things of the world. Deep down he knew it was naïve, but he allowed himself the fantasy. He didn’t know how else to deal with a world where everything could be taken away without warning. But Huckley had pulled the sheet back and exposed the fragility of his fantasy. The encounter kept replaying in his head; each time Huckley became less of a man and more of a monster, unstoppable, uncontrollable. It felt as if his run-in with Huckley had immersed him in cold water, shocking him awake to his own vulnerability. And now, as Jack stood just out of sight from Huckley’s body, the chill of that immersion made his hands tremble.
Jack detested the way he felt, the weakness, the lack of control. The only way he knew how to deal with a challenge was confrontation. In his mind, Huckley was a pale, ghoulish mask in a thunder storm, a twisted smile, a dark dream more nightmare than real. Jack needed him to be just a man again. Something natural. Something normal.
He stepped into the room.
Relief was his first emotion. Huckley lay prone in the hospital bed, the covers pulled up to his chest. His arms were on top of the blanket and fitted with an IV and sensors. Other wires and tubes ran from Huckley’s disabled body to the monitoring equipment arrayed next to the bed. An oxygen mask and nose tube covered his face and measured out his breathing. Jack wasn’t sure what he expected but the person lying on the bed in front of him was definitely not the monster he had built up in his mind. Relief at Huckley’s utter plainness soon gave way to confusion. This was the face of a murderer? He looked more like someone’s favorite uncle than a killer. No wonder no one believed him.
Jack checked the corners of the ceiling to make sure there were no cameras. Seeing none, he stepped further in to the room to get a closer look.
As he approached the bed, he noticed the bland smell of antiseptic mixed with the vaguely acrid smell of iodine. Jack stood next to the bed and looked down on the man who had terrorized him the night before.
The pale skin was even paler, but it no longer made him look menacing, just sickly. The man’s features didn’t gel with the sinister image burned in his mind from the night before. An angular bone structure and a rounded chin made Huckley more pleasant looking than handsome. He had pale blonde hair, so pale that his face seemed to lack eyebrows. Jack had been hoping to find some sign of evil, something to point to, for his own piece of mind. A tattooed swastika on his forehead like Manson would have been great. Anything to prove that the night before had not been his imagination and that this man was evil. But there was nothing and that disturbed him. For the first time, Jack wondered if he could have misinterpreted what had happened last night. He leaned against the bed, both of his hands on the blanket even with Huckley’s chest. He closed his eyes and tried to clear his head.
The fingers on Huckley’s right hand begin to twitch.
Lauren was likely done and looking for him by now. He knew she would be upset if she found out what he’d been up to, especially if she found out that he had told the on-duty nurse that she had asked him to check on Huckley. Sheriff Janney would have field a day with his clandestine visit. Jack could hear him now, spouting something about returning to the scene of the crime.
Huckley’s hand lifted off the blanket and hovered over Jack’s.
He had risked coming to the room for no good reason, he thought angrily. What the hell did he hope to accomplish here anyway? What was done was done. It was only a matter of time before they found the woman’s body. Then everyone would believe him. Sneaking into this crazy man’s room accomplished nothing.
Huckley’s fingers curled into a claw.
This guy was just some nutcake. End of story. The girls were fine. Just like Lauren told him, he had to focus on that. They were all fine. Life went on.
Jack opened his eyes just in time to catch a blur of motion as Huckley seized his wrist. The fingers were like metal bindings digging into his skin. Jack cried out. He pulled back, prying the fingers back with his free hand. Huckley lurched upright in the bed. His other hand ripped off the tubes attached to his body. He yanked on Jack’s arm and pulled him to the side of the bed so they were face to face.
Huckley’s mouth parted in a smile and yellow teeth poked through dry, cracked lips. His nostrils flared as if he were an animal smelling its prey. Jack struggled against the man’s grip, but it was impossible to break away. Huckley licked the air with lewd flicks of his tongue.
With his free hand, Jack swung a wild punch and landed it against Huckley’s jaw. A gash opened across Huckley’s face like a crack in dried ground. The wound was deep but no blood poured from it. Huckley’s mouth hung down at an impossible angle, his jaw broken.
Huckley shoved Jack away with both hands. Jack flew back from the bed and crashed into the far wall, barely staying on his feet. His instinct was to run to the door but he couldn’t move. He could only stare at what was happening in front of him.
Huckley stood on the bed, his clawed hands holding the sheet to his body. . With a flick of his hand, he threw the sheet down and exposed his naked torso. Dark sores covered his skin, circular purple splotches with black centers. A foul smell like rancid meat filled the room. Jack gagged at the stench.
Huckley laughed, thick guttural noises that gurgled with phlegm. He pointed at Jack and laughed louder; a mix of spittle and dark blood bubbled out of his mouth and dripped down his chin.
With his other hand, he stuck his finger into the black center of a sore, pushing it in one knuckle at a time until the entire finger had disappeared. Huckley worked the finger around in a circle with a wet, sucking sound.
Jack pushed his back against the wall behind him, as if he might push hard enough and climb into the wall and away from the monster in front of him. He wanted to close his eyes, but could not. He raised his arms to cover his face and gave into his horror. He filled his lungs and screamed.
“What the hell is going on in here?”
Strong hands were on his shoulders. Jack felt hot breath against his skin. He lowered his arms. Sheriff Janney’s face was inches from his own.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“It was Huckley. He…” Jack looked over the sheriff’s shoulder at the hospital bed. Nate Huckley lay there hooked up to the thunk-thunking respirator and quietly humming monitors. The bed sheet was tucked in around him, smooth enough to roll a quarter across.
“He was what?”
Jack rubbed the side of his head and closed his eyes
. In his mind, he could still see the open sores. He heard the laughter. But it wasn’t real. Just his imagination. He had to get a grip on himself. He opened his eyes and smiled. “Sorry. It’s been a tough one. Lack of sleep’s making me see things.”
“Let’s see you get on out of here,” Janney said. “What the hell were you thinking?”
Jack didn’t try to answer. He just nodded his head and went for the door. The nurse from the front desk stood in the hall, clutching her book to her chest. Jack nodded in her direction as he walked out of the room but the nurse stared down at the floor.
Served him right, he thought. After all, he had lied to her to get into Huckley’s room. He turned to say something, an apology, anything, but she looked horrified. That’s when it hit him. The nurse wasn’t mad, she was scared of him.
Jack wanted to say something to make it better, make her understand that he wasn’t the dangerous one. It was her patient in room 320 that she had to worry about. But everything he thought to say sounded crazy so he gave up and let Janney escort him to the elevator. The doors closed and he and Janney rode down in silence. Jack winced as he thought of explaining his little adventure to Lauren.
EIGHTEEN
The girls ran down the hall toward the exit to the parking lot. They had already said their good-byes to the nurses and now they were ready to go home. Lauren walked quietly next to him. And she wasn’t happy. Jack was trying to explain why he had gone the to Huckley’s room in the first place, but he couldn’t find the right words. And the more he tried, the more irrational the whole thing sounded.
“Look, I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t have gone up there,” he finally said.
“You’re right about that,” she snapped. “You told the nurse that I asked you to go there. It’s so unprofessional.”
“I know. It was stupid. I’m sorry.”
