He went back to the cart and pulled out a bagged garment; as he unwrapped and unfolded it, I recognized it as a biohazard suit like the ones the DMORT team had worn. The DMORT team called the garments moon suits, but Duane called it a “bunny suit,” because its built-in booties and gloves and hood make it look like an Easter-rabbit costume, minus the ears. “Bunny suit” seemed an oddly innocent nickname, though, considering how concerned Johnson now seemed. Once he was zipped in, he took a red and yellow instrument out of the cart’s bin and switched it on. This gadget was similar to the Geiger counter — boxy and about half the size of a car battery, with a wand attached to a flexible cord — but instead of a dial with a needle, this one had a digital display. “So what is that,” asked Miranda, “the all-new, fully equipped 2009 Geiger Counter Deluxe?”
“Sort of,” he said. “It’s an ionization chamber. A Geiger-Mueller counter gives you a yes-or-no answer — it tells you whether or not there’s elevated radioactivity — but it doesn’t tell much more than that. This one tells whether the activity is alpha, beta, or gamma radiation, and it measures the wavelength and energy accurately.”
“Sounds like a better gizmo,” she said. “Why doesn’t everybody use these?”
“These cost about four times as much,” he said. “And usually the Geiger-Mueller counter is good enough, because usually it tells you there’s nothing above background radiation.”
“But not always,” said Emert, who’d had a deer-in-the-headlights look ever since he’d vomited in the morgue.
“Not always,” conceded Johnson. He checked the ionization chamber’s display and seemed satisfied with what he saw there, then handed the instrument to Emert briefly while he rummaged around in the cart. First he dug out a pair of toy-looking plastic rings, which he put on his two index fingers. “Ring dosimeters,” he explained, showing us a small square of metallic foil in the broadest part of the band, where a gemstone would be if the rings were jewelry. He rotated the rings toward the inside of each finger. “To measure how much exposure my hands get.” Then he fished out a lead smock, the sort patients wear while having an arm or leg X-rayed, and put it on. “The body’s core is more vulnerable to radiation than the arms and legs,” he said. “The GI tract and the bone marrow, especially.”
Taking the ionization chamber back from Emert, he stepped around the corner. I saw him reach for the morgue’s door and open it, then extend the wand through the opening. He let out a low whistle just as the monitor clipped to his belt began to shriek again, then scurried back around the corner and rejoined us. He scanned our worried faces. “There’s good news and bad news,” he said. “The good news is, from the reading I’m getting and from what you’ve told me you found in the body, this isn’t something that’s spreading contamination.”
Nobody else seemed to want to ask the logical next question, so I did. “What’s the bad news?”
“The bad news is, the source, whatever it is, is putting out some intense radiation. I’ll need to notify TEMA — the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency — and call the medical folks over in Oak Ridge. They’re some of the world’s best experts in treating radiation exposure.”
“Actually,” said Miranda, “just before you got here, I spoke with Hank Strickland, a health physicist I know at REAC/TS. He’s on his way over now.”
Johnson looked startled, but he quickly recovered. “While I call TEMA, call Hank back. Tell him we’re looking at an intense gamma radiation source. Ask him if one of their emergency physicians could meet you guys up in the ER.” I saw alarm in the faces of Miranda, Garcia, and Emert, and if they were looking, they saw it in mine, too. “It’s a precaution,” Johnson said. “Triage. We need to see how much exposure you’ve gotten, and we’ll need to start taking blood and urine samples for that.”
Just then Eddie Garcia grunted in pain, doubled over, and threw up. From my recent DMORT training, I knew that vomiting was one symptom of radiation sickness. I also knew that the sooner victims began to vomit after being exposed, the worse their condition.
Miranda knew it, too. The cell phone shook in her hands as she struggled to hit the redial button.
After some quick, back-of-the-envelope calculations, Duane Johnson estimated that the radioactive pellet from Novak’s gut was packing somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred curies of radioactivity, and it was spewing pure gamma, the most penetrating form of radiation. “Like armor-piercing X-rays,” Miranda said, and Johnson nodded grimly. The image was vivid, but it was far from reassuring.
Hank arrived just as Miranda, Garcia, Emert, and I were heading upstairs to the ER. He offered to help Johnson retrieve the source and get it shielded. Dr. Chris Sorensen, an emergency physician specializing in radiation accidents, was on his way from Oak Ridge as well, Hank said, and would meet us in the ER. Meanwhile, Dr. Sorensen was on the phone with Dr. Al Davies, a UT emergency physician Johnson had paged, briefed, and asked to meet us in the ER.
Never in the history of UT Hospital’s ER had four people been processed so swiftly. Dr. Davies whisked us back to a triage suite, where he assigned a nurse to each of us. In no time, all four of us had tourniquets around our biceps as nurses prepared to draw blood.
Three of us were stuck almost in unison, the blood spurting thick and dark into a series of five vials. Garcia’s arm remained untouched. Garcia was holding his right arm across his belly; his face was tense with pain. His nurse, a thickset and graying woman who appeared to be in her fifties, took a step back. Dr. Davies hurried to her side. “Nurse, is there a problem?”
“I…” she faltered. “I heard it’s something radioactive. Is that true?”
“We’re not certain, but we think so, yes,” said Davies. “That’s why we need the blood samples, so we can tell how severe the exposure is.”
“I’m not comfortable doing this,” she said. “I’m afraid. I don’t want to be contaminated.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” snapped the doctor. Then, seeing the near-panic in her eyes, his tone softened. “This isn’t something he can spread to you,” he said. “It’s not like a virus or a chemical. It’s more like a sunburn, even though it isn’t showing up yet. You can’t catch this from him, any more than you could catch a sunburn.” He laid a hand on Garcia’s shoulder and left it there, showing her there was nothing to fear. “I’d draw his blood myself, but it’s been twenty years since I’ve done it, and it’d be cruel and inhuman treatement if I stuck Dr. Garcia with my rusty skills.” Still she held back, motionless except for her head, which began shaking “no.”
Just as Davies was drawing himself up to his most authoritative physician posture, my nurse — a young woman who had filled my two blood vials with cool efficiency — stepped in, taking the syringe from the hand of the reluctant nurse. “It’s okay,” she said. “I’ve got it.” She tapped her index finger on the inside of Garcia’s elbow to bring the vein up, then eased in the needle.
Garcia raised his head and studied her face. “What’s your name?” His voice sounded reedy and forced.
“Darcy,” she said. “Darcy Bonnett.”
“Thank you, Darcy.”
“You’re welcome,” she said. When she was finished, she gave Garcia’s hand a quick squeeze.