by Thomas Hopp
“Best not to contact the authorities just yet,” he said. “Given these infected gashes on our arms, I think it’s better to turn ourselves over directly to Kay Erwin at Seattle Public Health Hospital.”
PART THREE: HOSPITALIZED
Chapter 11
Eventually the North Cascades Highway merged onto Interstate 5. As I drove south past the tulip fields at Mount Vernon, McKean placed a call to Kay Erwin. He explained our situation and suggested she get the isolation ward ready for three new customers. There was a brief discussion about our turning north and going to Sumas, where the CDC was setting up a makeshift clinic for additional smallpox cases in the gymnasium of the Nooksak Valley High School, but McKean successfully argued that he was needed in Seattle to oversee the vaccine work. Clicking off the phone, he said, “She’ll be waiting with a dose of the standard vaccine for each of us.”
“I thought it didn’t work,” I said.
“Not well, perhaps,” said McKean philosophically, “but it’s the only option. Janet cannot have made much progress on the new vaccine in a day. It might be weeks before she can coax her E. coli cultures into making even a trace of subunit.”
“If you’re deliberately trying to freak me out,” I said. “You’re doing a good job.” The door to the autopsy room loomed in my imagination.
“Sorry, Fin. Just being realistic.”
As I sped down I-5, McKean dialed a number Kay had given him, that of Vince Nagumo, who was now the senior FBI agent in charge of this case. He described our experiences in the Methow Valley to Nagumo, who took down detailed information and promised to investigate as quickly as possible. But when McKean tried to explain the likelihood of Fuad’s involvement, Nagumo resisted. “He’s a proven asset and a reliable man,” I heard him say.
After Nagumo, McKean called Janet at the lab. He urged her to pull an all-nighter, without fully explaining our circumstances. After goodbyes, he clicked off the phone. “No need to upset her just yet,” he murmured, eying his oozing wound.
The return to Seattle was a high-speed freeway drive punctuated by occasional carloads of people pointing and gawking at the bullet holes in my ravaged Mustang as we went by. Just North of Everett, McKean turned to Jameela, who had been silent the whole time.
“May I ask how you got involved with these men in the first place?”
I glanced at her in the mirror and saw regret tinge her beautiful, pharaonic eyes. “I am a veterinarian, a specialist in Arabian horses. When I came here from Cairo, I had no idea what the Sheik was doing. He lives like a sultan of the old times. He has absolute power over everyone, his servants, his guards, his helpers, and their wives, and their children. No outsiders ever got past the guards at the gate, except that awful Sheriff. When the Sheik leaves the ranch, he travels in a limousine with dark windows. When he visits outsiders, he dresses in American business clothes. But on the ranch he is highly traditional.”
“He mentioned marrying you,” I said.
“Hah!” She rolled her eyes. “He already has one wife, whom he treats like a slave. But he wants more. He is fond of quoting the Qur’an’s advice on how a man should manage many wives at once. The holy book has old, out-of-date passages that explain how to keep one’s wives sexually satisfied, and under what conditions it is appropriate to marry your slave girls. I think he considers me one of those.”
“A slave girl?”
“Yes. I am a middle-class Egyptian by heritage. That means I am far below Abdul-Ghazi’s royal bloodlines. Within days of my arrival he sent me an invitation, via Massoud. I was to join him in his bedrooms, which are in a separate wing of the house from his wife’s. I refused, of course. But since then he has confined me to the ranch, as he does all the women of his household. He treats us like cattle - his wife, his daughters, me. He insists that all his women wear traditional veils and shawls.”
“But you don’t,” I said.
“I refused,” she replied in the same haughty tone she had used with the Sheik.
“He threatened to beat you.”
“He beats the other women if they dress improperly, or show too little respect for him, or speak too loudly. But I must wear riding clothes to exercise Majid, Zahirah and his other horses.”
“So he made an exception for you?”
“I made an exception for me.”
“He has never beaten you?”
“He would not dare.”
“But if he is so horrible, why not escape him before now?”
“Because of my beautiful Zahirah.” She sighed. “I could not bear to leave her. And, lately I have learned my father and mother are detained in the court of his father, the Sultan of Kharifa.”
“Kharifa,” said McKean. “A tiny Sultanate on the south coast of the Arabian Peninsula, between east Yemen and western Oman.”
“That is the place. Smaller than Monaco, but much richer.”
“Your parents are prisoners there?”
“They are comfortable, but they may not leave. The Sheik has warned me that things could go poorly for them if I did not obey him.”
McKean asked, “You had no inkling something evil was afoot? The virus, the victims?”
“He kept those things secret, even from those who live on the ranch. You saw the sign warning people not to enter that building. I never made trouble for myself by disobeying that warning - until last night, when I saw you go in. I only wish I had not called for help.”
“You and I both.” I looked at my wounded arm.
“Only once did something odd happen,” she said. “One day about two months ago, Dr. Taleed insisted all who lived on the ranch be immunized for tetanus. He gave us the shots himself.”
“Including Sheik Abdul-Ghazi?” McKean asked.
“Yes. The Sheik, and Dr. Taleed himself. We all got a shot.”
“That was no tetanus shot,” said McKean. “It was a dose of Taleed’s smallpox vaccine, unless I miss my guess. If so, Jameela, you’re already immune. You have no fear of catching anything from Fin or me. The Sheik has laid his plans well.”
“What a monster,” I muttered.
McKean looked thoughtful. “He sees himself as a holy warrior.”
Jameela cursed in Arabic. “The Sheik is a Muslim the way Hitler was a Christian.”
I glanced in the mirror. She looked deeply upset.
“It was brave of you to help us,” I said. “You risked your life.”
“And you,” she said, smiling. “You saved my life twice today. Once, in this car. And before, when you took me up on Majid. Massoud would have killed me for helping you.”
Her eyes met mine in the mirror, and we shared a soulful connection, until I got squirrelly as I often do with a beautiful woman so near. I searched my mind for something lighthearted to put us both at ease. “I used to date a girl who was part Arab,” I said, hoping to spark the idea in her mind.
McKean cut in. “What part?”
“What?” I said.
“What part of her was Arab? Her hands? Her feet? Her…?”
An assortment of my ex-girlfriend’s body parts flashed across my mind. Jameela looked away. The moment had fled.
Chapter 12
The trip to the Methow Valley had been fast, but this morning’s return was faster. I kept the Mustang well above the speed limit. Conversation was sparse. The tall evergreen forests and mountain vistas along the highway had lost their beauty, given our dismal situation and the exhaustion of a long night.
Just south of Everett we picked up an escort of two police cars. They stationed themselves one in front and one behind the Mustang, with their lights on. I took our speed up a notch. Around noon we arrived at the hospital’s rear delivery area. It was cordoned off with yellow police tape. A clear plastic canopy covered one of the loading docks. I pulled in under the canopy, and the escort cops parked in such a way as to block the entrance to the loading area. They stayed in their cars with their windows rolled up. Other than them, there was no one at the entrance. Word had no doubt spread
about who - and what - was coming. As we got out, three men in yellow isolation moon suits came to meet us. One of them took my keys with a promise to clean and disinfect my poor, mangled Mustang, and store her in the hospital garage. The other two accompanied us to the stainless-steel freight elevator, now also covered in clear plastic, and we ascended to the isolation facility.
When I stepped off the elevator, I looked around for Joseph Fuad. McKean and I had already discussed tackling him and disarming him. But he was nowhere in sight.
One of the two yellow-suits was an intern with dark blond hair, wary blue eyes, and DAVID ZIMMER, MD on his nametag. He ushered us toward the airlock, but I stopped outside the window wall, rooted to the spot where I had watched the same two men who accompanied us now, zippering up the body of Harold Fenton.
“You’re sure about this?” I asked McKean.
“Absolutely.” He turned with Jameela to follow the intern. I went along despite a certainty that bad times waited on the other side of the glass. We went through the airlock in pairs, and then the second moon-suited guy followed us and wiped down every surface from floor to ceiling with disinfectant soaked towels.
Beyond the sterility control room and the second airlock, Dr. Zimmer showed us to the same room in which Harold Fenton had died. McKean chose the bed on which Fenton had lain, apparently unafraid of its history. I took the other, where no one had died that I knew of. While I sat on the bed, making peace with my new surroundings, Zimmer showed Jameela to a second room just beyond ours.
The other isolation-suited fellow came along after he had swabbed the stainless steel surfaces of the inner airlock. He was a huge black fellow with mild eyes, cornrowed hair, and the body of a football lineman. His yellow plastic suit was wrapped tightly around his thick torso, biceps, and thighs. His nametag read JOHN HAWKINS, RN. He brought us hospital gowns and then drew the curtains separating McKean’s bed from mine, so we could change out of our street clothes. After Hawkins disappeared with our clothes, Kay Erwin showed up in her own yellow pressure suit.
“Let’s have a look at that,” she said, motioning for me to lie down and swinging out a small platform on which to rest my arm. Zimmer joined her.
“That’s a nasty cut,” she said, clucking her tongue. “It’ll need some stitches.” She asked Zimmer, “What do you think, David, would debridement help?”
“De-what?” I asked. My alarm kicked up a notch at the unfamiliar term.
Zimmer eyed the wound. “I don’t know. The virus could already have filtered pretty far into the surrounding tissue. We would have to take a lot.”
“A lot of what?” I asked. “What’s this thing you’re talking about? De - “
“Debridement,” Erwin finished for me. “It’s the…um, cutting away of infected flesh.”
I felt dizzy. There was a medical tray table beside the bed that reminded me of Dr. Taleed’s table. I eyed a scalpel among the instruments scattered there, and it felt like a fountain of cold water had started running in my guts. Erwin said, “I don’t know how much good debridement would do. The trauma would hinder the healing process. And it probably wouldn’t eliminate the virus entirely.”
McKean came to watch the proceedings. While fidgeting with the rear ties of his gown, he added his two-cents-worth. “Just one escaped virus is enough to propagate an infection.”
“Thanks, for that,” I said. “Any more kind thoughts?”
“Just being realistic,” he said. “Go ahead Fin, have the debridement if you wish.”
“Whoa!” I said. “I’m not saying I want it.”
Erwin sensed my panic. “All right,” she said. “No debridement, just a thorough scrubbing. I don’t want you getting gangrene while you’re supposed to be fending off smallpox.”
I gritted my teeth as Erwin took a large hypodermic syringe, filled it with lidocaine, and injected a dozen shots of the anesthetic inside and around the wound. Then she used a disinfectant-soaked sponge to scour the wound, to get at whatever virus and contamination she was able to reach. I gritted my teeth again while Zimmer finished off with a set of black stitches that pulled the swollen edges of the gash together. I got dizzy while he worked. One moment I was nauseous, the next I felt palpitations in my heart. I sweated from start to finish.
Finally, when Zimmer wrapped my arm in gauze, I thought my agony was over.
“Now, then,” Kay Erwin said. “We’ll need a baseline exanthema assessment.”
“A what?” I looked at her nearly cross-eyed with apprehension and exhaustion.
“Skin manifestations,” Kay explained. “I want to know about any pre-existing marks on you, so we can keep an eye out for pocks.”
“That’s a good idea,” I said. And then I thought twice. “Now, wait a minute. On what part of me?”
“Every part.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but Kay was done with formalities. She drew the curtains to shut out McKean and went for the drawstrings of my gown. “This won’t take more than a minute,” she reassured me.
I felt myself going red. Hadn’t I wondered, at one press conference or another, what Kay herself might look like naked?
She got the gown off me quickly, working with practiced hands despite the heavy rubber gloves and squeaking plastic pressure suit. I tried covering strategic parts of me with my hands, but she motioned for me to lie down on my back and then pulled my hands to my sides. I stared at the ceiling, concentrating on the lights and electrical conduits, to keep from going a deeper red. She inspected my face, flicking away a couple of glass window fragments and daubing the holes with a bit of gauze. Then she scrutinized my neck, chest, belly, navel, and groin, moving parts around with cold, gloved fingers, squinting at the top, bottom and sides of everything. I squirmed. When she moved on to inspect my legs, feet, and the spaces between my toes, I breathed easier.
“Roll over and lie with your hands at your sides,” she said. I did as she asked, staring at the wall as she made her way up from my feet to my thighs.
“Spread your legs please.”
Stationed at about butt level, she said, “Wider.”
I closed my eyes and tried not to imagine her gazing into nooks that I myself had never seen. At least she didn’t touch anything. She came up over my back, briefly pointing out a bump, a mole, and something she thought might be a small pimple to Zimmer. She fingered her way through the hair at the nape of my neck and on my head, and then she was done.
“You can get dressed,” she said, handing me my gown.
I put it on slowly. What was the point of hurrying? I would never have a secret from Kay Erwin again, as far as my body was concerned.
After they drew some blood from my good arm, Kay and the intern left me, closing the green curtain after them.
“Come on Peyton,” I heard her say. “Same procedure for you.”
I put on a new gown and blue bathrobe Hawkins had brought me. Then I lay down flat on my back, letting the heat and blush drain from my face. Erwin gave McKean the same cleaning, stitching, and full-body meat-locker inspection she had given me.
McKean bore his flaying and examination more stoically than I did, perhaps because he understood the purpose of it better. He even went so far as to make remarks about the depth and condition of his wound as they worked on him. But he wasn’t entirely inhuman. When Erwin got to the whole-body exam he said, “I can assure you I’ve already looked down there and found nothing remarkable - “
“I’ll be the judge of that,” said Kay. It got quiet for a minute or two. And then she was done. Once McKean was in his gown and bathrobe, Zimmer pushed the curtain back. While McKean and I lay recovering from our ordeals, Erwin went to give Jameela the same treatment, minus the pain and stitches.
“Why bother with all the cleaning,” I asked McKean, “if only one virus needs to get beyond the edges of the wound?”
“What else can they do for us?” he said. “Would you prefer amputation at the elbow?”
I laid my head back on my p
illow and thought about that prospect. “I guess that was a stupid question.”
“Not much point to amputation,” said McKean. “Any escaped virus has already entered your bloodstream. It could be anywhere inside you.”
“Thanks for the comforting thought,” I muttered. I put my good hand over my eyes and rubbed the lids, imagining myself typing at a keyboard without a left hand. Erwin and Zimmer came back, accompanied by Jameela, who was dressed in white pajamas and a blue robe. The docs busied themselves with their next task. Erwin took up a small vial of standard smallpox vaccine and dipped a tiny metal lancet into it. She asked Jameela to roll up her sleeve, and then swabbed her shoulder with an alcohol wipe and gave her an inoculation of a half-dozen pricks of the lancet. My turn was next. I bared my left shoulder and she swabbed a spot and needled some new holes in my skin.
“It’s the old vaccine,” she said, putting a small dot-shaped Band-Aid on it. “It’s nothing like what Dr. McKean’s working on, but it ought to help a little.”
“What about that progressive vaccinia Dr. Taleed was talking about?” I asked her. “What happens if I get that?”
“Then,” McKean interjected, “you’ll die twice.”
“Very funny,” I grumbled.
“Let’s keep a positive attitude,” said Kay.
McKean smiled and quipped at me again, “You’ll positively die twice, Fin.”
She gave McKean his half-dozen pricks while I rubbed my vaccinated and Band-Aided left shoulder.
When Erwin and Zimmer went to the duty station to write up our charts and discuss what they had done so far, I lay back and closed my eyes. But the thought of the autopsy room down the hall soon had them open again.
Jameela came and put a hand on my good shoulder. “You should sleep, Fin. You’ve had so little rest. Even Dr. McKean dozed while you drove us back from the ranch. Close your eyes.”
I obeyed. Soothed by her sweet tone, and lulled by that hint of jasmine, I succumbed to a bone-aching fatigue that weighed me into the mattress. I fell asleep.
Several hours later, I awoke, having regained a small amount of the strength that events had sapped from me. I would have slept all night and into the next day, but an unfamiliar male voice jarred my mind into consciousness.