He came and sat on the arm of the easy chair beside the rather low couch where I was sitting. The higher perch made him tower over me. I wondered if he had deliberately designed his searing arrangement to achieve this effect as a way of intimidating troublesome colleagues. I’d read somewhere that Lyndon Johnson used to pull that trick.
“You really went over the line last night. Earl,” Cam began. “Here I defend you to Miller, and you return the favor by sneaking around behind my back. Why didn’t you come to me? After all, you—”
“Janet came to you, remember? You wouldn’t listen.”
He grimaced. “Look, I’m willing to allow you were distraught over Michael and influenced by that crazy note of his—”
“Crazy!” I interrupted, leaping to my feet and forcing him to look up at me instead. His mouth dropped open in astonishment.
“I’ll tell you what’s crazy,” I continued, practically yelling. “It’s you continuing to ignore Janet’s warning that these infections are connected to the Phantom business!” So much for being careful, I thought, as I let fly my anger.
He started leaning back from me as I brought my face closer to his. Give him a taste of his own tactics was all I could think; I bored in on him until I was inches away. “Then Michael got infected, and now Janet’s been infected, yet you still don’t seem to get it. Worse, you continue going around like she and I are the enemy for pursuing the one idea that might get to the bottom of what’s already a nightmare.”
Cam’s face flushed. “Now wait just a goddamned minute!” He got to his feet. He was taller man me again.
“No, you wait just a goddamned minute! This is about people’s lives. Cam, patient’s lives, Michael’s and Janet’s lives. Speaking on behalf of patients, I have to be professional. On behalf of a friend I can be as nasty as it takes, and on behalf of Janet, I’m going to be your worst nightmare!”
I was screaming up at his face and couldn’t stop. Fear, lack of sleep, the possibility he had infected Janet—all combined to drive my rage way over any point where I could control it. Hell, after days of frustration and stalking shadows, I suddenly didn’t want to control it.
He stepped away, his expression quickly reverting from anger back to openmouthed shock.
I pressed in on him. “You want to charge me with trespassing, you go right ahead. I’m past it all. Cam! I don’t give a fuck anymore for your reputation or mine or either of our hospitals.’ Got that?” I stabbed the front of his chest with my finger. “I only care now about keeping Janet safe and bringing down this killer, no matter whom I have to talk to or how loud I have to scream!”
His face had drained to white. I’d backed him up against a wall loaded with plaques, citations, awards, and degrees. A cautionary voice from deep within me said, “This is crazy,” but I was beyond caution, not even capable of listening to what was left of my own reason.
“So tell me. Cam, what are you really up to? You were livid that I saw the records from the Phantom’s first attacks. They’re quite something, aren’t they? I even figured out how he did it. He’s real, Cam. As real as can be!”
“This could jeopardize Janet!” insisted that inner voice, sufficiently loud this time to snap me out of my tirade. I stood for an instant, breathing hard and fighting to regain my self-control. My outburst was anything but what I’d planned; for a few seconds I think I was probably as close to losing control as Cam was at Death Rounds, but I was rational enough to realize something. My anger had given me a momentary edge on him. I quickly decided I’d test my suspicions even further and throw some more of them in his face to see what he did. Afterward I’d do whatever it took to protect Janet.
“So I have a warning for you. Cam,” I continued, “just like you had one for me this morning. Explain to me right now why you seem so determined no one investigate the Phantom—what you’re afraid we’ll find—or you’re liable to end up being investigated yourself.”
He reacted as if I’d punched him in the gut. His color drained even further to a dusky gray that was alarming to look at. I felt I’d hit a bull’s-eye.
“Well, which is it going to be?” I continued. “Do I yell my head off about the Phantom, the infections, and you trying to cover it up until someone somewhere listens, or do you level with me?”
If I got any closer to him, it would be indecent. I spun away and walked over to the hutch where I slammed open the wooden door, grabbed a Coke out of his fridge and pulled the tab off the can without looking at him. I took a swallow and felt the cold liquid run all the way down to the pit of my stomach. The sensation reminded me I hadn’t had breakfast yet. I glanced at my watch. It was 11:10.
When I did turn around to face him, the one word to describe him was deflated. His eyes, usually so fierce, looked as faded as denim. He moved away from the wall, eyeing me warily. “You’ve got it all wrong, Earl. You’ve certainly got me wrong.” He sounded shaken and was circling around me, putting the couch between us, as if he were afraid I might spring at him. “I admit I went over the top at you before Death Rounds. Let me apologize for that. I should have been more understanding.” He was almost pleading. He extended his hand tentatively, reaching over the back of the couch, like an opponent at the end of a tennis match reaching over the net
I figured it was a good time to push for answers. “Why were you so enraged that I was looking at those charts?” I demanded. “You’ve seen them. You’ve got to know that those people were all attacked by someone.”
“I didn’t want stories about the Phantom starting up again.” He started to withdraw his hand, then pointed it at me. “Don’t you realize the panic that could cause? It would have been bad enough to have rumors that someone was spreading Legionella. And now, after our scare about the superbug, a story like that would be catastrophic.” He spoke quietly, but the urgency of his tone was impossible not to hear. An act? Maybe not. Panic was a legitimate concern, as Williams was forever stressing.
“Why were you so furious about the asylum being searched?” I demanded, letting my impatience sound while paying close attention to the expression on his face.
There was a flash of the familiar blue in his eyes. “I was furious that you had probably been spreading tales about the Phantom to Williams—you must have told him something fantastic or he never would have helped you get into those records—but again I apologize for my anger. You had Michael’s note and, well, I can see why you did what you did, but that doesn’t make it right.” His voice sounded strained and he seemed ill at ease, remaining behind the couch while shifting his weight from one leg to another. If any of this behavior was because he had something to hide, I really couldn’t tell. For all I knew, it could mean he had to take a leak.
“You still don’t accept,” I persisted, “that the Phantom is responsible for the infections.”
He shook his head. “No, I don’t accept that notion at all.” He took a deep breath and said, “Look, Earl, there’s no point in our battling over this. We’re on the same side. Won’t you please accept my apology for being so angry with you about the archives and let it go at that?”
“I’d like nothing better. Cam, except you haven’t explained a thing.”
He sighed, then moved around in front of the couch, and sat in the low seat he’d initially given me. “At least sit down, Earl. We have to talk about Janet. If you can’t accept my apology, do you want me to withdraw from her case? I can suggest a number of excellent members on my staff who could take care of her, but I still would prefer she remain under my--”
“Before we talk about Janet, answer me this.” I was determined not to let him shift the topic away from the Phantom. “Do you think those people whose charts I saw last night were attacked or not?” I remained standing, looking down on him.
He grimaced once more, then answered, “Yes, I believe someone was doing something to those individuals, but that has nothing to do—”
“And do you think those individuals were chosen because they’d been cruel
to patients?”
He swallowed.” Really, there’s no point in this—”
“Answer me, damn it!”
He looked up and seemed to study me. “Yes,” he said after a few seconds. Then he added, “All those individuals had questionable reputations for their work with patients. None of them ever had anything proven against them, but they shared a tendency to generate a lot of complaints from people in their care, just as Janet told you.”
“So someone was punishing the punishers?”
“Yes,” he admitted, after a second’s hesitation.
The silence between us then was total. I felt a wave of exhilaration, like I’d gained yet another step on that two-year-old trail, then wondered if I’d bullied him into acknowledging the existence of the Phantom back then, or had he his own reason for suddenly leveling with me, at least about that? His expression was neutral, telling me nothing.
I kept pressing. “How can you admit there was a Phantom yet not see that Phyllis Sanders and those two other nurses, so Janet tells me, were exactly the kind of punishers he was singling out two years ago?”
His eyebrows arched at the mention of the other nurses. He sighed in exasperation. “I knew Janet would tell you all about Brown, just as she told me about the trouble her patients had with Sanders and the OR nurse.”
Brown? Janet hadn’t told me anything more about Brown. Good God! I thought. Did he mean Brown was one of the Phantom’s Legionella victims. One had survived, I remembered, and if I recalled correctly, she’d been from ICU.
“But it isn’t relevant,” continued Cam, “because I keep coming back to the same starting point. There’s simply no way these bugs can be selectively made to infect individual people.” He slammed his fist into his palm as he made his point He was sitting more erect, becoming aggravated again.
As surprised as I was over his remark about Brown, I didn’t have time to dwell on it. As soon as I saw I was starting to shake him up, I honed my attack and went after him even more forcefully. “Because you say it can’t be done doesn’t mean somebody hasn’t found a way!”
“Christ, Garnet, I give up with you,” he exclaimed, pushing himself up off the couch and starting to pace in front of me. “You’re obsessed with this!”
“Then what did Michael find?”
He continued to stride back and forth, waving his arms. “I don’t know what he thought he found. Hell, he was sick, out of his head. Let me be blunt” He came to rest standing behind the couch again. “I know bacterial organisms better than you do,” he said pointing once more at me. “When I say it can’t be done, I mean that everything science has discovered about these organisms says it can’t be done.”
My anger surged. “Maybe you’d be a little less scientifically pure if it were someone from your family in ICU,” I shot back at him.
This time his eyes ignited into blue fire. “You have nothing to teach me about having someone in ICU,” he snapped. “I know a hell of a lot more about that kind of pain than I hope you ever will.” He leaned across the couch toward me again, but unlike before, he kept his hands gripped onto the cushions, like talons. I could see the tendons in his fingers straining into the material.
A loud knock on the door broke the silence as we glowered at each other. Before Cam could answer. Miller stuck his head into the room. “Doctor Mackie, I’m sorry to interrupt, but could I see you for a minute?” As he asked the question he was already in and closing the door behind him. I wondered if he’d heard us arguing.
He walked over to where we were standing, his surgical mask hanging loosely around his neck and his eyes showing the same tormented expression I’d seen earlier. He nodded toward me. “Excuse me. Dr. Garnet, I won’t take a minute.” To Cam he said, “The bacteriology technicians tell me you’re organizing a search of the asylum for Legionella. I’d consider it a personal favor if you’d let me be in charge of the team.”
Cam frowned. “But Harold, you should be on leave. I know you want to help, but in this case, follow my advice and go—”
“Please, Dr. Mackie. I’m better off at work than sitting at home thinking about her.”
I turned away and took a few steps over to the wooden hutch, ostensibly to find a place to toss my empty can of Coke, but I felt uncomfortable eavesdropping on his pain.
While he made his case for staying on the job, I tried to tune out the conversation a bit more by studying a collection of photos on top of the hutch. They were of a man and a boy doing various outdoor activities—skiing, hiking, canoeing—but over a period of years. While the man was consistently an older version of Cam, the boy aged through a series of shots from being a child to becoming Cam as a young man. There were no recent pictures.
“You’re sure, Harold?” I heard Cam ask from behind me, his voice sounding full of doubt.
“Believe me, all I want is a chance to find out how she got infected,” Miller answered forcefully. “By the way, who thought of searching the asylum?”
Without hesitation Cam said, “Why, Dr. Garnet here had something to do with that suggestion. I really missed the boat not thinking of it myself. Maybe he also has some advice about what you should be looking for in there?”
He hadn’t sounded sarcastic. When I turned to face him he stared at me rather impassively. There was no longer anger in his eyes. If anything, he looked sad. He added, “In fact, maybe he’d like to do the search with you.”
I nearly stopped breathing. “Pardon?” was all I could say, not believing what I’d heard. I studied Cam’s face again for some hint that he was toying with me, but his steady gaze revealed nothing but that strange funereal stare.
Miller on the other hand, looked astounded. “Dr. Mackie, with all due respect, it’s dirty work in there, getting water samples from rusty pipes and crawling around some of the spaces we’ll have to go through—”
“Of course, that’s up to Dr. Garnet,” said Cam, not taking his eyes off me.
What was Cam doing, proving he had nothing to hide or daring me to come and find it, sure that his cloak of secrecy could withstand even my scrutiny? But if he was so secure with his ability to escape detection, why had he been so upset about my going through the files? He never would have aroused my suspicions if he hadn’t made such a big fuss in the first place. Once more I studied him.
“What about it. Earl?” he prodded, his expression still neutral and indecipherable, except for his somber-looking eyes. “Would that make you feel better about Janet—pursuing what infected her?”
I didn’t know what to say. “All right” was all I managed to answer. My insides were in turmoil as I still tried to figure out what he was up to.
“Okay, Harold,” said Cam, turning to his protégé and putting his hand on the young man’s shoulder. “I know you’ll do the most thorough job possible, though personally I think you’re pushing yourself too hard right now.” He paused, then very softly added, “Maybe it’s fitting that you and Dr. Garnet hunt down the organism that took your mother.”
Harold still appeared stunned at having me thrust on him. At first he didn’t say anything, looking from Cam over to me.
“Harold?” repeated Cam.
“Yes!” replied Harold with a start, seeming to snap out of whatever he was thinking. “You’re right. Maybe it is fitting.”
Cam asked, “When do you think you’ll start?”
Miller was suddenly all business. “We’ll have to coordinate with someone from the engineering department We’ll need plumbers, diagrams of the water system, extension cords and lights—I don’t know what all. Also, our own day shift is strained to the limit with screening everyone in the hospital. I thought we could ask some of our people to work a double shift and go into the asylum during evenings.”
Cam nodded his approval, then asked him, “Can you be ready by this evening?”
“I don’t know. I’ve personally got another hour’s worth of screening scheduled, but I could start organizing a team right after that’s finished. I sup
pose it’s possible we could get started tonight.”
Cam turned to me. “Will you be around. Earl?”
“Sure,” I answered, unable to believe I was volunteering to spend another night in that hideous place. Harold continued to look unenthusiasdc about the prospect of baby-sitting me, but he took my phone numbers and told me he’d call at the end of the day when he knew what time we’d start. He then thanked Cam and left.
Cam stared at the closed door for a few seconds. “How do you think he’s handling it?” he asked, turning toward me.
Before answering, I noticed he was frowning and seemed much more troubled than he’d revealed while Miller was with us in the room. “I don’t know,” I answered tentatively. “Grief is such an individual thing. He seems driven to work during what should be his period of mourning for her.”
Cam grimaced. “Driven—that’s the word for it. The poor boy’s acting like he’s determined to track down the infection that killed his mother by himself. I swear he’s cultured more people here during the screenings than any other technician on staff at UH. He even wanted to lead the team we sent to check out his home where his mother lived with him, but I insisted on doing that job myself.” Cam shook his head. “I just hope I’m doing the right thing in letting him take on so much.” The gentleness in his voice was almost fatherly.
Feeling especially sheepish after our fight, I said, “Uh, Cam, I appreciate your having spoken to him on my behalf. He met me on my way in to see Janet. It seems he’s not blaming me so much anymore, thanks to you.”
Cam seemed pleased. “Good! It’s important he get beyond that.”
“You also made quite a gesture, including me in the search. I appreciate—”
“I did that for Janet’s sake,” he said with a dismissive flick of his hand. “The one good thing that came out of your going to Williams was that he saw what I’d missed. His suggestion about checking the water outlets in the asylum was brilliant. After Death Rounds I went immediately to our CEO and got him to authorize it. That’s what I was doing before I learned Janet was admitted and saw you in ICU. Maybe now you’ll be convinced I didn’t oppose the search, only your crazy stories.”
Death Rounds Page 26