Wilson raised a hand to his mouth and coughed again. His blue eyes were glassy. "But what do I have?"
"I'll need to do more tests on you at the hospital," Bingaman said, his professional tone cloaking the truth. What do you have? he thought. Whatever killed Joey Carter.
And killed Joey's father, Bingaman learned after he finished with his morning's patients and arrived at the hospital. Joey's mother and the boy's two friends weren't doing well, either, struggling to breathe despite the oxygen they were being given. And eight more cases had been admitted.
"We're still acting on the assumption that this is pneumonia," Powell said as they put on gauze masks and prepared to enter the quarantined ward.
"Are the quinine and camphor oil having any effect?"
"Marginally. Some of the patients feel better for a time. Their temperatures go down briefly. For example, Rebecca Carter's dropped from one hundred and four to one hundred and two. I thought we were making progress. But then her temperature shot up again. Some of these patients would have died without oxygen, but I don't know how long our supply will last. I've sent for more, but our medical distributor in Albany is having a shortage."
Conscious of the tight mask on his face, Bingaman surveyed the quarantined ward, seeing understaffed, overworked nurses doing their best to make their patients comfortable, hearing the hiss of oxygen tanks and the rack of coughing. In a corner, a curtain had been pulled around a bed.
"Some of the patients are coughing up blood," Powell said.
"What did you just say?"
"Blood. They're-"
"Before that. Your medical distributor in Albany is having a shortage of oxygen?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Their telegram didn't say."
"Could it be that too many other places need it?"
"What are you talking about?"
"The midway had to have come from somewhere to reach Riverton. After Riverton, it had to have gone somewhere."
"Jonas, you're not suggesting – "
"Do you suppose this whole section of the state is infected?"
"I'm sorry," the operator said. "I can't get through to the switchboard in Albany. All the lines are busy."
"All of them?"
"It's the state capital. So much business gets done there. If everybody's trying to call the operator at once – "
"Try Riverton. Try the hospital there."
"Just a moment… I'm sorry, sir. I can't get through to the operator there, either. The lines are busy."
Bingaman gave the operator the names of three other major towns in the area.
The operator couldn't reach her counterparts in those districts. All the lines were in use.
"They're not the state capital," Bingaman said. "What's going on that so many calls are being made at the same time?"
"I really have no idea, sir."
"Well, can't you interrupt and listen in?"
"Only locally. As I explained, I don't have access to the other operators' switchboards. Besides, I'm not supposed to eavesdrop unless it's an emergency."
"That's what this is."
"An emergency?" The operator coughed. "What sort of emergency?"
Bingaman managed to stop himself from telling her. If I'm not careful, he thought, I'll cause a panic.
"I'll try again later."
He hung up the telephone's ear piece. His head started aching.
"No luck?" Powell asked.
"This is so damned frustrating."
"But even if we do find out that this section of the state is affected, that still won't help us to fight what we've got here."
" It might if we knew what we were fighting." Bingaman massaged his throbbing temples. "If only we had a way to get in touch with…" A tingle rushed through him. "I do have a way."
The wireless radio sat on a desk in Bingaman's study. It was black, two feet wide, a foot and a half tall and deep. There were several dials and knobs, a Morse-code key, and a microphone. From the day Marconi had transmitted the first transatlantic wireless message in 1901, Bingaman had been fascinated by the phenomenon. With each new dramatic development in radio communications, his interest had increased until finally, curious about whether he'd be able to hear radio transmissions from the war in Europe, he had celebrated his fifty-second birthday in March by purchasing the unit before him. He had studied for and successfully passed the required government examination to become an amateur radio operator. Then, having achieved his goal, he had found that the demands of his practice, not to mention middle age, left him little energy to stay up late and talk to amateur radio operators around the country.
Now, however, he felt greater energy than he could remember having felt in several years. Marion, who was astonished to see her husband come home in the middle of the afternoon and hurry upstairs with barely a "hello" to her, watched him remove his suit coat, sit before the radio, and turn it on. When she asked him why he had come home so early, he asked her to please be quiet. He said he had work to do.
"Be quiet? Work to do? Jonas, I know you've been under a lot of strain, but that's no excuse for – "
"Please."
Marion watched with greater astonishment as Bingaman turned knobs and spoke forcefully into the microphone, identifying himself by name and the operator number that the government had given to him, repeatedly trying to find someone to answer him. Static crackled. Sometimes Marion heard an electronic whine. She stepped closer, feeling her husband's tension. In surprise, she heard a voice from the radio.
With relief, Bingaman responded. "Yes, Harrisburg, I read you." He had hoped to raise an operator in Albany or somewhere else in New York State, but the capital city of neighboring Pennsylvania was near enough, an acceptable substitute. He explained the reason he was calling, the situation in which Elmdale found itself, the information he needed, and he couldn't repress a groan when he received an unthinkable answer, far worse than anything he'd been dreading. "Forty thousand? No. I can't be receiving you correctly, Harrisburg. Please repeat. Over."
But when the operator in Harrisburg repeated what he had said, Bingaman still couldn't believe it. "Forty thousand?"
Marion gasped when, for only the third time in their marriage, she heard him blaspheme.
"Dear sweet Jesus, help us."
"Spanish influenza." Bingaman's tone was bleak, the words a death sentence.
Powell looked startled.
Talbot leaned tensely forward. "You're quite certain?"
"I confirmed it from two other sources on the wireless."
The hastily assembled group, which also consisted of Elmdale's other physician, Douglas Bennett, and the hospital's six-member nursing staff, looked devastated. They were in the largest nonpublic room in the hospital, the nurses' rest area, which was barely adequate to accomodate everyone, the combined body heat causing a film of perspiration to appear on brows.
"Spanish influenza," Powell murmured, as if testing the ominous words, trying to convince himself that he'd actually heard them.
"Spanish… I'd have to check my medical books," Bennett said, "but as I recall, the last outbreak of influenza was in – "
"Eighteen eighty-nine," Bingaman said. "I did some quick research before I came back to the hospital."
"Almost thirty years." Talbot shook his head. "Long enough to have hoped that the disease wouldn't be coming back."
"The outbreak before that was in the winter of 1847-48," Bingaman said.