Patient Zero

Chapter Ninety

Baltimore, Maryland / Saturday, July 4; 1:17 A.M.

SHE WORE MAKESHIFT pajamas-blue hospital scrubs and a black tank top. Her hair was untidy, there were fatigue smudges under her eyes. She held a six-pack of Sam Adams Summer Ale beer by the handle of the cardboard carrier.

“Did I wake you?”

“Yes.”

“Good, because I can’t sleep. Let me in.” She let the sixer of beer swing from her finger.

“Okay,” I said, and stepped back to pull the door open. Grace nodded and walked past me into the room. She gave it a quick, flat appraising look and grunted.

“They brought a lot of your things.”

“They brought my cat,” I said as I closed the door. Cobbler jumped off the bed and came over to her, sniffing tentatively. “Cobbler, be nice to the major.”

Cobbler still looked cautious but when Grace squatted down to pet him he allowed it. Her fingers flexed luxuriantly in his fur.

“Have a seat,” I said, indicating the recliner. I got the bottle opener that was attached to my key chain, opened two bottles and handed her one. I took mine and sat on the edge of the bed.

She rose and stood looking down at the cat for a moment, sipping thoughtfully.

“I like your friend Dr. Sanchez.”

“Rudy.”

“Rudy. We met outside the showers, had a bit of a heart-to-heart. He’s a good man.”

“You any judge?”

“I’ve known a few shrinks in my time.” She looked away, but I saw that her eyes were wet. Cobbler was still close so she busied herself by scratching between his ears, then she tilted the bottle back and drank nearly all of it.

“These last few days have been unreal,” she said softly. “Ungodly ”

She shook her head, sniffing back tears. She finished her beer, got another. I handed her the opener and as she took it her fingers brushed mine. She wanted it to look casual, but she wasn’t that good an actress. My skin was hot where she’d touched me.

“It must have been pretty bad at the hospital,” I said. “I still haven’t seen the tapes, but Rudy told me. Worse even than the crab plant, from what he said.”

Back in her chair she looked at the beer bottle as if interested in something on the label. When she spoke her voice was almost a whisper. “When we realized something about about what was going on, when we saw that we were losing control of the situation at St. Michael’s I ” She stopped, shook her head, tried again. “When we realized what we had to do it was the worst thing in my life. It was worse than ” A tear gathered in the corner of her eye.

“Have some beer,” I suggested softly.

She drank and then raised her head and looked at me with her red-rimmed eyes. “Joe when I was eighteen I got pregnant by a boy during my first year at university. We were just kids, you know? He freaked and buggered off, but then he came back when I was in my third trimester. We got married. A civil ceremony. We weren’t ever really in love, but he stayed with me until the baby was born. Brian Michael. But he was born with a hole in his heart.”

The room was utterly silent.

“They tried everything. They did four surgeries, but the heart hadn’t formed correctly. Brian lived for three months. There was never really a chance he’d make it, they told me. After the last surgery I sat with my baby day and night. I lost so much weight I was like a ghost. Eighty-seven pounds. They wanted to admit me.”

I started to say something, but she shook me off.

“Then one afternoon the doctor told me that there was no brain activity, that for all intents and purposes my baby was dead. They wanted me to they asked me if I would consent to having the respirator disconnected. What could I say? I screamed, I yelled at them, I argued with them. I prayed. For days.” The tears broke and cut silvery lines down her face. They looked like scars. “When I finally agreed it was so horrible. I kissed my baby and held his little hand while they stopped the machines. I put my face down to listen to his heartbeat, hoping that it would go on beating, but all I heard was one heartbeat. Just one, he died that quickly. One beat and then a dreadful silence. I felt him die, Joe. It was so awful, so terrible that I knew that I would never- could never feel anything worse.” She drank most of the second bottle. “It ruined me. My husband had left again after the second surgery. I guess to him Brian was already gone. My parents were long gone. I had no one else in my life. I continued to get sicker and I wound up in a psychiatric medical center for nearly three months. Are you shocked?”

She looked at me defiantly, but something in my expression must have reassured her. She nodded.

“In the hospital I had a counselor and she suggested that I look for something that would give me structure. I had no family left and she knew a recruiter. She wrote me a letter of recommendation and two weeks after discharge from hospital I was in the army. It became my life. From there I went to the SAS. I saw combat in a dozen places. I saw death. I caused death. None of it touched me. I believed that whatever had made me a person, a human being, was gone, buried in a little coffin with a tiny body. Both of us dead, killed by imperfect hearts.”

She wiped at the tears then stared with subdued surprise at the wetness on her fingers. “I hardly ever cry anymore. Except sometimes at night when I wake up from a dream of holding Brian’s hand and hearing his last heartbeat. I haven’t cried in years, Joe. Not in years.”

My mouth was dry and I drank some beer to be able to breathe.

Grace said, “When Al Qaeda attacked the World Trade Center I didn’t cry. I just got angry. When the bombs went off in the London subways, I tightened up my resolve. Grace Courtland, Major SAS, combat veteran, professional hard-ass.” She took a big breath, blew out her cheeks. “And then St. Michael’s. God! We went in there hard and fast, so tough and practiced. You never got a chance to see the DMS at its best, but everyone in Baker and Charlie teams were absolutely first-rate. Top-of-the-line combat veterans, not a virgin among them. What is it you Yanks say? Heartbreakers and life-takers? State-of-the-art equipment, cutting-edge tactics, nothing left to chance. And you know what happened? We were slaughtered! Grown men and women torn apart. Civilians killing armed military with their fingers and teeth. Children taking shot after shot to the chest, falling down and then getting right up again, their bodies torn open, and still they kept running at our men, tearing and biting them. Eating them.”

“God,” I whispered.

“God wasn’t there that day,” she hissed in as bitter a voice as I’ve ever heard. “I’m not a religious person, Joe. Faith isn’t something I’m good at, not since I buried Brian; but if there was ever a splinter of belief or hope left in me it ended that day. It was consumed by what happened.”

“Grace you do know that you and Church had no other choice?”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better? Do you really think that makes any difference to me? I know we didn’t have another choice, that’s why we made the choice we did. We were losing, Joe. Losing. Suddenly, all the training, all the power that we thought we had was gone. It failed us. Just as medicine and prayer failed Brian. All we could do was disconnect another switch, turn off more lives because there was nothing else left for us.” Tears fell steadily but she didn’t bother to wipe them away.

She gave me a twisted smile. “The thing is that was even worse than turning off my baby’s life support. Worse, do you understand? And afterward do you know what I felt the most? Guilt. Not for having to kill all of those people. No, I felt-I feel-guilty because that was the worst moment of my life. It probably always will be. So I feel like I’ve somehow betrayed or maybe abandoned my baby because now this event is bigger and worse even than that. I feel like I’ve lost Brian again. Forever this time. It hurts so damn-”

Her voice suddenly disintegrated into terrible sobs and she dropped the bottle and covered her face with both hands. I was up and across the room before her bottle rolled to a stop. I took her by the arms and gathered her to me, pulling her off the chair, wrapping her up against my chest. The sound of her sobs cut through my flesh and into my heart. I held her close-this angry woman, this bitter soldier-and I kissed her hair and held her as close and as tight and as safe as I could.

SHE WEPT FOR a long time.

I walked her to the bed and we lay down together, her face buried against me, her tears soaking through my T-shirt, her body fever-hot. Maybe I said something, some nonsense words, but I don’t remember. Her body bucked and spasmed with the tears until slowly, slowly, the immediacy of the storm began to pass. Her arms were wrapped around me, her fingers knotted in my shirt. The knots of tension eased by very slow degrees.

We lay like that for a long time, and then I could feel the change in her as her tension changed from the totality of grief to the awkwardness of awareness. We were as physically close as lovers, but there had been nothing even remotely sexual about her tears or my holding her, not even in our lying down together. Not at first. But now there was a new tension as we both became enormously aware of all the points of contact-of thighs intertwined, of groins pushed forward, of her breasts against my chest, of hot exhalations, and of animal heat and natural musk.

There was a moment when we should have rolled apart, made a few awkward jokes, and retreated to separate corners of the universe. But that moment passed.

After a minute or two she said, very softly, “I didn’t come here for this.”

“I know.”

“It’s well, there was no one else. I can’t talk to Mr. Church. Not about this. Not like this.”

“No.”

“And I don’t know Dr. Sanchez yet. Not well enough.”

“You don’t know me, either.”

“Yes,” she said quietly, her forehead tucked under my chin. “I do. I know about Helen. I know about your mum. You’ve lost so much. As much as I have.”

I nodded, she could feel it.

“Will you make love to me?” she asked.

I leaned back and looked down at her. “Not now,” I said. When I saw the hurt on her face I smiled and shook my head. “You’ve chugged two beers, you’re grieving, exhausted, and in shock. I’d have to be the world’s biggest jackass to try and take advantage of that kind of vulnerability.”

Grace looked at me for a long time. “You’re a strange man, Joe Ledger.” She pushed one of her hands up between us and touched my face. “I never thought you’d be kind. Not to me. You’re an actual gentleman.”

“We’re a dying breed they’re hunting us down one by one.”

She laughed and then laid her head against me. “Thanks for listening, Joe.”

After another long time of silence she said, “Back at the plant I asked you a question, about whether we’ve stopped this. Was that the last cell? Did we stop the terrorist movement here in the States, or did we just burn up our last lead?”

“Bad questions to ask in the dark,” I said, stroking her hair.

“Mr. Church spoke with the President and the head of the FDA. The gears are already turning to get the pharmaceutical companies involved. The President will address a closed session of Congress in two days. The full resources of the United States, England, and the other allies will be thrown against this now.”

“Yes.”

“So why am I still so afraid?” she asked.

The silence swirled around us.

“Same reason I am,” I said.

She said nothing more and after a long while her breathing changed to the slow, steady rhythm. I kissed her hair and she wriggled more tightly against me, and after a while, she slept. After a much longer time I, too, drifted off.