“I guess that’s it, then,” Madison said.
Jack reluctantly agreed. He realized they weren’t on the verge of finding a cure for GNS but he felt they were making some real progress. It wasn’t for a lack of determination or effort on his team’s part they had come up short. There was no blame to assign. Time had simply run out, which had been Jack’s greatest fear right from the beginning.
After another fifteen minutes had passed the last members of the research group had taken their seats at the table.
“I’m afraid I have some bad news,” Madison began. “Just prior to this meeting, Dr. Wyatt and I were informed the hospital has decided to go ahead with the Vitracide program. We anticipate treatment will begin within the next few days. So, for now the work we’ve been doing is on hold. We thank all of you for your participation. Everybody in the room went way beyond what was asked of them.”
“Does this mean we’re totally shutting down?” Marc asked.
“The hospital feels, and Dr. Wyatt and I agree, that we should all be unified behind the Vitracide program. If the treatment plan doesn’t . . . meet expectations . . . well, we can revisit the prospect of starting up our work again.”
One of the obstetric residents raised her hand. “My understanding is that the Vitracide protocol calls for ten days of treatment. Based on the increasing number of deaths were seeing, we may be too late to pick up where we left off in ten days.”
Jack knew she was right. With Sinclair in the wheelhouse, no matter how bad things were going, he wouldn’t admit defeat until the last second of the tenth day.
Jack stood up. “Your point is a valid one, but Dr. Shaw and I still feel the best thing for all of us to do is adopt an optimistic outlook and hope Vitracide turns out to be an effective treatment. If that’s not the case, we’re not closing the door on further investigation.”
For the next few minutes, the group remained, discussing their now futile efforts to find a cure for GNS. Finally, the last despondent team member made their way out of the room. Marc lingered.
“I guess it doesn’t matter anymore but we finished the analysis of the chimera testing. As it turns out, their distribution in GNS patients is different than the healthy chimera in the population.”
“In what way?” Madison asked.
“Usually, the chimera cells can be found in several areas of the body. The liver, lymph nodes and the thyroid gland, just to name a few. But it seems in our GNS patients almost all of them are in the thyroid gland.” He shrugged. “I’m not sure it means anything.”
“I guess if Vitracide fails and we ever get up and running again, we can look into it,” Jack said.
After Marc left, Jack and Madison stayed to gather up the volumes of computer printouts and notes strewn across the conference table.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“Right now or in ten days?”
“I meant now, Jack.”
“I’m going to get some dinner.”
“Mind if I join you?”
“Really. You must be desperate for company.” Madison folded her arms and glared at him with narrowed eyes. “Sorry,” he said. “Bad joke. You name the place.”
“As long as it has a full bar, I couldn’t care less.”
“Finally, something we can agree upon.”
Madison suggested a local sports bar, and they drove together. It took some effort, but Jack was able to empty his mind of all matters related to GNS, hospital politics and Dr. Hollis Sinclair. Their conversation was free flowing and easy and it was hard for Jack to deny he was becoming more captivated by her. But she was still a mystery to him. Even so, he had become more attracted to her than any woman he’d met since his divorce. He never felt his instincts regarding matters of the heart were particularly astute, but in the matter of Madison Shaw, he suspected she felt the same way. Jack had just finished paying the check when his cell phone rang. It was Mike.
“Of course I understand,” Jack said nodding his head. “I told you, if I were in your position, I’d do the same thing.” Trying to cast the indelible image of Tess Ryan lying in the ICU from his mind, he continued to listen patiently. “I think that’s a good idea; let’s talk in the morning.” With despair painted on his face, Jack slid his cell phone back into its case.
“Mike?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“That didn’t sound good. What’s going on?”
“Tess is scheduled for a C-section tomorrow,” he said with a disconcerted sigh. “I guess Sinclair’s moving faster than we thought.”
“What time?”
“Noon.”
Jack followed Madison past the bar and toward the exit. Two men, both dressed in dark sports coats, approached and stopped in front of them.
“Dr. Wyatt?” the taller one asked, reaching into his coat pocket and removing his identification.
“Yes.”
“My name is Craig Westenson. I’m a special agent with the FBI. This is Inspector Maxime Barbier with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. I wonder if we might have a word with you. It won’t take long, sir.”
Jack and Madison looked at each other briefly.
“I’ll meet you outside,” she told him.
“It’s been a long day. Go home and relax. I’ll grab a cab.”
Jack walked Madison to the front of the restaurant.
“Watch your six,” she told him.
“I beg your pardon?” he said with a blank look.
“Obviously you don’t come from a military family. My father was career Air Force. I’ll speak to you in the morning.”
Jack returned to the bar. Westenson and Barbier were sitting at a booth. He slid in across from them.
“Thank you for taking the time to speak with us,” Westenson said. “What I’d like to discuss with you might strike you as a difficult to believe, but I assure you the United States government wouldn’t be making these inquiries unless we felt there was substance to our concerns.”
Jack saw no uncertainty in either of their faces. He already had more than a clue in his mind of what they wanted to talk to him about. He clasped his hands, set them flush on the table and asked, “How can I help you, gentlemen?”
“We have a request, Doctor,” Westenson answered. He then took a few minutes to explain the details of why he and Barbier had sought him out. Jack listened carefully and asked no questions. When Westenson was finished, Jack emptied his lungs of a full breath, steepled his fingers and set his hands on the table.
“I think I have some information that may interest you,” he told them.
71
Twenty minutes after his meeting with Special Agent Westenson and Inspector Barbier, Jack was on his way home. Even though he told Mike he’d call him in the morning, he thought about placing a call now to check on him. He was just about to make that call when his phone tang.
“What the devil was all that cloak-and-dagger stuff about?” Madison asked him.
“Nothing, just routine.”
“C’mon, Jack. The FBI and Canadian police hunt you down to speak with you, and you tell me it’s nothing but routine stuff. Are you kidding? I thought you were done trying to con me.”
“I’m not trying to con anybody. I was instructed not to discuss the details.”
“That’s fine. You can skip the details and just give me the highlights.”
There was no doubt in Jack’s mind Madison would persist until he gave her some morsel of information.
“Suffice it to say,” he began with caution, “that the government’s concerned the scientific community may be operating under a rather large misconception in its efforts to cure GNS.”
“That’s what I assumed. So, how does all that affect us?”
“Good question. As soon as I have an answer, I’ll let you know,” he said. “I was th
inking of giving Mike a call. Do you mind if I get back to you in the morning?”
Jack was pleased Madison didn’t protest. A few raindrops began tapping against the cab’s windshield. At the same time, an ambulance, with the hi-lo wail of its siren, sped past him. Jack tried in vain to gather his thoughts before calling Mike. He knew that unless something dramatic regarding GNS happened, his best friend wouldn’t change his decision to have Tess undergo a C-section and begin Vitracide therapy.
Finally, he placed the call. Their conversation was brief. It was obvious Mike had made up his mind regarding Tess’s treatment, and Jack knew it would be impossible to convince him otherwise.
Amongst the many things Jack admired about Mike was his sixth sense when it came to evaluating a complex problem. Even as a kid, Mike rarely made the wrong decision. Deep in thought, Jack absently bit his lower lip. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t shake the nagging fear that, in spite of his flawless track record, Mike may have made the first truly bad choice of his life.
72
As soon as Jack arrived back in his hotel room, he got on his computer. He wanted to get some further information on what Marc had told him regarding the distribution of the chimera cells in the women with GNS. He hadn’t been at work for more than a few minutes when he realized he was exhausted. He was just about to wrap things up and climb into bed when his phone rang. He checked the caller ID. It was Lucien from Orlando Memorial calling.
“Hi, Jack. I’m sorry to call you so late, but do you have a few minutes to talk about the biopsy slides?”
“Of course,” he answered, instantly feeling as alert as if he had just awakened from a solid eight-hour sleep.
“I made a new set of slides using alternative staining techniques, and I have to tell you that a number of the slides bear a very subtle resemblance to the brain tissue of patients with some of the rarer forms of autoimmune diseases.”
Jack was instantly reminded of his team meeting when the possibility that the women suffering from GNS were all chimeras was first raised. He specifically remembered Carolyn, the medical student, informing the group that women with chimerism have a greater chance of having one of the autoimmune diseases.
In a guarded tone he said, “I’m sure you’re aware that all of the GNS patients have had a complete set of blood tests to see if they have an autoimmune disease. They’ve all come up negative.”
“I wasn’t aware of that, but it doesn’t surprise me. The slides I prepared are not diagnostic of any specific disease in the autoimmune family. All I can say is they have a vague resemblance to the brain tissue of patients with diseases like lupus. If GNS does turn out to be an autoimmune illness, it’s going to be a new one that’s never been described or seen before, which would account for why all of your blood tests have come up negative.”
“Almost all of the women who died were autopsied. I’ve read the reports. None of them even hinted at the possibility of an autoimmune disease.”
“I’m not surprised,” Lucien said. “The special techniques and stains we used to look at the young woman’s brain biopsy would never be part of a routine autopsy. Plus, the pathologists who did the autopsies were dealing with dead tissue while we studied specimens from viable brain.” He shook his head a few times. “There’s no way our findings would have been observed at any of the autopsies done on the GNS victims.”
Like most physicians, Jack was well aware that one of the most poorly understood groups of diseases known to medical science were the autoimmune ones. Normally, the body makes antibodies to fight off harmful bacteria and viruses. In patients with autoimmune diseases, this important process goes completely haywire. The individual’s antibodies, for unknown reasons, are defective and instead of fighting off infection, they attack and severely damage normal tissue. In spite of an enormous amount of sophisticated research, medical science had never figured out why the body attacks its own normal tissues. No cure had ever been found. Various treatments such as chemotherapy and steroids had been tried but the results had been far from encouraging.
Jack stood up and started in a slow pace around his room.
“Do you have a theory why the pathologists at Southeastern didn’t make the same observation you did?”
“I don’t know. What I’m seeing is the furthest thing from obvious, or maybe they weren’t looking for it,” Lucien offered. Jack knew what he was thinking and saw no reason to ask him to explain his comment. “The other reason could be that the findings I’m talking about are extremely thin. It’s not unreasonable to theorize that they could have gone unnoticed, or noticed and rejected as a possibility.”
“I know you’re a superb pathologist, Lucien, and please take this with the spirit it’s intended. Did you consider asking another pathologist to have a look at the slides?”
Lucien chuckled. “As a matter of fact, I did. I called Jacob Shoemaker in Tampa for a second opinion. He’s considered a national authority on autoimmune diseases. I assumed you wanted to keep this matter highly confidential, so I didn’t tell him the slides were from a GNS patient. He called me an hour or so ago and agreed with my findings.”
“Well, that’s certainly a fascinating observation you two have made.”
“Hopefully this will lead somewhere. It’s been a pretty lousy Christmas for a lot of people. Let me know if I can be of any further help.”
“Thanks, Lucien. I owe you one.”
Jack stopped pacing and sat on the end of his bed. He was already quite knowledgeable on the neurologic problems one sees in the autoimmune diseases. Lucien was right about one thing: If GNS was a new autoimmune disease, it certainly didn’t resemble any of the others and may not be detectable with the standard diagnostic tests available.
After a few minutes, he went out on his balcony. Looking across the Intracoastal Waterway and out to the Atlantic, he went over every detail of his conversation with Lucien. Even though he had promised Helen to stop all of his team’s efforts to discover the cause of GNS, Jack reached for his phone and called Marc.
“Are you still in the hospital?”
“Yeah,” Marc answered with a sigh. “We’ve been slammed with six new admissions. I’ll be here for a while.”
“Do you think you can find some time to check something out for me in the Patient Data Record?”
“Sure . . . but I thought we were no longer . . .”
“This is unofficial . . . and confidential.”
“I understand. What do you need me to do?”
“I want to repeat the autoimmune testing on all of the GNS patients just to make sure we haven’t missed something.”
“No problem I’ll take care of it right away,” he told Jack. “I assume you heard that Tess Ryan is scheduled for a C-section tomorrow.”
“I heard. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Jack tossed his phone on the bed. He then walked over to the desk, turned his computer on again and brought up his preferred medical information website. The website was a convenient resource for finding all the most recent scientific publications on any disease or medical topic. It was the same website he had used to educate himself on chimerism.
Jack would have gone to the hospital himself and done the research he’d asked Marc to do, but he had far more important plans for the next several hours. He continued to face countless uncertainties, but there was one thing that was unshakably true—by sunup he’d know everything that medical science knew about autoimmune diseases.
73
DECEMBER TWENTIETH
NUMBER OF CASES: 8,265
NUMBER OF DEATHS: 38
Alik Vosky stood in front of the window, staring out at a large high-rise complex to the north. After a minute or so, he walked over to the refrigerator and removed a mini bottle of vodka. He didn’t consider himself a drinking man, but today was an exception, even if it was only nine forty-five in the morning. He found a gl
ass, poured the vodka over a few cubes of ice and downed it in one long gulp.
Setting the glass down, he reached into his pocket to make sure the mace pepper spray gun he’d purchased was facing with the handle pointing up.
He hadn’t slept very well the night before, his mind cluttered with anticipation regarding his meeting with Jack Wyatt. He had written out in precise detail how the events of their twenty-minute rendezvous would play out. A few minutes earlier he checked the desk drawer to make sure the duct tape and hunting knife were also where he’d have easy access to them. Once he had Dr. Wyatt restrained with the duct tape, he would take five minutes to explain why his death was an absolute necessity. They were both scientists; surely Wyatt would understand.
Vosky sat down on the love seat and waited for Wyatt’s arrival. He considered pouring himself another drink, but then dismissed the notion as ill advised. As he expected, at exactly ten o’clock, there were three quick knocks at his door. He came to his feet, crossed the room and opened the door.
“Dr. Wyatt. Thank you so much for coming,” he said with a broad smile, extending his hand. “Please come in. I have all my notes and research set up on the table.” Before closing the door, Vosky took a moment to place the Do Not Disturb sign on the handle.
“I’m honored you asked me to have a look at your work. I truly appreciate the opportunity.”
Vosky motioned to the opposite side of the suite. “As I mentioned on the phone, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. I understand you think the entire outbreak is related in some way to the flu vaccine.”
“That’s our theory.”
“Well, in that case, it seems as if we’ve both arrived at the same conclusion,” Vosky stated, a little surprised Wyatt hadn’t asked him how he knew about his flu vaccine theory. As far as he knew, the theory had not been made public. “I’ve read about Dr. Sinclair’s virus theory, and I have to tell you, I believe he’s wrong. Please, have a seat on the couch, I’ll get my notes and I’ll explain to you why.”
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