Plague

Chapter 8 Day 1 11:30 PM

Chapter 8
Day 1
11:30 PM

Stephen followed Jacob to his office, connected by a glassed-in bridge from the hospital’s fourth floor to the medical office building next to the hospital.
Once there, Jacob broke out a bottle of Chivas and doled some out into four paper cups. He paged Tom and Joan to come up to his office and sat back with his scotch to wait.
Tom came right up and sat next to Stephan. He picked up his cup and drained it. His eyes wandered aimlessly around Jacob’s tiny office as he gulped his drink and seemed to have difficulties keeping his fingers out of his mouth. A rather desultory group, Jacob thought. Just sitting, drinking and staring at each other.
Joan entered the office, groped for a chair and sat down quickly. She was blinking her eyes and the muscle in her chin was quivering.
“What happened?” Jacob asked her. “Did you talk to the Jacksons?
“Damn it, Jake, I’ve never been so angry in my life! I told them what had happened and the father just started screaming obscenities. It seems that I’m incompetent, the other doctors here are incompetent and everyone is going to get sued and damn it, Jacob, I couldn’t even tell them what happened because I don’t even know myself!”
“What did you expect them to say to you? Thanks for telling me my previously healthy son just died and you don’t even know why?” Jacob asked.
Tears collected in the corner of her eyes. Thinking that he had been too hard on her, Jake spoke again, this time more gently.
“Look, Joan, they’re right, you know. We don’t know what happened. You did everything you could for the boy, and so did the entire arrest team. I’m sure they’ll calm down when we have more facts to give them. It’s not your fault. Try to relax, for God’s sake, and have some scotch. We have a lot of thinking to do, Okay?”
That provoked a miniscule smile out of her. She took the cup of scotch and gingerly stuck her tongue into it.
Looking at the three rather grim faces staring back at him, Jacob said, “Well, I guess you’re all wondering why I called you here tonight and…”
Stephan hit him with a balled up paper cup. Joan smiled a bit more and Tom got up to refill his cup.
Jake asked Stephan to bring Joan and Tom up to date on what they had found and then opened the floor to any ideas or theories. They batted around a number of diseases that no one had ever seen or heard of outside of a text book. Nothing would fit the paltry amount of data they had to work with.
The only idea which bore some merit was the concept of a parasitic process. The major problem with this was that there was no known disease process that did such damage to the brain.
Jacob looked at the others and asked, “Where do we go from here? Any suggestions?”
“What about Mulvihill?” Joan asked.
Stephan looked at her and asked, “What about her?”
Jacob described what had happened in the Pediatric unit.
“It sounds like she was drunk,” Tom said. “So what?”
“But Tom, maybe she saw something that might help us. At this point, anything might help us come up with some better ideas,” Joan said.
“Joan, you may be right,” Jake told her, “At least we have nothing to lose by talking with her.”
Jacob called the children’s unit and asked to speak to her. The charge nurse checked around and told him that Mulvihill must be on her break because she wasn’t on the unit.
“Where could she be?” Joan asked.
“Probably sleeping it off somewhere,” Tom said as he poured another scotch for himself.
Jacob thought for a moment then called the head of security. He asked him to see if he could locate Mulvihill and explained that he had to ask her some questions.
“Well, Doc, I’d really like to help you but right now I’m kind of busy. Seems that one of the visitors found a stiff in the elevator. Really upset her, yes it did!”
“What happened to cause the death?”
“Now, Doc, you should be telling me that sort of stuff. I only just found it.”
“We’ll be right down,” Jake said and hung up the phone.
He explained to the others what was going on. Joan headed back to the Pediatric Unit and Tom left to cut off the CAT scanner. Stephen and Jake went back to the hospital and took the stairs down to the first floor.
The group surrounding the elevator door consisted mostly of visitors and a few nurses and physicians evidently going off duty. Sergeant Michaels, the Chief of Security, was trudging back and forth, chewing on his ever-present unlit cigar. A short, balding man with a pugnacious look on his face, Michaels was well known for the Southern drawl he affected and his constantly disheveled appearance. He saw them approaching and, setting his teeth more firmly in his cigar, ambled over.
“I’m really glad to see you, Doc, yes I am. But I don’t need any more problems then what I got.”
“Just what do you have here?” Jacob asked.
“Well, I don’t really know much. The stiff was found by a visitor, like I told you. One of the nurses over there says she recognized the body as a woman who worked on the kid’s floor. One of the housekeeping ladies, I think she said.”
“Do you mind if we take a look at her,” Jake asked.
“It’s all right as long as you don’t touch anything. I’m waiting on the police right now. They told me to see that nothing was moved.”
Stephan and Jacob shouldered their way through the onlookers and stepped into the elevator, the doors of which were being kept open with a newspaper. The body was that of an older woman, her grey hair tied into a bun on the back of her head. Her face was frozen into a wide-eyed, horrified mask; her mouth open in a soundless scream. As Jacob closed her eyelids, Stephan was pushing strands of limp hair away from her neck and looking intently at the skin.
“Nothing over on this side, Jacob,” he said. “Help me turn her head a bit more to the other side.”
They both saw the scratch below her left ear at the same time. It was shallow at the lower edge and seemed to go deeper at the point below and closest to her ear. A thin line of fresh blood still oozed down her neck and under the dirty green collar of the uniform she wore.
Stephan looked at Jake smugly and asked, “What do you think we’ll find on the post? I bet it’s the same thing as the others.”
“You may be right, but if the cops have been called; we can’t touch her,” Jake said.
“Come on, Jacob, since when did you become such a stickler for the rules?”
“Since the cops got here.”
Jacob stood up and grabbed Stephan’s arm. He looked up and saw Michaels and a younger man, much better dressed in a conservative grey suit and highly polished black shoes. The shoes and the serious, no bullshit look on his face were dead giveaways.
“My name is Lieutenant Hudson. I can see that you two are doctors, but that does not give you the right to tamper with evidence. What were you two doing?”
Stephen was eyeing the cop up and down, frowning. Maybe he was trying to guess where he got his suit. Before he could say anything, Jacob spoke up.
“We were just checking for signs of life, Lieutenant. You never know what you’ll find.”
“That’s swell. Give me your names and stick around. I want to talk to you later. Now get the hell out of this area.”
“Michaels has them,” Jacob told him, and thought, “I just love a sweet guy like that,” as he and Stephen slowly walked to the stairwell. Jake could feel the slow burn building behind his back and his steps got slower. Before he closed the door to the stairs, he caught a last glimpse of Hudson standing with one hand pointing at him and angrily talking to Michaels. He was glad that looks couldn’t really kill.
Looking at Stephan, he said, “That asshole probably grew up sleeping with Mickey Spillane books under his pillow and got that way by osmosis.”
The door hadn’t even closed before Stephan ran out and back up to Lt. Hudson.
“Lieutenant, I know how busy the Coroner’s office is and I wouldn’t mind doing the autopsy on this lady. I’d even do it now, I mean after your men get…”
He was interrupted by Hudson’s roar. “What the fuck do you mean by insinuating that the County Coroner’s Office can’t handle a case like this? You goddamned doctors think you’re all so fucking smart! And tonight? Are you trying to hide something? I’ll bet that’s it! You’re all too fucking eager. Maybe you better come with me now!”
Stephan gulped and glanced at Jacob for support. Hudson had his handcuffs out and was reaching for his arm.
“Hey, wait a second, Lieutenant,” Jacob said. “Dr. Johns was only trying to help.”
He leaned closer to Hudson to lend an air of intimacy to what he had to say.
“He just loves mystery movies and he thinks he can help you guys out and play detective at the same time. You know how it is, being a detective can be so thrilling and some people who have no excitement in their lives will do almost anything for some thrills.”
Hudson glared at Jake and shifted his gaze to Stephan.
“Get out of here, you fucking creep. Just make sure I can find you when I want to!”
Hudson pushed Stephan away from him and Jacob grabbed his arm and steered him towards the stairs. Fast.
“Don’t you just love guys like that,” Jacob asked.
“The asshole!” Stephan added.
“Seriously, Jacob, what if I’m right and the woman’s brain is as scrambled as the two kids?”
“Well, off hand I’d say we have a rather bad situation here,” Jacob said.
“Whatever it is that is killing these people is moving around between them. That means there’s either one of them or more.
“Either way, we have to find out what it is.”
“Yeah,” Stephan continued the thought, “Before it nails all of us.”
“Yes,” Jacob said, “But what if it got out of the hospital? What if it got to Los Angeles?”
Stephan glowered at Jacob. He grunted and said, “We be fucked, my friend. You, me and the rest of the world. We would all be fucked, big time, if this thing gets out of here.
“If this is a new disease process, as it certainly seems to be, it would start a plague that no one would know how to combat.”
Jacob’s gaze grew unfocused. “That idea is too horrible to contemplate.”
“Ya think?” Stephan said, looking forlornly at Jacob. “And I would have to agree.”