Star Cruise - Outbreak (18 page)

Checking that there were no patients present, Emily said, “What kind of thing exactly?”

“People bleeding to death. An epidemic.” The nurse swallowed hard. “Risky stuff.”

“We don’t know what we’re dealing with yet, possibly nothing so dire. I haven’t made any official declarations so let’s not use that word.” Emily fought her desire to fire the woman on the spot and order her out of sickbay.
Nebula Zephyr
’s medical resources were thin enough as it was. The nurse had proven herself competent under ordinary circumstances, and she was good with the passengers. She’d been quite effective with Sessaly, the hysterical Socialite girl the other day. On that thought, Emily took a deep breath. “Even if we do have more critical care patients as the cruise continues, there’ll be a need for treatment of the routine kinds of complaints and problems.”

“Like the ’Lite with the splinter?” Relba preened and examined her perfect nails. “I do usually get good tips at the end of the cruise from passengers who’ve been in to see us. I know how to make the sickbay experience more palatable for them.”

Swallowing her distaste for the way cruise-ship medical staff could earn tips, Emily nodded affably. “Exactly. If Bevar, Vicente, Pamla and I have to prioritize the seriously ill patients, I’ll need you more than ever to handle the routine walk-ins.” She made herself smile and moved to her tiny office, where she could see the head nurse waiting.

Already talking as soon as Emily crossed the threshold, Vicente moved aside so she could get to her desk. “I sent Bevar to his cabin to rest at the end of his shift. He wanted to hang around just in case, but there wasn’t anything new going on here.”

“Good. I hate to say this, but I think we’re in the calm before the storm, so it’s best if he catches up on his sleep.” She scanned the reams of data Maeve had made available regarding the passengers and crew who’d suffered from the norovirus. Frustrated, she minimized the report. “I don’t have time to study all this. Maeve, can you run the initial analysis?”

“Of course, Doctor. Guidance as to what variables I’m sorting for?”

This was so far beyond her specialty and knowledge. And the answer she sought might not be in the data at all. Emily sighed, taking a stab at what might be useful to winnow from the giant haystack of random facts. “Any common patterns of behavior? The food each person ate, the places on board he or she visited—I don’t know. Age, sex, blood type, birth planets, eye color—you’re the AI, you figure it out.”

“Yes, Doctor. I’ll sort for commonalities in any aspect of the 1,327 affected sentients.” Maeve did her little trick of making a clicking noise to indicate she’d checked out of the conversation for now.
 

 
“Be careful what you wish for,” Emily muttered. “When will I remember that rule?” One eyebrow raised, Vicente stared at her. Gesturing at the sickbay beyond her door, Meg said, “This is about as far as you can get from the clinical situation I had on Fantalar. Which should be making me happy. I thought I wanted to be a civilian doctor now, dealing with garden-variety bugs and broken bones. However, I’m finding the prospect of handling an outbreak of some unknown, lethal pathogen on board a civilian ship daunting, to say the least.”

Vicente nodded. “I was a medical corpsman on a military hospital ship on the front lines. I can relate to your Fantalar experience, Doctor. Of course, we weren’t planetside under active bombardment like you were.” Eyes narrowed, he asked, “Do you think we’ll have more patients like Arln?”

“I’d have to say it’s a distinct possibility. I don’t have to tell you we’re shorthanded.” Tapping her stylus on the desk, she glanced at the nurse in the reception area and frowned.

He followed the direction of her attention. “Don’t worry about Relba. She frets and complains, but if the going gets tough, she’ll hang in there with us.”

“I’ll defer to your judgment—”
 

The portal to the corridor burst open, and Mr. Enzell struggled into the lobby, half carrying his wife and surrounded by their white-faced children. Syl was sobbing in great gasps, and the boys’ faces were set in expressions of terror. The oldest had a blood-soaked wad of cloth pressed to his nose. Mrs. Enzell’s head lolled, and she looked as if she was crying tears of blood. Clint immediately moved to support the woman on the other side, calling for Emily as he did so.

“Seven hells, here we go.” Emily was right behind them as the men helped Mrs. Enzell to an exam room and onto the bed.

“Trynna started bleeding a few minutes ago, Doctor,” Mr. Enzell said as medical personnel hurried to get their new patient hooked up to monitors. “She said she was dizzy and then—then her eyes—she was—the tears were blood. And next thing I knew, my son’s nose was bleeding. What’s going on?”

Emily caught Relba’s attention. “Call Bevar in, stat. I’ve got this, Vicente. Take the boy into room two and get him in bed, please.” As her staff moved to carry out the orders, Emily busied herself setting up the intravenous flow of fluids for Mrs. Enzell and added a basic clotting factor. “This is apparently a complication of the intestinal virus, Mr. Enzell. Do you have any symptoms?”

He blinked. “I’m fine. Marc, my oldest, he’s not doing too well.”

“My nurse is taking care of him right now. And Syl? And the middle child?” Emily spared a glance for them.

He clutched the kids closer to him. “Fine so far. Scared for their mom and Marc. How can bleeding from the eyes be related to an upset stomach?” Mr. Enzell’s voice was rough.
 

“Sometimes an infection affects different areas of the body at different times.” She tried to keep her own tone soothing.

“So you’ve seen this before? You know what to do?” He stepped closer to the bed and took his wife’s hand. “How long before she’s better?”

“Being in sickbay should do the trick, dear.” Sick as she was, Mrs. Enzell made an effort to reassure him. “Don’t give the doctor a hard time. I’m sure I’ll be all better by tonight.” Her voice was a thready whisper.

“The fluids and coagulant should help,” Emily said. “You were wise to come in right away.”

Clint knocked on the portal. “Excuse me, Doctor, but I think you should come out here for a moment.”

“I’ll be right back.” Although she could tell the Enzells weren’t happy to see her leaving the room, she inferred from the security officer’s voice that a situation was brewing.

Three more patients sat sprawled in the waiting-room chairs, each projecting an impression of terror. A man and a woman clutching each other were obviously in the throes of major nosebleeds. The third person was more alert to his surroundings. Spotting Emily, he jumped from his chair and moved to intercept her. Yanking his shirt open in the center of the lobby, he said, “I woke up with these bruises on my chest, Doctor. What the seven hells is wrong with me?”

Staring at the large purple contusions on his hairy torso, Emily strove for composure and a reassuring tone. “Side effect of the stomach bug, sir. If you’d step into the examining room on the left, we’ll be with you in a few moments. You’ve had no bleeding?”

He spun on his heel to gape at the two other waiting passengers. “Am I gonna hemorrhage like them? Are they gonna bleed to death?”

She took his elbow and was relieved to see Clint coming to the rescue yet again, taking the man’s other side. “No one is hemorrhaging, sir. Just nosebleeds. Now if you’ll come this way—”
 

“I’ve got him,” Clint said. He nodded to the door. “Incoming.”

As the two men headed toward the exam room, the passenger complaining bitterly to his security escort about being brushed off by the doctor, Emily hastened to assist a woman rushing into the lobby, daubing at bloody tear tracks on her cheeks. Her dress was bloodstained where tears had splattered. Glancing down the corridor, Emily saw several more people staggering in the direction of the sickbay. With relief, she identified Bevar, her PA, sidestepping passengers in his way. A moment later, he was helping her with the hysterical, terrified woman.

“I need to talk to the captain right away,” Emily said, relinquishing her hold on the passenger’s arm. “Triage them for now. Only the most serious cases get a bed. Keep the others in the waiting area. We’ll be moving the sick to a ward on Level C soon.”

Bevar did a double take at the mention of a special ward but only said, “Yes, Doctor.” He put his arm around the woman he was supporting. “Take a deep breath through your mouth, ma’am, you’ll be fine. We’ll get you fixed up in no time.”

Forcing herself not to sprint, Emily headed to her office and shut the door, leaning on it for a moment, head against the smooth panel. “Maeve, get me Jake and the captain
now.
”

“Captain Fleming will be with you momentarily. Jake says he’s handling a problem in the casino and not to wait for him.”

“All right.” Emily moved to the desk. “You’re going to have to add robos to the cleaning workforce. We can’t have infectious blood left on the floors or walls for any length of time at all.”

“Immediate response, yes, Doctor. Consider it noted. The captain will speak with you now.”

“Fleming here.” The captain’s image snapped into focus, his eyes narrowed. “Maeve says you have a new status for me?”

“We’ve run out of time, Captain. We need to institute measures to contain this outbreak right away.” Years of conducting military briefings for superior officers stood her in good stead as Emily outlined what was happening in sickbay and then said, “Passengers and crew should stay in their cabins and notify the ship if experiencing symptoms or showing the characteristic purple bruising. We’ll have to send teams in biohazard suits to pick them up and bring them to the quarantine ward on Level C. I’m going to need the entire level set aside if the current rate of new patients keeps up. Any luck on finding me more medical staff among the passengers?”

“There are three doctors listed on the manifest,” Maeve said. “All have been contacted and requested to report to you within the hour. I’ll redirect them to the quarantine ward on Level C. I’ve further identified an ex-military medic and a nurse among the crew.”

Biting her lip, Emily kept herself from making a sarcastic remark in response to the AI’s cheerful tone. “Those reinforcements will help, but I’m going to need a lot more if this outbreak keeps growing.”

“How contagious is this bug, Doctor?” asked the captain.

“I don’t know.” At his frown, she said, “We’re theorizing the military inoculations are keeping most of the crew healthy.” She did a rapid mental review of the earlier spread of the “norovirus,” before continuing to answer the question. “It’s not a clear pattern. Take the Enzell family, for example. The father never came down with the intestinal symptoms. All three of his children did, but so far two remain free of the second-stage symptoms. In Princess Falyn’s retinue, only Arln and one other guard were affected in stage one, despite all being in close proximity in her suite. I can’t extrapolate from such a small sample, of course, but anecdotally, the data indicates less than one hundred percent contagion.”

“I’ll take any shred of hope you can give me right now, Doctor. Keep me posted. I’ll drop the ship out of hyperdrive and put in a call to the authorities at Sector Hub at once.”

He clicked off. Emily drummed her fingers on the desk. “Get me Jake, please. I desperately need to talk to him.”

“He reports he’s on his way to sickbay. ETA three minutes,” Maeve answered a moment later. “You have a considerable backlog of incoming calls now, Doctor.”

Instinctively, Emily moved to summon the call log to begin dealing with them but hesitated with her fingers inches away from the keyboard. “Can you get me Meg?”

“Yes, Dr. Shane?” The cruise staffer’s voice was calm. “I think we can accept patients here on Level C any time you need to send them our way. Maeve’s got half the beds set up.”

“Good, things are getting hectic in sickbay. Can you find two extra staffers to answer the incoming calls and triage them for action? No medical experience is required. I’ll give them a checklist to operate from. I need to concentrate on the patients we have, not try to diagnose and reassure panicky passengers on the vid or the com.”

“I know just the people to handle the task, no problem. I’ll have the girls report to me here. Maeve, I’ll tell you as soon as we can start handling the calls. Anything else, Doctor?”

“Meg, you’re a miracle worker. Nothing else right now, but I’m sure there’ll be more later. I’ll come join you within the hour. Oh, and I’ll be bringing a special inject for you that I hope will help boost your immune system.”

“I didn’t have the stomach bug, Doctor.” Meg sounded puzzled.

“Just in case. I-I promised Red.” Feeling guilty that she hadn’t prioritized that favor earlier, Emily rushed on to the next item on her list. “There should be a few volunteer medical personnel arriving shortly. You can park them in the small conference room until I get there to conduct a briefing. Maeve found some names on the manifest and crew roster.” Emily clicked off the link.

Captain Fleming’s voice came over the ship-wide AI circuits. “This is your captain speaking. Sorry to break into your day, but we’ve run into some complications with the stomach bug a few people were experiencing in the last week. If you or someone in your party is feeling unwell, showing unexplained bruises, suffering a bloody nose or other unusual bleeding, please remain in your cabin. Call the Ship, and you’ll be directed on the next steps to take to obtain medical help. We’re fortunate to have Dr. Emily Shane, the Angel of Fantalar, flying with us as our chief medical officer on this leg of the cruise. You’re in good hands. You may have noticed a temporary dropout from light speed just now, which was necessary so I could alert the authorities at Sector Hub to be ready for our arrival in a few days. Dr. Shane assures me this bug isn’t particularly contagious at this stage—”