The Beijing conspiracy

CHAPTER 52

I mran woke from his doze in the total isolation ward where they’d transferred Kate after the accident. The small hospital had been constructed in a separate building on the campus of the Centers for Disease Control. Accidents in Level 4 labs were very rare but they were almost always fatal, and this ward had the same level of protection as the laboratories. Imran, like the doctors and nurses, was in his spacesuit, his regulator connected to a coiled red air hose dangling from the ceiling of the ward. He looked across at Kate and mouthed a silent prayer to Allah. She was tossing and turning in her sleep, beads of perspiration covering her pale forehead.

The door opened and the duty sister shuffled in followed by Curtis O’Connor. Both were fully suited and Imran smiled to himself as he watched them both reach for an air hose. Curtis was holding a bunch of white roses with bare stems. He had personally removed every leaf and thorn. It would have taken some smooth talking to get the sister to agree to him bringing them in here, Imran thought. Like any of the waste from this ward, the flowers would eventually be incinerated at ultra high temperatures.

Kate groaned as the sister mopped her brow with a damp cloth, which she then disposed of in a bright yellow waste bin marked with the biohazard symbol. The monitor above the bed showed a heart rate of 120. Imran knew that despite Kate’s punishing schedule, she somehow managed to find time to work out in the gym or, when she could manage it, she went for jog at lunchtime. This was one very fit scientist and a resting heart rate of 120 was a bad sign. Her other vital signs were no more encouraging. Her temperature was now 103° F, and her blood pressure was 160 over 100. Imran glanced at Curtis O’Connor who was also staring at the monitor, watching Kate’s heart rate blips as they raced across the oscilloscope. Both men knew that Kate was still mercifully free of any of the deadly telltale haemorrhagic blood spots underneath the skin, and both men knew that a fever normally occurred after the appearance of either a rash or the blood spots. But if Kate had contracted the disease, they would lose her.