CV

21

On Tuesday Bliss invited McNulty to attend the weekly staff meeting in his office. Present, besides Bliss, were Armand Schaffer, the head of food services, Pete Williams, the maintenance chief, Arline Truman, passenger services, Walter Taggart, engineering, Dan Jacobs, electronics, Charles Skolnik, chief steward, and Erik Seaver, purser.

Bliss introduced McNulty and said, “Before we do our usual Tuesday drill, I’d like to discuss the problems we’re having as a result of the epidemic, if I can call it that. Mr. Skolnik, will you begin? You must be getting most of the complaints.”

Skolnik smiled faintly. “When they can’t get us, they dump on Arline. We’re running about three hours behind on room service, and it’s getting worse. I’d say probably about seventy percent of the passengers are taking all their meals in their rooms. We’re doing our best, but we were never set up for that.”

“Mr. Schaffer, does that figure conform to your experience?”

“Our restaurant attendance is down almost eighty percent. Most of my people are working for Skolnik now.”

“Ms. Truman?”

“Charles is right, we’re spending most of our time trying to calm down people who can’t get room service on the phone. It’s a very unpleasant situation.”

“Some of these people are practically barricading themselves in their rooms,” Skolnik said. “When the steward knocks on their door, they holler to leave the cart and go away. It’s a morale problem for us, because we have to bill them for those meals, and the stewards don’t get their tips.”

“Any suggestions?” Bliss asked.

“I think we ought to consider a bonus to the stewards, to come out of general funds. Say fifteen percent of their pay.”

“I agree,” said Truman. “The stewards are carrying the whole load—if they get really unhappy, we’re all in trouble.”

“Fifteen percent is too much,” said Seaver.

“No, it really isn’t,” Skolnik answered. “In fact, it’s on the low side, because we’re talking about fifteen percent of their base salary, which is only about a third of their income. If they were delivering meals the usual way, they’d be getting fifteen percent and more on the charge for the food. I’d say definitely it ought to be at least fifteen, and I’d appreciate it if you’d come down and make the announcement yourself, Mr. Bliss, and, you know, thank them for what they’re doing under these trying circumstances and so on.”

“Mr. Seaver, is that agreeable to you?”

Seaver shrugged. “Okay.”

“All right, then.” Bliss made a note. “Now about passenger morale—I think that’s the major problem, isn’t it? Any ideas?”

“If we could tell them something reassuring about the epidemic—” said Truman.

“Any prospect of that. Dr. McNulty?”

“None that I can see. We’re still getting five or six cases a day.”

“Even though people are hiding in their rooms?” Truman asked.

“Yes.”

“Could we do something to convince them that they’re just as safe if they come out?”

“No, because it wouldn’t be true. Some people are being infected in their rooms—from stewards usually—but most of them are getting it in public places.”

“Dr. McNulty, that brings up the issue of asking people to report to you if they feel faint. Shouldn’t we be doing that with the stewards, at least?”

“All I can say is it didn’t work before. Five or six a day is bad enough, but we were getting nine and ten.”

“I just don’t understand that,” said Truman. “How could something like that make the disease spread faster?”

McNulty hesitated. “Let me tell you, I don’t understand it either. Ordinarily, if you’ve got a communicable disease, either it spreads broadcast, through the air, or drinking water, or some vector like an insect, or else it spreads by contact. Either way, you get a rising curve of infection until it levels off somewhere. This isn’t like that. What we’re seeing is one case at a time. The only way it makes sense is if there is a vector, like a bug, say, but just one single bug. Think of some little insect that’s a carrier of the disease—it gets on you, you get sick, then it jumps off and gets on me, I get sick, and so on.”

“Have you found anything like that on the patients?”

“No. But remember, there’s a latent period after the infection is passed on. By the time we see the patient, they’ve already infected somebody else.”

“So if we could examine somebody while they’re latent—?”

“That was the idea, but we never could do it.”

Skolnik said, “Dr. McNulty, does it sound to you like this is a smart bug?”

McNulty did not smile. “That’s a thought that’s crossed my mind.”

“Are you serious?”

“I don’t know if I am or not.”

“Well, if you don’t know, who does?”

Bliss rapped gently on the table. “Gentlemen, and Ms. Truman, we’re all under a strain. Dr. McNulty is doing his best, and I know we’re all grateful to him.”

“Let’s talk about this a little more,” said Truman after a moment. “Doctor, is it conceivable that this isn’t an epidemic at all? Could somebody be going around squirting people with something, or injecting them with some poison?”

There was a stir around the table. “My God, what a horrible idea,” somebody said.

“I don’t see how it’s possible,” McNulty answered. “It can’t be one person, because there’s no one person that’s always there. Often there’s nobody around but the two people— the one that’s infected, and the one they pass it on to.”

“Could it be on something that they hand each other—a coin, for instance?”

“No. Usually there’s no contact.”

Bliss sighed. “Now, Doctor, is it the fact that nobody you’ve consulted has been able to throw any light?”

“Yes.”

“And we can’t say when, if ever, we’ll be able to stop this thing?”

“True.”

Arline Truman leaned forward. “You said that sometimes there are only two people in a room when it happens. Wouldn’t that be our best chance? This may sound heartless, but suppose instead of sending somebody to pick up the person who’s ill, we send a nurse in there to take care of them and just keep the room locked?”

“Then you’ve got three people in there,” McNulty said wearily. “What do you do when all three of them get sick? Send in a fourth one—who has to be a nurse? Before the day was out, you’d have the room packed with nurses, all sick but one. The infection rate wouldn’t go down, the only difference would be that we’d be losing nurses, and we can’t spare them.”

“Are there other suggestions?” asked Bliss. He waited. “I hope we’ll all be thinking about this before we meet again. Meanwhile, let’s get on to other matters and let Dr. McNulty go back to his patients.”

Early on the tenth day, about nine o’clock, one of the volunteer nurses came running in. “Dr. McNulty, one of my patients looks better. I think he tried to say something.”

The patient was Randall Geller. He looked disoriented, but his eyes were focusing. His lips moved when McNulty bent over. “Wha’ happened?”

“You’ve been very ill, Mr. Geller, but you’re better now.” McNulty took Geller’s pulse; it was a little stronger.

Late that afternoon Yvonne Barlow regained consciousness. By that time Geller was feeling strong enough to be helped to the bathroom. McNulty called Bliss and said, “I think we re out of the woods.”

It was a wonderful feeling, but it was premature.