Her escort peeled her away with sad-eyed apologies. There was no jealousy or anger in his face, only a deep hurt. “She—she isn’t well, I think,” he said. “You know, this new—whatever it is that’s going around.”
Murt wiped off the lipstick and looked at Phyllis, expecting to find at best sardonic amusement, but she seemed pale and annoyed.
“I’m sorry I brought you here,” she said.
“Think nothing of it,” Murt told her. “You heard the man. This is what’s going around. Do you think I’ll catch it?”
Phyllis wasn’t amused. She did let him ride the taxi to her apartment, but bade him a terse goodby at the door.
Except for the incident of the blonde and Phyl’s reaction, the evening had been a bust. Murt wondered how he had ever visualized her as a warm-blooded, responsive female. He smiled at the evening of torment she had once given him.
She was entirely frigid or else so leery of men that she might as well have been one herself.
IV
The following morning, he presided at a specialists’ conference at the hospital, during which he revealed the results of the blood research. They had all read the Health Service bulletin and were sharply interested in the photomicrographs.
When the meeting was over, Feldman, the bacteriologist, and Stitchell, an endocrinologist, volunteered to work with Murt. They gave Phyllis’ “gland-irritation” theory more credence than Murt. He outlined a program. Both agreed to take the problem back to their own departments.
The conference set Murt behind in his work and he spoke scarcely five words to his assistant until he was ready to leave. As he finished scrubbing up, she handed him an early edition of the Times.
“Local Doctor Isolates Love Bug!” The story was sketchy and not half so positive as the headline, but it did name him and High Dawn Hospital, and described the new virus.
He stared at Phyllis Sutton. “Did you—”
“Of course not. The reporters were here, but I sent them away. I told them we were medicine men, not tobacco men.”
“Your name isn’t even mentioned,” he said suspiciously.
“You signed the report to the Health Service,” she pointed out. “The leak probably came at that end.” She put her hand on his arm. “It wasn’t your fault.”
His fury cooled as he noted her gesture. Then she realized that he was looking down at her hand and withdrew it quickly.
The next few days were blindly busy. A note from the government acknowledged receipt of his report and pictures, and was followed by a message that the virus could not be identified. The implication was that there was a strong possibility that it was the causative factor in the new malaise.
Murt devoted more attention to the joint laboratory work on the virus. The newspapers continued to come up with confidential information they shouldn’t have had, and they dubbed the Love Bug, Murt’s Virus. The name stuck, and the pathologist found himself famous overnight.
Phyllis continued to force all the credit upon him, on threat of transferring out if he violated her confidence. Except for the nuisance of dodging reporters, the accolade was not entirely unpleasant.
His pictures—old ones, Lord knew where they had dug them up—began appearing in the papers. Instead of reproving him, the hospital board voted him a substantial salary increase and gave him a free hand in directing the research. A government grant was obtained to supplement his budget, and the work picked up speed.
Necessarily, the lead that Phyllis Sutton’s early research had given them on the rest of the medical world was maintained largely because of the time lag in disseminating the information contained in Murt’s report, and the additional time it took for other clinical laboratories to confirm it.
Cages of experimental animals began arriving along with several additional specialists. Ebert Industrial Labs, contrite over the original information leak, made available their electron microscope, and Murt assigned the new toxicologist to work over there with Feldman, the bacteriologist, studying ways to weaken or destroy the virus.
Stitchell, the endocrinologist, and a trio of psychologists from the State University began injecting monkeys with virus when Feldman found he could propagate it in sterile medium.
On September 12, 1961, Dr. Sylvester Murt became a victim of the virus which bore his name.
He had slept poorly and he awakened feeling empty. His first dismal thought was that Phyl wouldn’t be at the hospital this morning. He had told her to spend a few hours down at Ebert Labs, getting notes on their progress.
As he shaved, dressed and breakfasted, this thought preyed on his mind. It wasn’t until he had put in half the morning clock-watching and door-gazing that he stepped outside his wretchedness and took an objective look at his feelings.
It wasn’t that he missed her help—he had plenty of personnel at his disposal now. He simply longed for the sight of her, for the sound of her voice and her heels clipping busily around his office-lab.
Here we go again, he thought, and then he came up short. The feeling was similar to the silly evening of infatuation he had allowed himself, but it was intensified tenfold. The burn in his stomach was almost painful. He caught himself sighing like a frustrated poet, and he grew to hate the sight of the hall door, through which she kept right on not appearing.
When she failed to show up by 11:30, and he gagged over his lunch, he knew he was sick.
He had Murt’s Virus!
Now what? Did knowing you had it make it any easier? Easier to make a damned fool of himself, he supposed. He’d have to take hold of himself or he’d scare her off the grounds.
At the thought of her leaving him for good, something like a dull crosscut saw hacked across his diaphragm, and he dropped his forkful of potato salad.
Back at his office, he diluted 30 cc of pure grain alcohol with water and swallowed it. Some of the distress and anxiety symptoms were relieved, and he bent determinedly to his work.
When her distinctive steps finally came through the door, he refused to raise his head from the binocular microscope. “How are they making out over there?” he mumbled.
“It’s slow,” she said, dropping her notes on his desk. “They’re halfway through the sulfas so far. No results yet.”
Relief at having her near him again was so great, it was almost frightening. But he gained equal pleasure from finding his self-control adequate to keep from raising his head and devouring her with his eyes.
“Sylvester,” her voice came from behind his stool, “if you don’t mind, I’d rather not go over there again.”
“Why not?”
Her voice was strangely soft. “Because I—I missed….”
At that instant, her hand rested on his shoulder and it sent a charge of high voltage through him. He stiffened.
“Don’t do that!” he said sharply.
He could see her reflection dimly in the window glass. She took a step backward. “What’s the matter, Sylvester?”
He fought back the confusion in his brain, considered explaining that he was making a fine adjustment on the scope. But he didn’t. He turned and let her have it. “Because I’ve got the virus,” he said in a flat voice. “And the object of my affection—or infected, overstimulated glands—is you!”