Poisoned Soil: A Supernatural Thriller (28 page)

Now, he had awoken with the same symptoms, and Monica had not improved. He crawled into bed to get his own rest. Monica’s raspy breathing sounded like air was being sucked through a straw that was punctured with pinholes. Her lungs were trying to inflate, but it seemed like all the air wasn’t getting in. Kevin went to sleep worried about her and hoping that he would fare better.

***

The taxi stopped in front of the Athens Regional Medical Center. “$6.50,” the driver said. Megan Wilcox fumbled through her purse and squinted at the bill, trying to determine if it was a ten or a twenty. She shook her head in frustration at her blurred vision, which only succeeded at making her head pound even more. She tossed the bill in the driver’s direction and grabbed the door handle.

“Hey, that’s a twen—” the driver began as she closed the door. Megan looked up at the large red letters that spelled EMERGENCY in front of the huge panes of glass windows. She walked to the admissions station and stood behind an elderly man. Now
he
should be here, she thought. The admissions nurse pointed to a clipboard and nodded her head in the direction of the waiting area. Megan took the clipboard and walked to take a seat.

Walking slowly through the maze of interlocking, cheap, tweed-covered chairs, she looked for a place to sit where she could be at least a few feet away from the walking wounded, thinking naïvely that she wouldn’t want to catch whatever they had. Not thinking at all that she might have something that they’d prefer not to have, thank you. As she passed, she took in the faces, some looking vaguely familiar to her even though that seemed impossible, given how far away from home she was.
I guess sick people all look the same,
she thought to herself.

She tried to focus on the form as she sat. Megan Wilcox, her trembling hands began to write with difficulty. It was difficult for her to see the form, even though she had perfect vision. She concentrated and tried to continue. 1445 Hutchinson Street, Armonk, NY, she wrote and then paused, trying to remember her ZIP code. Distracted, she glanced at the magazines on the table.
Always the same ones in these places
, she thought.
WebMD
,
Smart Money
,
Georgia Magazine
and
People
. She removed a copy of
Reader’s Digest
from the seat beside her that featured the short stories of Edgar Allen Poe. On the cover, a raven held its mouth open and cast an ominous gaze. She tossed it on the table with the others as she returned to the the maze of questions on the form. Not reading any of them, just checking “no” to each one as she walked back to the desk.

“May I have your health insurance card?” the nurse asked. Megan sighed and reached into her wallet for the Blue Cross Blue Shield card and handed it to the lady. The health care coverage was the last thing on her mind. IBM offered a great health care plan, even if she was almost a thousand miles from home. No, the only thing she wanted was some meds, something to get rid of the chills, aches and fever that had come over her out of nowhere in the early morning hours.

“Here you go,” the lady said, returning the health care card she had just copied. “The nurse will take you in now.”

The nurse asked Megan to step on the scale and recorded her weight and height. She wrote down 127 pounds, 5 feet 6 inches on the form as Megan slumped on the scale and stared at the wall. “You can step down now,” the nurse said, “and have a seat. Says here you’re thirty-four years old, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“New York,” the nurse continued. “Long way from home.”

“I’m staying at the Marriott here in Athens. Flying home tonight.” Megan said.

The nurse popped a thermometer in Megan’s mouth and recorded her temperature of 102 on the form. She sensed that Megan wasn’t in the mood to roll up her left arm sleeve so the nurse leaned over and did that for her, strapping the blood pressure cuff over her arm. She pumped air into the cuff with the squeeze bulb as she surveyed Megan’s condition. The nurse had already made up her mind that it was the flu. It was the fourth case she had seen in the past hour, even though it was months away from the heart of the flu season. After four years this job had become so mundane to her, other than the real emergencies that came in. But those generally went straight into the emergency room or prepped for surgery. The cases she saw were generally the same. The most exciting case she had seen this year was a beekeeper that was stung twenty times and was on the verge of anaphylactic shock. He couldn’t speak and could barely breathe, so the doctor wasted little time giving the epinephrine injection. Other than that it was always people with cold or flu-like symptoms who came in and paid the exorbitant emergency room fees even though, she thought, everyone knew to not waste the emergency room’s resources for common colds and flus.

She released the air pressure from the cuff and expected the blood pressure to be a little high, as it was with the other cases. The nurse recorded the numbers and then looked back to make sure she had seen them correctly. 162 over 114. The nurse checked the form to see if Megan had any family history of high blood pressure and recognized that Megan had blindly answered every question.

“Ms. Wilcox, do you have any family history of high blood pressure?” the nurse asked with a smile, not wanting to alarm the patient.

Megan had been leaning her head against the wall, her eyes closed. Now she opened them, but the bright florescent lights hammered spears right into her eyes and stabbed her temples. She closed them and said, “No. None.”

The nurse squeezed the bulb again to take another reading. The result of 164 over 118 did nothing to assuage the nurse’s concerns. “Ms. Wilcox, come with me and we’ll take care of you.” Megan tried to stand, but found she couldn’t do it. The nurse took her right arm and helped her up. She walked her to a bed in the emergency room and helped her to take her shoes off and lie down. The nurse turned to get one of the doctors on duty and began to pull the curtain closed in her room. As she did she looked back at the admission form and turned back to Megan. Masking her concern, she smiled reassuringly and said, “Ms. Wilcox, can you give me the name and number of someone I can call for you in case we need to notify them of your condition?”

Chapter 24

The beach home sat alone on a southern point of San Salvador island surrounded only by sand, water, and sky. A wide, wood-planked porch wrapped all the way around the house. When Rose walked all the way around it, it gave her the feeling that she was on an island by herself, with no one in sight. A wicker rocking chair beckoned to Rose, one of two that sat beside the front door and faced the broad steps that led into the house. She sat down, cupping between her hands the tea she had just made in the home that she and John had rented for the week. Facing south, she stared out at the beach and the ocean. What else was there to see?

Surely there was more, so she challenged herself. There was wispy grass growing from gentle sand dunes between the house and water, but her mind had registered those as indistinguishable from the beach itself. But indeed, it was separate from the sand, something different to consider, if she was so inclined. She wasn’t, so she looked to the sky, still dark blue overhead as it had yet to be fully illuminated. That was the event Rose had come out to see, the sunrise that would emerge from her left.

Pushing out of the chair she walked to the porch railing so that she could look overhead, seeing the darkness of the sky. Her eyes descended slowly to the eastern horizon and she tried to identify horizontal lines that distinguished the decreasing shades of darkness on the way down. The horizon was alive with energy and warmth. Above, the sky was cold and dark, not evil, but evoking no feeling of love. Resembling the coolness of death, not the warmth of life.

She couldn’t discern where the changes in the sky’s mood appeared. Instead, she could only notice the stark contrast from above to below, and her eyes settled on the horizon where the sun rose from the ocean so gently that it allowed her to stare directly at it. Two fishing boats were silhouetted against the giant orb and they appeared to be chasing it, pursuing it as if they could cast their nets around it and harness its energy. She wondered if John was on one of the boats.

John was so excited about the fishing excursion they had booked the month before, a private charter that would take him and Rose deep-sea fishing for trophy fish. When they had made their way to the beach house the afternoon before, Rose hadn’t felt so well. She and John sat on the beach in front of the porch and listened to the soft waves, about all Rose felt like doing.

“I’ll call and cancel the charter,” John had said to Rose as they sat on the beach.

“There’s no need,” Rose replied. “We can’t get our money back so let’s see how I feel in the morning. There’s no advantage to canceling now.” By bedtime Rose had felt better. John was hopeful that they would be able to go after all and Rose didn’t want to disappoint him. When they awoke this morning at 5:00 a.m. Rose did feel better, but she felt like a day at sea would set her back. Instead, she asked John to go to the Riding Rock Marina alone. John refused, and started to call the marina to cancel the trip, but Rose insisted.

“John, we’ve already paid for the boat. I’ll be fine and you know as well as I do that we need a Wahoo on our wall,” Rose said with a smile as she visualized the giant trophy fish.

John smiled and thought about it. Rose seemed fine and what she said made sense. Going to sea might make things worse for her, but why waste the trip?

“I just want to sit on the porch and read, John, so you go ahead and I’ll see you tonight.”

As the sun climbed and swallowed the darkness above, Rose walked back, this time choosing a wicker sofa on which to rest. A morning breeze began to blow gently, enough to make it comfortable to snuggle under a light blanket. She positioned two pillows on the armrest and stared into the southerly sky at the high level mass of white cirrus clouds on the horizon. Gazing into the sea, she saw the smiling faces of her beautiful daughters and hugged herself tight, sending them her love. Other than missing them dearly she felt fine, at peace, as she fell asleep.

***

MONDAY NOON: BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

“This is WBUR, Boston’s NPR News Station. A mysterious illness is being blamed for last night’s death of a local married couple. Monica and Kevin Colbert of Sutton, Massachusetts, were found in their home by their daughter who told doctors they had complained of flu-like symptoms. The Worcester County Health Department entered the couple’s homes wearing HAZMAT suits to remove bedding and take microbe samples. The initial cause of death has been listed as septicemia, but tests are being conducted to rule out whether or not avian or swine flu could be possible causes of death. This is Scott Sheldon for WBUR, Boston University Radio.”

***

MONDAY 2:00 P.M: ATHENS, GEORGIA

“In local news, a thirty-four-year old New York woman died suddenly this morning at Athens Regional Medical Center from what doctors are calling flu-like symptoms. Officials at the hospital reported an uptick in patients complaining of flu-like symptoms, even though the heart of flu season is still months away. In local weather, expect fair and mild conditions for most of the week. The National Weather Service says that large ridges of high pressure, one over Texas and the other centered close to Bermuda, will remain in place, steering tropical air from the gulf to the southeastern states. For WUGA in Athens, this is Kimberly Blanchard.

***

At 4:00 p.m., John posed for a picture next to the fighting chair at the back of the boat as he held the tail of the sixty eight pound Wahoo he had just landed. The Ilander-skirted ballyhoo lure still hung from the Wahoo’s lip, a rather unsatisfying last supper. Wind-whipped waves that had blown up in the past hour made it difficult for John to stand for the picture, but he was buoyed by his sense of accomplishment and smiled broadly.

He looked at his phone, hoping that somehow reception would magically appear. No bars. Not that he expected any twenty seven miles east of San Salvador island. “Oh, well,” he said, knowing full well that Rose’s cell phone wouldn’t work at the beach house anyway. He just wanted to send her the picture, to tell her he was thinking of her and that he couldn’t wait to see her that evening.

The captain turned the fifty-four-foot Bertram over-under around and began following the sun back toward San Salvador as the first mate took John’s fish and put it on ice alongside the grouper he had also caught. Turning the wheel over to his assistant, the captain came back to speak to John. “Hey, that’s a heck of a Wahoo you got there,” the captain said to John, purposefully playing up his Bahamian accent for the tourist. “Especially this early in the season.”

John smiled. “Yeah. Lucky, I guess.” John knew the Wahoo really only started biting in October and that the winter months are when they were most active. Still, he had what he came for, and with a few hours of fishing left he was optimistic that he had yet to land the really big one. The captain had told him in the morning that he expected the best bite to be near sunset.

“So you may have noticed I turned the boat back toward the island,” the captain said. “We got word that the hurricane in the Caribbean is turning north and they think it will head for the islands. We have to cut the trip short a few hours and head back. Just to be safe, you know, and to get our boat secured.”