Pandemic

29

THURSDAY, 5:15 A.M.

With everything that had happened on Wednesday underscored by the bizarre and unnerving shooting episode, Jack had had trouble going to sleep and was still tossing and turning well after midnight. Also disturbing had been a call from Warren to inform him there was yet another Suburban parked on his block with an Asian driver. The only difference was that the driver was significantly younger than the previous, tall dude.

As a consequence, Jack was sound asleep when Laurie’s mobile phone rang at 5:15 in the morning. Laurie was the night person, not Jack, but because she was a deep sleeper in the morning, she didn’t stir. Although she had mocked people in the past who kept their phones close to them at night, now that she was the chief medical examiner, she always had hers hearby. Yet Jack always had to give her a couple nudges to bring her to a stage that she heard the phone’s rather quiet ringtone. She’d chosen a tone called Illuminate that Jack was always trying to get her to change. It was a bit too pleasant. After the second gentle shoulder shake, she finally answered, and Jack buried his head under his pillow to try to screen out her conversation with the hope of possibly getting another half hour of sleep.

“Really?” Laurie questioned loud enough that Jack thought it capable of waking up JJ’s gerbil a floor below. He could feel her sit up, partially pulling the covers off Jack’s naked body. Instantly, any chance of him going back to sleep vanished. “Yes, of course,” Laurie added at a more reasonable decibel level but with unmistakable urgency. “I understand and will see that it is implemented immediately.”

Removing the pillow from his head, Jack looked at Laurie. She was rapidly scrolling through her contacts. “What’s up?” he asked, but Laurie ignored him. In the half-light, with her moderately long mop of hair in disarray and her eyes thrown open to their fullest, she looked like a madwoman. A second later, having found what she was looking for, she placed a call. “Who are you calling?” Jack asked, but she still ignored him, even after he repeated his question.

“Paul, it’s Laurie. Sorry to wake you so early, but I just got a call from the duty supervisor at the Department of Health, who’d gotten a call from the city’s Emergency Operations Center. We are to initiate immediately the OCME Pandemic Influenza Surge Plan. No, it’s not an exercise. It’s the real thing. So get out your copy of the protocol. I’ll be in the office as soon as I can, but since you’re closer, make sure that the mortuary tents that will go in the parking lot next to 421 are retrieved from storage. And then start the process of dispatching the refrigerated body collection trailers to all the city hospitals. I’ll see you as soon as I can.”

The next thing Jack knew, Laurie leaped out of bed and dashed into the bathroom. She was so preoccupied it was as if he wasn’t there, despite his calling out her name. He’d never seen her so animated in the morning. As long as he had known her, she’d been the antithesis of a morning person. Normally she dragged around with heavy-lidded eyes and a shuffling gait until she had a coffee.

Throwing back the covers, Jack followed her into the bathroom. Laurie was already in the shower and partially obscured by steam. The room was chilly, and she took showers hotter than Jack could stand.

Jack cracked the glass door to the shower and yelled over the sound of the water to ask her what was going on, although he had a pretty good idea from hearing her side of the conversation with Paul Plodget, the deputy chief medical examiner.

“New York City Emergency Management initiated the NYC Pandemic Influenza Preparedness and Response Plan that Bloomberg spearheaded in 2006.”

“My God!” Jack exclaimed. “Do you know what caused them to do so?”

“The duty supervisor didn’t know,” Laurie said as she rapidly soaped herself. “It’s not surprising. I’m assuming it had been a Case Load Hazard Trigger Point coming from city hospitals, which was set up a few years ago as an early-warning mechanism. My guess would be that there was a flood of really sick people yesterday and last night. It certainly wasn’t from us at OCME. I would have heard for sure if there had been a surge of influenza deaths last night. My worry is that’s what we’re going to be seeing today.”

“The timing is a bit ironic,” Jack shouted. “I’ve been worrying about such a situation because of the two subway deaths. And now to have it happen... weird! I hope to God it’s not a rash of cases like the two subway deaths.”

“Let me finish showering!” Laurie yelled back.

Jack quickly shaved, and after Laurie got out of the shower, he got in. Ten minutes later they were both down in the kitchen to have a quick bite on the run.

“Should I turn on the TV?” Jack questioned.

“Don’t bother,” Laurie said. “We don’t have time. Besides, let’s not subject ourselves to media misinformation. We’ll hear the true details soon enough.”

While Jack rushed to make coffee, Laurie called the night medical-legal investigator, Janice Jaeger. She used speakerphone.

“Has there been a flood of influenza deaths?” Laurie asked, just to be sure. After she’d told Jack the trigger didn’t come from the OCME, she wanted to be certain.

“There haven’t been any,” Janice assured her. “It’s been a busy night, but no influenza deaths. Mostly overdoses but also a couple accidents and one homicide.”

“Well, there’s going to be a surge of influenza deaths if NYC Emergency Management is correct,” Laurie said. “They’ve declared a Pandemic Influenza Emergency. So be sure to let Bart know the moment he arrives. Better still, try to get him on his mobile. Also call the mortuary techs and give them notice. Tell them I want everybody to be wearing personal protection gear, including N95 HEPA masks, with any presumed cases.”

“Should I tell anyone else?”

“Yes. Call the duty ME and give the same message. We are probably looking at working twenty-four/seven for the foreseeable future. I’ll be in my office in about a half hour.”

After finishing her call, Laurie tossed down the coffee she had diluted with a dollop of fat-free milk. “It seems awfully early for an influenza outbreak to start,” she said. “It’s usually not until late December or early January.”

“I agree,” Jack said while quickly peeling a banana. “It must be a strain completely out of the ordinary, like the bird flu everyone has been worried about becoming transmissible from person to person instead of just from poultry to humans. That would be really bad. What would be the best-case scenario is that it’s an influenza strain that this year’s flu vaccine covers. Then the city could do a massive vaccination program to take care of it.”

“Wouldn’t that be lucky,” Laurie said. “That could make all the difference in the world. But coming on this early makes me think it’s got to be something out of the ordinary, as you said. Maybe it’s something like SARS or MERS. Whatever it is, the prospect is really scary. I don’t think there are nearly enough ventilators available citywide. Some scenarios have predicted up to a thousand hospital admissions a day in this kind of scenario. As you know, everybody in city government has been terrified of this happening for years. It’s why there have been so many exercises and drills. Ever since I have been in the front office I’ve been concerned that all the Emergency Management people have been whipped up into a frenzy anticipating this.”

“I understand,” Jack said. “Should I call us a car?”

“By all means,” Laurie said. “Are you coming with me?”

“I will.” Jack took his phone out and opened a ride-hailing app. “The weather is hardly bike-riding weather, even for me.” The wind was driving raindrops against the kitchen window hard enough to sound like rice. It was one of those particularly ugly November mornings.

“What are you people doing up so early?” Dorothy asked as she suddenly appeared, coming up the stairs. She was in her robe as usual. She was wearing what looked to Jack like a shower hat covering curlers in her hair.

“There has been a sudden, serious outbreak of influenza,” Laurie said. “Apparently, it is a very dangerous strain. We have to get to work to prepare for” — Laurie paused, trying to think how best to complete her sentence — “for being busy.”

“That’s awful,” Dorothy said, immediately understanding, despite Laurie’s sanitized choice of words. “Especially since you have two young children to think of. For the life of me I don’t understand why you didn’t listen to me when I pleaded with you not to become a medical examiner. You could have been a pediatrician or a surgeon like your father.”

Laurie rolled her eyes for Jack’s benefit out of her mother’s line of sight. “I’m going to wake Caitlin and tell her to keep the children home until we know more about what is going on with this influenza situation,” she said, ignoring the irritatingly recurrent comment.

Jack finished summoning a car and slipped his smartphone into his pocket. He eyed Dorothy warily. He wished Sheldon had appeared with her. Despite Jack’s initial misgivings, Sheldon was turning out to be a helpful moderating influence.

To Jack’s relief, Laurie reappeared almost immediately. “Shall we go?” she asked him.

“By all means.”

Downstairs, they each got umbrellas and then waited in the foyer until a car appeared and slowed. When it then stopped in the middle of the street abreast of their building, Laurie and Jack ran out into the rain and piled into it. It was a black Toyota Camry.

As they pulled away from the curb, Jack made it a point to glance out the car’s back window. Although he wasn’t totally surprised, a black Suburban that had been parked up near Central Park West pulled out behind them and followed at a distance. Facing forward, Jack wondered if the driver or drivers were Asian, and if they were, which group they might represent: the group that possibly wished him harm or the group that had seemingly protected him. Although he didn’t know if he was guilty of wishful thinking, he had a sense it was the latter.

“I’m going to try to call the health commissioner,” Laurie said.

“Good idea,” Jack responded. As Laurie made her call, Jack again twisted around. As he expected, he could still see a black Suburban following at a distance.