The Ninth Day (32 page)

After thirty more minutes they reached an interstate. An hour later a blue sign appeared giving notice that lodgings, gas, and a hospital were all located at the next exit.

“Go to the hospital,” Oz said. Emma breathed a sigh of relief. Their ordeal was almost over.

“Any sign of Mono?” Emma said.

“Not yet,” Vanderlock replied.

The sign directed them to a small community hospital on the outskirts of town. Three square buildings, each four stories high, sat in a row, connected by enclosed glass bridges on the third level. The lights glowed in the darkness, and Emma watched as a doctor in blue scrubs walked between the buildings on the bridge. Vanderlock drove into the semicircular driveway following a sign that said ER. He pulled up next to an ambulance.

“You should go in,” he said to Emma. “You have the fewest symptoms.”

Emma crawled out of the car and entered through the automatic glass doors that slid open with a pneumatic sigh. The waiting area was jammed with people. Adults, children, and babies all occupied the resin chairs. Emma steered away from them, acutely aware of her possibly contagious state. A nurse in blue scrubs sat in a counter area marked with an overhead “triage” sign. She typed furiously on a computer keyboard. Emma stopped three feet away, ignoring the two chairs placed in front of the station.

“Excuse me? I have an emergency. My friend is in my car and he has something that might be contagious. I’m afraid to bring him in and infect the others.”

The nurse, a young, friendly-looking woman with a name badge emblazoned with N
ANCY
W
ALTERS
looked up from her keyboard.

“Contagious? What does he have?”

“Leprosy,” Emma said. “Or something far more virulent that mimics it. I’m not sure.”

Nancy stopped typing. “Leprosy? Are you kidding me?”

Emma shook her head. “I wish I was.”

“Where did you say he was?”

“In the car, which is parked in your driveway.”

“What’s his insurance company? They may require prior authorization.”

Emma shook her head. “I don’t think he has any.”

The nurse got up from her desk. “Wait there.”

Minutes later Nancy reappeared, walking fast, this time from another direction. She wore gloves and a face mask. Behind her came a young man in a white lab coat, also with gloves on his hands. His face mask hung on a thin elastic cord around his neck. They both stopped ten feet short of Emma.

“I’m Doctor Emmanuel. You said you have a man in the car with leprosy? That’s not an emergency. All you need to do is set up an appointment with a specialist and get some antibiotics.”

“It’s not exactly leprosy, but a virulent mutation of the disease with fast-growing symptoms that mimic it. Possibly contagious.”

“Do you have it?”

Emma nodded. “I think I’m in the early stages.”

The doctor put on his face mask. “You need to go to another hospital. We’re not set up for hazardous diseases. Our ICU is small, and it’s full right now.”

“How far is the next hospital?”

He named a medium-sized city in Kansas. “Four hundred miles away.”

Emma gaped at him. “Four hundred? Are you joking? He’ll die by then.”

The doctor put his palms out. “I’m sorry. I’m new. It’s July and I just rotated in as a resident. The attending is on vacation, but I called him and he told me to send you to a teaching hospital. He said we don’t do highly contagious diseases here. We transfer them.”

“That’s patient dumping. Someone appears in the emergency room you have to stabilize them before transfer.”

He shook his head. “Not if we don’t admit them in the first place.”

Emma wanted to hit the man. Only the fact that she would infect him as well kept her from doing so. She curled her hands into fists.

“Can you at least get me some antibiotics for traditional leprosy? There are three that work.” Emma named them. “Perhaps they’ll slow his progress.”

The young doctor shook his head. “I’m not supposed to write a prescription without a full workup on a patient. Besides, if this isn’t leprosy then the antibiotics won’t work.”

“Listen to me. He’s in a bad way. He’ll die. Please.”

The doctor still hesitated.

“I’ll give you some samples,” Nancy said. “Don’t go anywhere.” She jogged off, back down the hall.

Emma turned back to the doctor. “I need to use your phone.”

He shook his head. “You shouldn’t touch anything. The attending said to get you out of here. He said if you touch anything the entire hospital will have to run a sterile protocol. We’ll have to close. We’ll lose days. He said you
have
to leave.”

Emma felt her frustration growing. “Then you make the call for me. It’s the least you can do. His name is Banner. You need to tell him that Emma was here, that there’s a shipment of marijuana crossing the country that is infected with this disease as well, and that he has to stop it. Do you understand me?” She rattled off Banner’s number. The resident made no move to copy it down.

“If I report you were here we’ll have to close.”

Emma took a step toward him, and he took two rapid steps back. “You’re a mandatory reporter. I come in here talking about an infectious disease, you damn well better report it.” Nancy came jogging down the hall again, a paper bag in her hand. She stopped well clear of Emma, bent down, and slid the bag to her across the floor.

“I got you samples of rifampicin and clofazimine. We didn’t have any dapsone, I’m sorry.” Emma opened the bag. Four individual bubble packs of each drug filled it. The few pills were a joke, even Emma knew that it wasn’t enough to save Oz, given his advanced condition. Still, she was grateful to Nancy.

“Thank you,” she said. “Can you call a friend for me?”

Dr. Emmanuel waved her off. “She can’t call anyone. Use your own cell phone outside the hospital. You have to
leave
.”

Nancy nodded her agreement, a sad look on her face. “I wish you luck. Get him to St. Jude’s. They can help.”

Emma turned and stormed out of the hospital. A child ran in front of her and stopped, staring. Emma slowed, took great pains to avoid him, and jogged out the door.

Chapter 39

“W
hat about the shipment? You’re telling me La Valle is spreading leprosy?” Oz said in an agitated voice. Emma had recounted the dismal experience in the hospital to both Oz and Vanderlock.

“I’ll handle stopping the shipment,” Emma said. Oz gave her a dubious look, and Vanderlock gave her a serious one. She handed him the antibiotic samples.

“Take one of each. Maybe they’ll slow the progress, buy us some time. You want some?” Emma’s last question was directed at Vanderlock. He shook his head.

“Let Oz have them. He’s in worse shape.” Vanderlock showed his hand to Emma. The sores covered the entire palm and last three fingers. She lifted the tote so both Oz and Vanderlock could see it.

“I’ve got a bag full of drugs here. All of which treat rare diseases. If there’s even one investigational antibiotic, we’re going to take it.”

“And if not?”

“Then we go to a teaching hospital. To a specialist.”

Vanderlock drove on. “You think the traditional treatment won’t work?”

“This thing isn’t acting like traditional leprosy. There is a resistant strain, though. At least there was when I was dealing with this in India. Several patients came in with it. The ones with the nosebleeds often had the resistant form.”

“Okay, we try the new stuff too.” Vanderlock was back to his calm self. Emma could hear a slight strain in his voice, but nothing like the shocked reaction he’d just had. “We need to disable the tracking device in order to do this right, without the fear that Mono will come breathing down our necks again, and we need a place to hole up for at least a day.”

Oz shifted. “I don’t think we should waste time trying to locate and disarm the tracker. They can be hidden anywhere in the car and it would take me the better part of a day to find it. You said it’s a radio transmitter?”

Vanderlock considered the question. “I’m pretty sure it is. Not GPS. More like those systems you can buy to recover your car if it’s stolen.”

“So we need to attenuate the signal,” Oz said. Emma raised an eyebrow in a question at him. “Attenuate means to block it. The quick answer is that radio signals hit a certain frequency and travel at the speed of light. Certain materials are ‘dielectric,’ or excellent at blocking waves. Wood isn’t, that’s why you can play a radio in your house made of it. Metal has a high attenuation coefficient.”

Vanderlock looked at Oz in the rearview mirror. “What did you do before signing on as a mule for La Valle?”

“I was a student at MIT, but dropped out.”

“Not the brightest move for an obviously bright guy,” Vanderlock said. “Why’d you quit?”

“I followed a woman,” Oz said.

Vanderlock nodded. “Now
that
I understand.”

“Back to the radio waves,” Emma said.

“Without knowing what frequency the tracker’s using, I think we’ll need to cover the entire car with metal.” Emma watched as they drove past a field with a barn in the distance. A thought came to her.

“We’re in farm country. Would a chicken coop do it? Surround the car with chicken wire? That’s metal, right?”

Oz looked dubious. “It’s metal, that’s true, but depending on the frequency, the waves could get through the openings in the wire. Better to drive the car into one of those metal sheds you see people use to store their lawn equipment.”

“Would be a bit tough to pull up to any old house and ask to park the car in their shiny new shed from Sears,” Vanderlock said.

“Following up on your chicken-coop idea, metal-screening material would work. The holes are smaller, dense,” Oz said.

“They have rolls of the stuff at every home-improvement store I’ve ever been to,” Emma said.

Vanderlock turned onto a main road. “We’ll buy some at the next one we see. Then let’s ask around for an out-of-the-way motel. These small towns have tons of them.”

Oz kept low in the car as they approached a larger town. His face appeared almost grotesque. The last thing Emma needed was to attract more notice than they would already.

“Did you know there’s blood on your hip? That yours?” Vanderlock said. Emma looked at her pants in surprise. A blood stain, half dried, covered her hip. She touched the skin through the material and felt a wound. She probed it with her fingers. It hurt to the touch, but remained soft. She couldn’t feel any metal bullet or piece of shrapnel.

“Mono must have nicked me.”

Vanderlock pulled up to yet another Walmart. “Did Sam Walton own the Midwest? These stores are everywhere.”

“Maybe not the Midwest, but definitely the South,” Emma said.

Emma and Vanderlock entered the store and immediately split up. Vanderlock was in charge of purchasing the screening, Emma food, water, and bandages. She passed a display of faded Levi’s and picked up a pair of 501s in her size, doing her best to hold them at her side to cover her own shredded, bloodstained pants. She bought a new shirt, underwear, socks, snatched a baseball cap from a display and also picked up two prepaid cell phones. She hooked up with Vanderlock at the cash register. He put a black tee shirt on the conveyor belt.

“It’s for Oz. His is covered in blood.” Oz didn’t move while they loaded their purchases in the car. He lay in the back, taking short, shallow breaths. “He’s falling apart,” Vanderlock said in low tones.

“Did you find a motel?”

Vanderlock nodded. “Creek’s View. Three miles west, by a local creek. Family owned.”

Creek’s View consisted of a series of log cabins that stretched into a wooded area lined by a creek. Emma and Vanderlock stepped inside to check in, leaving Oz in the car. The motel office was the smallest cabin and first in the row. A tired-looking woman with faded red hair and rheumy blue eyes smoked a cigarette and watched a soap opera on a small television placed on the counter behind which she sat. Next to the television sat an open register book and a pen. The rest of the single room contained an empty stone fireplace with cobwebs spanning the corner and a wooden trunk used as a cocktail table was placed in front of two armchairs covered in a worn paisley print. A cat was curled up in one chair. It opened an eye to check on them.

“My wife and I would like two rooms,” Vanderlock said.

The woman gave Vanderlock a disinterested look. “Why two?”

“She won’t let me smoke in hers.”

The woman emitted a sharp cackle. “Why not just smoke outside?”

Vanderlock jerked his chin at the woman’s cigarette. “I like to smoke in comfort.”

The woman rose and pulled the register in front of Vanderlock. “Sign in.” She handed him a pen. He reached for a separate one lying on the counter. Emma watched him write, “Mr. and Mrs. Wilson Vanderlock” on the line. He tapped it and gave Emma a grin.