Susanne frowned at him. "Why don't you bug out and spend the day with her at home?" She gestured toward the triage desk, where J.S. sat, unoccupied and staring off into space. "There's certainly not much happening here."
She had a point. "I just might do that. Thanks, Susanne." Meantime he had a few things to prepare for next week's death rounds, but that could wait. First he checked with Michael, however.
"Go home," the man said when he learned Janet hadn't come into work. "I can handle things here." He glanced over to where Thomas had gathered the other residents to start morning rounds. "Especially with Dr. Biggs to keep me smart."
The young man from Tennessee looked up. "Thank you, Dr. Popovitch. If you'll put that in writing, I'll apply for a position here next year."
"Anytime," Michael said without hesitation.
"That goes for me too," Earl added, not having heard him express an interest in coming on staff before. "Are you serious?"
"You bet. I like it here. Your department's great. The hospital, the university, and the academic environment for research are perfect for what I see myself doing. The city's not too big and has lots of green spaces, plus being by the lake is terrific. And for a boy from the hills of Tennessee, the mountains an hour's drive south are just like home."
Earl walked over and slapped Thomas on the back. "Well, that helps fix what started as a crappy day." He also noted that every nurse in the room nodded approvingly. "And you evidently got the vote that really counts."
Susanne leaned over and whispered, "Now go home. Tell Janet that you're a gift from all of us."
He grinned. "Hey, take it easy, or I'll think you want to get rid of me."
"Perceptive," Susanne said as she headed into the medication cupboard.
On his way past triage he winked and said, "Kicked out of my own department, J.S. What do you think of that?"
He expected her usual playful response. Instead she started and looked at him as if she hadn't caught what he'd said. In fact, above the mask, she was a little pale. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine, Dr. G."
"Sure?"
"Of course." She straightened in her chair. "Hey, I'm a triage nurse. Who should know better than me if I'm all right?"
"Of course." He let her be, but on his way to the elevators, he couldn't help but think he should have checked her out more carefully.
Carriers.
The possibility set his stomach churning in high gear.
7:25 a.m.
Intensive care swarmed with its usual rush of morning activities. Patients here were an eclectic enough group with such a variety of multiple problems that they attracted consults from just about every type of specialist in existence. Cardiologists, neurologists, immunologists, oncologists, internists- they all huddled in small groups at the end of one bed after another and took turns pronouncing on the state of the particular system where their expertise lay. Mercifully many recipients of this attention were too sedated to hear or care. But the sentient ones wore puzzled expressions as sage-looking professors introduced themselves, then proceeded to discuss hearts, brains, white cell responses, tumors, and metabolic abnormalities as if these were entities to be considered on their own, objects of interest that happened to be located in the body of whoever occupied the cubicle. True professionals, they at least attempted to mask their glee at each discovery, managing to be no more noisy than excited shoppers at a mall.
Earl ignored them all and walked directly to the nursing station. He came up behind Stewart Deloram, who sat rummaging through a lost-and-found drawer. "Anybody see my goddamned keys? I seem to have lost them again."
Every nurse within hearing distance rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. Earl heard at least three of them mutter something about the need for idiot strings. The guy could keep track of every molecule in a patient's biochemistry, but personal belongings were another matter.
Stewart turned, caught sight of him, and jumped to his feet. "Earl! I intended to come and see you." He blurted out the words with an urgent sincerity that sounded odd coming from him.
"Pardon?" Earl had half expected a fight.
"I wanted to say I'm sorry for not realizing what Janet must have been thinking and feeling. I can be such a dolt about that sort of thing."
Well, well, Earl thought.
"I'll go to the case room and apologize to her in person, as soon as I get the ward settled-"
"She's at home, Stewart."
The thick black eyebrows arched like warring caterpillars. "What?"
"She decided to take it easy today."
"Oh."
"I think she's okay physically. Luckily, the blood levels for chloroform came back virtually negative, so we doubt the baby had a significant exposure. But the deliberateness of what happened really upset her."
"Shit, I hope I didn't add to that."
"No, no, I'm sure that's forgotten. I'm here to discuss something else with you.
Let's find a quiet corner."
They moved to an area behind a large curved console of monitors. The quantified parameters of life- blood pressures, pulses, the forces of cardiac contractions, oxygen saturations, respiratory rates- squiggled and jiggled in a dance of fluorescent green readouts.
"I went to interview the patients you spoke with on Peter Wyatt's ward, the ones who reported the near-death experiences that you called bogus."
"What?" His eyes widened, the way an animal's would if it were taken by surprise.
"Down, boy. If Wyatt had started a vendetta against you, I wanted to know, so as to put an end to it before anything got out of hand."
Stewart remained unappeased, his expression suspended between incredulity and fury.
"But since you visited with them last Friday, they have all either died or slipped into a coma."
Incredulity won.
"They what?"
"You heard me. Dead, or near dead."
"My God."
"Did they strike you as being that ill when you saw them?"
"Well, I don't know. I wasn't evaluating them medically…"
He seemed genuinely stunned by the news, but also to be fishing around for answers.
"Come on, Stewart, you don't need a full workup to sense people are near the end. It looked to me they were in bad shape on their charts, but of course nothing beats seeing them firsthand. Would you have guessed these people were about to die or go unconscious?"
"You mean you didn't talk to a single one of them?"
Earl felt Stewart hadn't heard the question. "No, I didn't. Now answer what I asked."
"Yes, they were ill," he said decisively, his puzzled expression unwinding to neutral. "None of them was going to survive more than a few days."
"Really?"
"Yeah, really."
An icy cold began to gnaw at the pit of Earl's stomach. "So it doesn't surprise you, three dead, two comatose."
"Not at all." Stewart's expression grew suspicious again. "What are you getting at?"
"You seemed pretty astounded at first."
He sat up straighter, threw his shoulders back, and raised his chin a notch. "Only that you went to question them yourself. But I guess I should thank you for that, considering you appear to be looking out for my interests against Wyatt's."
"St. Paul's interests, actually."
"I don't understand."
"I think you do." Earl turned to leave, in no mood to be stonewalled- he had other ways to find out what he wanted- when inadvertently he glanced toward the isolation chambers at the end of the room. Three were ablaze with light, the nurses busily attending to the patients within. But the one where Teddy Burns had struggled to breathe yesterday loomed dark and empty.