David Zeman - The Pinocchio Syndrome

When she remarked on this to Dr Hernandez, the doctor shrugged. ‘It is strange. But so far we haven’t been able to attach any significance to it.’

‘I’m puzzled by the symptoms,’ Karen said. ‘Shouldn’t there be fever or chills or nausea, or something to indicate the internal disorder?’

‘Off the record?’ the doctor asked.

Karen nodded. ‘Of course.’

‘I’m puzzled myself.’ He shook his head. ‘The symptoms make no sense. All the vital signs are normal. The patients seem conscious, but their will seems to be paralyzed. Their power to act, even to feed themselves.’

‘Were any of them able to walk?’ Karen asked.

The doctor shook his head. ‘Judging by where we found them, the illness stopped them in their tracks. If they were sitting, they just stayed there. If they were standing, they remained standing until weakness made them keel over. It’s like being struck by lightning. They just froze.’

Karen was thinking of Vice President Everhardt, lying helpless in a bed at Walter Reed. She wondered whether he looked like the patients here.

‘What is your people’s thinking on this?’ she asked.

Hernandez shrugged unhappily. ‘Frankly, we don’t know what to think. We’re concentrating on life support, nutrition, and so forth. We’ve quarantined the communities involved. We’re analyzing water and soil samples, even the air. It’s possible that something got in there and affected the whole population. Whatever it was, it didn’t affect anyone else. Each pocket of infection is completely encapsulated. People in the surrounding communities are healthy.’

He looked at Karen. ‘But even if we find a vector, we still don’t understand the symptoms. They’re not like anything infectious I’ve ever seen or heard about. The body keeps functioning normally, but the patient is incapable of action.’

‘Have you heard about the vice president’s illness?’ Karen asked.

‘Yes, I have. Why?’

‘It presents some intriguing parallels to this one,’ Karen said. ‘Lack of voluntary motor capacity, inability to respond to commands, but apparently normal perception and vital signs.’

‘Really,’ the doctor said. ‘How did you know that?’

‘I never reveal my sources,’ Karen smiled. ‘It was told to me off the record in Washington. You might want to talk to your people there, though Walter Reed is buttoned up tight.’

‘I’ll think about it.’ The doctor shook his head slowly as he scanned the ranks of helpless victims. ‘If it’s the same disorder, that could be a bad sign.’

‘For Everhardt?’ Karen asked.

‘For all of us.’ The doctor shook his head. ‘If a thing like this ever started to spread … and us without a clue as to how to treat it …’

As they were leaving the ward they passed the bed in which the little girl lay holding the teddy bear.

‘How did that get here?’ Karen asked.

‘I think they found her at home,’ said Dr Hernandez. ‘She was in her playroom. I suppose one of the paramedics brought it along to keep her company here.’

Karen looked more closely at the child’s eyes. Did she know where she was? From her glassy stare the reporter could not tell.

For the first time the tragedy around her struck Karen. What if this little girl never moved again, never spoke again?

Karen took her leave of Dr Hernandez and went downstairs to the hospital cafeteria. Her stomach was rumbling, for she had eaten nothing since early this morning. Unfortunately smoking was not allowed in the hospital. She would have to wait for a cigarette until she was outside.

She put a tuna sandwich, a granola bar, a container of yogurt, and a bag of potato chips on a tray and filled a Styrofoam cup with black coffee.

As she was carrying the tray toward a window table a familiar voice sounded in her ear.

‘Miss Embry. You get around, I see.’ It was Joseph Kraig, the Secret Service agent she had talked to last night. He was sitting alone at a table for four. He looked unhappy and somewhat more tired than the first time she saw him.

‘So do you,’ Karen said. ‘May I join you?’

‘Why not?’ He pushed back a chair for her. She threw her coat over one of the unoccupied chairs and sat down.

‘That doesn’t look warm enough for you,’ Kraig said.

‘I haven’t been outside much,’ she said. ‘Have you?’

‘Now that you mention it, no.’

He watched her peel the top off her yogurt.

‘You don’t look as though you eat enough,’ he said.

She shrugged off the comment, sipping at her coffee with a look of distaste. ‘I hate hospitals,’ she said. ‘My grandmother was in a succession of them when she was dying. If I never see one of these cafeterias again, it will be too soon.’

Kraig nodded. He had his own hospital memories. He did not care to revisit them.

Karen ate a few spoonfuls of yogurt, then sat back to study Kraig’s face.

‘What I really need is a cigarette,’ she said. ‘These hospitals are too strict about smoking.’

Kraig nodded. ‘The world is tough on smokers nowadays.’

‘Did you ever smoke?’ she asked him.

‘In high school,’ he said. ‘I quit when I got to college.’

Karen nodded, glancing at the thick wrists emerging from his suit jacket. His fingers were square, almost stubby. The backs of his hands were broad. She guessed he worked out, perhaps too much.

‘How did you get into the federal agent business?’ she asked.

He smiled, reflecting that it was indeed a business, like any other.

‘I was young, I had just gotten married. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life, and we needed money,’ he said. ‘A friend of mine was an FBI agent, and he told me about the salary and the benefits. From there, things just evolved.’

‘Are you still married?’ she asked.

He shook his head. She recognized the slight curl of his lip as the outward disguise of a pain he didn’t like to talk about. It was a look she had seen on her own face in the mirror.

He struck her as a straight arrow, but not as shallow. He looked like he had been around, made his share of mistakes. She liked that in him.

‘How about you?’ he asked. ‘How did you get into the reporting business?’

‘I always wanted to be a reporter,’ she said. ‘Even in high school. It keeps you busy. You meet a lot of people.’

‘People who aren’t necessarily glad to see you,’ Kraig added.

‘That’s right,’ she said, nodding. ‘But at least it gets you out of the house. I’m not that fond of my own company.’

She took a bite of her tuna sandwich, grimaced, and drank a swallow of coffee. ‘Jesus,’ she said. It had been years since she tasted food this bad, even on an airplane.

Kraig smiled understandingly.

She switched to the granola bar and ate half of it before saying what was on her mind.

‘It’s the same thing, isn’t it?’ she asked.

‘What?’

‘The same disease,’ she said. ‘The same as Everhardt.’

Kraig gave her a steady look.

‘You don’t listen, do you?’ he said. ‘No comment.’

‘On background?’ She smiled. ‘Off the record?’

He shook his head.

She was watching Kraig closely.

‘All vital functions normal,’ she said. ‘But the patient can’t act. Can’t obey simple commands, can’t talk, can’t walk, can’t feed himself. A paralysis of the function of action or decision.’

Kraig said nothing.

‘They’re looking for a vector,’ Karen said. ‘But they don’t really have a disease, so the vector may not help. There is no known disease that produces these symptoms.’

Kraig asked, ‘How do you know?’

‘I never reveal my sources.’ She shrugged.