by Ross Pennie
She gave him her number, and they shook hands, colleague to colleague. Miss Sharma smiled and thanked him several times for his invaluable assistance without seeming to notice the sweat trickling from his brow.
As he watched her walk away, his mouth felt as foul as the floor of a henhouse. Yesterday, he had reviewed his wife’s invoices for the previous month. Jamila’s parents were paying off their daughter’s account at the rate of five dollars per week. It would take them six months to settle Leila’s one-hundred-twenty-dollar fee. Jamila had spent four one-hour sessions with Leila within Miss Sharma’s three-week window. If Hosam included them in his report of Jamila’s movements, Leila’s work would be exposed directly to the health department. And . . .
Leila would be ordered to halt her vital endeavours.
The money they had invested in her equipment would be lost, including the paltry amount the greedy pawnbroker had given them for her ring.
Leila would go to jail.
The Church People would evict them from their townhouse.
He would never save enough money to sit his re-certification exams.
He would be stuck doing low tapers and high fades until he was an old man.
Merde!
Chapter 27
Natasha tossed her protective gear into the appropriate bins at Jamila’s door and pumped alcohol sanitizer onto her palms. Once the liquid had evaporated, she pumped out a second dollop, and then a third in case she’d missed a spot. Although she knew that no patients from the outbreak had transmitted the disease to any close contacts, she prayed the sanitizer was up to its germ-killing task and it had been okay not to wear a mask.
Still rubbing her hands, she walked over to the nursing station. There, she studied the whiteboard posted not-so-discreetly on the wall above a sink. Among the list of twelve patients currently admitted to the unit, she recognized the names of four: Jamila and the three others whom polio had paralyzed from the neck down — Blessica Velasquez the nanny, Barry Novak the retired labourer, and Lewis Feldman the laid-off menswear salesman. Like Jamila, the others had probably made recent visits to Virgil or Niagara-on-the-Lake. But Natasha knew she had to be certain about their movements. A shudder crossed her shoulders at the idea that any of them had picked up their Zika infection in another locale. A second focus of Zika-infected Aedes mosquitoes spreading the disease within easy visiting distance of Hamilton was too scary to contemplate.
She took note of the room numbers of her polio cases and set off to interview their relatives at the bedsides. She was soon disappointed to find that none of the patients had visitors this early in the day. Most of the staff, however, were crowded into Lewis Feldman’s room. By the anxious looks on their faces and the flashing lights on Lewis’s monitor, the sixty-three-year-old menswear salesman was in major trouble. Two of the polio victims, Esi and Darryl, had succumbed last week to unexpected cardiac collapse. Hamish called it malignant myocarditis and explained that their heart muscles had turned to mush overnight. Was the same untreatable complication happening to Lewis? And had something similar landed Muriel Simon on the cardiac ward?
Natasha’s cellphone chimed in her briefcase. She grabbed it and slipped into an unoccupied utility room.
“How can I help you, Ms. Sharma?” Ms. Bickerton said after they’d introduced themselves and Natasha had explained their mutual connection with Muriel Simon.
“I’m hoping you can give me some details about the trip your school made to the Niagara Peninsula in April.”
“What sort of details?”
“Let’s start with how many students participated?”
“You’ve caught me off-guard, I’m afraid. I don’t have the exact number at my fingertips. But what I can tell you is, we’ve sponsored just the one trip to Niagara so far this year.”
“Can you give me a ballpark figure, then? Are we talking a couple dozen teenagers or a couple of hundred?”
“Oh heavens! Our teachers and chaperones can handle only one busload of students on a single outing.”
“So, we’re talking fewer than fifty students?”
“I’d say closer to thirty-five.”
“And how many chaperones?”
“Usually two teachers and two volunteer parents or guardians.”
“I would be grateful for a list of all the participants. Names, addresses, and phone numbers, to start with. The students and the accompanying adults.”
“I must say, this is highly irregular. There are privacy issues involved here. I cannot provide any such information on my own. I’d need the permission of our principal and perhaps our school board’s legal department.” She paused and cleared her throat. “Who did you say you were with?”
“I work for Hamilton-Lakeshore Public Health Services. My boss is the medical officer of health for our region. He runs the Health Unit.”
“Does this person have a name?”
“Dr. Szabo.”
“Szabo? Why does that sound familiar?”
“Perhaps because —”
“Ah, you mean Dr. Zoltan Szabo, the fellow who’s been getting a lot of press these days concerning the epidemic everyone’s talking about?”
“That’s correct, Ms. Bickerton. And Dr. Szabo would appreciate all the cooperation you are able to give us.”
“So this is about those cases of . . . oh my God . . . of polio. And you think our kids are at risk because they went on that field trip? For heaven’s sake, why didn’t you tell me? And seriously . . . we should have been informed long before today.”
Natasha struggled to keep the smile in her voice. “We’re interested in the exact locations the students visited on that trip. Do you have a list of the stops the bus made and the places the students visited?”
“I’m not sure I have a record of every time the bus came to a stop, but I can tell you what was on the official schedule.”
“That sounds like a great start. Thank you.”
“I’m going to put you on speakerphone while I find my reading glasses and open up the field-trip file on my computer. I didn’t go on that trip this year, so I’ll have to read you what’s on the official itinerary.”
Ms. Bickerton tapped frenetically on her keyboard for at least a couple of minutes, then let out an exasperated sigh. “Stupid thing,” she said. “This new database is not being cooperative. The old one was much better.” She cursed again under her breath and typed another long sequence. Finally, she said, “Okay, here it is. April Excursion to Niagara-on-the-Lake and Environs. I hope you’ve got a pen and paper handy.”
With her notebook and briefcase balanced on the edge of the utility room’s massive stainless steel sink, Natasha fervently hoped she hadn’t ducked into the dirty room instead of the clean one. She sniffed the air and was thankful not to catch a whiff of dirty bedpans. “I’m ready.”
“Their first stop was Niagara-on-the-Lake. Specifically, Fort George. It’s at the far end of the town.”
“How long did they spend there?”
“This won’t tell me exactly, but the Fort’s educational program is always seventy-five minutes long. This year, it ran from, um . . . ten fifteen to eleven thirty.”
“Would all of the students have stayed around for that program?”
“The teachers would have insisted on it. Fort George is the major educational component of the day. Our kids always do a unit on the War of 1812.”
“I see. And then what did they visit, Ms. Bickerton?”
“Being high school students, they’re allowed time on their own until the next scheduled event. Whenever I’ve gone on this trip, the students have walked into town from the fort and hit the ice cream parlours and the fudge shop on the main street.”
“And after that bit of free time?”
“Let’s see . . . the schedule has the bus picking them up at the fudge shop at twelve fifteen and taking them down the r
oad to the village of Virgil.”
“What did they do there?”
“They’d have started with lunch at McDonald’s. It’s neither cultural nor educational, but the kids love it, and it’s affordable.”
“What did they do after they finished their Big Macs?”
“Give me a sec . . . Ah, this year it was Hardeman Hydroponics for a tour of their brand new tomato operation. And after that, Vander Zalm Nurseries for a look at the tulips. They must have a hundred varieties under one roof.”
“Both operations are in Virgil?”
“It’s a small village, so they’re not far apart.”
“I understand there are some medical cannabis growing facilities nearby. Were the students taken to any of those?”
Ms. Bickerton let out a chortle, and Natasha pictured a middle-aged woman with a generous bosom and a floral-print dress. “You must be kidding. The teachers would never have gotten them out of there.”
“Are you able to say if they made any other stops? Perhaps something not listed on the schedule?”
“Mrs. Todd, she’s the math teacher who accompanied the students and supervised the trip. She goes on this particular excursion every year. She would have typed up the obligatory trip summary and incident report.”
Incident report? Natasha didn’t like the sound of that. “Did something bad happen to one of the students?”
“No, no. Eleanor Todd is always precise. To her mathematical mind, even an unscheduled toilet stop is an incident.”
Natasha’s grade twelve math teacher had been like that — delightfully eccentric and reassuringly motherly. “I understand.”
“If something was added to the trip at the last minute, Eleanor would have recorded it.”
“And did she?”
“Let me read you what she wrote: The April 6 field trip went well with no hitches, hassles, or hold-ups. We kept close to the prescribed schedule. As usual, the ice cream, fudge, and burgers were the highlights. I suggest that Vander Zalm Nurseries be deleted from the itinerary in future years. The boys refused to be seen looking at flowers of any description, and the mosquitoes were frightful — little striped beasties buzzing everywhere.”
Natasha tapped her notebook with her ballpoint and said to herself: Thank you, Mrs. Todd. You’ve confirmed our Zika outbreak’s ground zero. But why, Natasha wondered, was it Vander Zalm Nurseries of Virgil, Ontario? What was special about that greenhouse? Its location close to New York State? Its microclimate? Its tulips? Its staff?
“I will need that detailed list of trip participants, Ms. Bickerton. How can we make that happen as soon as possible?”
“I think if you get your boss to fax a formal request to our principal, we can get you the information pretty quickly. Is tomorrow morning soon enough?”
Natasha looked at her watch. It was almost noon. Organizing Zika and Parvo-W blood testing for almost forty people was going to take some doing. The sooner she had that list the better. “This afternoon would be more helpful, if you can swing it.”
“Our kids are in danger, aren’t they?”
“At this point, we’re not sure whether or not they’re at risk of anything serious. But Dr. Szabo would like us to proceed with an abundance of caution. I’m sure you can understand that.”
“And you need to understand that many of our parents have limited resources and don’t speak English. This is going to throw our entire school into a panic.”
“I have no doubt that you and your colleagues are pros at culturally sensitive, multilingual communication. Dr. Szabo will probably call upon your expertise when it comes to contacting the families.”
Something clattered at Ms. Bickerton’s end of the phone. Natasha pictured the teacher’s heavy reading glasses dropping onto her keyboard. “Oh dear Lord. Oh Miss Sharma.” The poor woman was groaning as if someone had rushed in and punched her in the gut.
“What’s wrong? Ms. Bickerton, are you okay? Do you need me to call someone?”
“The bus driver on that trip, dear Barry Novak. He’s an institution at this school. Wonderful with the kids. I just remembered . . . he’s been in intensive care at Caledonian Medical Centre for about a week. I understand he’s on life support.”
Natasha flipped through her notebook. There he was — Barry Novak, polio case number six. But he was listed as a retired labourer, not a school’s occasional bus driver. “We had no idea he was a driver. He’s listed as a retired labourer.”
“He injured his back some years ago working construction and never got properly compensated. Now he drives part-time for the small charter company we use for our field trips. We’ve been presuming he had a heart attack. But if it’s your polio epidemic that’s got him . . . My God, we’d better get that list to you fast.”
Chapter 28
Hosam tucked Jamila’s smartphone into his jacket pocket and said goodbye to her parents. Fadi and Rima had been unable to help him fulfill Miss Sharma’s request to track their daughter’s movements. They knew little of her new life in Hamilton but lent Hosam her phone in the hope it would reveal something to help her desperate condition. Rima, teary-eyed, told Hosam she had watched Jamila type in the phone’s password and remembered it because it was Rima’s own birth date: 2281.
Hosam had the feeling that neither parent had benefitted from more than a year or two of schooling. As an auto mechanic, Fadi would not have needed to read and write. Rima struck Hosam as a traditional Syrian housewife who may have had street sense but no formal education. He was almost certain their literacy in written Arabic was limited to a few key phrases. Learning English was going to be a huge problem for them; so far, they had made no progress whatsoever. They admitted to being confused, disoriented, and embarrassed every time they ventured from their townhouse. Unable to decipher any of the English script on storefronts and road signs, they told Hosam they felt like imbeciles dropped onto an alien planet. Almost nothing made sense. Even the food in the supermarkets was strange to them, the labels on every package unintelligible. Being government-sponsored refugees, they had no group of private sponsors, like Hosam’s Church People, to help them find their way.
Instead of heading directly to the ICU’s exit door, Hosam decided to stroll clockwise around the unit and look surreptitiously through the glass walls of each of its fifteen private rooms. If Mo was still alive after last night’s debacle, he would probably have been admitted here. Hosam had never worked in an ICU this large, this orderly, or with this much sophisticated equipment. And Canadians were such a courteous bunch that it was a revelation to watch them at work. It amazed him how much they could accomplish without raising either their arms or their voices.
As he glanced into the fourth room along, he saw the occupant in the bed peering back at him through the window. He was a brown-skinned man in his late twenties with a mass of wildly dishevelled dark hair and a sneer of broken teeth. His bare chest and arms were connected to a dozen tubes and leads, and he was sitting with his gown bunched on his lap and his legs dangling over the side of the bed. By the dazed look on his face, he seemed to have no idea where he was. When the man raised his arms and started waving them frantically, Hosam could see that both of his hands were heavily bandaged in layers of white gauze and a great deal of tape.
Hosam stepped to the threshold of the open door and said, in Arabic, “Mo? Is that you, Mo?”
The man’s face lit up at being addressed in his mother tongue. “Where . . . ? Where in the blazing flames of hell am I?”
“In the intensive care unit.”
“A hospital?”
“Caledonian Medical Centre.”
“What . . . ? What happened? Did somebody shoot me?”
“Do you remember who I am?”
“Yeah. You’re the doctor . . . the big shot from Aleppo. Who doesn’t like getting his precious hands dirty.”
Hosam did not kno
w where that came from. He thought he had pulled his weight perfectly well during the church job on Friday night. He looked at his palms and shrugged. “Has anyone explained what happened to you last night?”
Mo shook his head and gestured to the intravenous device in his left forearm. “They poke me with goddamned needles. They take my blood. They ask me dumb questions.” He looked down at the cardiac leads attached to his hairy chest. “What are these stupid things?” His eyes followed the wires to the cardiac monitor flashing a host of graphs and numbers beside his bed. “My heart . . . it’s got something wrong with it? My chest hurts like hell, and I feel like shit.”
“I do not know all the details. But if you like, I can find them out and explain them to you. But you need to tell your nurse I am your official translator. They have rules here. They do not release information without permission.”
Mo rubbed his thigh with his heavily bandaged right hand then winced in discomfort. “Sure. Whatever.”
Hosam looked around. There was no sign on the door warning visitors away, and the staff seemed occupied elsewhere. He walked in and sat on the bed.
Mo winced as his weight shifted on the mattress. “Careful, I told you my chest was killing me.” He gestured toward the left side of his ribcage. “I feel like someone ran over me with their truck. Look at these bruises.”
Well, thought Hosam, a few cracked ribs were a small price to pay for a beating heart. “I was there last night,” he told Mo. “At the ball diamond.”
“What? Oh . . . you mean we pulled another of those wire jobs?”
“Not exactly. We barely got started.”
He told Mo the story of the high-voltage wire, the axe that got wet in the dew-covered grass, the thunderous discharge that stopped Mo’s heart, the long minutes of CPR, and the desperate final blow to Mo’s sternum that brought him around. He didn’t mention the nauseating smell of burning flesh.
“You saved my life?” he said, wincing again and examining the bruises.
Hosam nodded. “You could say that.”