Plague (29 page)

“Sure.”

“Why are you here?”

“What do
you mean?”

“Benjamin’s clearly a fool and the virus is contained on an island. It’s unlikely it’ll get out. Why did you risk your life coming to this place just to see a woman who is rumored to have survived it?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense to me either but I just had a feeling that this is where I had to be.” She folded her arms
, leaning against the glass of the large window. “I think about those people on the island. Seeing loved ones dying slowly with no one around to help. I can’t stand it. When I close my eyes, their faces are painted on my lids.”

“They did nothing to deserve that,
but
you did nothing to deserve the guilt you’re feeling now. The virus was a force of nature, like a tornado. You couldn’t control it.”

“No, but I could’ve stayed and helped. At least I could’ve tried harder to stay.”

“And you’d be dead just like the rest of them. Who exactly would that have helped, Dr. Bower?”

“Sam,” Duncan said, “you’re going to want to see this.”

Samantha walked over. There was a
YouTube
clip playing on Duncan’s cell phone. It was of a news broadcast from Los Angeles. The broadcast ran for a total of five minutes and twenty-seven seconds, but Sam only heard one line. It was a single sentence that rang in her ears and made her knees feel like they were about to buckle:

And again, for those viewers just tuning in, a case of the deadly Honolulu virus known as Agent X has been reported at Good Samaritan Hospital her
e
in Los Angeles.

CHAPTER 39

Ralph Wilson was at LAX within six hours of hearing the news. It was a red-eye flight and he didn’t arrive until
2:00
a.m. Pacific, which was
4:00
a.m. Eastern. He felt a fatigue he hadn’t felt since his days as a resident at Cedars Sinai, running from room to room in the ER
on thirty-
six-
hour shifts, hoping
he wouldn’t
fall asleep as
he sat
down to do a patient intake.

He raced through the airport and
opted to
grab one of the cabs that were ever present outside on the curb
instead of renting a car
. He stepped out into the night air. It was warm and
had a slight taste of exhaust i
n it.
T
wo cabs
were
parked at the curb. One was driven by a white man, the other by a black woman. He chose the white male and sat in the back.

“Good Samaritan Hospital.”

“You got it.”

The cab pulled away and they began to drive. He rolled down his window, hoping for fresh air
, but instead got lungfuls of exhaust
and low hanging smog. He rolled the window back up.

“What you doin’ out at this hour?” the cabbie said.

“What’s that?”

“What you doin’ out at this hour? Most guys that ride in here with suits as nice as yours don’t pop in at two in the mornin’.”

He shook his head as he stared out the window. “Cleaning up other people’s messes. That seems to be all I do nowadays.”

“
Better than causin’ ‘em.”

They rode through sections of the city that Ralph hadn’t been to in decades. He had
lived
here once, long ago. Back when the city wasn’t exploding with crime and the police were actually seen as the good guys. One thing he remembered vividly was taking walks around Echo Park every night. There would be families walking dogs, mothers pushing strollers, women jogging alone.
Those things were
impossible
to do safely
now. The city had transformed itself in such a short amount of time. Cities were like people; tragedy and heartbreak molded them. Pain molded them. Over time, they
were
unrecognizable.

On the corner of Wilshire several women in lingerie or fur coats with tall high heels
paced along the sidewalk
. They smiled to him and he smiled back. In a year, many of them would be dead or in jail. During his
stay here for graduate school,
he had conducted a study on the spread of disease among young prostitutes aged fifteen to twenty-five. He had bought them meals in exchange for their cooperation and most were eager to do it; their pimps only allowing enough food so they didn’t starve but that they were always hungry.

He had gone back
into the population
in exactly one year to track the results and couldn’t find a single person he had used. They were all gone, fresh new faces
replacing
them.

“Good Samaritan,” the cabbie said.

Ralph looked up and saw that they were in front of the hospital. He dug out some cash from his wallet and handed it to the man, not bothering to count it.
There was only one piece of luggage: a black doctor’s bag like
a physician
from the 1950s would carry. He grabbed it and stepped outside.

The hospital was several stories of dull brick and appeared much like the police headquarters
in
the movie
Dragnet
. There were palm trees up in front and a few ambulances lined next to each other. Two of the drivers were sitting on the hood
,
smoking
,
and they stared silently as Ralph walked by and through the sliding glass doors of the ER.

The reception area wasn’t staffed and he noticed a few people hanging out in a room nearby; a nurse and probably the two receptionists that should have been at the desk. Ralph waited a moment to see if they’d noticed him and then walked around the desk. There were a few charts
lying
out and he glanced through them quickly. He ruffled through some papers that were stacked neatly in a pile and then looked behind him to a large white board that had been made into a grid with marker.

The grid contained names and room numbers of patients. They were in blue with the names of the treating physicians and nurses in orange. Except for one. At the bottom of the list was a patient in red marker:
John Doe
. Under the diagnosis square of the grid, for patient John Doe
,
it simply said
Flu
.

Ralph glanced at the room number and then headed through the large double doors leading into the treatment area. There was another set of double doors and this one required swiping a key card or buzzing in. He went back out and looked at the board again before heading back and pushing a button on the intercom.

“Can I help you?”

“Yes, I’m Jake Sanders. Melissa Sanders’ brother. She’s in room 110.”

“Okay, I’ll buzz you in.”

As he came into the treatment area he smiled widely at the staff and headed toward room 110. He came to 110 and looked back; the nurse at the front desk glanced at him. He smiled again and went inside.

Melissa Sanders was asleep but the light over her bed was on. Ralph reached outside and grabbed the chart that was in a holder against the wal
l. He flipped through it. The treating physician thought it might be Alport Syndrome
,
an inherited disorder that damages the vessels in the kidneys. He stared at her a moment and then stepped outside and replaced the chart. The nurse was staring at her computer. He headed down the hall.

The linoleum and harsh lighting as well as the smell of antiseptic made him miss his treating days. When
he
would get so tired
he’d
forget to eat for periods of twenty hours or
more. But there was camaraderie
there, a shared purpose among the staff and physicians. His days were now filled with board meetings and administrators and he sometimes longed to just hang out in a lounge and gossip.

He was at room 153
when he heard boots stomping behind him. Two security guards were running down the corridor straight toward him. He glanced into the room and saw the open window and wondered if he could make it down the street and call a cab somewhere before the police got here.

No, that was ridiculous. He had nothing to be afraid
of
. Under the direction of the president, the
secretary
of Health and Human Services was given emergency powers in dealing with a health crisis. He would just claim he was acting under those orders; the bureaucracy was so thick no one would be able to say otherwise.

He placed his bag
down on the floor and kept his hands down to his sides to show them he was non-threatening, but they didn’t stop running. He thought maybe they meant to tackle him but then noticed they weren’t looking at him at all
but past him. They sprinted past
with
out
so much as a glance.

A nurse and a CNA were running after them. Ralph managed to step in front of the CNA.

“What’s going on?”

“Sir, just stay in your room please.”

“My sister’s a patient here. Please tell me what’s happening?”

“One of our patients has escaped custody. Now please go back to your sister
’
s room. Let us handle this.”

Ralph stepped aside and let her run past. It was possible that they had a suspected criminal here and while under watch he escaped. All gunshot wounds were reported to the police and most of the
gangsters in any major city knew to get treated and sneak out before the cops got there.

But he had
a feeling that wasn’t what this
was.

Ralph watched them run
down the hall and then decided to go the other way. The front doors were too heavily manned. You’d have to be a fool to run through them
, and
the ER was the busiest section of the hospital this time of night. The other floors,
though,
especially the top floors
,
which in any hospital usually contained the administrative offices
, were nearly empty past nine
. If someone were smart, they would go to the top floor and find a way to climb down.

Ralph hopped onto the nearest elevator.
He pushed the button to the eighth floo
r. He leaned against
the elevator as it rose, tilting his head back and closing his eyes. Fatigue was making his neck ache and giving him a migraine.

The elevator buzzed and the doors slid open. Ralph stepped off.

The floor was dark
and
only a third of the lights
were
on; an effort to cut costs that most hospitals were employing now. The corridor ran both to his left and right equal distances and he chose to go right. He could see his reflection in the windows at the end of the corridor. He resembled his father and it sent a chill down his spine.

He turned left and went past the restrooms and the vending machines. The floors in this hospital were massive and he thought it could take days to find someone in here.

Ralph walked another twenty minutes and then sat down near the lounge.
He needed a break.
A television was up on the wall w
ith a remote on the reception
desk and he grabbed it and sat back down.

He kept the volume off and flipped through the channels until he came to a fishing show. The boat was out on the Pacific somewhere—he could tell from the sapphire blue water—and the
sky was cloudless
. He wished he was there now, fishing and soaking up sun and thinking about
…
nothing. Rather than being stuck in an empty hospital doing what he was about to do.

He watched the show a long time when he heard a sound. It was muffled, coming from a far room, but it was enough. He rose and quietly followed the sound down the corridor. It was coming from a small room to his right. The lights were off. He reached in and turned them on.

A young woman sat on a gurney, her face in her hands
,
weeping. She gasped when the lights came
on
and looked up. Her eyes were rimmed red and her face was pale with splotchy patches of white.
She looked healthy but malnourished. The only giveaway that something was wrong was the crusted blood that stained her teeth and the corners of her mouth.

“Please,” she said, “I don’t want to go back.”

Ralph took a breath and sat down on the black stool against the wall. “You’re the patient, right? John Doe? The one that’s suspected of being infected with Agent X? Clever calling you John Doe. I could have walked past you in the hall and I wouldn’t have even thought about it
being a woman
.”

“I don’t want to go back?”

“Go back where, honey?”