Pathogen

by Jessica L. Webb

  “Okay,” Kate said quietly. She put her gown back on. The bulky vest was still warm from Andy’s body.

  Andy glared at her, and then she suddenly took Kate’s face in her hands, forcing Kate to look at her. “However important you think Chris Ozarc and Serena Cardiff are to their families, you need to know you are that important to me. To me and your mom and Tyler, you are that important, Kate Morrison. You will remember there are three of you in that room, and three of you need to come out again.”

  Kate’s heart hurt as it thumped wildly in her chest, beating strangely against the tightness of the armour vest. She wanted to twist away from Andy’s gaze, away from her words, the ones that struck the uncomfortable chord in her body.

  “Yes,” was all Kate could manage to say, as if she was simply accepting orders from a commanding officer.

  A moment passed, two, with Andy’s hands still clenched around Kate’s face. Then suddenly Andy released her and Kate walked immediately back to the room, not stopping for a final look at Andy or anyone else.

  Chris was in the exact spot Kate had left him. He looked up when Kate walked in, then his shoulders relaxed when he saw it was Kate.

  “How is she doing?” Kate asked. She wasn’t quite able to keep the shakiness out of her voice. She clenched her hands in her pocket, released them, clenched them again, trying to get her body under control.

  “I watched the monitor. It didn’t go below eighty-five,” Chris said. “Shouldn’t she be waking up?”

  Kate sent a random prayer of thanks that Serena wasn’t awake. “Her body is trying to heal itself, that’s why she’s sleeping so much.”

  “But she’ll be okay. You said you found a way to treat the critical patients,” Chris pushed, desperately seeking reassurance. There was so little of that to give right now. To anyone.

  “We think so. But we can’t do it at Valley General. Serena will have to be airlifted out of here at some point,” Kate said carefully, thinking of what Andy had said.

  Chris didn’t react. He just looked back at Serena and pushed a lock of hair off her forehead.

  Kate charted Serena’s vitals, listened to her lungs, and adjusted the flow of oxygen, Chris closely monitoring each movement. Then she hooked her stethoscope back around her neck and sat in the chair opposite Chris. She sat comfortably, giving no indication they were in any hurry. She waited, letting the silence stretch, while Chris worked through whatever end he’d come here to seek out.

  “Is it four?” Chris said suddenly.

  “Is what four?”

  “The…the death count. From the virus. Is it four?” Chris stuttered, his body tensed as if for impact.

  “Yes.” Kate tried to keep any emotion out of her voice as she confirmed it. Tried not to feel the impact of each of those deaths.

  Chris sagged under the weight of it. Kate knew almost exactly how he felt.

  “Will you tell me about it?” Kate asked after a moment of watching Chris wrestle and shift restlessly in his seat. “It might help to say it out loud.”

  Chris didn’t answer, and Kate wasn’t sure he’d heard. She heard a sound out in the hallway, a muted whisper, the steady squeaking of wheels over the floor. If Chris noticed, he gave no indication. Kate pushed away thoughts of Andy and focused on the two people here in the room with her.

  “You won’t understand,” Chris said, the dead tone back in his voice.

  “What won’t I understand?”

  “You said it yourself, you’re a doctor, you help people. How could you understand?”

  Kate thought about the best way to answer. “You’re right,” she said. Chris flinched. “I spend all my time trying to make sure other people are well. But I’m still human, and I do know what’s it like to feel out of control. I know what it feels like to not recognize yourself. To wonder exactly what it is you’re capable of. I know what it’s like to feel lost.”

  Kate watched as Chris slowly turned towards her, his eyes evaluating and judging, as if he was testing her story. Then he leaned back in the chair, his head bowed. It was exactly what he needed to hear, the understanding and the lack of judgement. Kate knew in that moment she should have been saying the same thing to herself and to Andy. The weight above her shifted.

  “Nathan Tomms,” Chris said, enunciating the name carefully, as it was the key to everything. “I wanted to hurt Nathan Tomms. I wanted him to feel sick and disgusting. I wanted him to feel so awful he couldn’t speak or focus on anything other than being sick. I wanted there to be nothing that anyone could do for him, I wanted him to get no relief. Because that’s exactly how I felt when Serena left me for him.”

  He paused and looked down at Serena before continuing.

  “I knew a guy at Princeton in the virology lab. He got drunk one night and was telling me about some crazy shit he was doing, making up viruses, mashing them together. He’s not a bad guy, kind of geeky. I don’t think he once thought about the implications. I paid him ten grand to give me one of the viruses. He said he’d use my immunity to last year’s flu so I wouldn’t get sick. He gave me a case to carry it and told me the best way to make sure someone picked it up. I think he was curious, more than anything. To see if it would work.”

  Kate watched Chris carefully as curiosity, empathy, and disgust competed for dominance. She thought about her conversation with Lucy, the seemingly sweet and sad love story of Hidden Valley’s royalty. It ended badly, apparently. Very, very badly.

  “I decided to go to the Fullworth farm on Labour Day. No one would pay attention to me there, at least no more attention than they usually did,” Chris added, bitterly. “I found out where Nathan was working in one of the barns, took out my camera from my bag, made it look like I was just changing lenses. But I got spooked, kind of freaked out and I left it in a stall. I don’t know, it must have spread like crazy. That’s not what I intended, I swear.” He looked to Kate, searching her face for any hint of judgement or persecution. Kate tried to keep her face free of both, tried to quell the questions in her head. This wasn’t the time for curiosity.

  Chris jumped as a monitor beeped. “What is it?” he demanded, his hand reflexively tightening around Serena’s, jerking her arm. Kate was surprised, then alarmed, that she didn’t wake up.

  “I don’t know Chris, give me a minute.”

  Kate read the monitors. Her O2 sats were drifting down in the now familiar descent from low-normal to critical. Kate thought about Jack, about his algorithm. She wondered how much time that initial dose of steroids a week ago had bought her now.

  “I need to make a call,” Kate said evenly.

  “Who?”

  “His name is Jack Sharpe, he’s a computer tech with the RCMP. He generated a computer program that might be able to tell me how long until Serena’s condition turns critical. We need to know, Chris.”

  Chris looked back and forth between Serena and Kate. She tried not to twitch with impatience. Andy said that they had time, that Kate should use that. Perhaps it wasn’t an advantage that she had after all. The monitor continued to beep, but Kate made no move to silence it. Chris was tense again, his muscles jumping spasmodically.

  “Okay, make the call.”

  Kate pulled out the cell phone, realizing she still had Jack’s. Shit.

  “I’m going to connect through Sergeant Wyles—” Kate started to say, dialing.

  “No!” Chris shouted, reaching across the bed and hitting the phone out of her hands. Kate’s arm stung, but she tried not to react, straining to hear whether or not Andy would take this action as a threat. She held still, waiting for her breathing to calm.

  “What’s the problem?”

  “You’re telling them to take her away, aren’t you?”

  “I’m not trying to pull anything over on you, Chris. I’ve been totally honest with you so far, and I don’t intend to change that. I need to call Sergeant Wyles so she can connect me to Jack since that”—she pointed to the phone that had skidded across the floor—“is his cell ph
one. Okay?”

  He nodded.

  Kate pulled out her own cell phone, took a breath, and called Andy, very aware that Chris was going to listen and interpret everything she said.

  “I need to talk to Jack,” Kate said, as soon as Andy had picked up.

  “I’ll call on the landline,” Andy said immediately. “What’s going on, Kate?”

  “The patient is stable for now,” Kate answered carefully, knowing Andy would understand. “Give Jack the following stats, tell him to assume that Serena Cardiff has entered the first sustained dip below normal O2 sats and tell him to text me the results of his algorithm.” Kate read the latest vitals off the monitor.

  “Okay. Are you all right, Kate?”

  “I’m fine,” Kate said, then immediately wished she hadn’t. It was a blatant lie, and they both knew it. Nothing about this was fine, nothing about Kate was fine. She took a breath, feeling suddenly and completely overwhelmed. She felt the same tug of disorientation that she’d had in Winnipeg, a slip of reality. Then she focused again on the monitors, on Serena lying on the bed, on Chris watching her so intently.

  “We’re fine,” Kate said, needing to be just convincing enough that Andy wouldn’t storm the room. “I need Jack’s answer as soon as possible. Please,” she added. Then she hung up, knowing if she stayed on the line with Andy any longer, she would lose it entirely.

  “He’s going to text me shortly,” Kate said to Chris. “It’s a ballpark of how long until Serena needs more treatment than I can provide for her in this room or this hospital.” Kate judged Chris’s response to this reminder. He seemed steady. “What are we doing here, Chris?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why did you come to the hospital?”

  “To see Serena,” he started, then stopped himself, his face contorting in pain, reacting to whatever he hadn’t said.

  “To see Serena…” Kate prompted, waiting. He didn’t speak. “To see Serena for the last time?” she offered into the silence.

  Chris flinched, but he kept his gaze on Kate, the uncertainty of what he should do holding him still.

  “You can trust me, Chris. Tell me what’s in your pocket.” Her voice was calm, even though her heart pounded. He continued to stare at Kate like she was someone who had all the answers.

  “I didn’t know the virus would kill all those people. I couldn’t have known, right?”

  Kate said nothing, keeping her face free of judgement, refusing in that moment to hear Jim Beckett’s raspy, smiling voice through his mask or see Roberta Sedlak’s cold body in the autopsy room.

  As if he could read her mind, Chris suddenly blinked and looked down.

  “Mrs. Sedlak…” he said, his voice raw. “She saw me on my way to the Fullworth farm, offered me a ride. I couldn’t say no. I wanted to tell her, I almost did. As I was getting out of the car my bag split and the camera lens fell out, cracking the casing. She picked it up before I could stop her.” Chris hung his head low. “I couldn’t have known,” he said, almost to himself.

  “Tell me how Serena got this virus,” Kate said. Her instinct told her he needed it all out, the whole story. A complete confession.

  “I knew he was coming to visit her. I knew I’d missed my target the first time. But I thought she had my immunity, we were both sick last year. It wasn’t meant for her.”

  Kate could see he was shaking now with nerves, adrenaline, regret, fear. She would have to move carefully, slowly. Lead him there, Andy had said. Kate needed to find a way to do that. Her phone chimed loudly, and Chris jerked up from his hunched over position.

  “Eighteen to twenty-four hours. Hyperbaric chamber in SK, three-hour flight.”

  Kate’s heart sank. It was even less time than Harris Trenholm. Eighteen hours, fifteen if you took off the flight time. Less if the ballpark was generous. Kate breathed slowly, reading the text again and again.

  “What does it say?”

  “It says we don’t have a lot of time to decide what we do here. Serena needs to be out of here in the next few hours.”

  “What will happen?” he whispered.

  “Her lungs are already beginning to fill with fluid. At some point in the next few hours, I will not be able to stop the fluid from completely filling her lungs, making her body incapable of getting the oxygen it needs. When that happens, she will die no matter what I do. We need to get her to a specialized facility, Chris. Soon.”

  Nothing. No sound, no movement. Kate wanted to hold her breath, but she kept it steady, slow. Minutes ticked by, measured by Serena’s laboured breaths and the steady beep of the monitors. Kate needed to try again.

  “You came to say good-bye, Chris. I think you should say it now.”

  Chris didn’t look up at her, but he did pull his hand from his pocket. He lay a small gun on the bed, dark against the white sheets. A thrill of fear shot through Kate, though she’d expected as much. She wondered if Andy could see but she refused to turn and check, refused to move even one muscle. Chris took Serena’s hand in both of his, lowered his head, and kissed her fingers. He said something quietly under his breath, gentle murmurings. When he looked up at Kate again, the deadness had returned to his eyes.

  “I can’t live with what I did and I can’t live without her.”

  Kate slowly leaned forwards, her movements careful, keeping her eyes on Chris the whole time. She leaned her arms on her knees and clasped her hands together.

  “It’s amazing what you can learn to live with, Chris. I think you should try.”

  “You don’t know—” Chris started to say in the same dead tone.

  Kate cut him off, her voice just sharp enough to get his attention. “Yes, I do. I let my sister live on the streets, I let her suffer, and I let her die. I live with that every second of every day. So don’t tell me I don’t know. Don’t tell me you think you’re the only one who has ever lived through regret and a broken heart.”

  It was a risk, a gamble. As she watched Chris waver, neither of them looking at the gun on the bed between them, Kate had time to remember Andy’s words. The worst self-preservation skills of anyone I’ve ever met. True, in this instant. Absolutely true. Kate could not deny the pull; every muscle in her being screamed to keep Serena and Chris safe. But herself? She was irrelevant, her own safety barely registered.

  “What should I do?” Chris barely choked out the words.

  “When you’re ready, go stand by the window and close your eyes. Think about how warm Serena’s hands feel. Because she can recover from this. And so can you, Chris.”

  A knife edge, sharp, painfully thin. So hard to balance, so unsure which way they would fall. Kate did hold her breath now, waiting. It was out of her hands.

  Chris looked at his hands covering Serena’s for a long moment, closed his eyes, and turned his face towards the ceiling. Then he opened them again, and without looking at Kate, he stood and walked to the window, his hands loose at his sides.

  Kate turned in her chair and raised her voice just enough so the sound would carry. “Andy.”

  Andy came in with her gun drawn, held low. She looked from Kate, to Chris standing at the window, to Serena on the bed, to the gun. Andy locked on Chris and strode across the room, Constable Slater shadowing her steps. Kate watched the scene unfold before her, feeling a bizarre break from reality in that moment. She wanted to tell Andy to be careful, to not hurt Chris. But Andy was holstering her weapon, pulling out handcuffs, approaching Chris with careful, tense movements.

  “Chris Ozarc, you are under arrest for manslaughter. It is my duty to inform you that you have the right to retain and instruct counsel without delay. Do you understand?”

  Andy’s voice seemed loud though her voice was careful, neutral. No accusations, no rough movements as she pulled his wrists behind his back and bound them with cuffs. She turned him with a hand on the shoulder, always staying just to the side. So careful, so controlled, Kate thought, watching her move.

  “Do you understand?” Andy repe
ated. “Do you want to call a lawyer? You are not obliged to answer, but anything you do say may be given in evidence.”

  Chris nodded but kept his eyes down and closed.

  Andy gestured to Constable Slater, who took control of Chris Ozarc. Then she raised her voice and called in the other officers. The room was suddenly full, too many bodies, too loud. Kate stayed hunched in the chair, watching Serena now, trying to tune out the action, not able to watch as they marched Chris out of the room. Kate felt a distant sense of relief, then sadness. Then, most terrifying, emptiness.

  “Kate.”

  Kate centred her attention on Andy’s voice, reading her evident relief edged with distraction, stress, needing to be somewhere else. Kate could hear every small nuance, every change in tone and pitch. She knew that voice so well. Kate watched as one of the officers lifted the gun on the bed with a blue-gloved hand, checked the chamber, and dropped it into an evidence bag. This seemed to be some kind of signal for Kate and she stood up, her legs shaky.

  “Is Serena’s transport waiting?” Kate said, pushing past the sick feeling as the adrenaline leaked out of her body. She picked up Serena’s chart and inputted the latest stats.

  “Yes, the air ambulance and Dr. MacKay are on standby,” Andy said carefully.

  Kate watched Andy move around the bed with those same careful, tense movements. As if the person in front of her was unpredictable. Kate still couldn’t meet her eyes.

  “I’ll take her,” Kate said, as she removed the IV bag from the stand.

  “No, Kate,” Andy said, and her voice was very soft, very gentle. It would have been easy if she had resisted angrily. Kate could have fought back against that. But this understanding, this gentleness…it was too much.

  Kate slammed her foot down on the release brake of the bed, walking around to do the same on the other side. She didn’t have enough strength left to move the bed by herself, her upper body shaking by now. Still she tried. She didn’t know what else to do.