“No, I’ll be good, I promise.”
***
“Hello gorgeous, how’s my favourite girl then?”
“Hi Henry, I’m good, how are you?” she said brightly.
“Much better for seeing you this morning. Is Viktor in today?” Henry reproached himself for not allowing the conversation to grow, so allowing him the opportunity to ask her out.
“Yes, he’s always here.”
“You’ve a cousin who plays for the Warhawks haven’t you Melonie?”
“Yes, Vinnie Kostermann, we’re very proud of him. How did you know?”
“Alistair Webster told me.”
“Oh, him.” She said disapprovingly.
Taking a deep breath, Henry ignored the remark, then said, “The Miami Dolphins are playing the Denver Broncho’s this weekend. Would you like to come over to my place and watch the game with me?”
“I would, but I’m already committed.”
Henry felt like a deflated balloon. “Never mind, it was just a thought.”
“No Henry, I didn’t mean that. I would like to go with you, but my uncle, Vinnie’s Dad, has a big get-together at his ranch and the whole family will be going. You could come with us if you like.”
“No, if it’s a family thing I wouldn’t want to impose.”
“You wouldn’t be. You’d be my guest and everyone will be glad to meet you. Please, say you’ll come?”
“OK then, if you insist, I’d love too.”
“Come by and pick me up, say around 10.00. We live at 222 De Koven Av. Here’s my cell,” she said scribbling her mobile phone number on a telephone message pad.
“OK then, it’s a date.”
Melonie gave Henry one of her “to die for” smiles.
“I’d better take these things through to Viktor.”
***
Viktor Czerny looked at the yellow substance blocking the nozzle of one of the cans of Meadowsweet and scratched his head. All the other cans had the same substance blocking the nozzle too. He studied the notes attached to each of the cans. They had come from all over the North East; some from Illinois, one from Maryland and the others from Wisconsin. He hadn’t seen anything like this substance before on any air freshener he’d seen in twenty years of service with C & W Cooper. He scraped some of the substance off one of the nozzles with a spatula and smeared it on a microscope slide. Under 400X magnification it had no structure, just gunk. He took it off the microscope and shone a lamp on it. The only thing he thought it looked like was dried egg yolk, the stuff that stubbornly remains stuck to forks that have gone through the dishwasher. He put the slide under a binocular microscope this time and had another look. It wasn’t crystalline, just an amorphous, wax-like substance. If it was egg yolk, he could test it for protein. But he didn’t know why it would be in a can of air freshener. A simple Biuret Test would suffice. He scraped off some more of the material from two other cans and dropped it into a small ignition tube. He left his bench and went to search for some Biuret reagent in the chemical store. He couldn’t find any but remembered its composition and collected the three necessary chemicals to make up a fresh sample. When he returned to his bench one of his colleagues, Brian Burford, was looking at the cans.
“What do you make of that stuff Brian?”
“Not a clue Viktor, is it the same on all of the cans?”
“Yep, take a guess, what does it look like to you?”
“Well, I’d say dried egg yolk, if you forced me to say. But how the hell could that be in cans of air freshener?”
“Don’t know. I thought I’d do a test and see if it is protein.”
“OK, well I’m doing some gel electrophoresis this afternoon, I could easily run another plate and run it against some real egg yolk. What do you think?”
Viktor laughed. “Where will you get the egg yolk from? Do you always carry an egg around in your pocket, just for those odd moments when you need to test for it?”
“I’ve got egg sandwiches for lunch.”
“OK, that would be good. After the Biuret test, I’ll depressurise a couple of the cans and see what the hell is really inside them.”
Having added 5ml of the fresh Biuret reagent to the ignition tube he warmed it in a water bath for a few minutes. The solution in the ignition tube slowly turned a violet/purple colour, confirming that there was protein in the mysterious yellow substance. Perhaps it was egg yolk after all.
***
It was late in the afternoon and Angela Levenson sat on the edge of her seat in the staff common room at the La Rabida Children's Hospital in Chicago. She was tired, had been working for 72 hours straight, barrier nursing five children with influenza. She was a wreck emotionally too, she had watched four children on the ward suffocate and die, and had been powerless to prevent it.
Captain Phillip James had interviewed nurses like Angela before, dedicated and gifted servants who suffered terribly when the patients they are caring for die. Conscious of her burden, he was respectful and gentle with his questioning.
“So, Angela, can you think of anything suspicious on the ward prior to Thomas McCauley’s death; suspicious visitors to the ward, weird packages that arrived, anything out of the ordinary?”
“No, nothing. Look we’ve all wracked our brains to identify anything that might be the source, but we’ve come up with nothing; nothing at all.”
“Did you do anything different during those days?”
“No. Look, these kids are vulnerable to any infection that is going around. It could have been brought in on anything. I’m sorry Captain I can’t help you.”
“OK. I’m sorry to keep on going over the same ground, but as you can imagine even the most insignificant fact could be the key to how this outbreak started. I don’t need to tell you that lives depend upon us finding the dispersal mechanism, and the quicker we do the fewer deaths there will be.”
Angela looked at Phillip indignantly. “You don’t have to tell me that. Of course, I realise the importance of discovering how the stuff is released. We’ve four kids in critical care now who could die at any moment, they’ll be your next statistic.”
“Angela, I’m not fighting you here, I’m not apportioning blame. I’m just trying to discover how these bastards managed to contaminate the three wards that have been targeted in this hospital.”
“I’m sorry.” She said apologetically, “It’s just raw emotion talking, the quarantine “regs” are making any normal life here impossible. We’re stressed out of our heads.”
“OK, run me through what you did in the week before Tommy started to exhibit the symptoms of the disease. Every detail you can remember, however frivolous.”
“Right, well my week of 4 till 12s started on the Saturday. I arrived at the ward just after 3.20am. I dressed into my scrubs in the women’s cloakroom, room S108.”
“OK, let me stop you there. Think back to that day and describe what you saw, what thoughts you had, any hassles you had at home or here at the hospital. Anything, everything.”
“OK, it had been raining. I was soaked to the skin and so I showered before I changed into my work clothes. I spent three minutes in the shower and then I dressed. When I came onto the ward everything was normal. I went to the charge nurse’s office for the usual meeting; we discussed each patient, their meds, incidents that occurred during the previous shift, what the doctors had planned and any ongoing treatments, the usual stuff.”
“OK. Anything you remember about any of the patients?”
“Yes, I’ve got notes about all that stuff.” Angela took out her notebook and looked for the page for that day, “Robbie Prentice had been sick during the night, he’d had awful diarrhoea. He had been prescribed; Imodium to control the diarrhoea, Buccastem for the nausea, and was on a dextrose saline drip for dehydration and the loss of electrolytes.”
“Anything unusual about any of that?”
“No, nothing at all. The chemotherapy drugs have that effect on many of the cancer patients, n
othing unusual about that. Except the smell that is. I don’t know what’s worse, the diarrhoea or the lavender air freshener.”
Phillip nodded. “OK, nothing unusual. So, moving on, what happened after the meeting?”
***
After depressurising the cans Viktor Czerny cut the top off one of them using a large pipe cutter. There was no mistaking the liquor inside was lavender, as the fragrance diffused quickly throughout the lab. Looking first at the pressure release valve, Viktor could see more of the yellow material adhering to the mechanism. It had effectively blocked the release valve, preventing it from working. He could now see why changing the nozzle hadn’t fixed the problem. Viktor first photographed the condition of the valve before scraping more of the yellow material off the mechanism and storing it in a labelled glass vial.
Looking now into the body of the can, he took a number of samples from the liquor, one from the surface, one from the middle and one from the bottom of the can. There was no sediment on the bottom of the can. Whatever the substance was that was blocking the valve had mixed homogeneously as all three samples looked the same. Next Viktor used a pipette to extract 1ml of the liquor and added it to a test tube with the same amount of the Biuret reagent. After ten minutes’ incubation, he analysed the colour change spectroscopically. Although there was some absorbance, it was barely detectable.
“Mm” … murmured Viktor. “What next?”
After concentrating some of the liquor he repeated the Biuret assay. This time he got a reliable reading. After constructing a standard curve, Viktor found the original liquor contained nearly 0.024% protein. It shouldn’t contain any.
Viktor noted his findings in his experimental log and included the bar code details from the can he had tested. Then he repeated the process with the contents of the other four cans. The results were all the same. The bar code details revealed that all five cans had been manufactured at the Meadowvale plant, from three consecutive batches, four months ago.
“Bloody hell, what the sweet Lord have you been doing in here Viktor? It stinks.” Brian Burford had returned to Viktor’s lab to give him the results of the gel electrophoresis.
“Really? I can’t smell it now. I had to evaporate some of the liquor to find how much of the yellow gunk was in each can. The cans are from three consecutive batches yet they all contain the same concentration of protein, 0.024%.”
Brian smiled at his friend. “Well, I can tell you, almost conclusively, that the yellow substance is indeed egg yolk. So how the hell did it get in the cans of air freshener?”
“I don’t know that, but I’ve got the quality control samples from those batch numbers, so I thought I would investigate where it came from, using those as a starting point.
“Sounds like a good idea. But switch on the fume hood next time, it smells really bad in here. It’s a wonder you haven’t got a headache.”
***
“She’s still very poorly so you’ve only got five minutes. Go easy with your questions Captain she’s been really ill and still very weak.”
“Certainly, Doctor Gutiérrez. I’ll be gentle, I promise.”
“Good, but remember, five minutes, that’s all.”
Captain Phillip James, dressed in a paper biohazard suit and mask, entered the darkened isolation ward as quietly as possible. The patient he had come to see was in the bed furthest from the door. He remembered as a kid being told that the ones who are going to die are near the door and those who will live are always the furthest away. He had believed that for years, until he discovered it was an urban legend. As he neared the bed the patient opened her eyes and tried to smile.
“Hi Gloria, my name’s Captain Phillip James. I’m with a USAMRIID team trying to discover the source of the disease. I’d like to ask you a few questions if you wouldn’t mind.” Gloria nodded her head weakly. “So, Gloria, how do you feel?”
“Like I’ve been run over by a steamroller.” She croaked, “I don’t think I’ve ever felt this bad before.” Obviously, she hadn’t been off the ventilator long because her voice was low and rough.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to tape this conversation, to get every detail and help me write the reports later. Any time you find it difficult to speak I’ll stop, OK?” Gloria nodded again. “Can you think of anything suspicious that happened at the nursing home, say in a period of five days before your first patient died?”
“Nothing that I recall.”
“Any odd visitors, packages?”
“Nothing.”
“Any new equipment delivered?”
“No.”
“What about your patients, or their visitors, anything unusual there.”
Gloria thought hard. “There were no visitors in the few days before Josephine Bruce died. It was all routine until the residents got the flu, then it was hell. I can’t rid myself of the smell. The residents often have an odour, you know what I mean? But with the flu they were much worse. They all had diarrhoea, they all were incontinent. Looking after them was a nightmare being so ill and all.” Gloria paused slightly. “Can you pass me that sipper bottle please?”
“Certainly. Do you want to quit? If this is too much I can come back later”
“No, I’m OK.” She resumed. “They weren’t just anonymous patients; many were friends, like Mr Hernandez. I’ll miss him, he was a real character.”
“How long was it between the onset of the symptoms and the deaths? Can you tell me if it was different for any of them?”
Gloria tried to recall the sequence of events prior to the deaths of her patients.
“That was weird. Some of the more robust residents only had the symptoms for a few hours before they died, yet for some of the weaker ones it was much longer.”
“Were the quick ones at the beginning of the outbreak and the more extended cases later?”
“Not that I recall. Mr Waddell went very quickly, then Mr Hernandez. He hung on for an age before he died. Alison Dearing, was the next and she only lasted half a day. You can get this information from their notes.”
“Yes, I know. I’m sorry, but I really need to get all the details, so I can sift out the odd and the unusual. Have any of your family or friends contracted the disease?”
“No, none.”
Captain James only had a couple of questions left when he saw Doctor Gutiérrez beckoning him from the other side of the glass door. The remaining questions were of little importance, so he thanked Gloria Steinberg and left.
27. More Deaths
Brian Burford lay restless on his bed, alternating between teeth-chattering chills and a raging sweaty fever. With no one to nurse him, he lay exhausted, thirsty and hungry in the darkened bedroom of his St Paul Gardens apartment on Centre Street, in Silver Ridge, Wisconsin. His sheets were soaked and had started to smell. He was too weak to get up and change them. He was also too weak to empty the bucket into which he had vomited. But he didn’t care anymore. His body ached, every bone and every joint. The pain across his eyes was unbearable and he had taken his last Tylenol. If he could press a button for his own immediate death, he would have pushed it there and then. Now he had to deal with the coughing, that made his chest hurt and his headache pound all the more. No matter how hard he coughed, he could never loosen all the phlegm that was restricting his breathing. On the verge of panic, Brian tumbled from his bed, still hacking up yellow/green pus tinged with blood. The effort needed to get to the phone in the adjoining room left him gasping for breath. Retrieving the telephone from its stand required more strength than he could muster, so he pulled on its cord. The telephone clattered to the floor beside him. Staring at the handset, Brian could not remember the emergency number and the phone’s insistent beeping confused him even more.
Eventually he recalled the number and pressed 9 1 1, But the beeping continued. He poked at the handset again, repeating the three numbers. Still, it beeped. Even thinking now hurt. Completely spent, he was now unable to move.
More coughing, more p
hlegm, more choking. Desperately trying to minimise the pain, Brian curled into a foetal position clutching his abdomen. His headache was worse and it pounded in his temples like a jackhammer.
“Oh God,” he croaked. “Help me, please.”
Bile flooded his mouth and too exhausted to care, he allowed it to trickle out his mouth. Breathing now took all his strength, forcing him to take short, shallow gasps. As his bowels cramped the severity of his abdominal pain rivalled that in his head. He wanted to die. He loved life, he loved Cathy Taylor, his long-time girlfriend. Cathy was in New York for a short break visiting her parents, seeking their approval for her marriage to Brian.
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