Tess Gerritsen - Bloodstream

“He seems quieter,” said Lincoln.

“They’ve pumped him full of sedatives. They had to, after the spinal tap.”

“Have the results come back?”

“No meningitis. No encephalitis. Nothing in the CSF to explain what’s happened to him. And now the parasite theory is dead as well.” She leaned back, her body heavy with fatigue, and gave a bewildered laugh. “No one can explain it to me.

How he managed to inhale an earthworm: It doesn’t make sense, Lincoln.

Earthworms don’t glow. They don’t use humans as hosts, There has to be some kind of mistake.

“You need to go home and sleep,” he said.

“No, I need answers. I need my son. I need him back the way he was before his father died, before all this trouble, when he still loved me.”

“He does love you, Claire.”

“I don’t know that anymore. I haven’t felt it in so long. Not since we moved to this place.” She kept staring at Noah, remembering all the times in his childhood when she had watched him sleep. When her love for him had felt almost like obsession. Even desperation. “You don’t know what he was like, before,” she said. “You’ve only seen him at his worst. His ugliest. A suspect in a crime. You can’t imagine how warm and loving he was as a small child. He was my very best friend She brought her hand up and wiped her eyes, grateful for the darkness.

“I’m just waiting for that boy to come back to me.”

Lincoln rose and went to her. “I know you think of him as your best friend, Claire,” he said. “But he’s not your only friend.”

She allowed him to put his arms around her, to kiss her on the forehead, but even as he did she thought: I can no longer trust you or depend on you.

I have no one now, but myself And my son.

He seemed to sense the barrier she had erected against him and slowly he released her. In silence he left the room.

She stayed all night at Noah’s bedside, dozing in the chair, waking up every so often when a nurse came in to check his vital signs.

When she opened her eyes to a startlingly bright dawn, she found her thoughts had somehow crystallized. Noah was at last sleeping quietly. Though she too had managed to sleep, her brain had not shut down. It had, in fact, been working all night, trying to explain the puzzle of the earthworm, and how it could have found its way into her son’s body. Now, as she stood at the window and gazed at the snow, she wondered how she’d missed an answer so obvious.

From the nurses’ station, she called EMMC and asked to speak to Dr. Clevenger in Pathology “I tried calling you last night,” he said. “Left a message on your home phone.”

“Was it about Warren Emerson’s ELISA test? Because that’s why I’m calling you.”

“Yes, we got the results. I hate to disappoint you, but it’s negative for Taenia solium.”

She paused. “I see.”

“You don’t sound too surprised. I am.”

“Could the test be wrong?”

“That’s possible, but it’s unlikely. Just to be certain, we also ran an ELISA test for that boy, Taylor Darnell.”

“And it was negative, too.”

“Oh, so you already knew that.”

“No, I didn’t. It was a guess.”

“Well, that house of cards we were talking about the other day, it just collapsed. Neither patient has antibodies to the pork tapeworm. I can’t explain why those kids are going berserk. I know it’s not from cysticercosis. I can’t explain how Mr. Emerson got that cyst in his brain, either.”

“But you do think it was a larva of some kind?”

“Either that or a hell of a weird artifact from staining.”

“Could it be a different parasite-not Taenia?”

“What kind of parasite?”

“One that invades its host via the nasal passages. It could coil up inside one of the sinuses and hide there indefinitely. Until it’s expelled or it dies. Any biological toxins it released would be absorbed right through the sinus membranes, into the host’s bloodstream.”

“Wouldn’t you see it on CT scan?”

“No. You’d miss it on CT, because it would look completely mnocuous. Like nothing more than a mucoid cyst.” Like Scotty Braxton’s CT scan.

“If it was coiled up in a sinus, how would it get into Warren Emerson’s brain?”

“Think about the anatomy. There’s only a thin layer of bone separating the brain from the frontal sinus. The parasite could have eroded through.”

“You know, it’s a marvelous theory. But there’s no parasite that fits that clinical picture. Nothing I can find in the textbooks.”

“What about something that’s not in the textbooks?”

“You mean an entirely new parasite?” Clevenger laughed. “1 wish!

It’d be like hitting the scientific jackpot. I’d get my name immortalized for discovering it. Taenia clevengeria. It’s got a nice ring, doesn’t it?

But all I’ve got is a degraded and unidentifiable larva on microscopic.

And no living specimen for show and tell.” Just an earthworm.

On the drive back to Tranquility she realized she was still missing a number of pieces to the puzzle. Max Tutwiler would have to supply them. She would give him the opportunity to explain in private; he had been her friend, and she owed him the benefit of the doubt. She’d been married to a scientist, and she knew the fever that sometimes consumes them, that intense rush of excitement when they scent the first whiff of a discovery. Yes, she understood why Max might hoard the specimen, might keep it a secret until he could confirm it was a new species. What she could not understand, and could never forgive, was the fact he had concealed information from her, and from Noah’s physicians. Information that might have been vital to her son’s health.

She was growing angrier by the mile.

Talk to him first, she reminded herself You could be wrong. This could have nothing to do with Max.

By the time she reached the Tranquility town line, she was too agitated to put off the meeting any longer. She wanted to have it out with him now.

She drove directly to Max’s cottage.

His car wasn’t there. She parked in his driveway and was crossing to the porch when she noticed, off to her right, footprints tracking away from the building.

She followed them a short distance into the woods, where they halted at a churned up section of snow mixed with dirt. She squatted down, and with her gloved hand dug into the disturbed snow. About six inches deep, she reached a layer of loose soil and dead leaves. She picked up a handful of dirt and saw something glistening, moving in her palm. An earthworm. She buried it and retraced her steps out of the woods.

On the porch, she glanced around for a shovel, knowing one had to be there. She spotted it, along with a pickaxe, leaning against the woodpile, frozen soil still caked to the blade.

The door was unlocked; she stepped into the cottage and saw at once why Max hadn’t bothered to secure the place. It had been cleaned out of almost all his belongings. What remained-the furniture, the cookware-had probably come with the rental. She walked through the bedrooms, the kitchen, and found only a few of his things left: a box of books, a basket of dirty clothes, and some food in the refrigerator. And tacked to the wall, his topographical map of the Meegawki Stream. He’ll be coming back for these things, she thought. And I’ll be waiting for him.

Her gaze fell to the box of books. To the corporate mailing label still affixed to the cardboard flap: ANSON BIOLOGICALS.

It was the name of the reference lab that had analyzed Scotty’s and Taylor’s blood, and had returned negative reports on both their drug screens. False negatives? she wondered, and if so, what were they trying to hide? It was the same lab that had recently paid a grant to the Two Hills Pediatric Group, to collect blood samples from the area’s teenagers. What was Anson’s interest in the children of Tranquility?