by Lauren Algeo
They researched for the rest of the afternoon. Brewer’s eyelids were growing heavy with a lack of sleep and he contemplated stopping for the day. He was halfway through reading a web page on viruses so he carried on until the bottom.
In the second to last paragraph, he scanned over a sentence then had to pause and re-read it. His eyes focused on part of it.
‘…and also viral meningitis, which can affect brain function with increased swelling.’
Brain function. Brewer felt a crackle of electricity surge through his body and he was aware that every part of him seemed to have frozen.
That was it. A hiker would be almost powerless if its brain was impaired. Viral meningitis? Wasn’t that what the hysterical woman had been shouting about when she’d brought her daughter into the hospital yesterday? Was there a way to give someone meningitis?
Brewer tried to speak; only his mouth was suddenly too dry to form any words. He swallowed hard.
‘Georgie,’ he croaked out.
She glanced up at him over the book she was reading. ‘Yeah?’
He pointed to the laptop screen.
‘What?’ she asked, coming across to the sofa.
‘Read that.’
Georgie skimmed over the bottom few paragraphs. ‘I don’t…?’
He tapped his finger over the brain sentence.
‘Oh!’ she gasped when the enormity of what he was getting at dawned on her.
She looked at him with wide, shining eyes. ‘You think we could stop a hiker’s brain from working?’
‘I bloody hope so!’
He called up Google and started to look into viral meningitis. Georgie paced around the room excitedly.
‘They’d be screwed if they couldn’t get in to people’s minds!’ she cried gleefully.
She picked up the pen and wrote ‘MENINGITIS’ in huge letters on the second piece of paper. She added a few exclamation marks for good measure.
‘Ok, I’ve found some stuff,’ Brewer said, reading from the internet. ‘Early symptoms include a rash, stiff neck, sensitivity to light, a high temperature, and other flu-like stuff. Then, if left untreated, it worsens to a severe headache, and swelling in the brain and blood vessels. Then eventually organ failure, a coma and death!’
Georgie gave a loud whoop. ‘How long would that take to kill you?’ she asked.
Brewer’s eyes skimmed the page rapidly. ‘For a normal person, about 3 to 5 days,’ he replied. ‘But in a hiker, who knows. They might not have the same genetic make up and immune system as us. Could take longer, could be quicker.’ He grinned at her. ‘I’m hoping it would kill one though, or at least render it useless. It couldn’t do much with a dead brain!’
Georgie laughed and clapped her hands. ‘We can bring these bastards down!’
She wanted to dance around the room but it seemed like an over reaction; they didn’t actually have a plan of action yet. She sat back down in the armchair.
‘So what next?’
The smile died on Brewer’s lips. ‘I have no idea. For starters, we need to learn who gets meningitis, how they get it, and how you can infect someone else with it.’
He trawled the web while Georgie flicked through book after book.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said, after closing another book. ‘What if we hit a school on a vaccination day?’
‘Eh?’ Brewer frowned.
‘At school, they give you all the jabs to make you immune right? What if we stole a load of injections of meningitis and pumped them into a hiker?’
Brewer looked into it online.
‘I don’t think that would work,’ he sighed. ‘They tend to use antibodies now for the actual vaccines so you wouldn’t do much damage by injecting one with those and we’d need to inject a lot. Plus stealing from a school is a bit risky.’ He paused for a moment. ‘I think you’re on to something with the child angle though. From what I can tell, it’s mainly children who contract meningitis by bacterial or fungal infections.’
Brewer’s mind kept coming back to the woman in the hospital with her ill daughter. The little girl would still be in the children’s ward if she had meningitis.
‘I’ve got a crazier idea than taking vaccines from a school,’ he admitted. ‘What if we were to take the blood of a child with meningitis from a children’s ward?’
Georgie burst out laughing. ‘Breaking into a school is too risky but you’re happy to walk into a children’s ward and try to take some sick kid’s blood!’ She cackled loudly. ‘You’re mental!’
Brewer wasn’t laughing. It was an insane idea – one he wouldn’t usually consider with the amount of risk involved – but he had a strong feeling in his gut that this plan might actually work. If they could just get one syringe of infected blood to inject a hiker with, and it worked… he didn’t want to get his hopes up too much, however this was the most concrete plan he’d had in a long time.
‘You’re not joking, are you?’ Georgie asked in disbelief. She could see the determined look burning in his eyes.
‘I’m deadly serious.’
She couldn’t quite comprehend the scale of the plan; it seemed ludicrous to her. ‘Talk me through it. What exactly are you proposing here?’
‘We go to a hospital with a large children’s ward… or a children’s hospital, in fact, like Great Ormond Street.’ Brewer thought as he talked. ‘Actually, we could call around some of the London ones first to see if there’s a child admitted anywhere with meningitis. Then we go there and get inside the children’s ward, somehow take a syringe of the child’s blood, and get out fast. We then find a hiker, wait for it to sleep, and inject it with the virus. We can watch for a few days to see what happens to it.’
‘That is a dangerous, stupid plan,’ Georgie warned. ‘But if you really think it can work, I’m in.’
‘I do,’ he said with no hesitation.
‘So how the hell do we do this?’
‘Well, first we find the child and the hospital then we find the hiker. When we locate an infected kid, we’ll need to move quickly before the treatment gets too far.’
‘If we can even get into the ward, how are we going to take blood without anyone noticing?’
Brewer’s brain was racing to come up with solutions to all the flaws in the plan. ‘Not we,’ he said slowly. ‘You.’
‘Me!’ she squeaked. ‘You’re going to make me take the fall for this if it screws up?’
‘No. I think you have a better shot at pulling it off.’
‘How?’ she demanded.
‘You’re young and petite, and a girl. You could pass for a student nurse. No one would give you a second glance on the ward. I’m a tall, older, unfamiliar bloke and I’d stick out like a sore thumb. People would remember seeing me. The nurses on the ward would challenge me. They’re more likely to believe you.’ He paused to try and phrase the next part so that it wouldn’t offend her. ‘And you have experience with needles.’
It still stung. Georgie’s face flushed red with shame and she glanced away. She sometimes forgot that she’d told him every dark, horrible secret from her past; how Spence had tried to get her hooked on drugs.
‘Only a bit,’ she managed to say. ‘I’ve never taken blood from anyone.’
Brewer felt guilty about raking up something she clearly didn’t want to remember, only he had no choice – it was their strongest option.
‘I know, but you’ll be able to handle the syringe competently,’ he said gently. ‘You’re our best hope, Georgie.’
‘Ok, I’ll do it. I have one condition though.’
‘What?’
She took a deep breath. ‘I want to use it on our hiker.’
Brewer looked at her sharply.
‘I know, it sounds stupid,’ she said quickly, raising her palms. ‘But if this works then I really want that hiker to be the one that dies first. Payback for what it did to both of us.’
He made up his mind easily. ‘Ok agreed. If we don’t find it straightaway tho
ugh, we can’t waste time searching everywhere. When we have the blood, we’ll give ourselves a day to find the hiker to use it on. If we don’t locate him by then we’ll take any one we can find. Sound fair?’
‘Yes,’ she smiled darkly. ‘But I really want that one.’
‘Let the planning begin then.’
Chapter 28
Three weeks later, they were ready. They spent a couple of weeks staking out King’s College Hospital, watching the staff. Around handover times of 7am and 7pm every day, they grew to learn which people were staff, and how they travelled to and from work.
Brewer sent Georgie into the hospital several days in a row, to get her used to being in the environment and familiarise herself with their manner. She stalked a few of the nurses to see which wards they went to. She quickly realised how easy it was to walk around the main hospital wards unnoticed; Brewer was right – people did dismiss her. She could have been a patient, relative, or member of staff coming to work. It was only if anyone spent too much time with her they would get that uneasy feeling, like people did with Brewer.
At the end of the second week, the surveillance time paid off. They had been watching a few of the young, female nurses and a couple of them caught the bus home after their shifts. At 7.40pm on the Thursday night, one of the girls was at the bus stop near the hospital entrance, alone. It was dark and cold so she had her coat pulled tightly around her chin and her holdall bag was on the seat beside her.
Georgie wandered out of the shadows and stood by the bus stop. The girl barely glanced at her. Georgie waited for her to be distracted by texting on her phone then lightening-quick, she grabbed the girl’s bag and ran down the road. By the time the girl realised what had happened, she was well away and disappearing into the darkness.
She met Brewer back at the flat and they went through the nurse’s bag. It held exactly what they had hoped for: a uniform and her ID badge. The girl was a nurse from one of the surgical wards, although the light blue shirt she had was similar to any staff uniform. Student nurses could have been dressed differently in every hospital for all they knew. Brewer hoped no one would pay attention to what the uniform was when they carried out the plan.
The main thing was that they had the ID, and people accepted you immediately if you had a pass around your neck or a badge clipped to your shirt. The nurse was called Tina Croft and she had light brown hair, which was pulled into a ponytail in the ID photo. She was fuller in the face than Georgie but it would do. They looked about the same age and no one would be looking that closely if it all went well.
Georgie tried on the uniform. The shirt was a little big, however it would make it easy to conceal anything she needed to in her waistband. The trousers were no good; they were far too long and billowed around her skinny legs. Brewer bought her some plain navy trousers instead, and she could wear her own black pumps.
With her red hair tied back and the stolen outfit on, Georgie looked perfect. Brewer’s only slight concern was the small tattoo on the inside of her wrist, which was visible in the short-sleeved shirt, but this was the 21st century and people shouldn’t care.
As a precaution, he got her to read up on meningitis in case anyone questioned her on the ward. She also spent three days cramming basic nurse skills such as taking temperatures and blood. While she did that, Brewer ordered a heparinised syringe, so the blood wouldn’t clot, and a small container box that Georgie could hide easily.
Phase one was complete; now came the hard part. Phase two was to find a child who had just been admitted with meningitis and get their blood. It was the part with all the risk.
Brewer made a detailed list of all the hospitals in and around London, and they took it in turns to ring up and pretend to be a concerned relative. Georgie put on a very convincing panicked routine that eased his concerns about how she’d perform in the hospital.
They had no luck in eighteen hospitals. One did tell them that a child had been discharged after being treated for meningitis, although they were very cagey about giving out patient information.
Fate aligned for the nineteenth hospital. It was lunchtime and they had been making phone calls for hours. They were both getting frustrated and short with each other.
‘Your turn,’ Brewer sighed, hanging up on another unsuccessful conversation and handing Georgie the phone.
She glared at it with disdain. So far she’d encountered nine snooty receptionists who hadn’t told her what she wanted to hear.
‘Fine,’ she snapped. ‘After this one I’m taking a break.’
She punched in the number from the piece of paper and the phone purred twice in her ear before a receptionist answered.
‘Darent Valley Hospital, how can I help you?’
Georgie forced herself into the routine she’d been practicing all morning.
‘Yes, please help me! My little sister has been rushed to hospital with suspected meningitis but I don’t know which one! Please can you tell me if she’s there?’
‘Oh, the poor thing.’ The receptionist sounded genuinely concerned. ‘Let me have a look on the system for you. When was she brought in?’
‘Thank you so much, it was a few hours ago but I didn’t have my mobile on me!’ Georgie was proud of her Oscar-worthy acting. She spoke fast and panicked, and sounded on the verge of tears. ‘She’s only seven and they were taking her in to a children’s ward.’
‘What’s your sister’s name, dear?’
‘It’s Sarah, Sarah Croft.’ She decided to stick to the familiar surname from the ID. ‘Is she there?’
‘That name doesn’t come up but let me double check with the children’s ward in case the system hasn’t been updated yet.’
There was a faint clicking on the line for a minute.
Georgie imagined a woman in her mid-forties, sitting behind the desk and tapping on her keyboard with manicured fingers while she spoke to the nurses. The previous receptionist she’d called had been a troll, who she’d decided was old and fat, with stubby hands and thick glasses.
‘Oh, that’s odd,’ the receptionist murmured when she came back on the line, then louder to Georgie. ‘We’ve just had a young boy admitted with meningitis but you did say your sister, didn’t you dear?’
Georgie couldn’t reply. She hung up the phone and let it drop onto the sofa. Brewer peered up curiously from the hospital list and she nodded to him.
‘We’ve got one,’ she said and smiled nervously.
She thought she’d be happy to have found a child, yet she suddenly felt a knot of fear at the task ahead.
Brewer’s face broke into a grin; she’d hardly ever seen him smile like that.
‘Seriously?’ he asked, jumping up from the armchair excitedly. ‘Who? Where?’
He checked the hospital list again without waiting for her reply. They’d been crossing off the names of places they’d tried and he jabbed a finger at the next unmarked one.
‘Darent Valley? It’s not that far. Did they say when the kid had come in? Was it a girl?’
Georgie tried to keep up. ‘It’s a boy. He’s just been admitted.’
‘Let’s move then!’
They had packed bags days ago in preparation for when they needed to act. Brewer got everything together while Georgie went to put on the nurse’s uniform. She tied her hair into a ponytail and gave herself one last look in the mirror. Showtime.
They travelled to the hospital and made it there in just over an hour. Not quick enough for Brewer, but way too fast for Georgie.
‘How do you feel?’ He asked her as they neared the hospital entrance and he caught sight of her terrified face.
‘I’m shitting myself,’ she admitted.
‘You’ll be fine. You’re ready for this. It’ll be just like we talked about.’
She nodded weakly, not trusting her voice.
He took her bag and coat, and handed her the box containing the syringe.
‘I’ll be waiting out here. Good luck.’
Georgie p
ut the nurse’s pass over her head and tucked the box into the waistband of her trousers. The shirt covered it and the vague outline could have passed for a pager. She walked towards the reception entrance, trying to look confident. It was freezing and her breath came out in white clouds but she was sweating.
The warm air in the reception area wasn’t the least bit inviting. There was a small, fake Christmas tree by the desk. It was less than a week until Christmas but Georgie had barely given it a second thought. She hadn’t really celebrated it over the last few years, and she doubted Brewer did. All it had meant to her last year was more drunken punters, and a couple of them giving her a bit of extra money – being the season of goodwill and all that. Maybe she and Brewer could at least have a turkey dinner. Georgie laughed to herself; this wasn’t the time or place to be distracted by thinking about such trivial things.
She walked along the corridor, past the reception desk, and followed the signs to the children’s ward. It was called Willow and located on the first floor. A couple of people smiled at her and Georgie tried to relax her tense shoulders. She tested the pass on one of the security locked doors further along the corridor and wasn’t really surprised when it didn’t work. This was a completely different hospital so the pass wouldn’t be recognised by this system.
She walked slowly to the ward entrance and hovered near the door until someone came out. The woman leaving held the doors open for her with a smile and Georgie slipped through. She was in.
She could see the desk at the end of a short corridor and knew they kept the list of patients on a whiteboard near there. A nurse was walking away from the desk towards a side room and Georgie stayed back until she was gone. The ward seemed quiet and a look at the board revealed that only two thirds of the beds were full. There were five boys on the list – three were in side rooms and two were in a four-bed bay. A child with meningitis would be isolated, which of the three was he?
A woman with red-rimmed eyes and a Christmas jumper walked by on her way to the phone near the door. Georgie gave her a slight nod, feeling a rush of sympathy. This woman had a sick child in hospital and she was here to steal a kid’s blood.