Robin Cook - Contagion

Jack returned to the bedroom. The radiator was now silent and the room temperature had dropped to a tolerable level, with cool air flowing in from the bathroom.

Jack began to dress so he could go downstairs. As he did so he recalled the events of the previous evening. The image of the gun barrel came back to his mind’s eye with terrifying clarity. He shuddered. Another fraction of a second and he would have been gone.

Three times in twenty-four hours Jack had come close to death. Each episode made him realize how much he wanted to live. For the first time he began to wonder if his response to his grief for his wife and daughters-his reckless behavior-might be a disservice to their memory.

Down in the seedy lobby Jack was able to purchase a disposable razor and a miniature tube of toothpaste with a toothbrush attached. As he waited for the elevator to return to his room he caught sight of a bound stack of the Daily News outside of an unopened newsstand. Above the lurid headlines was: “Morgue Doc Nearly Winds Up on the Slab in Trendy Restaurant Shoot-out! See page three.”

Jack set down his purchases and tried to tease out a copy of the paper, but he couldn’t. The securing band was too tough to snap.

Returning to the front desk, he managed to convince the morose night receptionist to come out from behind his desk and cut the band with a razor blade. Jack paid for the paper and saw the receptionist pocket the money.

On the way up in the elevator Jack was shocked to see a picture of himself on page three coming out of the Positano restaurant with Shawn Magoginal holding his upper arm. Jack couldn’t remember a picture being taken. The caption read: “Dr. Jack Stapleton, a NYC medical examiner, being led by plainclothes detective Shawn Magoginal from the scene of the doctor’s attempted assassination. A NYC gang member was killed in the incident.”

Jack read the article. It wasn’t long; he was finished before he got back to his room. Somehow the writer had learned that Jack had had run-ins with the same gang in the past. There was an unmistakably scandalous implication. He tossed the paper aside. He was disgusted at the unexpected exposure and was concerned it could hinder his cause. He expected to have a busy day, and he didn’t want interference resulting from this unwanted notoriety.

Jack showered, shaved, and brushed his teeth. He felt a world of difference from when he’d awakened, but he did not feel up to par. He still had a headache and the muscles of his legs were sore. So was his lower back. He couldn’t help but worry that he was having early symptoms of the flu. He didn’t have to remind himself to take his rimantadine.

When Jack arrived at the medical examiner’s office, he had the taxi drop him off at the morgue receiving bay to avoid any members of the press who might be lying in wait.

Jack headed directly upstairs to scheduling. He was worried about what had come in during the night. As he stepped into the room, Vinnie lowered his newspaper.

“Hey, Doc,” Vinnie said. “Guess what? You’re in the morning paper.”

Jack ignored him and went over to where George was working.

“Aren’t you interested?” Vinnie called out. “There’s even a picture!”

“I’ve seen it,” Jack said. “It’s not my best side.”

“Tell me what happened,” Vinnie demanded. “Heck, this is like a movie or something. Why’d this guy want to shoot you?”

“It was a case of mistaken identity,” Jack said.

“Aw, no!” Vinnie said. He was disappointed. “You mean he thought you were someone else?”

“Something like that,” Jack said. Then, addressing George, he asked if there had been any more influenza deaths.

“Did someone actually fire a gun at you?” George asked, ignoring Jack’s question. He was as interested as Vinnie. Other people’s disasters hold universal appeal.

“Forty or fifty times,” Jack said. “But luckily it was one of those guns that shoots Ping-Pong balls. Those I wasn’t able to duck bounced off harmlessly.”

“I guess you don’t want to talk about it,” George said.

“That’s perceptive of you, George,” Jack said. “Now, have any influenza deaths come in?”

“Four,” George said.

Jack’s pulse quickened.

“Where are they?” Jack asked.

George tapped one of his stacks. “I’d assign a couple of them to you, but Calvin already called to tell me he wants you to have another paper day. I think he saw the newspaper too. In fact, he didn’t even know if you’d be coming in to work today.”

Jack didn’t respond. With as much as he had to do that day, having another paper day was probably a godsend. Jack opened the charts quickly to read the names. Although he could have guessed their identities, it was still a shock. Kim Spensor, George Haselton, Gloria Hernandez, and a William Pearson, the evening lab tech, had all passed away during the night with acute respiratory distress syndrome. The worry that the influenza strain was virulent was no longer a question; it was now a fact. These victims had all been healthy, young adults who’d died within twenty-four-plus hours of exposure.

All of Jack’s anxiety came back in a rush. His fear of a major epidemic soared. His only hope was that if he was right about the humidifier being the source, all of these cases represented index cases in that all had been exposed to the infected humidifier. Hence, none of these deaths represented person-to-person transfer, the key element for the kind of epidemic he feared.

Jack rushed from the room, ignoring more questions from Vinnie. Jack didn’t know what he should do first. From what had happened with the plague episode, he thought he should wait to talk to Bingham and have Bingham call the city and state authorities. Yet now that Jack’s worry about a potential epidemic had increased, he hated to let any time pass.

“Dr. Stapleton, you’ve had a lot of calls,” Marjorie Zankowski said. Marjorie was the night communications operator. “Some left messages on your voice mail, but here’s a list. I was going to take them up to your office, but since you are here…” She pushed a stack of pink phone messages toward Jack. Jack snatched them up and continued on.

He scanned the list as he went up in the elevator. Terese had called several times, the last time being four o’clock in the morning. The fact that she’d called so many times gave Jack a stab of guilt. He should have called her from the hotel, but in truth he hadn’t felt like talking with anyone.

To his surprise there were also messages from Clint Abelard and Mary Zimmerman. His first thought was that Kathy McBane might have told them everything he’d said. If she had, then Clint’s and Mary’s messages might be of the unpleasant sort. They had called one after the other just after six A.M.

Most intriguing and worrisome of all the calls were two from Nicole Marquette from the CDC. One was around midnight, the other at five forty-five.

Rushing into his office, Jack stripped off his coat, plopped himself at his desk, and returned Nicole’s call. When he got her on the line, she sounded exhausted.

“It’s been a long night,” she admitted. “I tried to call you many times both at work and at home.”

“I apologize,” Jack said. “I should have called to give you an alternate number.”

“One of the times I called your apartment the phone was answered by an individual called Warren,” Nicole said. “I hope he’s an acquaintance. He didn’t sound all that friendly.”

“He’s a friend,” Jack said, but the news disturbed him. Facing Warren was not going to be easy.

“Well, I don’t know quite where to begin,” Nicole said. “One thing I can assure you is that you’ve caused a lot of people to lose a night’s sleep. The sample of influenza you sent has ignited a fire down here. We ran it against our battery of antisera to all known reference strains. It didn’t react with any one of them to any significant degree. In other words, it had to be a strain that was either entirely new or had not been seen for as many years as we’ve been keeping antisera.”