Plague

CHAPTER 41

Sam woke sometime in the evening to a knock at her door. For a moment, she wasn’t sure where she was, the surroundings completely alien, and then she heard Duncan’s voice on the other side of the door.

“You awake, Sam?”

“One sec,” she said. She made her way to the door, stretching her neck, which had tightened up like ball of rubber bands. It shot pain through her head and she rolled it in a circle before opening.

“Hey,” Duncan said, “you slept a while.”

“What time is it?”

“Almost seven. You ready to go?”

“Where?”

“To the hospital. Benjamin called ahead and set everything up.”

Sam stretched again and then went to find her shoes. Duncan hung by the door, staring off into space.

“Is this how you pictured life as a scientist would be?” he said.

“I see myself as a doctor, not a scientist.”

“Not me. Maybe that’s why I feel so out of place here. I should be in the lab with Pushkin, running cultures.”

“Then why’d you come?”

“For you.”

They exchanged glances as she laced up her shoes and followed him out the door.

Outside the heat was causing waves to come up off the ground and the stink of sweat and exhaust filled the air, broken occasionally by a soft breeze that would fill the nostrils with the scent of jungle vines and grass.

Sam went to the edge of the road, as there was no sidewalk. A few merchants approached her, hawking cheap homemade goods, and she politely turned them down. Eventually a car came for them and Duncan, Sam, and Agent Donner, who had just run out of the building in time to meet them, climbed aboard.

“Ben and Cami are already down there,” Agent Donner said.

“Holly’s not contagious,” Duncan said, “but I had Ben bring some gear for us. I think we should treat her as potentially infectious.”

As the car got moving, Sam opened her iPad and began writing a document. It was a makeshift journal; just something to use to help jog her memory later on if she should need it. If this girl did provide something useful, maybe the journal could later become an article in the New England Journal of Medicine.

They reached the hospital and got out. It wasn’t much more than five stories of what appeared like an office building but there were ambulances coming and going and she saw doctors in white coats smoking outside with nurses. They followed several people inside the double glass doors and Agent Donner spoke with someone at the desk before they climbed onto the elevator.

“They don’t have her in isolation anymore,” he said. “She’s just on the third floor in a room.”

“Why is she still here?” Sam asked.

“No idea. I assume observation. But from what Benjamin told me she’s recovered completely.”

They stepped off onto the third floor and it was nearly empty. A few gurneys were being pushed around, medical staff were speaking in hushed tones in the hallway, but there wasn’t the flurry of patients she expected in a moderately-sized city in South America.

They walked to the end of the hallway and saw Benjamin speaking on his cell phone. He seemed agitated and was pacing back and forth in the hallway. He saw them, ended his conversation, and put the phone away.

“You guys,” he said, “it’s not pretty.”

“What do you mean?” Sam said.

“You’ll have to see it for yourself. I’m just warning you. Your gear’s right there in that suitcase.”

They took out their suits, Kevlar gloves, booties, and clear plastic facemasks. After they suited up Sam was the first to open the door and step inside.

The first thing she noticed was Cami in a chair by the bed. She wasn’t suited and was just sitting in shorts and a tank-top with her legs crossed near Holly Fenstermac.

Holly’s hands were what she noticed next. They appeared as if they had been boiled in hot oil. They had large swelling balls of skin and fluid over them and Sam thought of the old scripture for Job, cast with boils for a bet between God and Satan, innocent and undeserving of such a fate.

Sam’s eyes followed the hands up the arms, which were filled with the same boils. Though she knew they only looked like boils. They were fluid-filled blisters and they took up every inch of skin. She had seen them in some of the patients in Honolulu, and in textbooks for smallpox.

Her face was covered with so many blisters you could only see the general shape. Her lips were swollen shut and even her eyes were covered in maculopapular rashes and the beginnings of blisters.

Cami was speaking softly to the woman, but it didn’t appear that she was responsive.

“Is she conscious?” Sam asked, barely able to get the words out.

“No,” Cami said. “I’ve been speaking to her for over an hour and she hasn’t responded.”

“I’ve never…I’ve never seen-”

“I know,” Cami said. “I haven’t seen it this bad either. I can’t even imagine the pain she’s going through. The blisters on her corneas have blinded her and the ones in her ear canals are making it difficult for her to hear. One of the doctors told us she only responds to touch, but that hasn’t worked either.”

Duncan came close to the patient and examined her eyes. He stepped back and looked at Sam. “I wouldn’t want survival like this,” he whispered, just in case the patient could hear.

“Me neither.”

“Come on. Let’s go.”

As Sam turned to leave, a noise startled her. It sounded like an animal’s hiss and she realized it was the patient. Cami leaned in close.

“I’m here for you,” Cami said. “My name is Dr. Mendoza. I’m here for you.”

The patient opened her eyes. The eyes themselves were overtaken with deep scarring from the blisters and it appeared as if they were covered in dried and cracking skin. Her head tilted and she began to speak in an almost inaudible volume.

Cami would whisper, “Yes,” or “No,” every once in a while but for the most part let Holly speak. After about half a minute, Holly tilted her head up again, glanced once to Samantha, and then closed her eyes.

“What did she say?” Agent Donner asked.

Cami wiped the tears away from her eyes. “She said she wants to be buried in the States. She’s from California and she wants to be buried there next to her mother. We need to make sure that can happen.”

“What else?” Agent Donner said. Sam assumed he was thinking what everyone else in the room was thinking; there was no way they would let her body return to the States.

“She said something about a canister. Some canister they found on their tour and that’s how they got sick.”

“She didn’t say any of them were bit by an animal?” Duncan said.

“No, she said it was a canister. They found it and that’s when Michael got sick.”

Agent Donner said, “Where is the canister now?”

“They gave it to someone in a village, a little boy.”

“What village?”

“I don’t know.”

“Ask her.”

Cami looked to Agent Donner. “No. Let her sleep.”

“She’s slept enough, Dr. Mendoza. Ask her what village. You can ask more gently than I can. If I have to wake her up, she won’t enjoy it.”

Cami stared at him a moment and looked like she was about to say something, but didn’t. Instead, she leaned down next to the patient’s ear and whispered something. The patient whispered something back but it was inaudible to Sam.

“She says it was a Pisac village on the route they took. She gave it to a little boy there.”

Agent Donner immediately left the room. Sam didn’t follow. She stood quietly and stared at the woman lying in the gurney, half alive and half dead, blind and going deaf. Soon the world would be nothing to her but darkness and pain.

“We can’t leave her like this,” Sam said.

Cami nodded. “I know. Please leave.”

“I can help.”

“No, just leave. I brought us down here. I talked Ben into coming. She can’t suffer like this. This is something I have to do. Please just leave, Dr. Bower.”

Sam waited a moment longer, and then turned to leave the room. Duncan held her by the arm. She wasn’t sure if it was to help her or himself.