Taji's Syndrome

by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  “You bet. Just as soon as we get information.” Harper had lost his distracted tone entirely.

  By the time they hung up, Jeff was half-convinced that he might be on to something. As he placed his call to Susannah, he hoped she would agree.

  “How’s Portland?” she asked after the first exchange of greeting.

  “Damp. Listen, Susannah, I need a favor.” Saying this made his mouth dry.

  “What is it?”

  “I’d like to get all the information we have on the victims and their families transferred to Seattle. I know there might be difficulty with the Privacy Act, but there are provisions for waiving that in cases of emergency.” He was pleading and they both knew it.

  “I think I can justify invoking emergency medical privilege. What are you looking for?” She did not sound harried or pressured, though Jeff knew that she was both.

  “I wish I knew. That’s why I want all the material. I hope there’s a key in all the facts that . . .” He did not know how to go on.

  “Is this for Doctor Klausen?”

  “No, for Doctor Ross in Seattle, at the University of Washington.” He realized he was not being entirely accurate, for Harper’s degree was a Ph.D., not a medical degree.

  “Research lab?” guessed Susannah.

  “Yeah, and willing grad students,” said Jeff.

  “Always useful,” she agreed. “I’ll start the paperwork right away. The ESD might want a statement from you as to the necessity of the information; get one off to me sometime today.”

  “I will,” he promised. “What’s it like in Atlanta?”

  “Warm,” she said. “Lots of flowers. Three blocks of Peachtree were tied up last night—there’s a movie company in town. Are you going to buy me dinner when you get back?”

  It took Jeff a moment to realize what she had said. “Dinner? I—”

  “Say yes before I lose my nerve,” she insisted.

  “Yes,” he said at once. “Tell me where you want to go. I’d be happy to see you. One warning,” he added as an afterthought.

  “What?”

  “I might not be very good company.” He tapped the receiver twice. “I want you to know that.”

  “Two glasses of pinot grigio should take care of that. Do Persians drink?” A giggle sputtered.

  “This Persian does. My family isn’t Muslim, it’s Orthodox.”

  “I didn’t realize you were Jewish,” she said, clearly confused.

  “Not Jewish Orthodox, Armenian Christian Orthodox. It’s a long story.” He hesitated. “I’ll tell you all about it over dinner, if you like.”

  “Good—I don’t want to talk shop any more.” It was her first actual concession to the strain of her work. “I’ll make sure your Doctor Ross can get his material. And I’ll look for your statement.”

  “Fine.” He was beginning to hope that there might be a way to avert the worst of the epidemic he could see emerging. “And thanks.”

  “You’re welcome. Call me when you know something.” She was about to hang up. “Take care of yourself, Jeff.”

  “You, too,” he said quietly, and hung up before she said good-bye; a farewell was too final for him now.

  When Max Klausen woke up, night had fallen and there had been eight more admissions to the hospital for TS, three of them nurses. These patients were put in the critical-care wing instead of the quarantine wing because there were no more beds available in quarantine, in this or the other sixteen major hospitals in Portland.

  “You talked to Sam?” asked Max when he had showered, shaved and got into the change of clothes he kept at his office.

  “Yes,” said Jeff. “And Harper. They send condolences.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Max, averting his face. “That’s good of them.”

  “I’ve put Harper to work on a new project. I’m having him collate information for us.”

  “What kind of information?” Max adjusted the knot of his tie.

  “Every kind of information we have about all the victims and their families. I’m hoping we’ll discover a pattern.” Hearing himself talk, Jeff felt that his position was weak, his goal so vague and ill-defined that there was no way he could learn anything of use.

  “What kind of pattern?” Max asked reasonably.

  “Damned if I know.” Jeff sat on the corner of the desk. “I’ve been thinking that it could be that we have not a toxin, or even a couple of toxins, but a bacterium or virus that uses the toxin as a springboard, or the other way around.”

  “You mean that the disease is contagious?” Max asked.

  “Or infectious,” said Jeff somberly.

  “I don’t like the sound of this,” Max told him after a brief silence.

  “Nor do I,” Jeff said.

  “Either the disease lowers the resistance to the toxin,” Max said, thinking aloud, “or the toxin eliminates resistance to the disease. Either way—”

  “Either way it’s risky.”

  Max looked at him with desolate eyes. “Risky? You mean deadly.”

  —Dien Paniagua, Wilson Landholm and Jeff Taft—

  It was unseasonably warm in Twin Falls and the windows of the local office of the State Board of Health and Environment were open; the chill that pervaded the meeting had nothing to do with the glorious weather.

  “So in the Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana areas, we can now assume more than a thousand cases,” said Dien Paniagua. “We’re looking for more cases, perhaps ones that haven’t yet been reported.”

  “I know the feeling,” said Wil Landholm. “We’ve stopped all sports programs in the state for the time being—I wish we could persuade the others to do the same.” He looked over at the secretary who was recording their conversation, since it was official and would be entered in formal records.

  “Our department has tried to find a way to determine how great the risks are, but so far we haven’t been very successful.” Dien looked at her watch. “The doc from Atlanta should have been here fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Maybe his plane was late,” Wil suggested, resisting the urge to add his complaints to hers.

  “He ought to call,” she insisted, then shook her head. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I’m very tired. I’m worried about Dan Vitale.”

  “Someone special?” Wil asked, trying awkwardly to make conversation until Dr. Taji arrived.

  “We work together. He went to the hospital two days ago. They think it’s TS. Two members of his family have it already.” She took out her handkerchief and blew her nose. “He’s the third person in our office to get it.”

  “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” said Wil, then went on, “This disease is supposed to be toxic in origin, but I wonder. I agreed with that at first, but I don’t anymore. Now I think that it’s communicable beyond the toxins.” He got up and walked down the length of the large office they had been provided for the conference with Dr. Taji. “You think you know how you’ll handle something like this. You think you’ve got the perspective. Then it happens and you don’t have any perspective at all after a while, and you don’t have the foggiest notion how to handle it. I remember watching a boxing match when I was in the Navy. This guy was getting beaten, but he couldn’t fall down. He stood there, and took blow after blow after blow. I’m starting to feel like him, and that’s nothing compared to what the victims go through.”

  “I am afraid,” Dien admitted simply. “All the time now.”

  “So am I,” said Wil, doing his best to ignore the secretary. “Look, when this is over, let’s you and me go get a cup of coffee. I have to talk to someone and I guess you do, too.”

  “Yes,” said Dien. “I’d like that.” She blew her nose again, saying, “It must be allergies.”

  “Un-huh,” Wil said.

 
“With the weather so warm.” Her face was composed but her hands shook as she opened her purse and took out a small vial of pills. “I really do have allergies,” she said.

  “Lots of people do,” Wil told her.

  She poured herself a glass of water from the carafe provided for the meeting, and as she swallowed the pill, she heard brisk footsteps in the hall.

  “Finally,” said Wil, looking at his watch again.

  Jeff Taji was carefully dressed as always, but his face was haggard and there were thumbprint-sized smudges under his eyes. He handed his attaché case to the secretary and said, “Forgive my late arrival. There was fog in Portland and it delayed our takeoff by half an hour.” He looked from Wil to Dien. “Doctor Paniagua, Doctor Landholm.” Each shook hands with him. “I’m grateful you’re willing to meet with me this way. It seemed there was no other means to get around Doctor Blair. Who is that fellow, anyway?”

  Both Wil and Dien became guarded, and Dien said, “He’s my superior,” without inflection.

  “I hope I won’t offend you if I say that he’s an irresponsible physician,” Jeff told them both. “I don’t mean to tread on toes, but Doctor Corwen Blair is a menace.”

  Both Wil and Dien relaxed visibly. “He’s difficult,” Dien agreed.

  “He’s a self-serving hack,” Wil said at the same time. Jeff drew up a chair, looking at the secretary. “You may delete that, if you wish.”

  The woman, her features rigid with disapproval, said, “I can’t do that, Doctor Tahi.”

  “That’s zhe, not heh. I’m Persian, not Spanish.” He opened his case and took out a stack of printouts. “You’ve already got the most recent material from Portland, at least you ought to have.”

  “It got here this morning. There’s an awful lot of it,” Dien said.

  “Yes. And now I’m going to give you some more.” He handed each of them a stack of papers. “I’m afraid that we’re off on the wrong foot with this disease, and I’m hoping you can help me prove it. I realize these questionnaires can’t be completely filled out by every patient you see, and certainly some of the information isn’t available, but I hope you’ll be willing to make an attempt at getting the information I’m looking for.”

  Wil was going through the forms, brow furrowed. “There’s an awful lot of questions here, and they cover—”

  “Some rather strange ground?” Jeff finished for him. “Yes. I’m toying with the theory that there is a communicable disease that is triggered by an environmental toxin—that seems to be the best bet so far. There may also be a genetic factor, but at this time that still looks like a long shot.”

  “Why didn’t you just send these to us? Why are you visiting us personally?” Wil moved closer to Dien and regarded Jeff with a measuring look.

  “For a number of reasons, actually,” said Jeff. “One of them is psychological expediency. If you have me here face-to-face and can ask questions directly there is a much greater chance that you’ll cooperate with me in my secondary investigation. Frankly, I need all the help I can get. Another reason is that I want to make a few direct observations myself, not only of you, but of the circumstances here, which is why I want to see the quarantine wings of the three community hospitals before I fly back to Portland tonight.”

  “We could send you a videotape and you could have spared yourself the trips to the hospital.” Wil was not going to let Jeff off the hook easily.

  “That’s true, but you and I know videotape isn’t the same thing as a room with a human being in it. I can get a very good impression from the videotape, but it will only be an impression.” He paused. “I trust what I feel far more than I trust images on a videotape and two miles of printouts.”

  “You may run into Doctor Blair at one of the hospitals,” said Dien, her attitude less challenging than Wil’s.

  “I won’t say I want to meet him, but it might give me a chance to find out why he’s so reluctant to assist this investigation.”

  “I’ll tell you why: he wants his slate kept clean,” said Wil. “He’s a politician and what he cares about is keeping his ass covered and gathering favors owed him. An epidemic looks bad on his record.”

  “Not cooperating with the NCDC doesn’t look terrific on a record,” Jeff pointed out.

  “You’re there and he’s here,” Wil said. “Never mind all this. Let me have a little time to go over this new stuff.”

  “Also,” said Jeff hesitantly, expressing something that had occurred to him on the plane, “if you can, I’d appreciate any tracing back you can do to the first cases of . . . TS you saw. What’s been puzzling me is how it occurred in such divergent places within such a short length of time.”

  Dien shrugged. “That might be hard. You know that the outbreaks we’ve had have come from several locations.”

  “About the first case I know of was a motel owner, name of Tucker, in the town of Mullen. The next cases were in Twin Falls.” Wil braced his hands on his hips. “That’s what brought me in on this.”

  “A sports team,” Jeff said. “I remember. And there were also some ranch hands, weren’t there?”

  “From the Gowan ranch, yes,” said Dien. “Only one of them survived, but in the last month they’ve reported only two new cases. The Twin Falls high schools aren’t so lucky.” She glanced once at the window, at the lavish start of spring, and felt despair for those who would never see summer.

  “Any military or civilian dumps on the Gowan ranch that you know of?” Jeff asked.

  “Not that we know of,” Dien answered carefully.

  “And no record of new dump sites near this city or . . . Mullen, was it?”

  “Not that we can find a record of,” Dien said.

  “What about incidence of the disease in anyone under age twelve?” Jeff remembered the discussion he had had on the phone with Weyman the night before. “No case of this disease striking any patient who has not reached puberty.”

  “No,” said Wil, looking uncomfortable.

  “No,” Dien concurred.

  Jeff slapped his hands together and pressed his steepled fingers against his jaw. “I know we’re on the wrong track. I can feel it. We’ve got a communicable disease that does strange things to the blood and the brain and for some reason is triggered by the hormonal changes of puberty, I don’t care if it looks like a dozen other kinds of environmental toxic reactions, it’s not. It’s not.”

  “Doctor Taji?” Dien ventured, unsure of herself in the face of Jeff’s outburst.

  Jeff looked around at her and his attitude softened. “I didn’t mean to do that. It’s been nagging me, and the more I learn, the more convinced I become. I know we’re seeing a pattern like toxin disease, but I know in my bones that it’s not. I’ve seen too much toxin reaction not to know it when it’s under my nose.”

  Wil had listened carefully. “That’s the reason for all the questions and whole family histories, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Jeff said. “I don’t know what I’m looking for, but I pray I’ll know it when I see it.” He laid one hand on the printouts. “I’m a minority of one on this. Everyone else in my division believes that this is a double-toxin reaction. For what it’s worth, I thought so too.”

  “But you’ve changed your mind?” Wil prompted. “Why?”

  “Because it’s the only thing that makes sense,” said Jeff slowly, as if the admission weighted him down. “Everything else leaves unanswered questions. The trouble is, we got so spooked by the Tunis Flu that we’re locked into seeing every new disease as an extension of the Tunis Flu; we think we’ve got to find two or three strains of everything and if we don’t then the disease isn’t as dangerous or as real as those three strains were. It can’t be avoided, I guess, seeing all new forms of disease this way. And this . . . TS, it acts like environmental disease. The incidents of it are in limit
ed geographical areas, those affected are from a narrow slice of the population, at least for the time being, and we haven’t a clue to the resistance pattern, if any.”

  “And you haven’t encountered unanswered questions before?” Wil was not quite mocking him, but was dangerously near it. “How lucky for you, Doctor Taji.”

  “I’ve ended up with long lists of unanswered questions,” said Jeff, refusing to be baited. “But not like this. The thing is, if it turns out that there is a biological trigger to this disease, if it is communicable, or communicates a susceptibility to toxins, then there are fewer unanswered questions, and the questions all make sense. That’s what convinces me to pursue this line of inquiry.” He met Wil’s gaze directly. “Can you help me? Will you help me?”

  Wil puffed out a sigh. “I suppose I’ve already said yes.”

  “Doctor Paniagua?” Jeff said.

  “Certainly.” She pulled the material she had been given toward her. “I’ll set to work on it this evening; if Blair will permit it, I’ll start sooner. But don’t assume he will cooperate. I’m planning to work around him.”

  “Thank you,” Jeff said.

  The three remained silent a short while, then Wil said, “If you’re right, Doctor Taji, then there may be an explanation for the pockets of TS we’ve been seeing. The trigger might be quite common but localized. The other alternative is that someone out there is a carrier.”

  “That’s what worries me,” Jeff admitted. “If carriers are involved, who are we looking for, and what is it going to take to find them.” He looked at his watch. “I’m due at the Twin Falls Community Hospital in fifteen minutes.”

  “I’ll drive you,” offered Wil, who was reluctantly starting to agree with Jeff’s theory. “”We can talk on the way.”

  “I want to come along,” said Dien decisively.

  “I’ll still drive,” said Wil, and might have reminded her of his invitation, but was uneasy about Jeff’s presence.

  “Excellent,” said Jeff. He busied himself with gathering up the three stacks of printouts that he had taken from his attaché case. “You can brief me on what I have to expect at the hospital.”