by Jan Coffey
Maybe it was because of what he’d gone through with Josh, but David had no fear about what was going to happen to him today. So long as Josh didn’t get it. That’s all he cared about. He shook his head at his new friend. “I don’t really remember anything specific about that, either.”
Josh took a picture of them from near the stairs. David zipped up the suit and made a face at his son. It was fine with him that their boys had decided to stay on deck, so long as they didn’t come close to them. No one knew what place was safe or how Philip had contracted this thing. There was nothing saying that something he’d touched or eaten downstairs wasn’t responsible for it. At the same time, he’d gone diving at an ocean disposal site. The most likely scenario was that something down there had caused the immediate infection. But Kirk hadn’t been affected by it.
Josh took another picture, and David thought the cameras were a great distraction for all of them.
Sharon, the RN, was communicating with the rescue vessels surrounding Harmony. David thought the young mother had done an excellent job of regaining her composure. She’d been clear in telling all of them what they had to do. She walked toward them now.
“This is how they want to evacuate everyone,” she began, motioning Rene to come closer, too.
“The smaller Coast Guard boat will take the children off first. Then the parents and crew go in the cutter. The Department of Interior boat will come for us. Then they want to board the vessel to see Philip. I think they’re going to use one of the choppers to airlift him out. Less chance of spreading contamination.”
All of them glanced in the direction of the dead researcher. The tarp had been a good choice. David didn’t want to know how bad the scientist’s wounds were getting.
And to think how skeptical he’d been of everything they’d heard on the news. He’d blamed media of making too much out of it. What a fool, he thought.
“Okay, I guess they’re getting started,” Sharon told them.
The designated boat was approaching Harmony.
“Josh and Dan, why don’t you tell everyone downstairs to come up,” Sharon called to the two boys.
“Do we know where they’re going to take them?” David asked, suddenly realizing he was about to be separated from his son. “I want to be sure they contact my wife right away.”
“I’m sure they’ll contact everyone,” Sharon told him.
David had to remind himself that he wasn’t the only parent there.
The teenagers, the parents, and the crew all came up. The boat approached and the two vessels lined up side by side. The transfer began very smoothly. David saw Josh working his way toward them. A couple of the Coast Guard personnel blocked his path.
“I need to tell my dad something,” he said.
David took a step closer. “What’s it?”
“Philip had strep, Dad. His Strep-Tester was blue. I saw it. He tested positive.”
David tried to make some sense of the significance of Josh’s news. Josh thought he had what Philip had. So did this mean that Josh thought he had strep, too? Or something worse?
No. Josh was obviously fine.
“They’ll take care of you when you get ashore,” he called out. “If your mom is not waiting for you, make sure you call her right away.”
David frowned, watching his son move toward the line of kids transferring onto the other vessel.
So what if Philip had strep. He obviously had something worse. And if Josh has strep, he’d survive it.
Yes, he’d survive it.
“You’ll be fine,” he murmured as Josh waved to him.
Thirty-Seven
Halabja, Iraq
Ashraf Banaz and her colleague shared a newly repaired five-room house in an old neighborhood of Halabja. Clara Hearne was a physician at San Francisco General Hospital. She was in her thirties and eager to tell another American about everything she was involved in here.
Austyn had already heard about the collaboration between the American and Kurdish doctors from Fahimah. As the young physician repeated some of what he already knew, he found his mind drifting back to the moment when Fahimah and her cousin met earlier.
There had been laughter, tears, a million questions while neither would stay quiet long enough to give the other one a chance to answer. Then, the two of them had escaped to one of the rooms off the living room. He guessed there had to be so much the two wanted to catch up now.
“Would you like another beer?” she asked.
Austyn looked down at the half full bottle in his hand and shook his head. “No, thanks. I’m fine.”
Clara had told him before that strict Islamic laws were enforced in Halabja, but only in public. People did what they wanted in their homes. He was also told that the two women bought the beer in Anqawa, a Christian town near Erbil.
“Where was I?” she asked.
Austyn couldn’t remember, but he figured Dr. Hearne was the type that never forgot anything. He was right.
“Oh yes, I was telling you…this work in Halabja is showing me one of the basic differences between American and Kurdish doctors. In New York City, research is a foundational feature of medical education. In the aftermath of September 11th, doctors enrolled 60,000 patients from the city in prospective trials. Everything that happens to them is being recorded.” She took a sip of her own beer. “In Kurdistan, there is no research infrastructure. Medical education is antiquated. The result is a group of intelligent, clinically skilled doctors who are ill-equipped to collect data and publish their findings about the patient population.”
He didn’t entirely agree with this, as both Fahimah and Rahaf had published. But he remembered she was talking about the medical profession in this little corner of Iraq. Considering what these people had gone through, compared with the environment that Clara was most likely from…well, there was no comparison. Austyn had to tell himself that he didn’t have to get defensive. He took a long swig from the bottle, amused by his own reaction.
Austyn decided to change the subject. “So, Clare…I’m curious. You two don’t mind living in this house when two-thirds of the houses on the street are in ruins?”
“Not at all.” Clare shook her head adamantly. “The manager at the hospital didn’t want me to stay in Halabja. He claimed he couldn’t guarantee the safety of an American woman. He wanted me to stay at Suleymaniyah, where there are hot showers and clean drinking water. He said he’d have me be escorted here a couple of days a week to check on the data the nurses are collecting. But I said, no way.”
“Is that how you and Ashraf connected?” Austyn asked.
“We knew each other before. So I told her what I was doing. She got an okay from her university. They tied a grant to it, and here we are.”
Austyn was certain things couldn’t have been as simple as that, but he appreciated her enthusiasm.
“You mentioned the rubble,” she continued. “In the morning, you’ll see it yourself. There is a real charm in this place, set as it is into the foothills of the mountains.”
“Still, the fighting and the poverty must get to you.”
“That’s true. The disconnect between the setting and the recent history makes it an emotionally taxing environment to work in. But enough about me. Ashraf wouldn’t give me a straight answer about you or her cousin Fahimah. Where has she been? I heard her name mentioned before, many times, but I thought she was dead.”
“Obviously, she’s not,” he said, not wanting to reveal anything more. He didn’t know how much of the truth Fahimah was telling her cousin.
“I hear she used to be a Political Science professor in Baghdad. I was pre-med all the way as an undergrad, but I loved Poli-Sci.”
Austyn nodded.
“All of them…everyone I met in their family…they’re so wicked smart.”
He nodded again.
“Another thing that Ashraf was vague about was about your job. What is it that you do?”
“I’m an epidemiologist. I work specifically on the sprea
d of rare diseases.” He looked around the living room. There was no TV. He wondered if these two women knew anything about what was going on with the outbreaks in the US and Afghanistan.
“So you’re an MD?”
“No, just a researcher with Master’s degree. I work on the investigative side of things. On how to stop epidemics.”
She moved to the edge of her seat and her eyes narrowed. He almost laughed.
“Are you CIA?” she said in a low voice.
“No. No guns. No spying. No tricks.” He thought Homeland Security would sound too much like CIA. “I work for NIH.”
He did work for them at one time, so that was close enough.
“Oh, yeah. Sorry, but NIH can be a real pain in the butt, sometimes.”
“I hear that a lot.”
Clara finished her beer, put the bottle on the coffee table, and sat back.
“So what’s your connection with Fahimah?”
“She is taking me to her sister,” he said, assuming if Clara had heard about Fahimah, then she must know about the younger sister, too.
“You mean Rahaf?” she asked, frowning.
“Yes. I’m hoping that she can help us in some research we’re doing,” Austyn told her. “Have you ever met her?”
“No. No.” She stood and picked up both of their bottles before walking to the kitchen.
Austyn looked at the doorway Fahimah and Ashraf had gone through. He thought he heard a noise, like Fahimah crying. He stood up as Clara came back into the room with two open bottles. She handed him one. He didn’t want it and put it on the table.
“You know, I’m pissed off,” she said, starting to pace the room.
“At what?”
“I’m pissed at their friends back in Erbil. After they called her, Ashraf was really worried about this.”
“She was worrying about what?”
“That they wouldn’t tell her,” Clara muttered. “That it would be left up to Ashraf to break the bad news.”
“What bad news?” Austyn asked.
“Rahaf has cancer. She’s dying.”
Thirty-Eight
Washington, D.C.
“Fourteen individual cases, Mr. President. Fourteen different infection sites. Each is considered a separate incident,” Faas said into the phone. He sat on the edge of the bed. With his free hand, he rubbed his chest.
The big guy obviously does not sleep, Faas thought. He looked at the clock next to his bed—1:03 a.m. Not that he’d been sleeping himself when some perky voice had told him that the president was on the line.
“Total fatality number is one hundred twelve, sir,” Faas said, answering the next question. He stood up and padded barefoot to the bathroom.
He knew he was on a speaker phone. Penn had kept his staff together to prep for the morning press conference. Nobody had bothered to tell Faas who else was in the room with the president. He’d recognized some of the voices, though. Tomorrow would be a big media day at the White House, and the president obviously wanted to make sure they were ready. They were planning on skipping the daily Press Secretary’s briefing. Instead, the president would be going in front of the cameras himself at about eight in the morning.
“Yes, sir. The hundred twelve includes the boat with the cancer kids.”
He took a bottle of antacid out of the cabinet. He opened it. Empty. He tossed the bottle in the trash.
“On the research vessel Harmony, there has been only one fatality so far,” Faas said, then listened. “Yes, sir. Considering the circumstances and how many people were in contact with the victim, it’s quite unusual.”
There was another bottle of antacid on the shelf below. He shook it first. There was nothing in this one, either. He tossed that bottle into the trash, too.
“The NIH people think the salt water might have been a factor,” Faas said.
He pulled out the drawer that Betty used to keep all her personal stuff. With the exception of some cotton balls and lots of hair pins, she’d emptied it. She’d taken his kids, his paycheck, and left him a house that he didn’t want or need. Shit, the least she could have done was to leave her prescription strength meds. A couple of years ago, Betty had a problem with acid reflux. She kicked the shit out of the thing with diet and no need for the medication the doctors had given her.
Faas, on the other hand, really liked those blue and white pills. They worked magic at handling his ulcer. He was too busy to have his stomach checked out and get his own prescriptions. So Betty had continued to be the drug pusher for him. He thought maybe he should have her arrested for that.
“Yes, sir. It seems that we may have learned something from the Harmony incident.” He sat down on the edge of the tub. The pain was really getting to him.
“No, sir. As far as we know, none of those kids are going to be on Oprah tomorrow. Everyone on Harmony was taken to the VA hospital in Maryland where we have them quarantined. They’ll be kept there for at least forty-eight hours for observation. But there’s no telling if Oprah won’t be storming the place. Who’s going to say no to her?”
He heard some laughs from the conference room. He slid the drawer out a little more to check the back of it. The whole thing came off the drawer slide and went crashing to the floor.
“Yes, sir. Everything is fine. I was stumbling in the dark and kicked something with my foot,” he lied. “Yes, sir. I will turn on the lights. Thank you for the recommendation.”
Here he was, bent over with pain, and Penn was thinking he was being a wise ass. Faas wished he had enough breath left in him to be one.
“I’ll call you with any news, sir. Absolutely. I’ll talk to you before the eight o’clock press conference.” He ended the call.
Faas sat down on the toilet seat. Shit, this hurt.
Looking across at the gaping hole left by the missing drawer, he thought he spotted something. Edging forward, he reached inside. Two blue pills, still in their wrapper.
“I knew you wouldn’t leave me totally high and dry, honey,” he said out loud as he tore off the paper backing to get at the pills.
Thirty-Nine
Halabja, Iraq
Through the door, he could hear Fahimah crying out in anguish. She said something in Kurdish that he doubted was intelligible even to her cousin.
She knows about her sister.
Propriety be damned, he thought. He rapped his knuckles on the door. Ashraf must have been standing just next to it, as she immediately pulled it open.
“Can I talk to her?”
“Yes, please,” the young woman said tearfully, sliding past him and disappearing into the other room.
Austyn walked in, closed the door, and leaned his back against it. She was crouched in the corner, her arms wrapped around her, rocking back and forth, sobbing. The guilt he felt was overwhelming. The fact that he personally had nothing to do with robbing her of five years of her life, of time she could have had with her sister, didn’t matter. He stood for the black hole that sucked the lives out of people who were innocent, as well as those who were guilty. There were no checks or balances, no chances to defend yourself. You were lost in an abyss, sometimes forever.
He knew the rationalization for the prisons. It was a dirty world. The government’s duty was to protect its own people…and businesses. There was no place for idealism in that world. Austyn remembered reading in college something about idealism increasing in direct proportion to one’s distance from the problem. Well, he was standing in the middle of the problem, on the border between Iran and Iraq, and he wasn’t feeling too good about the business.
She said something again in Kurdish, one fist striking her chest again and again.
Whatever lid he was trying to keep on his emotions popped. He walked toward her, crouched down on the floor, and gathered her in his arms.
“I’m so sorry,” he told her. But no words were enough. Nothing he could say or do could take away the pain of losing this loved one, this sister, this last family member left…this one p
erson you sacrificed your own life to protect.
Austyn didn’t know how long he held her like that. Her sobs subsided, but the tears never stopped.
Large pillows made out of rugs were the only furniture in the room. At some point he leaned against one and took her with him. His shirt was soaked with her tears. Austyn wished she would get angry, the way he’d seen her do at the Brickyard prison. He wanted her to unleash her anger on him. But she didn’t, and that made him suffer even more.
He didn’t know how long they sat there like that before she started to talk.
“Rahaf is in a hospital in Kermanshah,” she whispered. Kermanshah was a major city in the western part of Iran.
“What kind of cancer does she have?” he asked. His mind was already racing with arrangements that he could make to get Rahaf to the US. With the latest cancer treatments, there had to be something that they could do for her.
“It started as leukemia…some eight months ago. But she refused treatments…and now it has spread everywhere. They’re keeping her sedated…so she could tolerate the pain.”
She pulled away from him. Her eyes were swelled to slits, her nose was red. She reached for a box of tissues and blew her nose. He was relieved when she moved back and sat next to him.
“Who’s with her?”
“A couple of the people she worked with at the camp,” Fahimah said. “They took her there last week. The doctors say there is nothing more that can be done. They’re just making her comfortable until she dies.”
The Peshmerga soldiers who’d dropped them off were coming back tomorrow around midday to drive them to the border. They knew the Iranian guards who were on duty at that time. “We have to arrange for a faster way to get to Kermanshah,” he told her.
She nodded. “Ashraf is going to make some calls. There’s a small plane that occasionally flies between Halabja and Kermanshah to transfer patients to the hospital. She’s going to speak to the manager of the hospital and see if they can fly us over there in the morning.”