Edge of Black

by J. T. Ellison

  Another one? What the hell?

  They brought Brooke into the triage station. The nurse took one look at her, opened the door to the back and yelled, “Stretcher, oxygen, STAT.”

  Two seconds later a gurney rolled up to the door. Reggie deposited Brooke on the white sheet. She was looking even worse, her eyes closed, her breath coming in little pants. Sam could hear the laboring breath, wheezing in and out, knew the girl was most likely developing rales, the first steps to pulmonary edema. But without a stethoscope, she couldn’t be sure.

  This was maddening.

  “You may need to intubate her. What do you mean, another one?”

  “You’re a doctor?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’re getting slammed with people with breathing issues this morning. From all over town.” The nurse glanced furtively at Reggie and Elizabeth, whose faces were strained with shock. “We don’t know the cause yet. You two wait out here. You, Doc, come with me.”

  Sam narrowed her eyes at the nurse. She turned to Reggie and Elizabeth. “I’ll take it from here. You guys don’t leave without me, okay?”

  “Yes, Dr. Owens,” they chimed.

  Sam followed the nurse as she pushed Brooke’s stretcher back into the bowels of the emergency room. Obviously she was trying to keep from alarming everyone, but it was clear something major was happening. This was an emergency room in crisis.

  The nurse slammed an oxygen mask on Brooke’s face and shouted, “Dr. Evans, we have another one.”

  A doctor, bald on top, with a tonsure of curly gray hair circling his skull, approached the stretcher as they pushed.

  The nurse ran through the symptom list quickly as the doctor examined Brooke. Brooke’s breathing was declining, and as they pulled the stretcher into an open bay, he called for an intubation tray. A team of doctors and nurses leaped into action, swarming the girl, cutting off her clothes, putting the breathing tube down her throat, getting IVs started in both arms, taking blood. Brooke didn’t even whimper, or fight. She was just lying there, almost comatose.

  Sam stepped back out of the way and let them do their work, but couldn’t help noticing that Brooke’s clothes were being handled with extreme care, and all the people working on her were in level-two special protective clothing.

  Not good.

  The doctor, who Sam surmised was a supervisor, turned to her.

  “Are you exhibiting symptoms, too?”

  “No.”

  “Name?”

  “Dr. Samantha Owens.”

  “I’m just going to have a quick look.” He shone a light in her eyes, felt her pulse. “Ph.D.?”

  “Forensic Pathology, thank you very much.”

  He met her eyes then, a lopsided smile on his face. “Southern girl, too.”

  “Nashville.”

  “I’ve been there. Good barbecue. Any shortness of breath?”

  “No. I’ve got no symptoms. I’m her professor, we were in class at GW when she decompensated.”

  “Okay. Fever? Cough? Tightness in the chest?”

  “No. Nothing. I’m fine. As far as I know, so is everyone in my class except for Brooke. What is going on?”

  “We don’t know. We’re seeing people from across the city who are all presenting in respiratory distress. You stick around, okay? Just in case, here’s a mask. We’ll do everything we can for her. Might want to get her parents in, if you can.”

  He turned away, dismissing her. He wasn’t telling her everything. Despite his attempt at good humor, she could see the tight lines around the edges of his mouth and eyes. She put on the mask, then allowed the triage nurse to lead her back to the waiting room.

  Reggie and Elizabeth had found a corner oasis free of coughing people. Sam took two masks from the nurse and went to the students.

  “Put these on.”

  They both slipped into the masks, eyes wide with fear.

  “What’s happening, Dr. Owens?”

  Long low beeps began, different tones and beats. All of the phones in the room were chiming, including hers. She reached for it, but Reggie beat her. He turned his phone in her direction so she could read the text. It was from Alert DC.

  Washington D.C. Metro System is temporarily closed. Tune to your local emergency channels for updates.

  Sam felt a massive ripple of unease.

  Reggie got another text. “It’s up on GW Alert, too. What do you think’s happening, Dr. Owens?”

  “I don’t know. You know how emergency services can be, though. They tend to overreact.”

  They both knew she was lying.

  Sam wanted to comfort them. Reggie was handling himself, but Elizabeth looked like she was about to fall apart. “Okay, kids. Hopefully this is just a false alarm, a mistake, even a drill. We do need to get in touch with Brooke’s parents. Reggie, can you call the chancellor’s office and let them know what’s happening? Elizabeth, how about you get in touch with your RA. Let’s see if we can approach from two sides.”

  Reggie received another text. Then another. With every new ding Sam’s heart beat harder.

  “It’s official. They’re sending people with symptoms here, to GW.”

  Reggie finally started to look worried.

  “Why?” Elizabeth asked.

  Sam met her eyes. “Because they have the largest mass decontamination unit in D.C.”

  Decontamination. That was not the word she wanted to speak right now. Decontamination implied a biological or chemical attack. Which meant only one thing.

  Terrorism.

  Reggie nodded. “It gets worse. It’s happening right below us.”

  “Below us?”

  He looked at her in horror. “They think it started at the Foggy Bottom Metro.”

  Chapter 3

  Foggy Bottom was the Metro stop that fed George Washington University, as well as Georgetown. It was the last D.C. stop on the Blue Line west before it slipped under the Potomac and headed into Virginia. Just a stone’s throw away from the Watergate and the Kennedy Center, six blocks from the White House, it was one of the deepest Metro stops in the system, with an escalator that defied gravity and was constantly under repair. You could cut half an hour off your gym workout if you climbed those stairs.

  Sam’s mind was a blur, but she processed the information quickly. She had training for these types of situations—in the post 9/11 world, all law enforcement in Nashville had been given extensive briefings and training sessions, and as head of the medical examiner’s office, she’d been a part of that. Her first inclination was to figure out how to help.

  “Stay here,” she said to Reggie and Elizabeth.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To see what I can do to help.”

  “Dr. Owens, it’s not safe.”

  She turned back to Reggie and Elizabeth. “I’ll be very careful. I promise. You follow the instructions you’re given by the doctors and nurses here.”

  She booked it to the exit. The scene had changed dramatically in the fifteen minutes they’d been inside the hospital. Blue and white lights flashed, and she could hear shouting. The street was littered with fire engines, HAZMAT trucks, cops, ambulances and first responders rushing purposefully toward the Metro. Crime scene tape had already gone up around the park and the roads were closed, traffic being diverted away from the scene. Techs in Tyvek suits with SCBA—self-contained breathing apparatuses—streamed down the frozen escalator. A uniform shouted at Sam, gesticulating wildly toward the medical center. The message was clear. Get the hell out of the way.

  The only comfort Sam took from the scene was that it was still intact. A suitcase bomb would have eliminated the area.

  So not nuclear. Biological or chemical. It could be anything, really. Her mind started into overdri
ve, and she could swear she was starting to itch. She hoped it was a psychosomatic response.

  A first receiver, bundled in Tyvek and nearly unrecognizable as a male aside from his size, stopped her. People dressed similarly were streaming past them into the bowels of the Metro.

  “Ma’am, were you in the Metro?”

  “No. What’s happening? I’m a doctor, with disaster training. Can I help?”

  “Not until we can be sure you’re okay. Get inside the hospital. You’ll be decontaminated and asked to stay for observation.”

  “I just came from the hospital. I’m fine. I want to help.”

  The receiver shook his head and pointed toward the doors. “Too bad. You’ve exposed yourself. You have to go though the process. Get inside.”

  Oh, son of a bitch. She shouldn’t have gone back out until the scene had cleared. Now she was going to be stuck.

  Sam was tempted to disregard him, to surge forward, but the thought was fleeting. She’d just be in the way.

  She turned and went back into the hospital. A line was forming on the right side of the emergency room, snaking down the hall. Sam knew immediately what they were doing: triage for the people who were in the Metro, and triage for those who weren’t. So whatever substance this was, they were taking precautionary measures for the people who were close to the attack, and a whole different set for those actually exposed to the contaminant.

  Another receiver met her, this time a no-nonsense nurse with steel-gray hair and a sharp chin. Sam tried again. “I’m a doctor. What are we dealing with? What kind of toxin?”

  The woman shook her head. “We don’t know anything just yet, sugar. Now shut up and get in line, you’re holding things up.”

  Nurses. The same everywhere. All dedicated to helping, and no time for bullshit.

  Maybe this was just a massive false alarm. She prayed fervently that was the case, but the precautions now being taken—those that she could see, anyway—precluded that.

  Sam was passed from hand to hand, interviewed briefly, and when it was clear she hadn’t been in the Metro proper, nor was exhibiting any symptoms, was sent to yet another line. People formed in behind her, more excited than scared.

  What the hell was going on? Sam wasn’t used to being incapacitated like this. She felt just fine. Obviously the exposure was in the Metro. She could see people coming in on stretchers, their clothes rapidly being cut off and disposed of, oxygen applied. One man was intubated, the rest were just moaning. Sam watched the first receivers bathe his body with a solution of soapy water, getting whatever he had been exposed to off his skin.

  Words were starting to float around now, from the people coming in off the street.

  Respiratory distress. Coughing. Burning eyes. White powder.

  Sam’s trained mind went to a different place.

  Anthrax. Ricin. Sarin.

  D.C. was always on extra high alert, just like New York, and all the major cities, really, for any hint of terrorist activity. There was one plus to the situation—they were prepared for nearly anything. But the fallout from any of those kinds of attacks could last for days. She combed her memory—what was today? An anniversary of some sort, with meaning only to those involved?

  Her line, the double-check line, she’d dubbed it, took only ten minutes, but it felt like hours. Sam was finally in front of Dr. Evans again.

  “Name?”

  “Dr. Samantha Owens. We met an hour ago.”

  He was taken aback for a moment, then nodded. “I remember. Nashville. What are you doing here?”

  “I went outside to see if I could help.”

  “Brilliant, Doctor. We’ll need you on the back end of this, not in the middle. Any new symptoms?”

  “No. I’m fine.”

  “Since you’ve been in the contamination zone you have to stay isolated for the time being. Maybe you could keep an eye on the folks here, let us know if any of them start showing symptoms. The reports are coming in that the people who are sick took the Metro this morning. So we’re just being extra cautious with people who were in the area. Can you do that for me? Keep yourself out of any more trouble?”

  “Of course. But what should I be looking for outside of respiratory distress? What are we dealing with?”

  “We don’t know yet. They’re in the tunnels doing air-quality tests. HAZMAT is getting positives for an unidentified neurotoxin. Might be a false alarm, but I’ve seen too many people who aren’t looking good to think it’s just a mistake. Good news is, while we’ve got a few critical, none are dead yet. Hang in there. It’s going to be a while before we can release you.”

  “I have HAZMAT training. I can help.”

  “We’re fine right now. We’re the best in the country at response. Thanks, though.”

  She was shuffled off to the right again, taken down a long hallway, then asked to sit on the floor and wait.

  This was insane. She should be helping, not sitting in a hallway with a bunch of scared people waiting to see if any of them started coughing.

  They couldn’t stop her from thinking about the situation, though. She knew exactly what the HAZMAT teams were doing, the tests they’d be running. If there was powder, they’d be able to analyze it on-site. If it was airborne, that was a whole different kind of response.

  The logic of the situation started to eat at her. If Foggy Bottom was ground zero, why stage a biological or chemical attack at the Metro station closest to the best decontamination unit in the area? Remorse? Desire to allow innocents to live? Terrorists wouldn’t be kind, or allow for convenience. They’d stage as far away from help as they could to maximize the dead, then hit the first responders as they came in, as well.

  Come on, Sam. You are really jumping to conclusions now. You don’t even know what’s happening—it could just as easily be a chemical fire as it could a terrorist attack. The Metro was constantly under repair, and steady work was being made on the new Silver Line to the airport. This was most likely just a local issue that needed extra precautions.

  That made her feel better. It wasn’t like her to assume: she was a scientist, after all, logic and evidence her closest friends. But it felt different to be involved, not on the outside trying to figure out what was happening. Without a cadaver, a set of sharpened Henckel knives and a dissection tray, she was sometimes lost.

  But she’d been involved in plenty of investigations in the past. She couldn’t help herself. She let her thoughts distract her. How many victims would there be? If it was a biological or chemical hazard, it could take hours until they knew what they were dealing with. If it was airborne, it could be ten times worse. So many of the airborne toxins took hours to manifest symptoms, and were practically impossible to contain. With this many people already down, perhaps it was something else. Chemical, most likely.

  It was rather cruel and unusual punishment that there wasn’t a TV in the hallway they could tune to. She figured the media was going absolutely stark raving mad by now.

  Her iPad was first generation wireless only, damn it, or else she could be researching exactly what was going on right now. Her phone was just that, a phone, with the ability to dial in and out, and receive texts. She wished she could text Reggie, let him and Elizabeth know she was stuck back here, but she didn’t have his number in her phone.

  She wished she could call Xander. But he was fishing today, off in the wilderness. She’d never be able to reach him. One of the things that they were both happy about in the relationship was the freedom. Sam wasn’t a hoverer, and Xander needed his space. He liked being able to come and go without letting her know his every move, and so did Sam. It was becoming the bedrock of their relationship. But right now, all Sam wanted was to hear his voice, to know that he was okay. To feel his arms around her.

  The people near her started talking among themselves, and she
listened to the rumors fly.

  “It’s all over Twitter. They don’t know what’s going on but they’re saying fifteen dead.”

  “I just heard two dead.”

  “Twenty-nine bodies.”

  “No one knows what the deal is.”

  “Holy shit. They’re ordering extra body bags.”

  Sam felt the blow to her gut. Any casualty would be too many. Two, fifteen, twenty-nine—she hoped to God those numbers weren’t just climbing as more cases were reported. If that number was even close to the truth...and with many airborne toxins, instant death was rare. Obviously people had made it out of the Metro; the triage nurse wouldn’t have asked her if they hadn’t.

  Jesus. She just wanted to know what they were dealing with.

  Fletcher.

  Ah. Why hadn’t she thought of it before? Detective Darren Fletcher, her buddy in D.C. homicide. He’d tell her what was going on, if he knew, at least.

  She went through her phone until she found his cell number. She hadn’t talked to him since she got back to town and started teaching, irrationally hoping he wouldn’t be upset with her. She’d worked a case with him before she moved back to D.C., the death of her ex-boyfriend, and the two of them had formed a bond. Fletcher would have liked that bond to go further, but he’d respected the fact that she was with Xander now. Sort of. She hadn’t been willing to test that theory yet.

  The phone rang and rang and rang, finally going to voice mail. Well, that wasn’t good. That meant he was either avoiding her call or too busy to take it. She decided to try one more contact—Dr. Amado Nocek, one of the city’s medical examiners. Nocek had offered her a position with the M.E.’s office when she told him she wanted to move to D.C. She appreciated that offer so much, but being an M.E. wasn’t what she needed to be doing right now. She was still recovering, still trying to make sense of her life. Her job in Nashville had become an albatross around her neck instead of a joy. She needed to do something that didn’t involve day-to-day contact with the dead.