The Judas Virus

by Don Donaldson

  Vamp meant vampire. “Did she do draws on either of those other patients?”

  “She was Gaynor’s vamp, but not that other woman.”

  “She never saw Lucy Cowles?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “Look again to be sure.”

  He returned to Lucy Cowles’s records, perused them, and shook his head. “Never.”

  “Could the records be wrong? Could the person who was assigned to Cowles have one day sent Pearl Ritchie in her place?”

  “What do you think, I’m gonna stand here and tell you we keep incorrect records?”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “You don’t believe me, ask Pearl. There she is.”

  Chris looked behind her and saw an overweight young woman, with a blood kit in one hand, come in and head for the swinging door to the lab.

  “Pearl, Dr. Collins would like to talk to you.”

  The woman walked over to where Chris stood.

  “Pearl, in the last two weeks, do you remember doing a draw on a patient named Lucy Cowles?”

  Pearl’s gray eyes rolled upward as she mulled the name over. “No.”

  “She wouldn’t have been one of your regular patients. You would have seen her as a favor to . . .” Chris looked at the fellow helping her.

  “Dawn,” he said.

  “No, I haven’t covered for Dawn or anybody in months. And I might not ever do it again, considering how they’re always too busy to help me.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Did I sound uncertain? I’m sure.”

  When Chris stepped from the hospital a few minutes after talking with Pearl Ritchie, she emerged slowly, making sure there were no TV crews hanging around. She made a clean escape to her car, then sat thinking about her visit to the heme lab. If Casoli had seen the two patients who’d died, it would have suggested that she had somehow become a carrier even though she showed no evidence of having been infected herself. But her one visit to Gaynor was before the transplant, and she’d never seen Cowles. Pearl Ritchie wasn’t there the night Wayne was coughing, but she was his usual vamp. So maybe she became a carrier from handling his blood. And she did see Dan Gaynor after the transplant. But not Lucy Cowles. And if Ritchie was a carrier, why hadn’t any of her other patients become infected and died?

  With discordant possibilities tossing around in her head like junk in a Venetian canal, she started her car and drove to the parking lot exit, where she had to decide on a destination.

  Her practice office?

  Definitely not.

  Home?

  To do what? The laundry?

  Noting for the first time that it was a fine spring day, she realized she’d been so involved with her work and the transplant situation she hadn’t bought any seasonal plants for her little high-rise woodland.

  An hour later, she was on the elevator of her apartment building hitting the up button with her elbow because both hands were occupied with a flat of mixed bedding plants. She couldn’t open her apartment door with her elbow, so at that point she had to set the flat down. When the plants were safely out on her balcony, she returned to her car for the other things she’d bought.

  She loved almost everything about her apartment, but trying to garden ten floors from street level was not one of them. Someday, she’d buy a house with some land, where she could wash her own car and not have to lug potting soil up in an elevator with people staring at her.

  She spent the next ninety minutes planting impatiens, petunias, celosia, and begonias in the big decorative pots she used for annuals. When everything was fertilized and the pots arranged so they’d get the correct amount of sun, she changed out of her gardening clothes, then returned to the balcony to admire her work. Coming back inside, she was suddenly aware of how cold and empty her apartment felt. For as long as she’d lived there, she’d had almost more professional work than she could handle, so she was always too tired and preoccupied to reflect on much else. Now, with no patients to think about, she realized how barren her personal life was.

  She thought about the week when Wayne had stayed with her. At first it had been awkward, but then, when she’d become more used to him, it wasn’t so bad . . . to have him there when she’d come home, busy making dinner . . . like a family.

  She shivered and went to find a sweater.

  Sorting through the French armoire she’d bought at an estate sale for a fraction of its value, her thoughts went back to lunch that afternoon. She should have agreed to meet Michael tonight.

  She remembered their kiss on Stone Mountain, how good it felt.

  “Do something you’ve never done before,” Victor had said. She imagined herself and Michael in her bed, naked, pressed against each other . . . Stone Mountain times ten, times a hundred. Her face flushed, and she could hear her heart in her ears.

  Thump thump. Thump thump. Call him. Call him.

  She pulled on a sweater and looked at the phone.

  Thump thump. Thump thump. Call him. Call him.

  She moved slowly to the phone and stood beside it, her hands folded together in front of her, lest one betray her and reach for the receiver.

  Call him. Call him.

  She picked up the receiver and punched in the first three digits of Michael’s pager. Then her finger hit the disconnect.

  She stood there a moment, immobile.

  Her finger returned to the keypad and traveled over it.

  One ring . . . two . . . an answer . . .

  “Dr. Monroe, please.”

  After a short wait, the ME came on the line.

  “This is Chris Collins again.”

  “Nothing new,” he said, knowing why she’d called. “I still have your pager number. I’ll call you if there’s another one.”

  “Thanks. Sorry for not waiting.”

  She followed that call with one to the Monteagle ER and received the same news.

  She hung up and went back to the kitchen. There, she poured herself a cup of coffee and carried it to where she’d put the copy of Billy Runyan Wayne had given her.

  She took the book to a comfortable chair, opened it, and read the inscription Wayne had ostensibly written there years ago.

  Whatever else you might think of me, please believe that I do love you.

  As though she might now find the insights into Wayne’s mind that had eluded her all the other times she’d read the story, she started on it again.

  At five o’clock, with eighty pages to go, she put the book aside and turned on the national news. It led off with the transplant story, Jeffrey Latoria as the on-site correspondent. After he had laid out the bones of what had taken place, including her dual involvement, he said, “An hour ago I spoke with the recipient of the pig liver, Mr. Wayne Collins.”

  Chris stiffened in her chair as the live feed faded to tape.

  And there was her father, beside his red truck.

  “Mr. Collins, how does it feel to be the world’s first recipient of a pig liver?”

  “Of course I’m grateful. It saved my life. I just wish it hadn’t come at the price it did.”

  “Are you referring to the people who died?”

  “Right now, I can’t see how those lives for mine is a fair trade. And I want their families to know that I’m so sorry.”

  “In your opinion, could those deaths have been avoided?”

  Recognizing this as a loaded question, Chris tensed, hoping Wayne could handle it.

  He thought about it a moment and said, “Mistakes were made.”

  “Wrong answer,” Chris muttered.

  “Could you expand on that?”

  “Say no,” Chris muttered again. “Don’t play his game.”

  “I’d rather not,” Wayne said.
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  “No,” Chris muttered, banging the arm of her chair in irritation. He’d made the right decision refusing to say any more, but the way he’d phrased it sounded so clandestine it was bound to stimulate interest in the details of how this terrible thing had happened. And when that became known, the spotlight would swing her way.

  “I’m sorry, I have to go now,” Wayne said, turning and opening the door of his truck.

  “Mr. Collins, how does your daughter feel about the situation?”

  Wayne turned to the camera, and Chris clutched the arms of her chair, hoping he wouldn’t say anything stupid. “You’ll have to ask her about that.”

  Her fingers uncurled in relief.

  The camera switched to Latoria. “And that’s the situation here in Atlanta.”

  The network anchor returned. “Fearing for the safety of their members, the Southeastern Association of Independent Realtors has canceled their annual convention, which was to be held next week in Atlanta. With the death toll at five, Atlantans are sleeping uneasily tonight.” The anchor turned to face a different camera. “In the Middle East today . . .”

  Chris got up and switched off the set.

  She considered calling her father and telling him how dumb it had been to let himself be interviewed, and how he’d compromised her privacy by telling the world mistakes had been made. But in his defense, it wasn’t easy to be rude and just walk away from someone trying to speak to you. With the cameras on him, he had to have been nervous and talking without any time to think. Who knows what she might have said under those circumstances? No, it wouldn’t be fair to criticize him.

  MILES AWAY, ON the administrative floor of Monteagle Hospital, John Scott was on the phone.

  “Governor, as I explained to the state health department, there’s no need to bring in the CDC.”

  Scott was trying hard to control his temper. The hospital’s reputation was already muddied, and there was no way he was going to let the CDC troop through the halls snooping in every corner, making his operation look totally inept.

  “We’ve got one of the best virologists in the world as well as a former EIS officer from the CDC working on the problem. We don’t need any help. In fact, it’s been over twenty-four hours, and we’ve had no new cases. So it looks like the thing may have burnt itself out . . . Yes, of course, it’s too early to know that for sure. I do realize the pressure you’re under, but give us seventy-two hours to work on it. If there are any more new cases, we can talk again.

  “Governor, this is a situation that calls for mature judgment. And I’ve always believed that was your great strength. It’s why I contributed so generously to your last campaign . . . I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. Please just erase it from your memory . . .

  “Right, seventy-two hours . . . Yes, Governor . . . Well, I certainly appreciate that. Thank you. Feel free to call me anytime. Yes, sir . . . Have a nice night and don’t worry. We’re on it.”

  As Scott hung up, he was very glad he hadn’t followed through with his earlier inclination to pillory Chris Collins.

  DESPITE TAKING A melatonin, no Atlantan slept more poorly that night than Chris. Everything kept running through her head in a disturbing collage that made her grind her teeth. Prominently featured in this cerebral extravaganza were the puzzles associated with the five deaths. Her father alive, all the others carrying the virus dead. The two patients . . . infected like the nurses, but how? Fingertips whirled through her brain, some with white lunulas, some gray. Pearl Ritchie, Karen Casoli . . . Karen Ritchie, Pearl Kasoli . . .

  Finally it was morning. She sat up and brushed at her hair with her fingers, feeling like an intern just finishing a thirty-six-hour shift. She couldn’t go through another night like that. But how could she avoid it?

  It was that damned virus, moving around in unknown ways, affecting people differently. Until she understood all of that better, she’d never be able to sleep.

  She sat on the edge of the bed, at a loss for what to do. Then the answer came to her.

  Sam Fairborn.

  Chapter 21

  CHRIS PULLED INTO the Fairborns’ dirt driveway and got out of her car.

  Sam Fairborn had retired from the CDC even before she had arrived there for her training as an EIS officer. But she’d heard about him regularly because he was a legend among the staff. He’d earned a lot of that reputation during the outbreak of Sudan encephalitis in Seattle that killed twenty-eight people during the late fifties. Prior to that, the disease was unknown in the US, so no one believed him at first when he identified it. Through that kind of insight and open-minded thinking, he’d played a major role for decades in every significant investigation the CDC had undertaken. When everyone else was stumped, Fairborn, it seemed, had the answer.

  Chris had learned where he lived from one of his friends at the CDC. But her contact didn’t know his phone number; nor could Chris get it from information. So she had just come out here in hopes he was home.

  She’d driven twenty miles from Atlanta on the interstate and gone another three on a narrow country lane, until she’d seen his name on a mailbox. She now discovered that he lived in a small white stucco cottage covered in yellow roses that were blooming so prolifically she paused at the foot of the brick walkway to the house to admire them. Then, thinking that she’d better announce herself, she walked to the front door and rang the bell.

  It was answered by a lovely older woman with high cheekbones and her pure white hair swept up into a stylish coiffure. She was wearing an elegant black knit duster over a sheer gray knit dress, pearls at her ears and throat. Looking like that, Chris thought she was apparently expecting someone or about to go out.

  “I’m sorry to have come without calling first, but I couldn’t find your number. I’m Dr. Chris Collins. I once worked at the CDC. I’ve never met your husband, but I’d like to talk to him about some puzzling features of a new virus.”

  “Was that your father on the news two nights ago?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Chris half expected the door to be slammed shut, but instead the woman said, “Come in.”

  Chris stepped into a room with exposed rough-hewn beams that would have made the place oppressive were it not for the decor, which was bright and cheery, with many layers of interest, and had that crowded eclectic look that was difficult to clean but pleases the eye.

  “I’m Ann Fairborn.” She offered her hand, and Chris shook it. “Sam’s working in the backyard. I’ll show you the way.”

  Chris followed her to a study with the same beams and professional decor and through a pair of French doors into a modest-sized garden enclosed by walls of old brick. Along the wall on each side, a deep border of summer-flowering perennials was coming on strong behind the deep green of peonies heavy with buds. In front of the peonies, tulips were just fading, their petals falling away, so there were gaps in the blooms.

  “He’s back here,” Mrs. Fairborn said, leading the way to a stucco outbuilding in the rear of the garden.

  They found Sam Fairborn standing at a potting table behind the outbuilding, a row of clay pots to his right on the table, several bags of caladium bulbs to his left, their identifying labels still on them.

  “Sam, this is Dr. Collins. That man who got the pig liver is her father. She’d like to talk to you.”

  Chris was shocked at Sam Fairborn’s appearance. With his lovely wife and charming home, she was expecting Mr. Fezziwig from A Christmas Carol. But Fairborn looked like a man who’d stepped out of one of those old torn paintings you see in antique shops. What was left of his thin hair was pure gray. But his eyebrows and his mustache and goatee were coarse and black. Both eyebrows extended well above the upper rim of his glasses, but the left one in particular seemed to be trying to reforest his scalp. His eyes were hooded with suspicion, the right distinctly more than th
e left. She waited for him to speak, but his mouth remained frozen in a drooping arc of displeasure.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t call ahead, but I couldn’t find your number.”

  “That’s why it’s unlisted,” Fairborn growled. “Who told you where I live?”

  Not wanting to get that person in trouble, Chris said, “A mutual friend.”

  “I don’t have any friends.”

  “Acquaintance, then.”

  “Imprecision in speech leads to fuzzy thinking.” His big hand reached for a bag of caladium bulbs, and he ripped it open.

  “Dr. Collins, would you like something to drink?” Mrs. Fairborn asked. “We have tea, coffee, and diet cola . . . not a common brand, but one Sam likes.”

  “No need for that,” Sam said. “She’s not staying.”

  “No, thanks,” Chris said.

  Ann Fairborn put her hand on Chris’s arm. “I’ll just leave you two to talk then.” Her smile encouraged Chris to remain there. She waited for Sam to ask her what she wanted, but he just kept working.

  “I’d like to talk to you about the pig liver transplant initiative at Monteagle Hospital.”

  “Damned irresponsible program if you ask me.” He looked at Chris and shook a caladium bulb at her. “To proceed with a transplant even when you know ahead of time that all pig cells contain a retrovirus is a recipe for disaster.” He turned back to his work, pulled a clay pot toward him, and plunged the bulb into the waiting soil.

  “It’s certainly been a disaster, there’s no debating that. But there are some features of what’s been happening that don’t make sense. As the infectious disease member of the team, I feel very responsible for what’s occurred.”

  Fairborn looked at her. “Was it your idea to start the program?”

  “No.”

  “Not your fault then.” He dug in the bag for more bulbs.

  “Certain events took place that make me feel I could have prevented the spread of the virus.”

  “I’m not a psychiatrist.”

  “I don’t need a psychiatrist.”