Taji's Syndrome

by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  “Okay. And you?”

  “One of my kids has a bug, but other than that everything’s fine.” He consulted his watch and made a note in his log. “You going out again this morning?”

  “Over to the hospital.” He drove to his parking space and pulled in. As he locked his car, he noticed that Cindy Chung was getting out of her little British Lancer and he waved to her. “Cindy!”

  “Gerry,” she called out, returning his wave. “How are you?”

  “Fine, fine,” he said, and for the moment it was almost the truth. He joined her at the elevator doors. “How’re things in the wonderful world of ophthalmology?”

  “Optical,” she said, grinning at him. “Are you busy this weekend?”

  “I don’t know,” said Plaiting. “Am I?”

  “Call me tomorrow; I’ll know something then,” she said as the elevator doors opened. “You look a little tired,” she observed as they rode up.

  “Probably. I’ve had a couple tough cases recently. You know what that can be like.”

  “Not the way you do,” she corrected him. “It’s not the kind of thing I deal with.”

  “Count your blessings,” said Plaiting with more emotion than he realized. “Call me,” he added as the doors opened at her floor.

  “You, too.” She left him with her remarkable smile to keep him company all the way to his office. As he looked over his schedule for the day, Plaiting permitted himself a brief fantasy: what would his good Protestant Irish family think if he showed up with a Chinese bride? His ex-wife had come from the same background he had, and their marriage had been a calamity from the first. Perhaps they would see Cindy Chung as a breath of fresh air, a new influence in a hidebound family. Then he laughed aloud once, and reminded himself that he had only been out with the woman once, had done nothing more than kiss her twice. And if his family didn’t like it, then the hell with them.

  “Doctor Plaiting, Helen Miller is in room two,” said his nurse from the door, her tone slightly admonitory since Plaiting appeared to be dawdling.

  “Tell her I’ll be there in a minute. Have you got the—”

  “Blood pressure, temperature, chest index all recorded,” she said with brisk efficiency.

  “Thank you, Missus Shepherd,” he said. “I needn’t have asked.”

  “She’s got a low fever and some slight bronchial congestion,” added Cynthia Shepherd. “She complains of loss of appetite and malaise; nothing specific.” She paused. “Her color is pasty.”

  There was a sudden coldness in Plaiting’s chest. “I’d better look at her,” he said, all too certain of what he would find.

  —Samuel Jarvis—

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” Sam Jarvis asked Harper Ross. “You’re still in shock about Kevin, and taking on more study right now . . .” He cocked his head and watched the other man with skeptical interest.

  “I have to do something.” Harper shook his head slowly. “I can’t just let him die and do nothing. I can’t leave it at that.”

  “Are you sure you aren’t simply looking for an acceptable escape?” Sam asked gently. “Harper, I know how hard it is to lose a child—Lorna and I lost our boy fourteen years ago and it still hurts—but you can’t let it weigh you down this way.”

  “That’s what I mean,” said Harper, his eyes sharpening. “I don’t want to be weighted down, and for me, that means getting to the bottom of what killed him. I admit that I never thought I’d be doing something like this, but I do have some skills and they can be of some use to you, I know they can.” He braced his elbows on the desk and leaned forward. “I know how to investigate crimes—that’s what I teach and I’m fan-fucking-tastic at it—and Kevin’s death is a crime. I’d be wasting my skills if I didn’t help out in finding his killer.”

  Sam sucked his lower lip before he answered. “I won’t say we can’t use the help, because we can. I won’t say you can’t help us, because I’ve got a hunch you can. But I do want you to think about this for a while. Don’t insist, not quite yet. Take a week to think about this, because once we get started, I don’t want you pulling out. If you sign on, you’ve got to sign on for the whole schimoola.”

  “I’ve already thought about it, Sam,” said Harper. “I’ve talked to Phil and he said he can arrange a leave of absence for me if I require it.” He pushed his knuckles together. “I’ve told him that I want it, and with the option of an extension if it’s necessary.”

  “Let’s hope that it won’t be,” said Sam. “But I meant that about taking a week to consider,” he cautioned his friend. “It isn’t just for you, it’s for Susan. Unless I miss my guess, this would be harder on her than on you—am I right?”

  Harper closed his eyes briefly, and when he opened them, he looked toward the sleety window and the distant freeway down the hill. “She wants no part of this. She wants to forget about it. I’ve tried to explain, but—”

  “You ought to talk to her, Harper. You know as well as I do that she’s entitled to your support. If she’d be hurt by your working with us on this, you should think about what it might mean if you—” This time it was Sam who was cut short.

  “She has my support, and she knows that. Shit, Sam, I did everything I could think of while Kevin got sicker and sicker. I’ve promised her that we’ll get away next winter, and I intend to keep that promise, no matter what. But if I don’t do something now, I don’t think I could live with myself. That’s got to be part of it. Doesn’t it?” At last he looked at Sam again. “Doesn’t it?”

  “Sure,” said Sam heavily. “Sure. Why not?”

  Harper got up and paced down the room. “I’ve talked it over with her, and with Grant and Mason. Susan hasn’t said much. Grant— well, who knows what Grant really thinks? Mason is very sympathetic. If he were a little bit older, he’d probably want to work with us.”

  “Mason’s a very bright kid,” said Sam carefully. “That’s often a mixed blessing.”

  Harper nodded. He was standing by the tall bookcases that filled the far end of the room. “Where do I start?” he asked as he indicated all the texts.

  “Next week, next week,” Sam insisted. “I mean that. You need to think about this a little longer.”

  “Tell me something to read in the meantime, and I’ll go along with your orders.” Harper ran his hand over the spines of the books on the fourth shelf from the floor. “Which one should I start with?”

  “I’d recommend waiting, Harper,” warned Sam, although he knew it was useless. “You’re not ready yet, not the way you think you are. You do need more time.”

  “If I don’t get the books from you, I’ll try the library. There must be some basic texts on the diagnostic techniques used in cases like Kevin’s. Or what they’ve done with other mysterious diseases they could not identify. There must be something on how they found the vaccine for AIDS, at least.” Harper’s eyes were wet, but he went on as if everything were normal. “I think that it would be best for me to start with methodology, don’t you? That way I can adapt my own field to yours. Do you think I should try virology as well, or—”

  “Harper,” said Sam in a quiet, penetrating way, “go home. That’s what I think you ought to do. Go home. I want you to take one full week and think about this. Talk it over with Susan and with the boys. Determine if you want to get involved. I mean it, Harper. As your physician as well as your friend, I want you to know what you’re getting into. Do I make myself clear?”

  “You don’t have to write out a prescription, if that’s what you mean,” said Harper, an undercurrent of defeat in his words. “All right, I’ll do as you tell me, but it won’t make any difference. A week from now I’ll be back and I’ll want something to do.”

  “If that’s what you decide then, fine.”

  “How can you doubt it? Sam, I owe something to my son. I owe it
to him to find his killer, and to do everything I can to be certain that killer claims no more victims.” He stopped abruptly.

  “You can’t save them all, Harper,” Sam said evenly. “No matter what you decide, you have to face up to that now; you will not be able to save them all no matter how diligent you are and how honorable your purpose.”

  “All right. I accept that. And I accept that murderers go scot-free and laws are circumvented every day. I can live with that reality. But I can’t live with my own inaction. Can’t you understand that?” He rounded on his friend, his face filled with pain.

  Sam gave Harper a long, measuring look. “How much do you know about Kevin’s illness? I don’t mean what they told you at the hospital, I mean what you learned about it while he was . . . getting sicker.”

  Harper was about to snap back an answer, but then he stopped and gave the question genuine consideration. “I know,” he said thoughtfully, “that there was some dysfunction of his blood, that he became weak and lethargic, that he ran a low temperature for several weeks, and then the temperature went up to one-oh-two and stayed there until just before he died. He had trouble eating, he developed respiratory problems, he became disoriented, he suffered severe pain and inflammation of his joints in the last four days of his life.” He came back and sat down opposite Sam. “He was apathetic for the last two weeks, and by the time they put him on IV feeding, he had already lost more than twenty pounds, and he didn’t need to take any weight off. He complained of cramping in his intestines, but that might have been from the lack of food as well as from the disease itself, whatever it is.” Harper’s face took on the distant look which indicated intense concentration. “For the six months before he was hospitalized, he had mild, flu-like symptoms from time to time, nothing very specific, but they hung on, and he never developed any stamina once the disease took hold. He had swollen glands in his neck and chest before he became really sick. That’s when you ordered the extra tests in case it was leukemia. I remember how relieved we were when it turned out he didn’t have leukemia.”

  “I remember, too,” said Sam with difficulty.

  “And I think that Kevin felt worse then than he let on, for whatever reason—”

  “Pride,” suggested Sam.

  “Kids can have terrible pride,” agreed Harper. “It might have been that, it might have been his own desire not to worry us. He kept telling us not to fret, not to be so concerned, that he would get well. I wonder if that was as much for himself as for us? Mason said it was.”

  “Mason’s a smart kid, we’re agreed on that.” Sam folded his arms and watched his friend. “Anything else, Professor?”

  “I don’t know,” Harper said after a slight hesitation. “I keep thinking that there ought to be something I could pinpoint, a detail that would show the way to the rest, but nothing comes to mind.”

  “You realize, I hope, that if you do decide to help us out with this that you might have to watch a lot of other kids die.” Sam held up his hand to stop the objection Harper was beginning to voice. “I know I’ve said this before. You think you’re prepared to deal with it. The trouble is, I’m not sure you are. Hell, I know I’m not. It isn’t fun and there’s no way to get used to it. Are you prepared to deal with that? Don’t try to answer me now, but promise me you’ll keep it in mind during the week.”

  “Sure,” said Harper seriously.

  “And I want you to accept that we might never find the cause, not in a way that would satisfy you. My personal belief is that it’s connected to some kind of environmental contamination, a toxic waste dump or some other similar problem. I don’t think you can decide in advance that you’ll get the secret. These days, there are lots of conditions that come and go.”

  “All right, I’ll do my best to remember that,” said Harper. He was about to get up when something occurred to him. “Would my journal be any help? I kept a record of Kevin’s condition once it became apparent that something wasn’t right. Do you think you might be able to make use of it?”

  “Could be,” was Sam’s cautious answer. “I think it would be worth looking at, no matter what. You probably saw aspects of his illness that the rest of us missed.” He did not mention how slim a chance it was that this record would reveal anything of merit, but he knew better than to discard a document that might contain a clue to the cause of Kevin’s death.

  “How many other kids have you seen with the same symptoms?” Harper asked, the question sounding much louder than it was.

  “Five so far, and two adults whose symptoms are similar. We don’t know yet if this is the same thing, but we can’t afford to take chances.” Sam stood up. “Go home, Harper. Think this over. Don’t decide until next Tuesday night, and if you still want to help out, I’ll meet you here at nine on Wednesday morning. How’s that?”

  “I’d rather start right now,” said Harper.

  “That’s what you think,” said Sam, trying to make light of his warning. “Give it a week, a full week. If you don’t, I know it will catch up with you later. Believe me.”

  “I believe you’re trying to help,” said Harper, taking Sam’s proffered hand and shaking it. “I appreciate that. But I want you to understand that I will be back, and I want to stay with this all the way.”

  “All right, I’ll keep that in mind,” said Sam, his hands braced on his hips as he watched Harper go to the door. “It wouldn’t trouble me if you decided to change your mind.”

  “I won’t,” said Harper as he walked out.

  Sam remained standing for a short while, his eyes fixed on the middle distance. Little as he wanted to admit it, he hoped that Harper would remain firm in his resolve. There was something about this damned disease that vexed Sam, and nothing that he had seen or heard from his colleagues had been able to dispel the deep sense of foreboding that had settled over him since he had admitted Kevin Ross to the hospital. Now he had more patients with the same ominous symptoms and he knew no more about what to do for them than he had when Kevin worsened and died.

  He reached over and picked up the telephone and punched in the number of the hospital two blocks away. “I’d like to talk to the epidemiologist, please. Doctor Hal Shevis.” He waited while the automated system transferred his call, playing him selections from Laughter in the Dark while he waited.

  “Shevis here,” said the man who answered the phone on the eighth ring.

  “Hal, it’s Sam Jarvis. Look, I need to get together with you. I need your advice.” He was toying with a pencil, standing it on end, sliding his finger down it until the pencil tipped over and then starting the process again.

  “The Ross boy again?” Shevis guessed.

  “Indirectly,” said Sam. “I think we have to talk. Really. There are other cases and even though there aren’t enough to involve your department, technically, it seems to me that by the time there is, we’ll all be in deep shit.” He shivered as he said this, and blamed it on the light fall of snow drifting past his windows.

  “I’ve been over your notes,” said Shevis. “Little as I like to say it, I think you might be right. I’ve already ordered a review of toxic sites, as you suggested, and I’ve put out a request for the monitor records on contaminants. The regs on them are new enough that we’re not going to get much, but it’s worth a try.”

  Sam was pleasantly surprised. “You mean I don’t have to come over there and throw a fit?”

  “No,” said Shevis. “We might be out of the mainstream of practice, but we’re not stupid, you know,”

  “No,” agreed Sam with a sudden rush of relief. He felt as if he had cleared an enormous hurdle with nothing more than a hop and a skip. “Thanks. I mean that.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Shevis. “And I would appreciate being kept abreast of anything you come up with. I’ll do the same for you. When did you want to get together for this talk, by the way?”
/>
  “Tonight?” Sam said, wondering how Shevis would take such a suggestion.

  “Fine,” said Shevis at once. “I’m going to send out a few queries, just in case. I want to know if there are any other cases like the ones you have currently in the Pacific Northwest area, and if there are, how many and how advanced. I might have some news by five. If not, I will in the next day or so.”

  “Good. I’ll check with the hospitals in the network, to find out if they have anything going.” He started to make a note to himself, but Hal Shevis cut him short.

  “I’ve already attended to that. And for what it’s worth, there are another six possible cases at Harborview. Five of them are teenagers,” he added.

  “That fits,” Sam sighed. “Why teenagers? What are they doing, where are they going, that it happens to them? Are they simply more susceptible, and if so, to what?”

  “Thinking out loud?” Shevis asked. “Save it for tonight. Say eight, at the Moroccan restaurant?”

  “Fine. I’ll meet you there,” said Sam, not sure he would have an appetite by the time he arrived.

  “For what it’s worth, I hope you’re wrong,” said Shevis.

  “For what it’s worth, so do I,” said Sam.

  —Wilson Landholm—

  Coach Jackson paced across the basketball court, his shoulders hunched and his scowl deepening with every step. “What do you mean, four of the boys can’t play?” he demanded of the team physician.

  “I mean that they’re sick and they can’t play, Jim; just what I said.” Landholm hesitated. “They’ve got mono or something like it. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” Jackson insisted. “If we lose those four, we can kiss the season good-bye. Christ, they’re—”

  Landholm shrugged. “I’m sorry, Jim. More for them than for you. Those kids are sick. It’s almost as bad as that fever that went around when those army storage tanks leaked, four years back. I’ve sent blood samples to Portland, just in case. I don’t want any more surprises.”