Silent Fear, a Medical Mystery (28 page)

The stunned news media took a second of silence to absorb the CDC’s count. “That does include Michael Johnson?” a young woman asked.

Ralph scanned the entire room carefully. “Yes. And please advise your viewers and readers if they have a hint of symptoms or signs of this meningoencephalitis as previously reported, then they should immediately seek medical attention because isolation is required. Patients are continuing to spread this brain-eating organism. I can’t think of anything worse to befall anyone.”

Chapter 26

Rachel pulled her CRV into Maxine’s parking lot, shut off the engine, and peered into the visor mirror. She didn’t need to do a thing to her hair, so she got out and smoothed her knee length skirt and V-neck, long sleeved top. The temperature had turned a little cooler. She enjoyed it when the weather played cat and mouse, teetering between one season and the next.

Rachel looked around at cars and spotted Leo’s two aisles over. Draping her bag over her shoulder, she headed into the restaurant. Her nerves got a bit jumpy. She saw him inside at the bar where they had previously had dinners and the flat screen TV was on. She walked up behind him.

“Hello, Leo.”

“Well, well,” Leo said. “If it isn’t Miss Extortionist.”

Rachel’s heart thumped, like a kickstand on an old bike.

“Nevertheless,” Leo continued, “there’s a lot to be said about her.” He looked her up and down, slowly. He then gazed at her face, scrutinizing it in a clockwise fashion. “She’s just beautiful.” He put down his beer mug. “But even beauty can be a mirage.”

“It’s nice to see you, too, Leo.” She slinked onto the bar stool.

“What’ll you have?” the bartender asked. He placed a napkin on the counter.

“Get her a double scotch,” Leo said. “She can handle it.”

“No,” Rachel said, her pulse quickening. “I don’t do scotch. Get me a Bailey’s.”

The young man turned around to his bottles by the back glass wall.

“Nothing hard core tonight,” Leo said, “you’re going smooth and silky.”

“That’s my style.”

“Bull shit,” Leo said.

Rachel tried not to bite her lip. She tried to look peripherally around him. Had he brought her money?

The bartender put down her liqueur as well as two menus. He turned around and focused on the screen. Rachel looked up as well. Live coverage had begun of a news conference in Nashville. The CDC specialist handed over the microphone to the neurosurgeon in charge. Leo’s interest gained momentum when he realized Rachel’s eyes were glued on the news.

“As previously reported,” Danny said, “the first case which sprouted this outbreak came from a fourteen year old named Michael Johnson. Michael came in on a Sunday, seventeen days ago. It is with great sadness that we are reporting Michael’s death yesterday.”

“So,” Leo said, “I gather that must be Julia’s father. The other man you hijacked.”

Rachel kept quiet.

“Okay, then, what’ll you have?” Leo asked, moving the menu towards her.

“I don’t want anything, especially if you’re not going to be civil.”

“Okay, Rachel. We’ll call a truce. I was sorry to see you left me like that. You covered all the bases in your letter, however. Sometimes you just have to do what you have to do.”

Rachel relaxed enough to take a sip. The drink warmed her tongue and slid down like melted chocolate. She took a deep breath. “Did you bring the money?”

Leo cracked a smile. “You must be destitute to ask for such a thing.”

Rachel flinched. The comment struck a nerve.

“Don’t worry. I decided to give you the present with strings, of course. I don’t expect anything else to come of this.” He looked questioningly at her.

Rachel swallowed. She worried over legalities that could arise from Danny. Would he press charges, in which case, she would have to claim her innocence and pin Julia’s abuse on Leo? What if he motioned for change in custody and dragged in the pediatrician’s testimony and she’d again have to pin it on Leo? She couldn’t think about it now. She needed the payoff, she’d have to stay out of Leo’s way, and hope the custody issues didn’t flare up.

“Leo, unless a court forces it out of me, then no one else is going to know what you did to my baby.”

Leo narrowed his eyes at her. “I’ll hold you to it.”

“No problem,” she said.

“I have your money in two small bags. They’re big bills. They’ll fit fine in that shoulder bag you’ve got on purpose.”

Rachel’s comfort zone returned. She finished her drink.

“If I can’t buy you dinner,” Leo said, “then how about coming back to my place? It would be nice to get my money’s worth.”

Rachel gave him an evil look. She stood and opened her shoulder bag.

“I think I’ll skip. I have a babysitter and I want to get back to Julia,” she lied. There was no way she was going to tell him about the recent turn of events.

Leo slipped his hand into the inside pockets of his sports coat. He dropped two plastic bags into her purse. She sat the purse on the stool, loosened one of the bags, and looked in. Cash was there. She thumbed through it the best she could and felt confident he had made good on her blackmail.

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Danny and Casey lounged in the great room watching the 9 p.m. nightly news recap. Danny kicked off his shoes, startling Dakota, and Casey chugged down the last of his soft drink. The small can of mixed nuts they had shared was empty.

The taped evening news conference on the PAM update began. “This is historic, you know,” Casey said. “Here we have the first devastating human illness of the third millennium.”

Danny blinked. He hadn’t thought of it that way.

“You don’t look too bad for a normal guy being on television.” Casey peered over at Danny and patted Julia’s diaper. She lay asleep on the coach between them.

“I guess. But I wouldn’t want to make a habit of it. I’ll be glad when this whole mess is behind us.”

Casey nodded. “Me, too. Every time Mark and I make a run, we worry if it’s going to be someone infected.”

Danny reached for his cell phone on the coffee table and lowered the volume on the TV. “I’m going to call Joelle real quick.” Danny hit her number and she answered on the second ring.

“Hi Danny. You watching our media recap?” She had a curled up position with Bell on a recliner.

“I am. I couldn’t go to bed without putting all my faith in your lab work for tomorrow. Will you call me immediately the next few days if you get any breakthroughs?”

“You bet. Especially since all our present hope rests on your dog. Or what his DNA can do.”

Danny smiled at Dakota who rumbled in his sleep. “Thanks Joelle. They say there is a greater thrust these days towards intertwining human and veterinarian medicine.”

“For sure. And Rhonda has been a big help.”

“Okay, good night,” Danny said.

Casey flicked the television off since the news conference coverage ended. Danny picked Julia up, but she didn’t stir too much. Both men turned off the lights and headed upstairs where Mary was already asleep.

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Joelle helped the young medical student assistant with the spectrometer samples and results he worked on. The sun beamed into that area of the lab as she showed him how she wanted the outcomes recorded. He asked her questions about the ongoing medical epidemic. “I want to be a medical researcher some day,” he said. “I don’t think I can handle listening to people complaining about what aches them here or there.”

“You may make a fine researcher then,” she responded. “Especially if you like detail.”

He gleamed and pushed back his long hair. “Plus, I’m good with numbers.”

Joelle finished with him, turned the radio up a bit, and went to the other side of the lab. He was probably another student filling his resume, covering all the basics, and then would come to her in a few years to write a recommendation. That’s the way it usually worked.

She couldn’t wait to prepare her slides from the seventh saliva sample and needed to start without Rhonda, who had told Joelle she’d get over in the afternoon if a small window of opportunity came along.

Joelle moved the base of the light miscroscope over and sat on the bench. She had several slides of the same thing and slipped the first one under the stage clips and worked the knobs to adjust the image. Before looking, she tapped her fingers on the scope in time to the music, praying for an optimistic finding.

Under the scope, what she peered at was a trophozoite whose outer membrane had been breached like what the Newfoundland’s saliva had done. But in addition, the inside, the cell nucleus, had been decimated, like what Joelle had caused to happen with the Labrador retriever’s saliva. One dog, or possibly one breed, had done both.

“Eureka!” she exclaimed. She stood up, switched to another slide and it showed the same thing. Tears came to her eyes. She sat down again. The tears accumulated and flowed. She reached for a tissue, sobbed, and pumped her fists when she stopped whimpering with joy.

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Ten minutes later and with much more composure, Joelle called Danny. When Danny saw her number, he excused himself from speaking with a patient in the pre-op area and went to the desk. “Joelle?” he said.

Joelle choked up again. “Guess what?” she sputtered.

Danny closed his eyes. “I’m taking your tone to mean we’ve got a positive result.”

“Yes. Your dog’s saliva both penetrates and destroys the inside of this amoeba. In vitro, of course.”

Danny felt his hair stand on end. The implications were staggering. “Joelle, nice work. This is incredible.” He spun the stool around to face the wall, away from staff and patients.

“Nice team work for all of us,” she said.

“You know this will go somewhere. It has to. The implication is that Dakota’s saliva probably kept me from getting PAM, or killed the amoeba once I picked it up.”

“I hear you. Let’s see what results we get from Rhonda’s samples she brought me yesterday, although we have a beginning substrate for a cure. But … there’s always the FDA to contend with.”

“However, lives are at stake,” Danny said. “What can I do for you now?”

“I have to call Rhonda right away. Can you call Ralph at the CDC and give him a heads up, too?”

“You’ve got it. I’ll talk to the southern humorist doc any time.”

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When Joelle called her veterinarian friend with the news, Rhonda confessed, “I’ve never been this happy about results to do with humans ever!”

“Why don’t you come see for yourself at the end of the day,” Joelle suggested. “I think we can prepare the next six samples you brought over by then ... the other Chesapeakes. I am so curious if it’s just Danny’s dog or indicative of the whole breed.”

“I have my theories about that,” Rhonda said. She stood at an open classroom door monitoring students taking a test.

“Are you going to tell me what they are?”

“I’ll explain later.”

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At four o’clock Danny and Joelle met with Timothy and Peter at the hospital to round on all present patients with PAM. Joelle explained to Timothy and Peter how her lab work showed promise and how they had gone down the route they had. They visited Bill Patogue, barely alive, in a deep coma. They each silently said their good-byes. Death would come during the night.

They sat down in a small room for families, which was empty. Timothy propped his cane in the corner and sat with a heavy heart. “I’m retiring soon, all of you. It is very sad to be leaving under these conditions.”

“Maybe we’ll break ground before we throw you a retirement party,” Joelle said, forcing a smile.

“I’ll second that,” Danny said. “Even so, Timothy, I know you’ve had a stellar career. You and I have sent patients back and forth for each other’s expertise for years and I can attest to your neurology skills.”

Timothy grinned, his crow’s feet giving testimony to his seventy-one years. “Thanks, Danny.”

A half hour later they broke up their discussions and Joelle and Danny walked over to the lab. A cool, pleasant breeze blew through the wind-tunnel between the medical buildings, hinting of an advancing change in the weather.

Chapter 27

As Danny and Joelle passed the fountain and towards their own reflections on the glassed ground floor, Joelle pulled out her cell and called Rhonda. “Danny and I will be in the lab in two minutes. Is it a good time for you?”

“I’ll be there in five,” she said and hung up.

After gearing up, Joelle and Danny took a spot at her lab table. “Let me show you what your dog did.” She opened a slide box nearby. “By the way, what’s his name?”

“Dakota.”

“Good name. How did you come up with it?” She set up a scope with the morning slides.

“I didn’t. My baby girl’s mother dumped him on me. Her loss. She then wanted him back after she blew town and got settled.”

Joelle fiddled with her earring. “Well, I can say two things about her. She has good taste in men and dogs.”

“Well, thank you. I think what you mean to say is that she had good taste to figure out a sucker.”

Joelle laughed. “We all make mistakes, Danny. Now you’ll never make that one again.”

“I make a better surgeon than a womanizer,” he said with a smile.

She signaled for him to look under the microscope. “I have a sneaky suspicion it’s your ex-wife that’s your soul mate.”

“Me, too.” Danny stared at the brain eating amoeba whose inside had been churned to goop. He whistled. “Hallelujah,” he said.

“What did I tell you? I think either Dakota or you are going to have a medical cure named after you.”

“I’ll second that,” Rhonda said, planting herself behind them. Her painted fingernails did an imaginary writing in the air. “The Dakota or Tilson antibiotic, or DakTilmycin.”

“Oops, I better get the new samples ready,” Joelle said. She’d forgotten to turn on the radio, however, so she did that first. “I work better with music in the background,” she said as they watched her zip back and forth doing her scientific steps using the six dog saliva samples left.

“So what’s you’re thinking about these samples?” Joelle asked Rhonda. “What was it you wouldn’t tell me before?”