Viral

by Robin Cook

  In an attempt to avoid thinking the worst, Brian let his eyes wander around the ED waiting room. It was moderately busy as per usual. In contrast to him, no one seemed to be in an agitated state, which only made him feel worse. Then he suddenly saw Dr. Hard, who had just materialized from the depths of the Emergency Department. The doctor paused, and after a moment surveying the room, his eyes locked on to Brian’s. He then immediately headed in his direction with a determined stride.

  Assuming the man was coming to see him, Brian quickly rose to his feet. As the doctor approached, Brian’s mind, which was trying desperately to divert his attention away from reality, decided that without his protective gown and with his lean and lanky body the man looked more like a cowboy hero in an old Western movie than a doctor in a New York City Emergency Department. Yet, unfortunately, he didn’t appear as if he was coming to save the day. With his mask covering most of his face, Brian couldn’t see the man’s expression, but the way he was walking suggested a disturbing gravity. Fearing the worst, he tried to steel himself.

  Dr. Hard stopped six feet away. “Are you Brian Murphy, husband of Emma Murphy?” he asked. He spoke with an aura of seriousness and empathy that cut to the chase.

  “I am,” Brian managed. His throat had gone bone dry.

  “I’m afraid I have very bad news for you,” Dr. Hard said. “Would you please come with me?”

  BOOK 2

  CHAPTER 15

  August 31

  Squinting his eyes, Brian walked out of the MMH Inwood Emergency Department into the glare of the late summer sun and then hesitated on the sidewalk. He was overwhelmed and had never felt so much in a daze in his whole life. Was he locked in a terrifying dream with no escape? If it was reality, was he depressed or furious? It was difficult to decide as his mind flipped back and forth from one extreme to the other.

  Just an hour before, Dr. Hard had led him back into the depths of the Emergency Department, coming to a stop outside of the trauma room where the paramedics had taken Emma. After telling Brian he had very bad news for him, he’d not said anything until that moment. Brian had known what was coming and had tried to brace himself.

  “We ran an emergency EEG, which is an electroencephalogram, on your wife, which is a recording of brain waves.”

  “I know what an EEG is,” Brian had said irritably, not yet ready to hear what else the doctor had to say.

  “Your wife had a flatline EEG, including no activity from the brain stem, which is responsible for basic life function. What we believe is that her status epilepticus had gone on too long, depriving her brain of oxygen for a protracted period.”

  Although Brian had suspected as much, Dr. Hard’s words were like lightning bolts and suddenly the meaning was clear: Emma was dead. A seizure caused by brain inflammation from a disease carried by a mosquito had killed her. To him, the odds seemed impossible. Was human life really so fragile and tragic? The question kept reverberating in his mind, as did Emma’s last wish to be readmitted to the hospital, where she could have been treated immediately for her third seizure and thereby might still be alive.

  At that point Brian had been permitted to view Emma’s body in the trauma room. Gazing down at the pale, lifeless form on the table with an endotracheal tube protruding from her mouth and an IV line going into her arm was an image straight from a nightmare. It was hard to believe that someone in her prime, with such vitality and strength, could be so easily brought down by an insect, which seemed so tiny and inconsequential in comparison.

  After viewing Emma’s body, Brian knew he had to make some decisions. In a kind of a trance he remembered the funeral home that had handled his father’s funeral a year and a half prior. After a quick call, it was arranged, and he couldn’t believe the finality of it all. Brian was told that after Emma was seen and cleared by a medical examiner investigator, her remains would be picked up by the Riverside Funeral Home. Then after signing some forms, he was told that he could go home.

  The wail of a siren yanked Brian out of his momentary trance as he watched an ambulance race up the hospital driveway and then make a rapid three-point turn to back against the ED receiving bay. He watched the doors open as a patient was extracted, similar to the way Emma had been handled a few hours earlier. Had it really only been a few hours ago?

  After taking a deep breath, Brian pulled out his phone. He’d been putting off calling home to report the news, but he knew he’d have to do it at some point. Of course, he could wait until he got back and do it in person, but he thought that was somehow unfair since he’d promised he’d keep everyone informed. Involuntarily he shuddered at the thought of having to tell Juliette that her mother was gone and never coming home. Considering how much she had suffered when Emma had been hospitalized, he knew this was going to be devastating.

  Marshalling his courage, Brian opened his contacts and was about to tap on Aimée’s number when he paused. Something arresting caught his attention. About a hundred feet away, a uniformed, mildly overweight driver carelessly flicked a cigarette butt onto the sidewalk. Equally attention-grabbing was the vehicle whose front passenger-side fender the chauffeur was leaning up against. It was a gleaming black Maybach parked in a clearly marked no-parking zone directly in front of the hospital’s main entrance. Although Maybachs and other luxury cars were common in some areas of Manhattan, particularly Wall Street and Midtown, in Inwood they were scarcer than hen’s teeth. Brian pocketed his phone and, desperate for a diversion from the paralyzing sadness, headed over to get a closer look. As he approached, the driver went through the ritual of lighting another cigarette, and after doing so, he proceeded to toss away the used match with the same disregard he’d exhibited with his cigarette butt. He then crossed his arms and assumed a posture of boredom and haughtiness that truly rubbed Brian the wrong way. The man had a face mask, but it dangled uselessly from an ear.

  Without any particular plan in mind, Brian approached. The driver eyed him with a kind of colonial disdain as if Brian was a native of a distant, semi-civilized part of Manhattan. Feeling a tidal wave of anger at this individual’s self-satisfied superiority as clearly a member of the capitalistic world that had also created Peerless Health and the MMH hospital chain, Brian tensed. From his experience as a police officer, he could see the man was wearing a shoulder holster from a characteristic bulge in his overly tight chauffeur’s uniform. Even the fact that the man thought it necessary and appropriate to be armed for his visit to the “wilds” of Inwood struck him as offensive.

  In fact, he was about to tell the man that he had to pick up his cigarette butt and used match, which he was certain the man would refuse, when a sudden realization popped into Brian’s head. Up until that moment it hadn’t occurred to him to question who the owner of the Maybach might be.

  “Quite a nice set of wheels,” Brian voiced, nodding toward the Maybach’s imposing hulk.

  The driver didn’t respond but rather eyed him with hooded eyes that Brian could just make out through the man’s aviator sunglasses. He was wearing a chauffeur’s hat, but it was jauntily sitting back on his shaved head.

  Purposefully being provocative while maintaining the required six-foot distance, Brian walked directly up to the Maybach’s rear passenger-side door. With almost every muscle tensed in his six-foot-one, nearly two-hundred-pound frame, he quickly rapped on the window with his knuckle. As he expected, it made almost no sound, confirming his suspicion that the Maybach limo was armored.

  The snobby chauffeur was caught off guard by Brian’s actions. He straightened up, flicked away his half-smoked cigarette, and spoke in a strong Brooklyn accent: “Don’t touch the car!” It wasn’t a request but rather an order.

  With his body taut like a high-note piano wire, Brian was fully ready to take the man down. But the driver did not follow up his threatening order with any gesture whatsoever. Instead, he added, “Please step away.”

  With some disappoint
ment, Brian relaxed a degree and then said: “An armored Maybach! We don’t get to see too many of these babies around here in Inwood.”

  “I’m surprised you haven’t seen this one on occasion. It comes up here maybe two or three times a week.” He then leaned back against the car’s front fender and looked off into the distance as if Brian didn’t deserve any more of his time.

  Brian bent down and looked at the rear tire. “Wow! Run-flat tires, too.” He stepped back from the vehicle so he could see both passenger-side tires at the same time. “Yup. Run-flat tires, front and back.” He was now reasonably sure who the owner of the vehicle was, especially if this person visited the hospital two or three times a week and could afford an armored Maybach. It had to be the MMH Inwood CEO, Charles Kelley.

  Turning his attention from the car, he looked over at the main entrance to the hospital. It seemed to him, particularly in his current state of mind, that fate might be providing him with a rare opportunity to address his pent-up anger at Emma’s avoidable death. If she hadn’t been discharged, she would have been under seizure watch and likely still alive. Suddenly there was little doubt in Brian’s mind that Charles Kelley and Heather Williams bore significant responsibility not only for Emma’s passing, but also for his future bankruptcy, the possible loss of his home, and the ruin of his life.

  With a new sense of purpose, Brian turned his attention back to the snotty driver. “Tell me. Could this impressive armored vehicle belong to the one and only Charles Kelley?”

  A slight but detectable smile briefly turned up the corners of the driver’s lips as he turned to look condescendingly at him. “I’m not allowed to say exactly who it is I chauffeur.”

  To Brian the driver’s response was the equivalent of admitting what Brian suspected, and the effect was immediate. As if propelled out of a cannon, he bolted for the hospital entrance, shocking the driver out of his staged indifference. “Hey!” the surprised driver shouted. “What the hell? Where are you going?”

  Brian didn’t slow or respond. He was a man on a mission. Having visited Roger Dalton’s office so many times and even Kelley’s office once, he knew exactly where he was going. Because the hospital had instituted visiting restrictions due to the pandemic, he was confronted the moment he navigated the revolving door by a woman with a clipboard who asked if she could help him. Besides her clipboard, she was holding a number of face masks for those who needed them.

  Without slowing since he was already wearing a mask, Brian just called over his shoulder that he had an appointment in administration with Mr. Charles Kelley. That was sufficient for the greeter, who merely nodded and waited for the next arrival.

  Although his decision to confront Kelley had been spur of the moment, now that he was on his way, he became progressively determined to follow through with his plan. He knew he’d undoubtedly be considered a persona non grata, but he was committed to saying his piece. As he pushed through the door separating the vast, marbled hospital lobby and the carpeted admin area, he made a beeline for Kelley’s office after seeing that the conference room was clearly empty.

  “Excuse me!” a receptionist-cum-secretary called out as Brian swept by, heading for the closed door. “Where do you think you are going? You can’t go in there!” She was the same individual who had unceremoniously escorted Brian out of Kelley’s office on his previous spur-of-the moment visit. Swiftly she picked up her phone and frantically punched in a series of numbers.

  Reaching Kelley’s office door, he didn’t bother to knock. Instead, he tried the knob, which was unlocked, and burst in. Inside Kelley was clearly having a meeting with five of his underlings, including Roger Dalton, all seated on the oversized leather couch or occupying assorted side chairs. Kelley was standing behind his massive desk, apparently in the middle of a PowerPoint presentation. There was a flat-screen wall-mounted TV displaying Raising Collections on Accounts Receivable During the Covid-19 Crisis.

  For a moment time stopped, allowing Brian to get a good look at Charles Kelley and to appreciate the skill of the painter who had done the man’s portrait hanging over the faux fireplace. True to life, Kelley was a handsome man with high cheekbones, sharply defined features, carefully coiffed sandy-colored hair, and an expensive business suit. Unlike the portrait, he was darkly tanned, and his hair was streaked with golden blond as if he’d just returned from a Caribbean vacation despite the pandemic. To Brian he looked like a model in a top-of-the-line menswear advertisement. The only thing that surprised him was Charles’s height, which Brian guesstimated to be somewhere in the six-foot-eight realm.

  “Who the hell are you?” Charles demanded, having finally recovered from his momentary stunned silence at Brian’s precipitous arrival. His tone was condescending, as was the facial expression he quickly assumed, reminding Brian of Heather Williams.

  “I’m an aggrieved customer and a long-term resident of this community,” Brian snapped as he strode toward Kelley, pointing his finger up at his face. “I need to talk to you about this hospital and its mission, and you need to hear me out.”

  Roger Dalton struggled to his feet from where he’d been sitting in the deep couch and leaped forward to intercept Brian. “He’s Brian Murphy,” Roger called out, positioning himself between Brian and Charles Kelley. “His account is seriously in arrears and has been turned over to collections.”

  Brian was briefly taken aback by the audacity of the rail-thin Roger Dalton. “Sit down, Roger!” he ordered, pointing back to where Roger had been. “You are not personally responsible for this travesty, unlike Mr. Kelley.”

  “Yes, sit down, Roger,” Charles echoed. “Okay, Mr. Murphy. Exactly what do you think you can tell me that I don’t already know and know invariably far better than you?”

  “Fat chance you know it better than I!” Brian sniped, approaching closer to the desk while continuing to jab his index finger up into Charles Kelley’s tanned face. “Do you have any conception whatsoever of what your profit-oriented leadership is doing to families like mine, struggling to get through this pandemic? My wife just died minutes ago from encephalitis after being discharged from this hospital while still ailing with EEE, all because I couldn’t pay an outlandish and incomprehensible bill.”

  “I am sorry to hear about your wife’s passing,” Charles offered, casually crossing his arms. “But I can assure you that her discharge and her passing did not have anything whatsoever to do with your ability to pay. At MMH all patients are treated with the same attention to clinical detail and are given the finest care possible.”

  “Bullshit,” Brian countered. He could tell stock language when he heard it and what Charles had just said certainly wasn’t at all what he and Emma had experienced. “Here are the facts: My wife needed to be under seizure watch because she was still suffering brain inflammation, yet she was discharged even though neither of us wanted that. If she had remained in the hospital, she wouldn’t have died. It’s as simple as that.”

  At that moment two hospital security guards dressed in dark suits came flying into Charles Kelley’s office, clearly responding to the distress call by the secretary. Without waiting to assess the degree of danger Brian represented, they made the mistake of rushing at him.

  Reacting by reflex and using his tested skills, Brian made quick work of both security guards, throwing them ignominiously to the floor and pulling their jackets up over their heads. As they struggled to free themselves, Charles’s demeanor changed dramatically as he sensed real danger from Brian. Uncrossing his arms, he grabbed his wheeled executive chair and stepped back from his desk. Brian, for his part, had now moved up to the desk and was leaning on it with both hands, glaring up into Charles’s alarmed face.

  “Here’s what I think in a nutshell,” Brian said with vehemence. “I think you are running what amounts to fraud with your health insurance coconspirators by taking advantage of this country’s laissez-faire healthcare situation to maximize your
profits. In the process, you and your collections people are bankrupting me and hundreds of others.”

  Before Charles could even respond to this denunciation, the limo driver doubling as a personal bodyguard came flying into the office in a manner similar to the hospital security people. Making the same mistake as they, he came at Brian at a run. On this occasion, not only did Brian throw him to the floor, pull his jacket over his head, and rip it in the process, but he also disarmed him.

  By now the first two security people had managed to disentangle themselves from their jackets and had gotten to their feet. Thinking of trying their luck with him a second time, they took a step forward but then hesitated upon seeing that Brian was holding the limo driver’s Glock pistol. But to their surprise and relief, Brian merely emptied the gun, tossing the shells into the corner of the room, where they clattered against the bare floor and hit up against the wall.

  “I’m here to talk, not fight,” he warned, looking both security men directly in the eye to make certain they got the message and were willing to stand down. “I need to get off my chest what needs to be said about what this hospital is doing to this community.” With a particularly large clatter that made everyone in the room jump, he tossed the gun into a wastebasket beside the desk.

  Intent on trying their luck again with Brian, both security guards took yet another step toward him, but now Charles held up his hand, intuitively sensing that Brian was more than capable of holding his own. “Stand down!” he ordered. “Let the deadbeat have his say.”