Unsafe Haven

by Betsy Ashton

  An electric shiver crossed my shoulders, and both Emilie and Ducks reached out to me in comfort. I raised an eyebrow.

  “My grandfather is one of the local medicine men, what some call a shaman. I grew up around people with sight,” she explained, calm and composed. “I have it, too.”

  “My granddaughter and her teacher both are special. Em told me she found helpers here. I should have realized she meant people with the gift, not only nurses and doctors.”

  “I talked with Mr. . . . umm, Ducks, isn’t it? We had an immediate connection. He asked me to keep watch, too,” Leena said.

  I relaxed a bit. “Great, three spooks.”

  “Oh, many more than that,” she assured me. “Several nurses and a couple of doctors are very close to Great Spirit. Researchers have yet to prove that modern medicine and the old ways can’t work together. We’ll do our best for the kids.”

  A machine beeped across from Alex’s room. She laid a hand on my shoulder before leaving to checking on another child.

  I called Eleanor, only to find her unavailable. Raney wasn’t, so I filled her in on what was happening.

  “Whip’s angry with me. He thinks I’m shirking my duty,” I said.

  Raney dismissed Whip’s attitude. She’d been critical of him when Merry was recovering. “That’s crap. You aren’t. He couldn’t do any better.”

  “He knows that. He lashes out when he’s scared.”

  We talked until the battery in my cell complained of abuse.

  Three hours later, when Johnny walked in, Alex looked worse than ever. Johnny read the green monitors, frowned, and kissed me. Alex was drowsy but able to communicate.

  “Hey, Captain Chaos. You look like one of the X-Men, all hooked up to those way cool machines,” Johnny said.

  Alex tried to grin, but grimaced instead. He coughed. “It hurts.”

  “I can see that,” Johnny said. “I brought a couple of new games for your Game Boy.”

  Alex’s lack of interest was a mute testament to how sick he was. I led Johnny out of the ICU and to a balcony, where we could see light and shadows painting the distant mountains with purples and lavenders from a mad artist’s palette. Another day dawned.

  “He’s been down for X-rays, but they haven’t found pneumonia. He’s scheduled for a CT scan later to see what’s going on in his lungs.”

  “What can I do?” Johnny held me tight against his strong chest.

  “Just this. Be with me.”

  I told him about Nurse Leena. “It seems many Native Americans have gifts similar to Em and Ducks. They’re all working to help. We need them,” I said.

  “I agree. We’re not alone.”

  Once again, I felt Emilie’s presence. Johnny jumped away and waved his hand around his face. He looked around the corridor, but no one was near.

  “Something touched me.”

  “That would be Ducks. He’s letting you know you should follow your instincts.”

  It was my turn to hug a trembling Johnny. His death grip on my hand showed how shaken he was by Ducks’ touch. I turned the subject away from the twilight zone. “Let’s talk with some of the other parents. Maybe they know something we don’t.”

  ###

  We tracked down two mothers and a father, all of whom had children in the ICU with Alex. We introduced ourselves and compared notes, but none of us knew anything definitive. Symptoms ranged from fevers to rashes to body-shaking chest congestion. One had swollen lymph nodes. The children had only one thing in common—they were desperately ill.

  “I sent my husband home to take care of the younger ones. They need their father,” said one of the solitary mothers. The other mother had done the same. The women were the parents of the two children who’d checked in on Alex’s first day, the ones Johnny, Ducks, Emilie and I had seen arrive.

  “I’m all Belinda has, so I’m staying. She’s my only child,” the father said.

  Sirens approached the hospital, and we glanced at each other, shoulders tense, faces drawn with new worry. Another sick child?

  Johnny and I argued over whether he should stay the night or not. Although I needed his strength, I thought we should alternate. Johnny wanted to take the watch. My phone rang. Emilie asked to speak with her uncle Johnny. After a minute of listening, Johnny handed the phone to me.

  “Mad Max, Alex is really bad. Mr. Ducks agrees. We don’t know what it is, but you need to stay with him. Uncle Johnny can go back to the ranch.” She muffled the phone. I heard the ping of an incoming text. “Mr. Ducks wants you to call him.”

  “I will as soon as I hang up. Is your dad there?” I asked.

  “He’s working late at his office. He’ll be home later.”

  “Ask him to call me as soon as he arrives.”

  “Will do. Stay strong.”

  No sooner had I ended my call with Emilie than my phone rang again. “Hi, Ducks,” I said.

  “Tell me what you’re seeing.”

  I gave him a quick update on how Alex looked and acted, what tests had been run, which were still waiting, current treatments, and what Leena suggested. He already knew about the midnight apparition.

  “Good. I’m sensing the same things,” Ducks said. “I’ve been doing a bunch of research on the Internet. Have you heard of hantavirus?”

  I hadn’t. I asked Johnny.

  “They used to call it Navajo flu. It’s not flu, but it can—” Johnny broke off and turned away. “It can be pretty bad.”

  Ducks learned that it was prevalent in the Southwest and was found in mouse urine and feces. It caused upper respiratory symptoms similar to what we were seeing, according to various websites.

  “How serious is it?”

  “Caught early, it can be treated. Alex fell ill in the hospital, so Dr. Running Bear began treating him immediately,” Johnny said.

  I heard Ducks shuffle through papers. “Symptoms include fever, racking cough and gastrointestinal complications sometimes. Alex has some of these symptoms, right?”

  “Check, check, and check. I’ll ask Dr. Running Bear about hantavirus. Thanks.”

  I asked him to “stay on this channel.”

  “Don’t worry, Max. I’m here.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  JOHNNY PREPARED TO leave shortly after dinner, but only after I crossed my heart and promised to call if Alex’s condition changed for the worse. We walked downstairs.

  “I can at least lend moral support if I’m here,” he said as he hugged me at the front door. We stepped outside, where the heat of the day had given way to an evening bordering on chilly.

  “I’m having my Jewish-mother-sweater alert, but the night air and freshening breeze feel wonderful. I don’t want to go inside just yet.” Johnny and I sat on the hand-carved bench beside the entrance, me resting against his chest. He put his arm around me for warmth.

  No matter what he said, I needed more than moral support. I needed the damned medicine to work. Hell, I’d take a miracle if it meant Captain Chaos could breathe easier.

  With Emilie and Ducks on remote watch, and Johnny on his way back to the ranch, I ambled, deep in thought, through the all-too-familiar corridors to the ICU. Patients were bedded down for the night; nurses squished by; voices were hushed. Back in the room, I alternated between reading and dozing in the recliner. Each cough, moan, or restless tossing brought me to full wakefulness. I hadn’t been this alert since my own kids had been down with various childhood diseases. Strep and croup had been the worst.

  Alex’s temperature spiked and dropped and spiked again. I changed the damp towels on his forehead, offered cracked ice, and used alcohol rubs to cool him. No matter what the doctors and nurses tried, he remained inexorably ill.

  When Alex’s breathing labored, Dr. Running Bear ordered inhalation therapy with cortical steroids. Toby brought in a nebulizer and taught Alex how to use it.

  “We should see an almost immediate change,” Toby said. He wasn’t his normal, chirpy self, sounding distracted and exhauste
d, albeit not angry this time. “This stuff works really fast.”

  I didn’t see any improvement by the time Dr. Running Bear dropped by an hour later.

  “Antibiotics took care of the infection, but they aren’t having any effect on his lungs. Let’s give him a couple more treatments with the steroids and monitor him,” he said.

  For all practical purposes, Dr. Running Bear lived in the ICU. Four more children came in, and one left to a funeral home—the first death. It wasn’t one of the first three children. The child who died was already sick when she arrived by ambulance; her case was discovered too late.

  “What else can we try?” I tamped down fear, trying to shove it in a box and lock the lid. It struggled free.

  “Right now, we’re treating his symptoms. I think he has a virus, which would explain why antibiotics aren’t doing anything.”

  Dr. Running Bear ran his hand through his hair. His high cheekbones were more pronounced, and his black eyes had sunk deeper into his skull. “If Alex and the rest can avoid secondary infections, their bodies’ natural immune systems should take over.”

  He steered me out of the ICU and away from the patients. We walked to a bank of windows and watched a thunderstorm rise as if by magic.

  “You don’t know what kind of a virus this is, do you?” I asked.

  “No. I sent blood samples overnight to a CDC lab for testing. We should have the results in a couple of days.”

  “Don’t you have a lab here?”

  “We do, but we lack special equipment to isolate one virus from another. That takes very expensive stuff we’ve never needed before,” he sighed.

  “So, you can do basic tests, but you need the CDC’s help isolating this virus from all others out in the world?” I leaned my back against the railing to better to watch Dr. Running Bear. “Em and Ducks found your lab in the basement, but they didn’t go inside.”

  “Probably a good thing they didn’t. Toby reigns over it like it’s his private kingdom.” He smiled down at me. “Anyway, the lab has the basic equipment to let us handle the routine problems we face in the population, but this outbreak isn’t routine.”

  He shook his head, releasing hair from behind his ears. “My hair’s getting too long, but I don’t have time to get it cut.”

  I laughed. “In New York City, you wouldn’t have this problem.”

  “I’ve been there. Your health department frowns on long hair for medical staff unless it’s tied back. Ours does too, but it allows Native Americans to follow our traditions as long as we maintain proper hygiene.” His gaze shifted to the world outside. “Do you know one of the families wants to bring in a local shaman to smudge their son?”

  Nurse Leena had told me about the shaman.

  “It might help with those families that put more faith in traditional healers than in modern medicine. I have nothing against trying anything. I’d try voodoo if I thought it would work.”

  “You and me both. Anyway, the uncle of one of the boys burned dried grasses and sage in an attempt to smudge the evil from the child’s room and from his body before his parents brought him to the hospital. Given how sick that little boy is, I didn’t think the ceremony helped.”

  “If you bring in a shaman, Captain Chaos will think it’s pretty darned cool,” I said, to show that I had nothing against these families seeking comfort in traditions.

  “He’ll do a ceremony tomorrow. He’ll start outdoors before moving into the ICU. In the meantime, let’s hope more children don’t come in.” Dr. Running Bear’s fatigue deepened the creases around his eyes. He looked much older than he had five days earlier.

  “Life was so much easier when you operated on Alex. Smooth sailing until he got sick.” A feather tapped my cheek—I couldn’t forget what Ducks told me about this hantavirus thing. Dr. Running Bear looked sharply at me.

  “You met Ducks, didn’t you?” I asked.

  Dr. Running Bear nodded. “He just reached out to you, didn’t he?”

  “He did.”

  “Spooky guy. Not as spooky as your granddaughter, but spooky enough. What’s he thinking about?”

  “Hantavirus.”

  Dr. Running Bear seem to stare through me. “Hmm. When did Alex arrive? Not at the hospital, but at the ranch?”

  “Late the day before we went riding. That would be five—no, six days ago,” I said, mentally counting back.

  Dr. Running Bear watched the cloud shadows continue transforming the mountains with different colors. Could the Great Spirit, embodied in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, hold the answer? Is he looking beyond modern medicine, beyond scientific diagnostics, for help?

  “Rare that symptoms show up so quickly. The incubation period for hantavirus is usually between one and five weeks,” he said.

  “He said this virus usually strikes children. Is that true? Other than their ages, I don’t see much else in common.”

  “If it’s hantavirus, it can strike healthy people of all ages, but those at greatest risk are often younger than twenty-five. Try not to worry, Mrs. Davies. We’ll find out what’s going on. We have to.” Before he could continue, his cell buzzed. “Shit! Gotta go.”

  He broke into a run down the corridor, stormy sunlight turning his hair blue-black.

  “What do I do now?” I asked the empty corridor. Neither Emilie nor Ducks had an answer.

  Before dawn, Alex broke out in a rash.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CLOSE TO FIVE the next morning, I hit the panic button next to Alex, my hands trembling on an adrenaline surge. I slid aside when two nurses ran in and scrutinized the beeping machines. I couldn’t detect a change in the various graphs from the day before; perhaps the machines kept secrets they didn’t want me to understand. If that was what they were trying to do, I’d wring the truth out of them. The nurses turned to look at me.

  “I was changing a wet cloth on his forehead when Alex’s gown slipped off his shoulders and exposed a mean-looking rash. It wasn’t there when I sponged him at ten last night. He cried out when I touched him. When I saw the rash, I called you,” I said. I pointed to a swollen area along his neck covered in red bumps.

  One nurse exited into the hall. The remaining one updated Alex’s data on her laptop. I paid little attention to what was happening in the hall until I saw the first nurse tie a gown over her scrubs, cover her hair with a cap, and add gloves and a surgical mask before checking first one room, then another. The nurse with Alex waved for me to leave.

  “Too late. If he’s contagious, he’s already infected me,” I said, tired of being waved off in general. I stayed, unable to imagine anything or anyone prying me from my grandson’s bedside. Deep in my illogical heart, I knew that if I stayed, I could prevent him from getting any worse. I didn’t consider that he could die. I refused to go down that rabbit hole.

  It’s bad, but the doctors are doing everything they can, Emilie texted.

  I know, I texted back.

  Try not to worry.

  As if.

  An on-call doctor arrived half an hour after I hit the alarm. He too had donned protective clothing before he steered me out of the room by my elbow. I tried to pull away, but his grip only tightened. “Wait outside,” he said firmly.

  He slid the glass door closed, leaving me to watch everything he did, note every place he touched, and watch as much of Alex’s reaction to the prodding as I could see. I knew from how he twitched when the doctor probed his neck and under his arms that his condition had worsened. Until now, his lymph nodes hadn’t been swollen.

  I texted Johnny. Please come back. Alex is much worse. I needed someone to lean on. I needed him to be with me.

  An hour later, I met Johnny downstairs. He dropped a small duffel bag before I threw myself into his arms.

  “I’m so glad you’re here.” I squeezed a grunt out of him.

  “I knew I should have stayed last night,” he said.

  “And done what?”

  “I could have taken a turn by Alex’
s bed.” He kneaded a knot in my neck.

  “You couldn’t have prevented the rash any more than I could.”

  “No, pretty lady, but I could have done this.” Johnny held me close and I took solace from his beating heart.

  “I’m sorry, funny man, but the scene in the ICU has been one step short of chaotic.” I gave Johnny all the information I had, which turned out to be practically nothing. Every doctor and nurse on duty had rushed from room to room upon the discovery of Alex’s rash. The ever-present Toby drew blood from each patient. The medical staff sent family members like me out of the unit to fume and fuss elsewhere.

  Panic left my mouth as dry as a wad of cotton. Johnny led me into the cafeteria, where we bought the last bottle of water in the cooler. We shared it. No one had restocked the cafeteria for breakfast.

  “I texted Ducks and Em. Hell, they already knew something is badly wrong,” Johnny said. “Maybe they can find something the doctors haven’t thought of.”

  I kicked myself for not contacting Ducks immediately. “Thanks. Em sent a ‘don’t worry’ text. All I can do is worry. It’s not like I can focus on anything outside what’s happening upstairs.”

  We walked down the long corridor that connected the emergency room, maternity and pediatric wards, and the main lobby to the medical and surgical wards and the ICU. The corridor was strangely dark; it should have been filled with early morning sunlight. I looked through the wall of windows facing the desert beyond. Heavy overcast lent an ominous feeling to the start of the day. I shivered.

  “Did you sense something?” Johnny tightened his hold on my hand.

  “I’m not sure what it was, but yes.”

  Just outside the ICU, we met Dr. Begay, the night physician, who had bags under his eyes as big as mine. I pointed at his face. “Try Preparation-H. It’ll reduce the swelling.”

  He looked startled before he grinned. “That’s the first piece of useful advice I’ve heard all night. Thanks. I will.”