by J. D. Bishop
The lot was nuts. Obviously, people were already jamming the ER as the virus scared the shit out of New Orleans. Some woman tried to rush in an empty parking space that Patricia had spotted, both of them coming from opposite sides of the aisle to nearly go nose to nose at the one spot that was still available. Blaring her horn repeatedly and jamming her foot on the gas, she bullied her way into the space, barely avoiding colliding with the woman, who promptly gave her the finger.
Patricia rushed out of her car and past the woman, who was probably debating running her over. The woman lowered her window as Patricia ran by. “Selfish bitch,” the woman yelled. “Eat shit and die!”
“Right back at you,” Patricia replied as she kept running. Bitch.
Her feet were killing her. She might have looked sexy as hell in her high heels, but running in pumps was painful and dangerous. If she wasn't careful, she would need medical attention. She ran into an overly curious Hispanic man near the hospital doors. “Sorry.”
He took a good look at her face as she tried to move past him. “Hey, aren't you that news lady on Channel—”
“No,” she replied quickly, running through the hospital doors. She didn’t have time to get delayed by anyone right now, and she sure as hell didn’t want to listen to someone’s sob story.
She was breathless by the time she reached the information desk, which was miraculously not swamped. A large black woman wearing hospital scrubs sat in front of a computer screen chewing gum. Her name tag said Rosa. Trying desperately to calm her ragged breathing, Patricia said, “Hi, I'm here to see Gregory Oakley. I'm his next of kin.”
The woman typed something into the computer sitting in front of her, not even lifting her face from the screen to look at her. “Can I see some identification, baby girl?”
Patricia produced her ID and gave it to the woman, who finally looked up from her monitor to compare her face to the driver’s license. Rosa checked over it for a few moments, then she handed it back, her eyes immediately going back to her screen.
“What's your relation to the patient?”
Patricia glanced down the hall at the elevator, her anxiety growing. Something was wrong, but she had no idea what. “I'm his older sister.”
The woman handed her a blank name tag sticker. “I'm going to need you to put your name on that and put it right over your chest.”
Patricia looked around and saw a cheap knockoff Sharpie held down by a string. She uncapped it, writing quickly. After she was done, Patricia leaned forward, her heart pounding. “Can you tell me if my brother is okay?”
The woman snorted. She might be fast at her job, or maybe she was tired, but Rosa wasn’t going to win any awards for great customer service. “Honey child, I don't know a damn thing. They don't tell my ass nothin. I just connect people to where they want to go—speaking of which, your brother is on the fifteenth floor. You'll have to ask the ladies up there for permission to see him.”
“Okay, thank you, Rosa.” Patricia turned toward the elevator but was quickly stopped by the woman, who had stood up from her desk.
The woman was staring at her hard, a semi-frightened look on her face like she had something to say. “Hey, you look very familiar. Do I know you from somewhere?”
“I get that a lot,” Patricia said. Normally, she’d be willing to stop. Hospital workers who were scared usually had useful information, but she was only thinking of Greg at the moment. She quickly fled down the hall and got in the elevator, not wanting to be recognized by the woman and be held up another five minutes.
She checked her watch. It was still early—7:30 AM. Elijah and Matt should just be wrapping up the 7:25 network morning show news break. Her mother was probably just getting to the house to pick up Natalie. She was going to have to call to check on them after she saw what was going on with Greg.
A man got on the elevator just as the doors were closing. It was an older man, maybe in his late forties, dressed in a hospital coat, slacks, and a white dress shirt. He looked kind of pale, sickly. Remembering what she’d had to read on the teleprompter, she sank back against the elevator wall, giving herself breathing room. The man gave her a polite nod. She gave a weak one back, noticing that he was sweating. He kept coughing, trying his best to stifle them, but there was little break except that they seemed to get slightly weaker as the elevator climbed. Finally, the man shook his head and looked over at her, a rueful smile on his face. “If you ever want to keep your health, don’t work as a doctor. We get exposed to every damn bug that comes through here.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Patricia said as she pressed herself against the elevator wall as hard as she could, wishing she had a germ mask. Thankfully, the man got off on the seventh floor. She breathed a deep sigh of relief when he was gone.
To say it was hectic on the fifteenth floor would be an understatement. It looked like Bourbon Street crossed with a sick ward. Nurses and doctors were running back and forth, handling patients. Patricia was surprised. It hadn't looked this busy on the bottom floor. Then again, she was hardly paying attention in her haste to reach her brother.
She went up to the nurses' station. Several young girls sat in front of computers, talking to themselves worriedly. One of them had a germ mask on her face while another two were already looking worn out, pale, and sweaty.
Patricia leaned over, shoving herself into their attention. “Hello, I'm here to see my brother, Gregory Oakley.”
One of the girls looked up and responded. “Ma'am, we're going to have to ask you if you have that virus that seems to be going around?”
Patricia looked around nervously as at least a dozen people were hacking behind her. “No, I don't, but if I stay around here much longer, I can tell that I most definitely will.”
The girl with the germ mask handed her one and some gloves, looking nervous herself. “Here, take these. Maybe they’ll help.”
Patricia put them on quickly. “My brother . . .” she began.
Swiftly cutting her off, the nurse said, “The doctor will be out to see you in a moment. The waiting area is filled, so you're going to have to stand around. Sorry.”
Patricia strolled around the nurses' station, scouting out the waiting area. It was packed with people. All of them looked very sick, like the man on the elevator, coughing, sneezing, and carrying on. All of them had pale skin and were sweaty, but it wasn’t a feverish sweat—they all seemed to look cold. Whatever it was, the CDC story was bullshit. This didn’t look like the flu at all. Worried, she backed away from that infested den and tried to stay secluded in the hallway.
A handsome man in a white coat came walking up to her moments later. His name tag said Dr. Humphries, and he at least looked healthy, as well as professional.
“Hello, Miss Oakley.” The man had a pleasant tone to his voice, and he offered his hand, which Patricia shook. He had a good grip too. “I'd like to start by saying that I appreciate your work in bringing us the news. You're a joy to watch.”
Patricia was flattered. He didn’t sound like he was kissing her ass but rather like a genuine fan. “Why, thank you. My brother, is he—”
Before she could finish, Dr. Humphries raised his hand, a small smile on his face. Half-turning, the doctor said, “Your brother is fine, Miss Oakley. I can't say the same for some of his friends, though.”
Thank God.
Overwhelmed with relief, Pat asked, "Are they okay?"
A frown came over the handsome doctor's face, and he lowered his voice slightly. “Two of your brother's friends are in serious condition. They both sustained concussions and we have them under close observation. The other two just had minor bruises and scratches, like your brother.”
Patricia felt a little surge of relief again. At least no one died, but something bugged her. “Doctor, if my brother was all right, why is he still here? And why have I not received a call from him? I’ve been texting his cell and calling him all morning. In fact, I know I’m listed on his information card in his wallet
as his next of kin. Why wasn’t I notified?”
The doctor looked around furtively, his eyes tightening, and he leaned in further. His smile disappeared, the confidently professional look slipping as his eyes took on a concerned, worried look and he spoke in barely above a whisper. “Your brother and his friends were brought here by emergency personnel, accompanied by some military man. He said that he was CDC, but I served in the military. I know active duty and I know career guys. He smelled of career. About an hour after he came in with them, another group of military personnel came in. They've been questioning them all night. To tell you the truth, I think there is something going on with this virus that they’re not telling us. I received some results back from a lab test last night. The test results were of an unknown pathogen that we've never encountered in our lab. This has a story written all over it, if you catch my drift.”
The doctor's story and demeanor worried her. This was getting more frightening by the minute. She definitely wanted to get her brother and get out of there and hope that neither of them got sick. It wasn't worth sticking around to find out a story. She had a daughter to worry about. She was not one of those suicidal journalists.
The doctor's expression turned grave. “It was strange, too. All of the military men—they’re not younger. They’re older, and they don’t even look to me like military medical. They all have the haircuts and the demeanor of combat troops, infantry types. The guy who came in said he was a Lieutenant, but there’s no way a Lieutenant gets to be that old. It was just . . . weird. But that's not the worst of it. Your brother and his friends all had high alcohol content levels except for one of them. The man who ran into them died. So you are looking at some serious charges here.”
Patricia cursed inwardly. She had been wrong about someone not dying. She was really paying for not being stricter with her brother. She could hear the shit her mom would be talking already, not to mention her father, Joe.
The doctor's face twisted in confusion. “I'm also not sure if that accident didn't disorient them in some way. They've been saying some disturbing things about a man they encountered.”
Intrigued, Pat asked, “Like what?”
Casting a glance toward a scurrying staff member moving through the hallway, the doctor replied, “I think it's time you see for yourself. Follow me. Quietly. You’re not supposed to be where we’re going.”
Following the doctor down the crowded hallway, she evaded the other rushing doctors and nurses, keeping quiet as Doctor Humphries put on his best authoritative look. They walked the length of the hallway, constantly dodging personnel until they came to a large room. There was a man at the door in a military uniform, and he stood up when Dr. Humphries approached. “Authorized personnel only, Doc.”
Dr. Humphries rolled his eyes and pointed at Patricia. “She just got here from the state health department, and they called for her to come up. This is Doctor Kildare.”
The guard looked unsure, but then a crash down the hallway diverted his attention, and he swallowed, looking scared. “Okay, Doc, but it’s on you. I gotta go help down the hall.”
Dr. Humphries nodded and opened the door for Patricia as soon as the guard’s back was turned. Inside, several military men sat at a table. One of them appeared to be a military doctor, or at least he was wearing a white jacket with his fatigues. Her brother, his friend Jeffrey, and Greg's girlfriend, Rebecca, were sitting across from them. They all had cuts and bruises on their faces and looked extra tired and more than a little scared. They were currently engaged in a heated conversation. Greg was doing most of the talking.
Greg's voice was filled with exasperation as he talked. “Look, sir, we already told you a million fucking times. We stopped at the gas station so my friend Jeff could get some headache medicine because he had a killer headache. My girlfriend, Jeff, and the other girl that was with us, Christy, were the ones who went inside. They said the store clerk that worked in there was sick and in need of help. They tried to dial 911, but they could get no signal on their cellphones. Then the man just stops breathing . . . just like that . . . he stopped breathing. The man just stood there not breathing and that freaked them out. They came out and got in the car. That same man came and jumped on my hood, and I drove as fast as I could to get him off my hood. Then we got hit. That's the last thing we remember.”
One of the men, the obvious leader, responded. “So you expect us to believe that a man who stopped breathing ran at your car, clinging to your hood as you drove ninety miles per hour up the street?”
Greg scoffed. “Is this a fucking joke? We heard about what happened. You guys unloaded several rounds into that man and he kept coming back. Look, we’re not doctors, we get it. Maybe the guy had something else wrong with him, but he was all sorts of fucked up no matter what. Why are you trying to make it seem like we’re crazy?”
The man shook his head. “Listen, kid, you guys are the cause of two men being killed. You're lucky I don't throw all of your asses in jail right now.”
“I think that will be about enough,” Patricia said as she walked into the room. The military men, who’d been ignoring her to that point, whipped their heads around, their eyes going wide at the sight of the unexpected visitors.
“Trish!” Greg exclaimed, jumping up from his seat. “Thank God you're here.”
Patricia tossed a hard look at the military men. “Good morning, gentlemen. I've been trying to frantically reach my brother all morning, and I'm not pleased to find that he's been unable to answer me because he’s being unlawfully detained when he has already answered your questions.”
Greg was all excited chatter, which sort of pissed Patricia off. She wanted to stay on momentum, to keep the military men off-balance. She knew that she was pushing her luck. Maybe they couldn’t arrest her brother for drunk driving, but there were plenty of other laws on the books they could use to keep him right where they wanted him. Not that Greg understood any of that. “Trish, they took our cellphones . . . wouldn't let us make calls out to anyone. There's something crazy going on. We were attacked by a crazy man.”
The senior military man, who had gray in his crewcut and steel in his blue eyes, broke in. “What the hell . . . I should have you both arrested as well. Since I’m a little busy at the moment, I’m not. So here’s what’s going on . . . Trish. What your brother is trying to say is that he and his drunken friends were the cause of two deaths. They claim a store clerk, who was dead, jumped their hood while they drove up the street. Now how ridiculous does that sound? They're just trying to make up a story for being drunk and causing an accident.”
Jeff had been sitting there quietly, but he seemed to get irritated by the man's statement. He slammed his hand on the table and snorted, shaking his head. “Bullshit. We saw the man die right in front of our faces, and then minutes later, he jumped on our hood. There's no way that something like that should have happened. True, we were drunk and high—well, at least I wasn't—but that doesn't explain what happened either.”
Patricia looked from the teens to the military men. Something was obviously wrong here. If the authorities knew that the teens were drunk, they had all the evidence they needed to detain them. Why go through all the effort to make them tell the truth? And besides, drunk driving and that were state laws. The military wouldn’t be involved at all. What the hell were they doing asking some teens about a state crime?
Staring at her bruised brother, Patricia said to the military men, “The story sounds utterly ridiculous, I agree, but why are you questioning them over and over if you knew they were drunk? Why does what they say matter in the least at this point? They are guilty of a crime. Lock them up. Oh, wait, you can’t since you have no jurisdiction inside the United States via the Posse Comitatus Law. The PATRIOT Act might have fucked that up a lot, but it hasn’t given you the right to question a bunch of teens about a car accident without state officials or lawyers present.”
She did not like the look that came her way. She had them nailed and th
ey knew it. Finally, one of the others growled and looked away from her glare. “Because one of them is the brother of a popular news reporter. We can't have him telling his big sister to say crazy things over the news. We’d prefer to not have goddamn riots in this town again. We saw how fucked up this place can get with Katrina—that’s why.”
A few things clicked for Patricia right then. “You’re lying. I can read it. I’m a pretty decent poker player too, you know. It appears that more is going on than meets the eye here. The military does not usually handle civilian crime. It's not in their jurisdiction, and it takes a state of emergency from the governor to even bring in the National Guard. So this is a lot more than a cold and a car accident. You guys are trying to cover something up. All of those sick people in there—it's related somehow, isn't it? I'd suggest you let my brother and his friends go, or I’m going to lay this wide open on TV.” Patricia placed her hands on her hips, directing a hard stare into the man's eyes. “You’re right, I am a popular reporter. In fact, I have the most Facebook follows in all of New Orleans. So unless you want me mass posting the bullshit you’re doing here, you’d better start talking right now.”
The man sat back in his seat, appraising Patricia. “Ma'am, we can detain you for making comments like that, or simply because we feel like it. Don't press your luck. You’re right—this is a lot more than what you think, and we don’t have to answer a damn thing. Now, we were nice before, but if you push it, you’re going to find out that the First Amendment is no longer in effect in New Orleans.”
Patricia wasn't one to back down. “Bullshit. Without a declaration from the government, you don’t have shit. I have a camera crew right down the hallway. If you so as much as try it, you will be all over the news, and it’ll be live. Fuck the network and their interview of the Kardashians. Now let them go or we're going to have half of Louisiana and a quarter of Mississippi hear about the dead man attacking my brother and his friends in the middle of the night.”
