by Barbara Ebel
The bird pranced around on the table in the middle of the room. When he commented, “What’s your problem,” Dustin closed his eyes. Never before was the bird’s question so relevant.
“Too much for you to listen to, Solar. I can’t handle Sean’s death and breaking up with Annabel all in one week. You just go about having a bird’s life with nothing to worry about.”
He felt doubly saddened by the fact that he had spent the most amount of time with Sean than anyone else and, yet, he would have no say in his funeral arrangements. Of course, families took care of those details, but he would love to know if they were contemplating cremating or burying him. He and Sean had once jokingly talked about death and his partner mentioned how petrified he was of fire. “After my life is dead and gone,” he said, “no way do I want my dead body to face burning flames.”
Dustin wondered if Sean ever said anything like that to his wife. Long after he finished his protein shake, he thought of all the advice Sean had given him. He hoped he had been as good a friend to him in return. His heart also yearned to call Annabel to tell her what happened, especially each time he re-read her message from earlier in the day. But the relationship was over and he wasn’t yet ready to confront her or call her to make that crystal clear. At present, he was too vulnerable.
He could depend on his mom. She’d still be awake, especially since a thunderstorm approached both their locations from the south; she would be affected as well. The telltale signs of a stormy night were already present with distant rumbling skies and lightning, so he decided to call.
“It’s late,” she said when answering. “Is everything okay?”
“No, Ma, far from it. The worst thing happened today. If it weren’t for me buying my partner a cup of coffee, something might not have happened ... ”
-----
It seemed like Annabel found the most medically known, yet rarest, eosinophilic parasitic brain offenders, so she canned her search for the next hour and read from the rotation-assigned pediatric book. With disappointment, she glanced over at the clock; it was past bedtime. To show up at a private practice in the morning looking like some post-call medical student would not be professional.
She jumped into the shower, but as she dried herself off, rumbles sounded, coming from the direction of the river. When she opened the bathroom door, she needed to shove it a bit, and found Oliver standing in the way. He wore a frightened appearance. Since lightning and thunder was headed their way, his quivering had begun.
“Oh, no, Oliver. Bad timing.” She grimaced as she pulled a pajama top over her head. “Actually, since I’m a doctor-in-training, no timing will ever be appropriate.”
After she pulled on the other half of her pajamas, she crouched down in front of him. “Don’t get me wrong, boy. I don’t hold a grudge. Your characteristics are embedded in your DNA and we can’t change that. I’ll take care of you through thick and thin. Even when you’re old, tired, and arthritic.”
Oliver plowed past her and walked into the wet shower stall. He circled around and, finding no better security against the pressure change and approaching storm, he exited with wet paws.
Annabel then remembered. “Bob bought you something that may help!” She bit her lower lip; where the heck did she put it?
Her apartment was too small to lose anything, so she opened the closet accordion doors and remembered throwing the Thunder shirt box on the top shelf. After she grabbed the end, it fell to the floor. She let Oliver stay cowering in the closet while she read the instructions and straightened out the material. After grabbing him by the collar and closing the doors, she put the article on the dog step-by-step. He made no fuss and didn’t seem to mind.
The thunderstorm ramped up as Annabel climbed back into bed and Oliver again took to her mattress and nervously circled. Over the next half hour, the storm continued to grow worse, but the dog’s panting didn’t.
Her phone dinged and she scurried past Oliver. Hoping beyond any other wish, she wanted to see a message from Dustin. But no such luck. A weather alert pinged for severe weather in her area. No kidding, she thought.
She scrambled back and, in time, she realized that both the thunder shirt and paying attention to him helped Oliver better tolerate the noise and light show.
Sleep for her, however, was useless. Her mind wandered back to the two parasitic diseases she had read about earlier, the first one involving the pork tapeworm. But the idea of the second one, the gnathostomiasis, nagged at her. For some reason, there seemed to be some fact she had overlooked, she had missed. Something not to be disregarded.
“You idiot,” she said clearly. The undercooked or raw sources of the parasitic worms, especially the frogs and eels, was the important piece to the puzzle. The etiology of Toby’s problem may have been stark and evident, handed over to her and Bob in outright dialogue in Toby’s hospital room earlier in the day, like a spoiler alert to a murder mystery novel.
“A Florida raw slug!” she exclaimed to Oliver.
It was midnight, but the search had just begun.
-----
The last few years, George Gillespie’s bedtime routine stayed prim and proper and as dependable as a faithful employee who never took a day off. He went to bed at nine o’clock whether he attended an evening meeting or not, and always after showering and a last look at his computer.
George and Marlene’s master bathroom was extra spacious, but he had made it clear earlier in their marital years that bathrooms were for one person at a time.
Marlene thought her husband’s privacy issues were indeed strange. After all, doctors were the ones who trained and worked with naked or semi-naked people all the time. So, in her opinion, there should be little to no modesty issues for a physician. If anybody understood that human beings all had the same body parts, it was them. His behavior was odd.
George showered and padded into the bedroom wearing his favorite pajamas. Marlene closed her reading device and swung her legs to the side of the bed. “You finished?”
“Sure. I’ll be in my office for a little while.”
Marlene went into the bathroom. George’s iPhone was on the shelf next to the sink. She picked it up and poked her head out the door. “You forgot your phone.” The screen woke up as she passed it to him, and Tabitha Klondike’s picture popped up.
“Did you take a picture of a picture?” she asked.
George took the device and turned it face down. “Yes, I did. A lovely female patient of mine drew that sketch. I complimented her on her creativity and artistry. Even snapped the picture, letting her know that people may desire her work.”
Marlene smiled. “You are the best pediatrician, adding such personal touches to the doctor-patient relationship. I bet she was thrilled.”
With a wide grin, her husband nodded. “I try to be.”
“Well, you are. Whenever I visit your office, I see that side of you.”
Pleased with her remarks, George left for his home office. She showered as well and went back to bed, this time to sleep and not read. Her husband had made it to bed as well, and within minutes, he began to lightly snore.
But sleep would not come, especially since a thunderstorm added to the situation. Marlene hated when she couldn’t sleep, mostly because her activities the next day would suffer and she’d be too tired to focus correctly. And tomorrow morning, she needed to put hours in at the hospital. She read two more chapters of her current sci-fi fantasy and closed the cover of her eBook device.
Time to turn to a sleeping aid, she thought. She ambled to the kitchen and contemplated the over-the-counter pill containers in the cabinet. Although rarely needed, a white one combined with a pink one was her “color code” to sleep, so she grabbed an acetaminophen and diphenhydramine and chased them down with water. Now she waited for their effect and, in the interim, turned to go back to bed.
Marlene glanced at the hallway towards the front door. Her husband’s office door was always closed, but it was cracked open and a dim
light shone from inside. That’s a first, she thought, and decided to turn off any lights.
She creaked open the door. It was only the desk lamp that was on, so she passed the other sparse furnishings and rolled the desk chair out of the way. George’s laptop cover was open. She still had a few minutes to kill, so she figured, what the heck. Perhaps a current news breaking story would pop up on the screen. She settled her fingers on the mouse touchpad and the screen came alive.
But in a second, she furrowed her brow and gasped. How could a news agency be so explicit! She was horrified at a naked young girl in a lewd posture.
Without thinking about it, Marlene hit the forward key to eliminate the story in front of her, but as she did so, she realized what she saw had no text or information.
Another picture popped up. A male youth was also without clothing and the shot appeared to be taken in a barn. The boy’s expression showed discomfort, as if someone was behind the camera making sure he did what was asked of him.
Finding it unacceptable and obscene, Marlene wanted to throw up. She couldn’t look at the boy’s act for another second, and placed her index finger on the laptop tab.
“Oh my God,” she cried, realizing she had discovered a cache of child pornography.
Her heart pounded with disgust and uncertainty about what the material in front of her meant. Some pages had more than one photo, and there was no discrimination over sex or ethnicity. Worse than that, all pediatric ages were exemplified, from infants to boys and girls more likely in their years of puberty. A huge thunderclap sounded, but it didn’t rattle her because the images in front of her gave her a jolt and took precedence.
Marlene left the computer just like she found it, turned off the desk light, and hurried to the bathroom attached to the office. She cried over the sink and trembled. For every young child she had seen, her body quaked like it was beset by a natural disaster.
How horrid, she thought. The material she witnessed was the result of poor, innocent children being used or abused by sick adults for their perverse enjoyment. And the bottom line most likely had to do with money. An illicit money-making industry where the perpetrators’ wrongful material was sold through porn sites or private websites like underground illegal drugs.
So what the hell was her husband doing with it? Her husband, a pediatrician? Her quivering subsided as she began to get hold of herself and her own stupidity. What she had failed to admit to herself was that, for years, she suspected his behavior was more amiss than she acknowledged.
Yes, she was guilty of being in denial that her own husband was a certifiable pedophile. Her chest heaved. Should she consider herself an enabler and somewhat responsible?
No, she told herself. But now what? She had found the material by accident; this was his own private affair and computer. If it had not been for the light on in the room, she would have never entered.
Minutes slowly ticked by and Marlene finally got hold of her emotions. She slipped out and into the hallway where a night light guided her back to the master bedroom.
She had two issues to grapple with as she slid under the covers. First, what to do about what she found. Was there some action she was supposed to take? Not that she was aware of. She was also not going to confront George. In essence, their relationship was off a bell-shaped curve already, so she should leave it unchanged.
Secondly, and worse for her, she had to keep those images from popping back into her head like some kind of child abuse pornography PTSD. Under these circumstances, even a whole bottle of acetaminophen and diphenhydramine wouldn’t be able to put her to sleep.
Throughout the dark morning hours, Marlene stared up at the dark ceiling. She was afraid to close her eyes and have her mind invaded by those images as lightning lit up the sky outside.
-----
Bob was never the medical sleuth that Annabel was, but tonight his blood simmered with exhilaration as he dove into the medical and scientific world of published articles in obscure, as well as important, journals. He was deep into researching medical illnesses with high eosinophil counts in blood and spinal fluid.
He was snug in his overstuffed leather chair and ottoman with the drape open to the sliding door. The thunderstorm was the perfect backdrop for his endeavors and one that helped deter him from going to bed.
A huge clap of thunder boomed and he startled. Oh no, he realized. Another night with a significant summer storm and Annabel had storm-phobic Oliver. Bad timing, he thought, because it should be his turn to deal with and comfort Oliver. And get no sleep because of it.
He grinned because at least he had bought the dog a thunder shirt and perhaps she would be using it on him for the first time. He wondered if he should call her to ask if it was helping, but it was already 11 p.m. Maybe, just maybe, she was getting some sleep.
Bob straightened his laptop on his thighs and focused again on a paper he just stumbled on. It was a historical accounting more than anything else, published in China, and written several years ago by multiple authors.
Here it was; the first reported human case of the particular type of eosinophilic meningitis they found, discovered in Canton, China in 1933. And the parasite responsible was first detected in rats!
CHAPTER 22
“The dare, that’s it,” Annabel continued. Oliver was huddled beside her on the bed and paid no attention to her. The stormy weather was more important.
“A stupid kid’s dare. I swear Toby is sick because of that slug he tossed down his throat! Now all I have to do is prove it.”
She went back to the literature regarding neurocysticercosis, caused from ingestion of eggs from the adult tapeworm, Taenia solium, and then gnathostomiasis caused by several species of parasitic worms in the genus Gnathostoma. After assuring herself that both eosinophilic meningitises were not what Toby had, based on geography, etiology, and other parameters, she became more resolved to find a link to raw slugs.
By midnight, Annabel exhausted the use of the textbook she borrowed from the doctors’ lounge.
“Oliver, sweetheart, I’ll be right back.”
The dog nevertheless followed her. When they settled again, she sat cross-legged on the bed, resting her laptop on a thin pillow. She wasn’t bothered one bit about the time because Oliver needed her anyway. Tomorrow, she chuckled, Bob deserved some flack for somehow avoiding Oliver’s storm nights and leaving him with her.
Now it was time to dig into the massive volume of information so graciously available to every person in the entire world. She whittled down her search to “rare infectious disease,” and dived pretty far, but never pinpointed an entity quite like Toby’s illness. Soon she narrowed things down to scientific journals reporting “tropical” diseases.
Luckily, she stumbled on an American journal mainly dealing with tropical medicine and thumbed through indexes looking for the keywords of mollusks such as slugs or snails. Oliver’s panting increased with a close thunderclap and she managed to keep him lying next to her using her left arm.
Her eyes again rested on the computer screen to find an article with an important subtitle: “A parasitic nematode that is transmitted between rats and mollusks in its natural life cycle.”
She flipped the pages to the article and began speed reading: “Humans are accidental hosts. They do not transmit this infection to others.”
So far, as much as the medical team knew, no one else contracted the illness from Toby. She kept scanning and, finally, she came across something awful: “Eosinophilic meningitis caused by a lung worm of rats.”
“Oh my God, Oliver, listen up.” The poor dog startled, but she continued. “A lung worm of rats was first reported on the Gulf Coast only in 1985 and researchers think it came from infected rats. Rats scrambling off ships that docked in New Orleans!
“It says here this lung worm of rats is the principal etiologic agent of human eosinophilic meningitis, Angiostrongylus cantonensis.”
Annabel’s left arm left Oliver’s back and raised toward th
e ceiling. “Bingo! Now we’re talking!”
Ambitious to find out more, Annabel behaved like a sponge and absorbed everything presently known about angiostrongyliasis. Very few cases had been reported in the United States, the first one being a youth in a Louisiana hospital in the 1990s.
She pushed her head back into the pillow shoved against the headboard. The storm was muted and heading north, and it was time to undress Oliver from his thunder shirt. She undid the Velcro and unwrapped the material. After giving him a hug, he jumped off the bed.
“I’m finished, Oliver. I can’t read another word.” Her excitement over the information she had unearthed was only muted by tiredness. Bob was definitely asleep, but if she texted him, he’d see it first thing in the morning. She grabbed her phone:
“I think I found it … Toby’s disease. Angiostrongylus cantonensis. Rats are the definitive hosts of the parasite, and snails or slugs are the intermediate hosts. And, hell, humans are not supposed to be eating raw mollusks!”
The text zoomed off with a swish. As she wiggled under the covers, she heard a return “ding.” That can’t be, she thought. She reached again for the phone. Bob must be crazy to still be up.
“Darn you, Annabel. I found out a lot too. And btw, I hope Oliver was not too much of a burden Again!”
“Your thunder shirt helped a lot. And no, he’s a love, not a burden.” She paused to think about it. “Actually, good work comes out of my storm nights with Oliver.”
“How about that?!?Good night,” he added.
“Good night as well.”
Her eyes were so tired, but she forced them to look at one more thing on her phone, but there was still no word from Dustin.
-----
Annabel woke, aggravated as hell at her alarm clock, but, of course, it was her own fault why she was too tired to scramble up and start moving. Oliver made it impossible to catch another five minutes of rest because his snout was in her face. The morning left no residue of a storm in the sky and he wanted his walk.