The Judas Virus Read online

  Please let Engineering have the right ones . . .

  “Doctor?”

  “I’m here.”

  “All our filters are yellow.”

  She mechanically thanked him for his help and hung up.

  Yellow.

  Damn it.

  Mary Beth had become infected by using the wrong filters. But what about Ginny Barroso?

  Chris picked up the filter replacement log and looked for Ginny’s entry the night she was infected. There . . . filters replaced at the start of her shift.

  Replaced with what? Mary Beth must have gotten two extras from Engineering. Or Ginny didn’t actually replace the filters. Either way, she must have worked her shift with yellow filters in her mask. Just to be sure, Chris went down to the ICU, hoping to find the nurse who’d worked the isolation ward day shift during her father’s stay.

  She spotted her almost immediately: a big, dark-haired woman whose nose dominated her face. Chris couldn’t remember her name. Brenda, maybe. She walked over to where the woman was adjusting the delivery rate on a patient’s IV. When Chris was a couple of steps away, the nurse finished with the IV and turned, giving Chris a glance at her name tag, which was not Brenda.

  “Hello, Barbara, how are you?” Chris asked.

  “Dr. Collins. I’m all right. It’s a lot more work down here than it was taking care of your father. How’s he doing?”

  “Still better than anyone expected. Do you remember the day we discussed you taking the filters from the backup respirator?”

  “Yes.”

  “You were expecting the new filters to come up from Central Supply at any time. Did they ever arrive that day?”

  Barbara thought back. “I don’t think they did . . . no, I remember, they brought a couple of boxes the next morning, a few minutes after my shift started.”

  “So you used some of those when you changed filters.”

  “I’m sure I did.”

  “Do you remember anything unusual about the filters you replaced?”

  “The rims were yellow, not purple. I thought that was kind of odd, but I just assumed they were from some other maker.”

  “Thanks. You’ve been a big help.”

  “And I didn’t even have to lift anything.”

  Chris wasn’t eager to tell Michael what she’d learned, but he needed to know. She passed up the house phone in the ICU and found one in a less public area. Michael returned her page promptly.

  “I know how the virus got into those nurses,” she said. She told him her story objectively, with no attempt to hide her culpability.

  “Amazing,” he said when she finished. “So many places where that chain of events could have gone a different way. Good job. Thanks.”

  “How will you write your report?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Whom will you blame?”

  “No one. It was just a series of mistakes that got compounded as the day wore on.”

  “Will Scott see it that way?”

  “I have no idea. Do we really care?”

  “He does run the hospital.”

  “So maybe we’ll have a difference of opinion. Wouldn’t be the first time. And I’ve got bigger problems than that to worry about. I better get started on my report. Thanks again for figuring it all out.”

  Chris was not comforted by Michael’s charitable view of the account she’d given him. She knew who was at fault.

  She arrived home a little after 6 p.m. still thinking about the backup respirator. She expected to find her father busy in the kitchen and dinner nearly ready. But he wasn’t there. She saw some strips of well-pounded veal and an uncooked spinach casserole on the counter and there was a big fresh garden salad in the fridge. But the cook was somewhere else.

  And the apartment was silent.

  Mildly curious, she went down the hall to what was temporarily serving as Wayne’s room and knocked on the door.

  “Hello. Anyone home?”

  No answer.

  Fearing that he might be in there in some sort of coma, she opened the door and looked inside. Her eyes went first to the sofa bed, which was neatly made up and didn’t have Wayne in it. She flicked on the lights and went inside to see if he was on the floor on the other side of the bed.

  He wasn’t.

  Puzzled, she started for the door, but then saw something on the chest she’d let him use. It was a bottle of Bombay Gin.

  Flushed with anger, she grabbed the bottle and took it into the living room, where she pulled an armchair around so it faced the door. Then she sat, the gin bottle in her lap, waiting for her father to return.

  At 6:14, she heard the sound of a key in the lock, and Wayne came in carrying a small brown paper bag.

  “Where have you been?” Chris said accusingly.

  Obviously confused by her tone of voice, Wayne held up the brown bag. “I needed some fresh garlic.”

  Chris stood up and stalked over to him. She held the gin in front of his face. “Recognize this?” Without waiting for an answer, she turned and walked away, talking now to the wall. “You know how important it is that you not drink.” She turned to face him. “You promised a room full of people that you could be trusted. And they believed you, invested their time and a considerable amount of money in you, and this is how you repay them? You said you had changed. Well, forgive me if I see the same old Wayne, all for himself and to hell with everyone else.”

  “Look at the cap on the bottle,” Wayne said.

  “What about it?”

  “Is the seal broken?”

  She examined the cap. “No.”

  “So I couldn’t have consumed any of the contents.”

  “Not yet. But you were planning to.”

  “I bought it so I could look at it every day and see the enemy. It’s not good enough to just be strong when there’s no alcohol around. I have to be able to resist even when it’s easy to take a drink. Have you ever smelled alcohol on my breath since my return? No? So why did you assume the worst when you found an unopened bottle in my room?”

  When it came to her father, Chris realized that she was two people. One wanted to roast him over an open flame, deaf to all pleas for mercy. The other wanted to love him and believe he loved her. As those dual incarnations grappled with each other to see which would deal with the current situation, a third Chris stepped forward. Cool and objective, this one understood that her reaction to all this was being colored by anger at herself over what she’d just learned at the hospital. She saw now that Wayne could be telling the truth.

  “You’re right,” she said. “It was wrong of me to accuse you like that. I’m sorry.”

  “Apology accepted. Now let me get in the kitchen and put this garlic to use.”

  THE NEXT MORNING, Dominic and Ginny Barroso and Mary Beth Cummings all reported to the hospital, and each gave a blood sample. By late afternoon, Ash had the results: virus absent in the two women, still present in Dominic. Shortly after Chris learned of the results, she got a phone call.

  “Dr. Collins, would you hold please for Dr. Scott?”

  The Monteagle CEO. What could he want? Uh-oh. Michael’s report . . . Scott had learned how she’d screwed up and was probably calling to vent all over her.

  After a few seconds, he came on the line. “I assume you’ve heard that the blood of the two nurses was negative for virus today.”

  “I was informed of that not fifteen minutes ago,” Chris replied, thinking this was an odd way for him to begin.

  “I want to reinstate the two women and allow them to return to work. But I thought I’d get your views first.”

  He wanted her opinion. As though she were still in good standing with him. Hadn’t he read the report yet? The question of reinstatement of
the two nurses was one she’d been thinking about since even before she’d been told of the test results. Despite the possibility that months or years from now the virus might somehow damage all those who had been infected, there seemed only one reasonable course of action. “I don’t see that we have any good reason not to reinstate them. And since they were infected as part of their regular duties, they may have legal recourse if we don’t.”

  “That’s what Bechtel said. And I certainly don’t want the hospital involved in a protracted lawsuit over this issue while we’re in negotiations for licensing rights to the virus. I appreciate your sensitivity to that. You’re obviously a person who sees the larger context here.”

  Uncomfortable with Scott’s belief that her decision had come from a fear of legal action, Chris hastened to correct him. “Even though I mentioned the possible legal ramifications of not reinstating them, I was more concerned with treating those women fairly.”

  “Of course,” Scott said. “As was I. By the way, Dr. Boyer told me you were the one . . .”

  Here it comes, Chris thought.

  “. . . who figured out how the virus was transmitted. That was good work. I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but Monteagle is looking for a medical director of infection control, and I think you’d be an excellent choice. I don’t need your decision right now. Think about it. I’ll hold the job open while you do. If you have any questions, call me.”

  Chris stayed by the phone after hanging up. How could he want her after she’d let those nurses become infected? Too puzzled to concentrate on anything else, she called Michael.

  “I just talked to Scott, and he offered me the infection control job at Monteagle.”

  “Good. I’m glad.”

  “Why’d he do it?”

  “Why wouldn’t he?”

  “Those nurses . . . it was my fault.”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  “The backup respirator . . .”

  “C’mon, no one could have foreseen what was going to happen from just that.”

  “Did you put it in your report?”

  “No.”

  “You should have.”

  “It was irrelevant.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “It wasn’t a novel. Just a report on the salient facts.”

  “I don’t need you to protect me.”

  “That never crossed my mind. Believe me, it didn’t.”

  “Well . . . I wish you’d put it in.”

  “I’m sorry. I probably should have let you see it before I gave it to him. But I was pressed for time and thought I had the facts well in hand.”

  Though she was upset, Michael’s explanation seemed reasonable. “I guess I understand. I’m sorry I came on like that.”

  “Is there a chance you’d take the job?”

  “I don’t deserve it.”

  “Chris, ease up. Not only weren’t you responsible for what happened, no one was hurt. No harm, no foul.”

  A sports cliché. Did he really think that would make her feel better?

  But in the next moment, her strong need for absolution made her more receptive. It’s true, no one was harmed. At least not yet. And maybe never. Why carry that burden before I have to? “I suppose you’re right.”

  “So think about that job. I’d love having you over here.”

  Chris sat for a moment after hanging up, reflecting on what Michael had said. Had he been trying to protect her by submitting an abridged report? If so, then he, too, believed she was culpable. No, he didn’t think that. He was right. No harm, no foul.

  GINNY BARROSO LOOKED with dismay at her silver-handled brush.

  “What’s wrong?” Dominic said, pulling on the shirt he was going to wear when they picked up Ginny’s new car.

  She showed him her brush, which was so packed with strands of her hair he could barely see its bristles.

  “How long has that been going on?” he asked.

  “This is the first I’ve noticed it.”

  “Are you using some new kind of shampoo?”

  “I’m not doing anything different. How does my scalp look?” She bent her head down so he could see.

  “Come in the kitchen. The light is better there.”

  They went to the kitchen, where Dominic sat Ginny under the hanging light fixture over the breakfast table. There, he prowled diligently through her hair, seeing nothing unusual about her scalp, but pulling many hairs loose even though he was trying to be careful.

  “Your scalp looks fine,” he said finally. “The hair is just coming out. Could this have something to do with that virus we picked up from the hospital?”

  “I suppose it’s possible, but no one mentioned that this might happen. And it’s not even in our blood anymore. If they thought I was sick, they wouldn’t have let me go back to work. How’s your hair?”

  Dom tested his hair in several places. “It’s okay. But I didn’t get the virus the same time you did. We should talk to Dr. Boyer about this.”

  “They’ll probably want to examine me. Let’s swing by the hospital after we pick up my car.”

  An hour later, they were flying down the highway with Ginny behind the wheel of a brand-new white Pontiac with a gray interior that smelled so good it almost made her forget her hair was falling out.

  Trying not to think about it himself, Dominic kept up a constant flow of chatter about the car’s features. “Look, here’s a place in the console that stores change by denomination, and another compartment below that for CDs.”

  About seven miles from the Monteagle exit, Ginny started to feel hot, and sweat began to pearl from her forehead. She turned up the air-conditioner.

  Though Dominic found the new setting distinctly uncomfortable, he didn’t complain.

  Five miles from their exit, Ginny cranked the air up another notch.

  Three miles later, just as Dominic was about to tell Ginny she was freezing him, a shimmering opalescent cloud bloomed in the center of both her eyes, through which she could see nothing.

  “Oh, Dom . . . Something’s wrong with my eyes. I can’t . . .”

  She began cranking her head around so she could see past the obstruction.

  “You’re weaving,” Dom shouted. “Stay in your lane.”

  Ginny knew she had to get off the road, but they were in the middle lane, and there was traffic all around them which she could only see around the edges of the shimmering cloud.

  “Dom, I’m going blind. I can only see . . .” Slowly, the cloud expanded, snuffing out even more of her vision.

  As the car veered to the right, toward a tour bus, Dominic reached for the wheel, but the sudden movement caused his seat belt to catch, restraining him. With a crunch of metal, the car collided with the side of the bus.

  Instinctively, Ginny turned the wheel hard to the left, sending the car too far in the opposite direction so that it was struck by a pickup in the next lane. The impact deployed both airbags in the Barrosos’ car. Fused at their front ends, the two vehicles headed for the shoulder and left the road. The pickup bounced over the ground and came to a stop with its driver unharmed. But the Barrosos’ car hit a huge cement drainage tile.

  With the airbags already depleted, the impact snapped Dominic’s head forward, breaking his neck and severing his brainstem. Though still blind, Ginny was otherwise unhurt.

  “Dom, are you all right?” She threw off her seat belt and groped for her husband. Then she felt the fire, burning her feet with such pain as she had never known. The flames spread up her legs—excruciating pain.

  Unable to think about Dominic, she clawed at the car door, got it open, and threw herself from the vehicle. The fire had now reached her thighs. She beat at the flames, but her hands couldn’t feel them.

 
Such pain . . . the burning . . . so bad . . .

  She screamed the whole time she was dying. And with the ambulance less than a minute away, the screams and her life ended.

  It was the most awful thing the driver of the pickup had ever witnessed. The woman was screaming about being burned alive, and there was nothing he could do to help her. Because there was no fire.

  AS MARY BETH Cummings reached for the shampoo, she launched into the first few bars of “You Light Up My Life.” She didn’t need the help of tiled walls to make her voice sound good, for she was an exceptionally gifted singer. She had power and range and just enough of a sawtooth edge on her delivery to make the sound distinctive, all the ingredients that would have given her a real shot at becoming a professional singer. But even as a child, she’d believed she was destined to be a nurse, so that her dolls always looked like victims of some catastrophe, with their heads and limbs swaddled in plaid, flowered, or striped bandages made from any scraps of fabric she could find.

  A nurse was all she’d ever wanted to be. Yet here she was, not four years into her dream, enrolled in law school, on her way to joining the ranks of one of the most ridiculed and disliked professions on earth. There probably were nurse jokes out there, but she couldn’t have told you one, even if you’d given her an hour to think. But everybody, even Mary Beth, knew a few lawyer jokes. Nurse to lawyer; just one of life’s little surprises.

  Like picking up a funny virus that fixed her finger.

  And on Friday, thinking that after she’d given them another blood sample at Monteagle, it’d just be an ordinary day: a class in civil procedure, one on torts, a quick lunch followed by a couple hours in the library, then dinner and back to the hospital. There’d been no way to anticipate that at lunch she’d be sharing her table with a guy who looked like a model. His name was Tom Fitzpatrick, and he was part owner of a chain of Atlanta health clubs. He’d amused her all through lunch with an exaggerated Irish accent, and then while she was practically choking on her sandwich after one particularly funny line about the potato famine, he’d asked her out.