The room went pitch-black. There was nothing that emitted light. Not a red dot on a monitor. Not a crack of filtered light. Not a single reflection. He couldn't even see McCathy who stood right beside him.
He found the eyepiece of the first microscope and tried to look through. His faceplate made it difficult. He saw only black. And now his heartbeat pounded so hard he thought the vibration might be obscuring his view. The faceplate was flexible plastic and Platt pressed it down until he could feel the eyepiece of the microscope solidly against his eye sockets. Still, he could see nothing.
"ANYTHING?" McCathy yelled from beside him.
"NOTHING FROM THE FIRST ONE."
"NOTHING HERE."
Platt waited. Sometimes it took a few minutes for the serums to mix and cause a reaction. Still, there was nothing. He reminded himself: Marburg on the left, Ebola Zaire on the right. He pulled back, took a deep breath and positioned himself over the other microscope, repeating the process.
"NOTHING HERE," McCathy yelled about his second sample.
Platt barely positioned his faceplate and he could already see it. It wasn't a faint glow. It was bright. He sucked in air and shoved his eyes hard against the microscope. Below him it looked like a night sky with a glowing constellation.
"Holy crap," he muttered. He jerked his face away and found the other microscope. Nothing there. Back to the other. Still glowing, even brighter now.
"WHAT IS IT?" McCathy yelled.
"I'VE GOT ONE GLOWING."
"I KNEW IT. WHICH ONE?"
Platt had to stop himself. He had to slow his breathing. He needed to think. He needed to remember. Marburg, left. Ebola Zaire, right. The pounding in his heart was no longer a problem. It was as if all sound, everything around him had stopped, had come to a grinding halt. Everything except for his stomach, which slid to his feet.
"IT'S EBOLA ZAIRE."
CHAPTER
37
Saint Francis Hospital Chicago
Dr. Claire Antonelli stared at the image of Markus Schroder's liver. On the desk in front of her were various other images and test documents. She had gone over all of them more than twice. The man behind her was seeing them for the first time and even he was quiet. In fact, Claire found it unsettling how quiet Dr. Jackson Miles had become.
She glanced back at him. His deep-creased face was a perpetual frown. She remembered him once calling his wrinkles "well-deserved life lines." He had those life lines for as long as Claire had known him, even back when he shepherded her through a tough residency, taking her under his wing when her all-male class made it clear that she was their outcast. Dr. Jackson Miles told her then that if he could become the first black chief of surgery then she could certainly overcome the discrimination she was dealing with.
"The liver's enlarged," she said, obviously only as a prompt.
"But otherwise doesn't look unusual." He didn't take his eyes off the image, studying it as if it was a puzzle."What about typhoid or malaria?"
"I've had him on antibiotics with no effects. Not even a break in fever."
"E. coli or salmonella?"
"Not according to the blood tests," Claire said and released a sigh. These were questions she had already asked herself. Confirming or dismissing them out loud to her onetime mentor didn't make this any easier. "I thought perhaps a liver abscess or a gallbladder attack but the ultrasound doesn't seem to agree."
"Might not show it."
Claire watched Jackson Miles rub his jaw with a huge hand that always surprised her in surgery when it was able to delicately work through the smallest incisions.
"I've sent off for more extensive blood tests, but I'm not sure I can wait. He's becoming more and more unresponsive. I'm concerned he'll slip into a coma."
"Any chance he was exposed to something?"
"According to his wife even contracting malaria or typhoid is a stretch. At first I considered E. coli or anthrax. There was that farmer last year, remember who contracted anthrax somehow from his own cattle? Vera, Markus's wife, told me they make periodic visits to Indiana. A family business she still owns, though someone else runs it for her. She said she hangs on to it for sentimental reasons." Claire stopped herself when she realized it sounded like she was rambling. To o much. It was too much information. She didn't need to go over everything out loud. "Markus works in Chicago as an accountant for a law firm."
"Anyone else at the law firm sick?"
"I've already thought of that, as well." Claire ran her fingers through her hair, trying to settle herself. She was operating on little sleep and cold pizza. The adrenaline high from seeing a healthy and happy Baby Haney had worn off."There's someone out on maternity leave," she told him. "Another with a broken leg. No one with flulike symptoms."
"Do you think the wife would agree to exploratory surgery?"
"What are you thinking?"
"There may be something latched onto the liver or kidneys that's not showing up in the ultrasound."
"You'll do the surgery?" she asked and made sure it didn't sound like a student asking her mentor for a favor.
"Get the wife's approval." He nodded."We'll both scrub up and take a look-see."
He made it sound so matter-of-fact that Claire could almost believe it'd be that easy. Then he patted her arm with his gentle bear paw of a hand, and smiled down at her.
"We'll do our best," he said, detecting her apprehension, her skepticism. "That's all we can do."
Claire hoped Markus and Vera Schroder would see it that way.
CHAPTER
38
The Slammer
The telephone on the wall startled Maggie again. She had been so engrossed in her Internet computer searches that she hadn't noticed someone come in and take a place by the window.
When she looked up, Platt's eyes were on her, so intense, so penetrating she didn't want to meet them. He knew something and it wasn't good news. She took her time, closing a file, signing off a site and all the while letting the phone ring and letting him stand there.
"Thanks for the computer," she said when she finally answered. "You're about to tell me I'm going to get a lot of use out of it, right?"
He just stared at her and she could see his jaw was clenched too tight, so tight that the muscles twitched.
"You're always trying to preempt me," he said, his expression remaining unchanged.
"Sorry, it's a habit. I'm usually the bearer of bad news. I'm not used to it being the other way around."
"Are you always this cynical?"
"I chase killers for a living."
"Awww…" He smiled, tilting his head back as if that were explanation enough. "You're used to throwing people in the slammer, not being in it yourself."
He pointed to her chair and started to sit in the one on his side, but stood back up and waited for her.She didn't want to sit.She'd rather take bad news standing up, or better yet, pacing. But he looked so exhausted. His freshly washed hair was still damp. Dark bags puffed out under his eyes. A white smear of something—soap perhaps—left on his chin, bright white against the stubble. And he had changed clothes, a William and Mary T-shirt and navy sweatpants. But the same white Nikes.
"So something tells me you didn't just get back from a leisurely jog?" she asked as she took her seat.
"No jog this morning." He followed suit but sat up straight when she thought he looked as though he'd rather slump down and stretch out like he had before.
"I may have found something," she told him only because she wasn't sure she wanted to hear his news yet. "I think this guy might be duplicating certain pieces of unsolved or old crimes."
"What makes you say that?" He looked curious but nothing more.