“That tells me a lot.” Kristine jutted her chin characteristically forward as she smiled. “Should I guess what it means?”
“No. Let’s walk a little more.”
“Bailey and Tilly will like that.”
They strolled along the paved pathway from the building. Grace looked around to make sure there weren’t any people closeby before she said, “When I shifted two nights ago, Simon saw me.”
“What!” Kristine stopped so abruptly that Bailey yanked on his leash, then sat and regarded her reproachfully. She patted him as she spoke. “Oh, damn. What’ll we do now? Can we trust him to keep it to himself? Or has he contacted the media already? Did you sleep with him to bribe him, or should we—”
Grace knew her laugh was thin as she raised the hand not holding Tilly’s leash. “Not to worry,” she said. “He won’t say anything. Not if he wants me to keep his secret. I saw him shifting, too, around a week ago.”
Kristine looked as if she wanted to slide down to the pavement and sit for a while. “And you didn’t tell me before because…?”
“Because you didn’t need to know.” And because Grace had wanted to protect him before. Still did, but she was also practical and hoped he’d be convinced to work with Alpha Force, one way or another. “But I’ve learned he’s developed his own chemical formulation to modify the times of his shifts, and it has some aspects that could be useful to Alpha Force. I called Ft. Lukman. Drew, unsurprisingly, is busy, so he’s sending Patrick Worley in his place both to talk to Simon and to work with us on how best to stage our outbreak to tempt our thieves with test samples.”
“Wow. This is amazing. I’m at a loss for words.”
“That’s definitely amazing.” Grace smiled at her assistant. “And it’s all you need to know for now. Ready to go back?”
“Sure.” As they again traversed the sand-strewn path between the drought-tolerant vegetation, Kristine was silent for a while. As they reached the door again, the feel of air conditioning wafted out when someone walked out. When those people were outside hearing distance, Kristine said, “And I’m supposed to believe that Simon and you talked about shapeshifting all night?”
Grace laughed. “Believe what you want. I’m changing clothes now. Want to walk to the hospital with me in about half an hour?”
“Sure thing.”
When Grace and Kristine arrived at the Infectious Diseases Center on the second floor, the duty nurse, Jen, ran up to them. “Problem,” she said. “Glad you’re here. Some visitors came in to see one of our PTSD patients, and they were sick. All of them, apparently. The initial assessment is MRSA, but we won’t know for sure until lab tests are run. The patient they visited is showing symptoms already. A couple of the visitors are family members, and at least one had been in a local rehab facility and could have gotten sick there. We’ve admitted the visitors and have the patient and them in isolation, but this could be bad.”
Grace shared a look with Kristine. Damn right, this could be bad.
It also could be the way to trap the thieves.
The acronym MRSA stood for “methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.” In short, it was a type of staph infection particularly resistant to antibiotics. As far as Grace knew, the disease wasn’t considered a bioterrorist threat. But in the wrong hands, unchecked, the fluids that contained a particularly bad antibiotic-resistant disease could be used for nasty results.
It was a shame they had no viable suspicions about who the thieves were. But starting rumors around here about how dangerous the stuff was, how it could be a major threat in the wrong hands, might be the way to go. It might even be true.
Grace would call her superior officers soon and alert them. If Patrick was around today or tomorrow to talk about Simon, all the better. He could help supervise their game.
Simon appeared in the hallway beyond Jen then. The sight of him caused Grace’s temperature to simmer, but she kept her reactions in check. This was not the time to think about last night.
Simon hurried toward them. “Moe Scoles is down there.” He gestured toward the far end of the hall. “He and I gave our current patients their initial checkups of the day. Fortunately, none appeared to have additional symptoms, and standard sanitary practices have already been beefed up. Right now, you and I are assigned to the PTSD wing,” he said to Grace, “to check the remaining patients for any symptoms of MRSA. You okay with that?”
He looked deeply into her eyes. She read in his that, as professional as he was acting, he was genuinely concerned about her.
A pang of warmth surged through her. She smiled back, but grimly. “I’d better be.” It wasn’t like she could object even if she wanted to. This was a military hospital. She could wait for direct orders, but no need.
“I’ll go to the isolation unit to see if there’s anything I can do to help there,” Kristine said.
“Sounds good,” Grace responded. “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you to be careful.” Or to keep her eyes and ears open, she said silently with a look. Kristine gave a small nod and hurried off. “Let’s go,” Grace said to Simon.
He handed her a mask and donned one himself as they approached the psychiatric unit. When they entered, Grace made certain that the door locked behind them.
The last time she had been here, a lot of patients and nurses had been clustered together in a lounge to see Tilly do her tricks. Now, no one was visible in the hallway at first. A nurse soon appeared, dashing up to them. She had a mask on, too. “Glad you’re here. I don’t see any indication of anyone else with symptoms, but after seeing what poor Alice Johns went through…”
That answered one of Grace’s questions. She hadn’t heard before which of the PTSD patients was the one who’d been infected.
After scrubbing at a nurses’ station to ensure they carried no infection, Simon and she decided to go together to see the remaining patients to make sure they missed no indications of the disease. Since symptoms included red, swollen areas of infection, sometimes pimples oozing pus, at least an initial diagnosis of the possibility of MRSA wasn’t hard. Confirmation of the dangerous staph infection was another thing, though. So was initial diagnosis before the sores were apparent.
The smells here were strong, but not of disease, only disinfectants and the odors Grace had experienced in the psych unit before.
The first PTSD patient they saw was Sgt. Jim Kubowski, who’d initially seemed indifferent to Tilly during her first performance but wound up hugging her—and was happy to see her the second time. He hadn’t made much of an impression on Grace before, but now the medium-height guy struck her as being very pale beneath his round cheeks. “You going to be able to keep us from getting whatever Alice got?” he asked almost timidly.
“We hope so,” Simon replied.
“A friend of mine was a POW for a while. When we got him back, he had this terrible infection. Could be the same thing. They saved him, but no one was sure at first.”
“We’ll do all we can to make sure Alice and her family members are okay,” Simon said in a soothing tone. He was the one to check Kubowski’s vitals and ask him questions to elicit a description of any symptoms. Simon also did a check of the guy’s skin to look for the sores. He found none, and the guy seemed fine to Grace, too. That’s what they noted in his chart.
Despite removing and discarding disposable gloves, they both carefully scrubbed up again before approaching the next patient. It was someone who hadn’t been at Tilly’s performances. Then they visited PFC George Harper’s room. The guy who’d been so warmly accepting of Tilly’s presence the first time and a little standoffish the second also appeared fine.
They dropped in on a couple more patients with no indication of the disease, and then they went to Sgt. Norman Ivers’s room. Grace wasn’t looking forward to this, and she wasn’t disappointed. This PTSD patient was just as nasty as he had been for Tilly’s first performance.
“Hey, nice to see you, Dr. Andreas,” he said in a sarcastic tone. He w
as lying in his bed in a T-shirt, the sheet pulled up to his waist. His black hair was straggly, and he appeared as if he hadn’t shaved for at least a week. “What, no dog this time? I wanted to give that cute little fellow a pat. Or a punch. Whatever.”
“This isn’t a visit for entertainment,” Grace responded. She glanced sideways at Simon, whose hard expression suggested he wanted to give this patient a punch…or whatever. “We’re here to make sure you’re feeling okay.”
“That’s right. I hear our dear little Alice had some of her nearest and dearest come in and make her sick—and maybe the rest of the hospital, too. Isn’t that a kick?”
She wanted to give him a kick but said very professionally, “Yes, unfortunately there is a possibility of an outbreak of a highly contagious disease. That’s why Dr. Parran and I are here. Can you tell us if you have any lesions on your skin, any sores that you didn’t—”
“Oh, I’m fine. Otherwise, I’d give you a big hug and kiss so I could pass along the pleasure.”
“In that case, I think Dr. Parran will do the honors of checking you over.” Not necessarily a good idea, since Simon seemed as revolted by the guy as she felt, but she didn’t want to get any nearer to him—and not because she thought he had MRSA or anything else contagious.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, he seemed fine except for the strong smell of the meds used to help ease patients out of addictions. He was their last patient to check in the psychiatric ward, so after making notes on his chart and scrubbing again, Simon and she left.
They returned to the Infectious Diseases Center, where they entered onto the hospital computer system whom they’d seen and that they had found nothing alarming with them.
“Was everything okay?” Jen, the nurse, no longer had her mask on. She looked pale and tired.
“Fine,” Simon told her. “Need anything here? Otherwise I’ll head over and see what I can do at the isolation ward. I assume Dr. Andreas will stay here to hold down the fort.” He looked at her, his expression issuing a command. But Grace wanted to be where she could help most.
Including seeing what kinds of samples were being taken from the affected patients, where they were being tested and stored, and what the plans were for handling and incinerating them.
“You assume wrong, Dr. Parran.” Grace shot him a quelling look, then turned to Jen. “Unless, of course, I am needed here.” If so, she would stay—for a while.
“I think we’re okay. We’ve a full staff of nurses available, and if we need a physician I’ll page you. As long as that’s all right.”
“That’s fine,” Grace said. “Let’s go, Dr. Parran.” Ignoring any objection by Simon, Grace hurried away toward the stairway that would take her down to the E.R., and the isolation ward that sat nearby.
As she neared it, she caught the nauseating odor even before they entered the sealed-off area. The efficient staff had attempted to mask it with disinfectants and other cleaning solutions, but Grace wasn’t fooled.
She glanced at Simon, who’d marched silently beside her as if irritated that she hadn’t heeded his attempt to protect her.
Nice, heroic thing to do, she supposed. But she had her own agenda, which included complying with her orders from Alpha Force.
Simon clearly caught the smell now, too. His nose was wrinkled in a show of distaste, but not even that detracted from how handsome she found him. Which wasn’t necessarily a good thing, even after all they’d shared.
Sure, it was enjoyable. It was also likely to be ephemeral. Again.
“You ready for this?” she asked.
“As ready as you are.” His frown deepened. She prepared to say something nasty, making it clear that he was not the boss of her—that she had other bosses, and he now knew that. But before she spoke, he said, “Glad to watch your back here, Lieutenant.”
She grinned and headed for the nearest nurses’ station to scrub up.
Damn, but he wanted to throttle the stubborn woman. Now that he had learned who and what she was, he wanted to take care of her even more than he had in the past. They shared a lot.
Including a career of treating people with diseases that could kill them—after they’d passed it on to others.
Like the patients inside this area Simon had just entered with Grace. The smell was overwhelming here despite all that had been done to attempt to get rid of it. He’d caught some smells in the psychiatric wing, too, but since they didn’t seem related to the new disease outbreak he’d ignored them.
The nurses’ station all but blocked anyone who had managed to get in, even with the hospital ID cards that had to be swiped outside and limited access to people with no business in certain areas. The woman behind the desk, Sharon, looked at Grace and him. “Hello, doctors. You here to help?”
“Yes, they are.” That was Dr. Moe Scoles, who had come up behind her. “Good thing, too. I think we’ve contained it, but I don’t have to tell either of you the dangers of MRSA. If I’m wrong, this hospital could become a disaster area.”
“We won’t let it,” Grace said. She moved around the desk toward Scoles. “Has MRSA been confirmed? By testing, I mean. I assume specialists like you can recognize what appears to be the lesions it causes.”
“Yes, we’ve collected nasal swabs and sent them downstairs to the lab for culturing. We should get confirmation within twenty-four to forty-eight hours.”
“Fine,” Simon said. “So what would you like us to do here?”
“Thought you’d never ask. Some of Alice’s relatives work at a rehab facility near downtown Phoenix. That’s undoubtedly where they started passing around the MRSA infection. We’ve alerted them, and they’ve started increasing their precautions against the contagion. They also sent three more infected patients our way who’ve just arrived. We’ll need them checked over and swabbed. If it looks like they’ve also got MRSA—which they undoubtedly will—they’ll need to be introduced to the first regimen of antibiotics.”
“Has it worked for the initial group of patients?” Grace asked.
“Looks possible, but you know how resistant MRSA is to treatment.”
“Show me which patients need to be examined,” Grace said.
Simon knew he wouldn’t convince her to let him deal with this. “Show both of us,” he told Scoles.
Chapter 15
The rooms in the isolation ward were small—the better to keep them as sanitized as possible.
Grace was assigned two of the three new patients. The first was a man in his forties. He was awake and aware of what was going on with him, staring at her in her disposable sanitary mask. “I’ve heard of this MRSA stuff before, doctor. I’m an air-force veteran, and was staying at the rehab facility after follow-up surgery, thanks to a recurrence of problems from an old injury. Some people came down with MRSA when I was in the first hospital after returning to the States, and a bunch didn’t survive.” His eyes were worried as he looked at her. “I’ll be okay, though, won’t I?”
She had already seen the red, pussy lesion on his arm that indicated the possibility of MRSA. She hardly needed to look at it. The smell in this room was ghastly to her heightened senses. “We’ll take good care of you.” That was the best she could promise, as much as she wanted to swear he’d be fine. With a nurse standing behind her in the doorway, she used her gloved hand to rub the inside of his nose with a swab to obtain a sample. The nurse, also well covered with disposable protective items, collected the swab in a plastic container, which she sealed.
Grace injected the patient with the initial antibiotic, one that sometimes helped to fight off the highly resistant staph infection that was MRSA. If it didn’t work, they had others to try. They had to find the right combination to combat this epidemic and save this patient and the others.
When they left the room, Grace watched carefully as the nurse placed the swab-containing vessel, marked with the patient’s name, room number and other identifying information, into a larger one.
Both removed their glove
s and masks and changed into new lab jackets. The old stuff—even the jacket—was placed in sealed containers to be carefully decontaminated or disposed of. They ran their hands beneath an ultraviolet light to ensure there was no glow—a sign that they had gotten bacteria on themselves.
A similar scenario occurred in the next room. Once again, Grace paid attention to the sample. The large container in which it was placed was the same as the prior one, and it contained a few other sealed capsules. It was large enough to be put onto a gurney where two orderlies, also in sanitary garb, prepared to wheel it downstairs to the lab floor. Grace would have preferred that one of the two people handling the samples be a security guard—possibly armed. But two people were better than one to keep the samples safe. And so far no samples had been stolen while still inside in the hospital—only after being taken outside for disposal.
Besides, having the samples handled this way might be more tempting for the thieves. That could be a good thing. Grace had already notified Autumn and Ruby. But would they be a sufficient force to catch the thieves? For one thing, Kristine, like Grace, was still occupied in the hospital.
When Grace and the nurse finally peeled off the clothing from the second examination, she was approached by Simon.
“Stay back,” she said. “I need to shower.”
“You okay?” he asked, earning a smile from her.
“I will be. See you on the outside.”
The nurse and she headed toward the facilities to disinfect with antibacterial soap and hot water. When Grace emerged in clean aqua hospital scrubs, she hurried out the door from the enclosed ward into a lounge. As she had hoped, Simon was already there. Alone. Grace assumed that word was out about MRSA being diagnosed here at Charles Carder. Visitors would be limited and instructed not to stay long. Precautions would be taken to avoid spreading the highly contagious disease.
“Did the patient you saw likely have MRSA?” she inquired.
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