Tainted

by Ross Pennie

  “Certainly not.”

  “But to be honest, I don’t see how Extendo-Tox can possibly be acting as a prion. Its link with the victims is just coincidental.”

  “Actually, I’ve never thought that Extendo-Tox was our prion.”

  “Our friend Dr. Szabo thinks it is.”

  “I look at Extendo-Tox as an essential cofactor, but not the only element in play.”

  “Now you’re really complicating the issue.” Banbury looked anxiously at his watch as if feeling pressed by his next appointment. “Why don’t you let the government agencies do their job and find the prions for us? They know what they’re doing.”

  Where, wondered Hamish, had this man been for the past ten days? Perhaps he never went grocery shopping and hadn’t witnessed the chaos created by Wyatt Burr’s wild accusations. But how could he have missed the televised “updates” from the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, devoid of any meaningful information? Every day they announced they were testing the Lorreaux chocolates for prions and promised that the results of their investigation would be available “shortly.” When the tests did come back from Winnipeg, they were bound to be negative.

  Hamish forced himself to hold Banbury’s rheumy, pop-eyed gaze. “I’ve uncovered something that makes it impossible to overemphasize the importance of the link between the CJD victims and their Extendo-Tox injections.”

  Banbury coughed, looked again at his watch, and eased into the battered metal chair beside his cluttered desk. He swept his thick mane of wavy hair from his brow and rested his hands in his lap. “I sense there is something important you haven’t told me about this prion business.”

  Hamish scanned the room for another chair; there wasn’t one. He pulled a wad of tissues from his pocket then wiped the grime from the edge of the closest workbench and leaned against it. He decided he’d better tell Banbury the whole story, without checking with Zol. The old fellow seemed prepared to listen, but maybe only for the moment. If he were as pure a scientist as his cluttered lab suggested, he would be desperate to be the first to tell the neuro-science world how his tulip plaques had come about. But if that meant implicating his beloved Extendo-Tox, would he tell the whole truth?

  Hamish worked at a crack in the linoleum with the toe of his brogue. It was essential that Banbury keep quiet about the mink in the sausages until the laboratory in Guelph finished assaying for prions. There was no telling what the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the Ministry of Agriculture, Health Canada, the combined bureaucracies of three levels of governments, and the WHO would do if Banbury opened his mouth too soon. For starters, Zol would get fired.

  “Dr. Banbury,” Hamish began, “Zol Szabo and I think we’re on to something. But we have to keep it quiet until we’ve got an airtight case. Can you agree not to say anything about it until Zol says we’re ready?”

  Banbury stared distractedly at the floor for a moment then raised his hand in a Boy Scout salute. “You have my word. Within reason.”

  Still leaning against the edge of the workbench, Hamish told Banbury about Ned Krooner’s goring by a mink with probable transmissible mink encephalopathy, the discovery of mink meat in Lanny Krooner’s products, and the link between Krooner’s meats and six of the CJD victims.

  At the end of the story Banbury coughed into his handkerchief and wiped his chin. He gazed at the mountain of books and journals on his desk as though recalling something hidden there. He opened his mouth, then looked at the door as if to be sure no one else was within earshot. He licked his lips and said, “Did any of the victims exhibit olfactory aberrations?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m wondering about the state of their olfactory nerves,” Banbury said. He then asked whether any of the victims had hallucinated about wonderful odours, or had complained of terrible smells that no one else noticed, or had lost their sense of smell altogether.

  Hamish thought for a moment. Ken had said that Owen woke up one morning and began to hate the smell of coffee. He complained it smelled like vomit and refused to let Ken drink it in the house. That’s when Ken switched to green tea. Brenda McEwen had said, only half-seriously, that she thought the fruity aroma of the Lorreaux chocolates made her husband high and fed his addiction to them. And hadn’t Natasha mentioned that Rita Spinelli refused to bathe? Had she lost her sense of smell?

  “Now that you mention it,” Hamish replied, “at least two or three of the cases had problems with their sense of smell. Why do you ask?”

  “Post-marketing surveillance of Extendo-Tox has uncovered a number of recipients with olfactory aberrations. It’s all very hush-hush and no one knows what to make of it, but . . .” Banbury stared at the floor as if harbouring thoughts he was not ready to reveal.

  Hamish cast his mind back to his neuroanatomy class. It had been a difficult course crammed with minute details, all to be memorized for a final exam. One day the professor brought in a number of powerful scents and asked the class to describe their reactions as they sniffed them. Everyone was amazed how their minds were flooded with vivid details of events they hadn’t thought about in years. The professor had then explained the strong bond between memory and the sense of smell, thanks to neural pathways linking the limbic system in the brain with the olfactory nerves in the nose.

  Hamilton’s CJD victims all had suffered memory difficulties. All had their prion plaques concentrated in their amygdalas, an essential component of the limbic system. “Isn’t there a direct connection between the sense of smell and the amygdalas, Dr. Banbury?” Hamish asked.

  “Of course. A veritable highway of nerve fibres leads from the odour-detecting receptors in the nose, through the olfactory bulbs tucked beneath the frontal lobes, along the lateral olfactory striae, and into the amygdalas.”

  “In words understandable to an infectious disease doc,” Hamish asked, “what does that mean?”

  “It means I must get out those brains, dissect out their olfactory bulbs, and examine them closely. As pathologists, we always ignore the bulbs at autopsy because they’re almost never important. Not in determining the cause of death, at any rate.”

  “Is Extendo-Tox interfering with them?” Hamish asked.

  Banbury studied his hands as though the answer were contained within his arthritic knuckles. “It wasn’t designed to. But it seems that perhaps — just perhaps, mind you — it could be. At least, in some recipients.” He ran his forefinger along his nose. “The nasal lining is so well supplied with blood vessels that negligible amounts of Extendo-Tox in the bloodstream could accumulate in the olfactory apparatus.” He paused, his tongue quivering between his lips. His shoulders sagged and he seemed to wither on the chair like the desiccated spider plant on the windowsill beside his desk. “If . . . if Extendo-Tox exerts some sort of unanticipated effect on those olfactory bulbs and receptors, I suppose it’s anyone’s guess what the consequences might be.”

  Hamish pictured a text-book drawing of the two olfactory bulbs. They looked like miniature spring onions lying in parallel inside the skull, immediately above the nose. They connected the nose to the brain. If Extendo-Tox locked onto the nasal receptors that generated the sense of smell, it might migrate into the much-ignored olfactory bulbs and further concentrate itself there. And if it injured the bulbs, Extendo-Tox could open a pipeline between the bloodstream, the nose, and the brain, providing prions an expressway into the brain and its amygdala.

  “What do we do next?” Hamish asked.

  Banbury’s chair pitched forward as he stumbled out of it. “We have no choice. We must perform the Extendo-Tox-specific assay on the olfactory bulbs.”

  “I thought you returned all the reagents to the company.”

  “Neil Rasmussen owes me a favour,” Banbury said, rolling up his shirt sleeves, “and he’s bound to have the reagents tucked away somewhere in a freezer.” His eyes, red and bulging, half twinkled as he added, “He hasn’t thrown anything out in thirty-five years.”

  CHAPTER 27r />
  Just before ten o’clock that morning, Zol turned in to his parking spot at the rear of the heath unit and switched off the ignition. He turned up the radio. While waiting for the news to come on, he watched the sparrows huddling in the naked birches outside Mr. Wong’s back door. If they were looking for crumbs, they’d have a long wait until the busboy put out the garbage sometime tonight. On the street, the squirrels played a dangerous game of survival-of-the-fastest against the stream of vehicles speeding down the road, dodging the potholes and the puddles. How he hated the low clouds and bitter drizzles that November inflicted on southern Ontario. Without the sparkle of February’s snow and the optimism of March’s strengthening sun, November offered only gloom, a greyness that invaded the bones.

  He told himself he shouldn’t feel so glum. The visit he’d just made to I and W Meats had been illuminating. The ginger-haired woman behind the counter had coped with product recalls before. The names of the microbes rolled off her Scottish tongue: Trichinella, Salmonella, Campylobacter, E. coli. As Zol watched, she tossed all of Krooner’s “improperly inspected” products into a plastic garbage bag, secured it with a length of string, and placed it on a shelf at the rear of her walk-in refrigerator. She promised not to touch the contents until she heard from the health unit later in the week. She was quick in her assurance that Lanny Krooner considered himself an exclusive supplier and sold his pies and sausages only to her and to Four Corners. And as for his head cheese, she was certain he provided it to no one else except Chef Heinrich at The Hungry Cuckoo. She forced a smile and wrote down the eatery’s phone number and address, clearly anxious to redeem the sullied virtue of purveyors of processed meat. The Hungry Cuckoo wasn’t open for lunch on Tuesdays, she explained, so Heinrich wouldn’t be there until after one.

  As Zol sat in the parking lot shaking his head at the latest update from Health Canada, a sticky note was sitting on his computer screen. It had been placed there by Anne some thirty minutes earlier. She wanted to be sure he saw it as soon as he returned. There was no urgency about it, so she hadn’t bothered him with a cellphone call.

  “Good news,” Anne’s note began, “Ermalinda called. Dr. Margolis had a cancellation this morning. Max is getting his injection today! 10:15. On their way now.”

  At the end of the news, Zol stepped out of his vehicle and glanced up at his office window. The morning’s crop of public-health dilemmas could wait a few more minutes. He needed a latte, a tall one in a proper glass with lots of froth. He locked the car and headed down the street to the Nitty Gritty Café. Perhaps Marcus could find him a quiet spot in a back corner.

  He took his place in the lineup at the counter. The café was bustling with patrons, refugees from bars whose owners hadn’t cottoned to Marcus’s winning formula of gelatin-free organic fare. Zol breathed in the earthy aroma of fresh espresso and counted six heads dallying in the queue ahead of him. The young woman behind the counter was flirting with a youth in a baseball cap as he deliberated between a gingersnap and a brownie. The woman’s eyes reminded Zol of Colleen’s. They spoke of warmth and wisdom. Colleen should be calling back at any time. It had been two hours since he’d left a message on her mobile.

  The irresistible fragrance of the coffee intensified as the line diminished ahead of him. When it came his turn, Zol smiled and asked for a latte. An extra tall one. The young woman asked if he wanted it to go. He paused and looked over his shoulder. So much bustle and noise, even in the back corner. He checked the time — almost a quarter past ten. He’d better get back to the office. Yes, he’d have it to go.

  He strolled into his office and set the latte on his desk. He felt cheered when he spotted Anne’s note and its promise of good news. A moment later his world fell dark. Dread consumed him. The walls pressed inward, and all he could see was the computer’s screen saver — Max’s drawing of birds and a rainbow over Niagara Falls. He’d been so proud to use every crayon in the box. Now the drawing sneered at Zol and mocked his fatherhood.

  He ran his hands through his hair and pawed the wet from his forehead. He grabbed the phone, dialled the switchboard at Caledonian Medical Centre, and lived a millennium through more than a dozen rings before the operator answered and connected him with Dr. Margolis’s line. And then the ringing started all over again. His watch said ten seventeen. Please God, may Margolis be like any other doctor — running at least a few minutes late.

  A female voice chimed in that unmistakeable answering-machine tone: “We are in the office but on the phone at the moment, or helping other patients. If this is a medical emergency, call nine-one-one or go to your nearest Emergency Department.”

  His opened his mouth, his entire being frozen in concentration and poised to leave a firm but simple message. Though far from ideal, it might do for the moment. But six words came back at him in the same flat tone, filling him with rage and panic: “This machine does not take messages.”

  He stared through Max’s rainbow on the monitor.

  What could he do?

  He could get in the car and storm Margolis’s office. No. It was a fifteen-minute drive to Caledonian’s campus on Mud Street. Too long.

  He could tell Bell Canada to break in on the line. A public-health emergency. No, he’d tried that before. He would have to connect with three automated attendants, then speak with two supervisors. And if the line were managed by a computer, he couldn’t break through anyway.

  He looked again at his watch. Ten eighteen. He dialled the paging operator at Caledonian. Lake Ontario could have drained to nothing in the time it took an operator to answer.

  Finally, he asked for Hamish.

  “Dr. Wakefield is not on call, I’ll put you through to Dr. Yang who is the resident on call for infectious diseases. One moment pl—”

  “No,” Zol shouted. “I must speak with Dr. Wakefield. No one else. Tell him it’s Dr. Szabo — public health.”

  “You don’t need to shout, sir. I’m just following procedure.”

  “Can’t you just try his pager?”

  “Dr. Wakefield is very particular. When he’s not on call, he can only be disturbed for a good reason.”

  “This is life and death.”

  The line clicked, and Zol heard a radio station; violins were playing through an ad for a funeral home. He pictured himself standing beside a junior-sized coffin in a carpeted room where everything was suffused in grey. The music clicked off, and Hamish’s husky whisper scratched down the line.

  “Thank God,” said Zol.

  “Hell’s bells, Zol. What’s up? I got paged Star One, that means either cardiac arrest or a bomb threat.”

  Zol explained. Asked him to run over to Dr. Margolis’s office. Do whatever it took to stop Max’s injection.

  “Be there in a flash.”

  Zol dashed down the stairs to the parking lot, chastising himself as he ran. How could he be so stupid? One way or another, he should have got hold of Margolis and cancelled Max’s injection. At the very least he should have told Ermalinda he’d withdrawn his consent. That way, she would have called him about the last-minute appointment instead of following his previous instructions.

  Shot or no shot, he had to be with Max, to hold him in his arms, breathe the green-apple smell of his hair.

  The display on the phone said ten twenty as Hamish hung up. He strode to the door of the semi-dark viewing room. He’d been reviewing a CT scan in the imaging department when his beeper went off. His hand gripped the knob but stopped short of turning it. There was no use in dashing, blind and panicked, into the hectic, brightly lit maze of the department.

  What was the fastest route to the children’s care and research tower? Should he take the stairway at the end of the corridor, dash up one flight, then follow the elevated walkway? No, he had no idea which floor Margolis was on. Switchboard would know, but they took forever to answer. He could zip down three flights — or was it four? — and take the sub-basement passage. No. Too much running, too many stairs, too much time. He remem
bered the smoking terrace outside the cafeteria. That was it: two flights down, out the rear doors by the vending machines, across the terrace, and through the main door of Children’s Care. A panel in the lobby listed all the docs and their offices.

  Three minutes later, his legs seized with cramp, Hamish threw open the door to Dr. Margolis’s office on the seventh floor of Children’s Care. He leaned against the jamb, unable to take another step. His throat screamed for air. His heart pounded in his neck. He hadn’t done flights like this since he’d carried the code blue beeper as a resident. And even then they insisted you walk, not run, to cardiac arrests.

  All eyes in the waiting room turned in his direction. Mothers clutched their children to their laps, alarmed and annoyed at the red-faced madman wheezing in the doorway. He swept the room with his gaze — no sign of either Max or Ermalinda. Spasms clenched his throat in a grip too tight to launch a single word at the reception window on the far side of the waiting room. Still leaning against the door, he dug for the puffer in his lab coat. One pocket, then the other. Hell — he’d left it at his office.

  As he gasped in the doorway, two crucial minutes evaporated. It tore him apart to see them wasted, but he had no choice. He could barely move, and he certainly couldn’t speak. The receptionist eyed him from her wicket but said nothing. The incessant ringing of her phone kept her in her seat. The mothers stared, lips tight, feet planted, knees clamped. Their children squirmed over their colouring books and game gadgets. Hamish wanted to wave a hand as if to say, Don’t worry, I just need a sec, but his embarrassment paralyzed him as much as the run up the stairs. His watch ticked to ten twenty-three. Had Max already had his needles?