TR picked up the pace and moved as far to the left of the sidewalk as he could. Just a few more steps . . . Keep facing that way, Wayne.
Suddenly, Wayne turned and looked right at him.
“Mr. Collins, I see you’re leaving,” TR said brightly.
“There’s no need for me to be here. As you can see . . . as everybody can see, I’m fine. I probably should be dead by now, but I’m not. And I’m sick of this place.”
“Sometimes I feel the same way.”
“Two more people died from the virus,” Wayne said.
“That’s what I heard. Very confusing.”
“Do you think it’s my fault? The virus mutated in me. If someone else had received the liver I got, it might not have changed and become lethal.”
“No court in the world would buy that. You had no control over the virus. It was purely a matter of biology. We can only be responsible for events whose outcome we can influence and whose consequences are fully known to us. This situation in no way meets those conditions.”
With his attention on TR, Wayne didn’t see the cab approaching.
“That’s a generous view,” Wayne said.
The cab pulled to a stop in front of him, and the driver got out. “Either of you Wayne Collins?”
Wayne signaled the cabbie with his hand, then extended it to TR. “Thanks for the pep talk.”
They shook hands, and Wayne threw his suitcase in the cab’s backseat. He climbed in after it, and the cab pulled away.
Watching it leave, TR thought back to what Wayne had said about being fine but thinking he probably should be dead. That was the truth. No way he should still be walking around. That was as disturbing to TR as being forced to articulate all that crap about blame.
Chapter 19
“WHERE WE GOIN’?” the cabbie asked.
Wayne recited his address and lapsed into thought. More deaths. From the virus that had mutated in his body. Why? What was there about him that brought misfortune and misery to everyone he had anything to do with? And the last two, he’d never met them, never even seen them, and they were dead. He’d been wrong. His life hadn’t been spared so he could put his balance sheet in order. Whatever had led him to all those mistakes in the past had saved the biggest screw-up for last.
Ahead on the left, Wayne saw a sign that suddenly made his palms sweat and his mouth go as dry as a Dead Sea Scroll. “Cabbie, pull in at that liquor store.”
A few seconds later, with Wayne almost ready to jump out with the cab still moving, they pulled into the parking lot.
“I’ll just be a minute.”
Wayne got out and went inside, where death and pleasure were displayed in thousands of colors and shapes. He looked for the old familiar: Bombay Sapphire gin in that beautiful topaz-blue bottle. He found it among the clamor with the precision of a bloodhound and hurried to its shelf, where he took a liter bottle in each hand and carried them to the cashier.
Back in the cab, as they set out once more for his apartment, Wayne sat with the bagged bottles in his lap, holding them against him, the contact warming him. Gin was Wayne’s escape hatch. Plan A was to stay sober. Bombay gin had always been plan B. He’d been warned at AA to avoid the big four that might kick off plan B. He should never let himself be hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. Well, at least he wasn’t hungry.
When he reached his apartment, he went inside, threw his little suitcase down, and took both bottles out of their paper sleeves. He put the bottles on the TV and sat down in front of them, a follower paying homage to his deity.
ALL THE WAY home, Chris regretted that she hadn’t done whatever was necessary to keep her father in the hospital. It appeared that when the virus killed, the interval between noticeable hair loss and the onset of blindness and fatal heart arrhythmia was only a matter of hours. So even though Wayne presently had no symptoms, it could all happen fast. But not so quickly that he couldn’t get to the hospital in time. If he was thinking clearly. He seemed so upset over the latest deaths. And that could mean . . .
Damn it.
She hurried down the hall, unlocked her apartment, and went directly to the phone, where, fearing that he might be about to go on a drinking binge, she punched in Wayne’s number.
THE PHONE BEGAN to ring, but Wayne had no interest in anything but the blue bottles and the contents that would take all the pain away. He got out of his chair and went into the apartment’s kitchenette, where he filled a glass with ice from the freezer of his little refrigerator. He carried the glass back to the other room and set it on the TV. With trembling hands, he broke the seal on one of the gin bottles, spun off the cap, and slowly poured the gin onto the ice, mesmerized by its sensuous beauty as it snaked over the cubes.
CHRIS HAD LOST count of how many times Wayne’s phone had rung, but she stayed on the line hoping that if he was home and just didn’t want to be bothered, he might answer anyway just to stop the noise.
Finally, believing that he probably wasn’t home, she gave up.
She’d been running on adrenaline since she’d rescued Michael from those reporters, and it was time now to get off it. A few minutes of meditation put her feet back on the ground, but it didn’t keep her from thinking about the backup respirator.
Then a darker consideration, that no one had yet voiced, rolled into view. The drugs they could use to combat vascular spasm, cardiac arrhythmia, and inflammation simply treated the symptoms of viral infection, not the cause. If there were any new cases, could they really be cured? Or would they be as intractable as some of those tropical viruses like Ebola? It was a possibility too horrible to contemplate.
Maybe getting drunk wasn’t such a bad idea.
She went to the kitchen and located the gin she and Wayne had argued about and that he’d left there when he moved out. She didn’t know why she’d kept it, but was glad now she had. She opened the bottle and poured a little in a glass. After pausing to smell the contents, she tried it.
It felt like Drano going down, and when it hit her stomach, it set off an inferno that made her face flush. And her mouth and tongue were now numb. Oh yeah, this is great, she thought. She poured the rest of the bottle into the sink.
If only she’d noticed that the backup had no filters in it.
Now a part of her tried to lay the blame off on Wayne. If he hadn’t come to her for help, she wouldn’t be in this mess. But instead of helping, that train of thought just reminded her to also feel guilty about letting him leave the hospital.
How bad was it going to get? Would a hundred people die? Two hundred?
How did that damned virus get into the two new cases? Maybe those weren’t her fault. If it wasn’t a respirator problem, maybe she could get them off her conscience. If she could also forget that she’d set the whole thing in motion by the first call to Michael.
With the twin rats of guilt and worry chewing on her, she decided that if she couldn’t thwart them by getting drunk, sleep might do it. Because she suffered from occasional bouts of insomnia, she kept a bottle of melatonin on hand. She didn’t like taking it, but tonight, knowing that she’d need help, she took one before slipping under the covers and, within the hour, found temporary relief from the mess her life had become.
WAYNE’S GIN ON the rocks sat on the TV as yet unsampled. He was back in his chair staring at it, sliding his two AA poker chips around in his right hand, rasping them against each other. He’d been given the traditional white chip at his first meeting. His sponsor, Asa Gray, had handed him the red one for ninety days’ sobriety just before Wayne had left Kansas City to come to Atlanta. Fifteen minutes earlier, when he’d been about to take that first drink after returning to his apartment, he’d heard Asa’s gravelly voice.
“Okay, bud, you been clean for ninety days. So that entitles you to this red chip. But you ain’t accomplished shit. Ninety da
ys is nothing. It’s a long burp. You’re still just one drink away from disaster.” He had held the chip in front of Wayne’s face and wiggled it. “It’s red because it’s a danger chip. You’re feeling smug and satisfied, like you got this thing whipped. But you ain’t. It’s still got you by the short hairs, and if you don’t watch yourself every minute of every day, you’ll be flat on your ass, drunk in some alley. Then you get another white chip. And I’m gonna give it to you.”
Asa reached in his pocket. “It’s already got your name on it. See, here it is.” He showed Wayne a white chip with Wayne Collins scrawled on it with a black marker. “White means you’re back where you started—no progress, no pride, no guts.”
Asa Gray . . . God, how Wayne hated that SOB. The way he squinted at you when he was ragging on you, that voice, like transmission gears being stripped. Where was the hug for ninety days of denial, the compliments, the encouragement?
Asa Gray . . . It was the thought of having to take a white chip from him that a few minutes ago had stopped the gin bottle a few degrees short of starting Wayne down that old road. But now the gin was reasoning with him. You don’t ever have to see Asa Gray again, it said. He can only give you the chip if you let him. Or if you admit to what you did. You can always lie. You’ve had plenty of practice.
But then Wayne thought of Chris. By entering the transplant program, he’d promised her he’d stay sober, gave her his word. So what? the gin said. She isn’t around. You can get drunk tonight, alone here in your apartment, and no one would ever know.
But he’d know.
Chris.
He did love her. But she wouldn’t believe him. Still didn’t trust him. This was his last chance with her. But people had died because of him. It had all gone wrong. Why? He’d been so sure the transplant was meant as a reprieve. Could there be something about all this he didn’t see, something positive?
He looked at the beautiful blue bottles, and the gin assured him he saw it all clearly.
CHRIS WOKE FEELING even lower than the night before, and her first thoughts went to the Monteagle ER and the medical examiner’s office, so that even before she got dressed, she had the ER on the phone.
Because there had been a shift change during the night, it took a while for the new crew to understand what she was talking about, but eventually, they coughed up the information that no one had been admitted in the last eight hours for possible viral-induced inflammatory disease.
Harboring some doubt about the accuracy of their report, Chris then called the ME’s office, where, of course, Hugh Monroe wasn’t in yet, and the skeleton crew couldn’t tell her anything about new arrivals. Needing to get out in the world and confront whatever was waiting for her, she dressed quickly, started some coffee, and picked up the morning paper from the hall.
And there it was, front-page headline, above the fold: Killer Disease Grips Atlanta.
The story was fairly accurate but was written in a sensationalizing manner that made her feel even worse, especially when she was mentioned by name as the transplant recipient’s daughter. A boxed sidebar carried the warning she’d wanted publicized, but in the context of the accompanying story, it just made the situation sound even more dangerous for the city’s general population. Now, absolutely dreading this day, she gulped down half a cup of coffee and headed for her car.
When the elevator reached the floor below hers, the doors opened for an older couple that had lived in the building longer than she had and whom she often encountered in the mornings. Seeing her, they stepped back and waved her on, apparently afraid she was infectious.
Subsequently, as she left the apartment building, a blue van came speeding down the circular drive that ran past the front door. It stopped abruptly, and people started piling out as if it was about to explode.
A well-dressed man with a big mustache came toward her as though the mike in his hand was some kind of radiation detector and she was fresh in from Chernobyl. “Dr. Collins, may I speak to you for a moment?”
Jesus, it was Jeffrey Latoria, from CBS. Close behind him were two cameramen, who deployed themselves on each side of him.
“Sorry, but I’m very busy today,” she said, taking off at a quick pace.
Undeterred, Latoria pursued her. “Doctor, please . . . We’d like your view on the danger this city faces from the transplant virus in the liver given to your father.”
Chris kept walking.
“Give us some idea of how bad you expect this epidemic to be.”
Chris realized that if she didn’t talk to him, it would appear that she knew the situation was terrible. It would have been a good opportunity to calm people, if she had anything optimistic to say. But she still didn’t know the extent of the problem. So all she could do was leap into her car like a fugitive embezzler and take off, which she did.
Not in the mood now to see anyone associated with her practice, Chris headed in the opposite direction. Without making a conscious decision to go there, she soon found herself in the parking lot of the Cabana Grove, her father’s apartment building, where she saw by the presence of his red pickup that he was probably there.
She’d seen the truck many times since he’d reappeared in her life, but for some reason, today, it brought back memories of that day when she’d spotted an earlier version through the hole in Mrs. Lipinski’s closet. Thinking about it, she began to feel silverfish crawling over her and remembered how she’d cried out for him to save her.
A Richter level ten shudder ran through her, and she brushed a ghostly silverfish from her neck. “Save me,” she muttered. “Why, he couldn’t even save himself.”
Now that she was here, she believed she’d come to find out if he’d gotten drunk last night. So as she got out of her car and made her way to the metal stairs leading to the second-floor units, she was afraid of what she was about to see.
At his door, she paused, wondering if this was really something she needed to know. Then, not at all sure she was doing the right thing, she knocked.
Prepared to see a red-eyed rumpled derelict, she was rocked by the neatly dressed normal Wayne that opened the door. “This is a surprise,” he said.
“May I come in?”
He stepped back, and she went inside, where she immediately saw the two bottles of gin on the TV.
He closed the door. “I’m not going back to the hospital, if that’s why you’re here.”
“I want to apologize for last night. When I told you about the two newest deaths, I wanted to hurt you.”
“Mission accomplished.”
“I called last night, afraid that I might have caused you to . . .” She gestured at the gin.
“I thought about it and nearly did. But in the end, I couldn’t. I still have things to do, and I can’t do them drunk.”
“Have you seen the paper?”
“Not yet.”
“The whole story was on TV last night, and it’s in the paper this morning. When I came out to get my car a half hour ago, Jeffrey Latoria from CBS jumped out of a van and wanted an interview.”
“What did you do?”
“I ran. I didn’t know what to say. I feel so bad and so responsible for what’s happened.”
“Why?”
“Mind if I sit down?”
He pulled the armchair where he’d fought the gin wars last night around so it faced the bed. When they were both sitting across from each other, Chris told him about the filter mix-up.
“I don’t see how that makes you responsible,” he said when she was finished. “You can’t do everything yourself. You spoke to that first nurse about the problem, and she told you it was being taken care of. You did what you were supposed to. Others didn’t. Why should they be exonerated? This is a heavy load that just can’t be carried by one person. If you want to point fingers, stick one in my chest. I’
m the one who nourished and brought that little bastard into existence.”
“Sorry, but you don’t get any points for that. The mutation and growth of the virus was nothing but a set of biochemical reactions over which you had no control. No ability to intervene, no blame.”
“I don’t agree with you, but I appreciate you saying it. I’m glad you came. It’s not the kind of happy family chat I imagined we might have, but I’ll take what I can get. Where do we go from here?”
“Maybe if we’re real lucky, the disease will have run its course. If not . . .”
“I mean about us.”
“I have no idea.” There was an awkward pause in the conversation, then Chris said, “If you hadn’t needed a liver, would you have ever come to find me?”
“I don’t know. I may have been too afraid of facing you.”
“And yet you say you care for me?”
“My lack of courage is no argument against that.”
“You didn’t even come to Mom’s funeral.”
“I wasn’t aware she died until months later. Otherwise, I would have been there.”
“Unless you were too drunk to find your way.”
He nodded. “That would have delayed me. But a moment ago, when you were arguing that I shouldn’t feel responsible for the deaths of those five people, you were willing to absolve me because I lacked the intent to harm them. Can’t I get the same consideration for my actions toward you and your mother?”
“You’re twisting my words. I didn’t say you lacked intent to hurt those people, though I’m sure that’s true. Control was the issue. You had no ability to stop the virus from mutating. You weren’t forced to leave us. It was a choice, freely made. So you have to accept the consequences and the blame for how we struggled.”
“She could have remarried.”
“You’re forgetting the little detail that you were never divorced. Till the day she died, she believed you might come back. She loved you, you dope.”
The Judas Virus Page 17