head cradled in her lap. The girl was unconscious now — 'post ictal,' the doctors called the condition. Ellen checked that Lucy hadn't soiled or wet herself, then looked up at the headmaster and shrugged.
'Should we send for an ambulance?' he asked.
'She'll be fine in twenty minutes. This hasn't happened for a while. Her medication may have to be tweaked. If it's okay with you, I'd just as soon she stay in school if possible. Just leave us right here for a bit. If she's not up and about in twenty minutes I'll take her home. But she's better off here with the other children. Much better.'
Donnegan looked for a moment as if he was going to object, but instead reached down and patted Ellen on the shoulder.
'Whatever you say, Mrs. Kroft,' he said. 'You know this kid best.'
Ellen sat on the newly mowed lawn, staring off at nothing in particular, rocking Lucy gently in her arms, and making no attempt to stem the steady flow of tears from her own eyes. Minutes later, the girl began to come around.
Ellen slid behind the wheel of the Taurus and headed north. In moments, in spite of herself, she was reliving the horrible sequence of phone calls that had signaled the start of it all.
'Mom, something's wrong with Lucy. I took her to the pediatrician this morning. He said she was in terrific shape. Fiftieth percentile in height and weight, way ahead of most three-year-olds in speech and hand-eye coordination. Then he gave her two shots — a DPT and an MMR. That was about eight hours ago. Now she's screaming. Mom, her temperature is one-oh-three-and-a-half and she won't stop screaming no matter what. What should I do?…'
'… I called the doctor. He says not to worry. Lots of kids get irritable after their vaccinations. Just give her Tylenol…'
'… Mom, I'm frightened, really frightened. She's not screaming anymore, lout she's completely out of it. Her eyes keep rolling hack into her head and she doesn't respond to anything I say. Nothing. She's, like, limp. Dick is getting the car right now. We're going to bring her to the emergency room…'
'… They're going to keep Lucy in the hospital. They don't know what's wrong with her. Maybe a seizure of some sort, the doctor says. Mommy, it's bad, I'm so scared. It's bad. I know it is. Oh, Jesus, what am I going to do? My baby…'
What am I going to do?
Beth's panicked words echoed in Ellen's thoughts as they did almost every school day after drop-off. With effort, she forced them to the background. There were other things to focus on this day, most notably a strategy meeting across the Potomac at the headquarters of PAVE — Parents Advocating Vaccine Education.
Driving by rote, Ellen headed up the George Washington Parkway toward the Teddy Roosevelt Bridge and D.C. Now a trim, silver-haired sixty-three, she still recalled all too vividly the day just before her fifty-fifth birthday when she went, according to her husband at least, from being 'good-looking' to being 'a damn fine-looking woman for your age.' A year and a half later, Howard had left their twenty-nine-year marriage and run off to be with a thirty-something cocktail waitress he had met during an engineering convention in Vegas.
At the time, it was as if her life, on cruising speed, had hit a brick wall. She accepted an early retirement package from the middle school where she was teaching science, and then effectively pulled down the shades of her existence, shutting herself in and her friends out. Ironically, it was the tragedy surrounding Lucy that pulled her back into the world.
She had always been a positive, upbeat person, but Howard's hurtful and unexpected departure coupled with the end of Lucy's life as a vibrant, healthy child had been a one-two punch that threatened to send her spiraling to the bottom of a Valium bottle. With the help of unrelenting friends and a godsend of a therapist, she gradually opened the blinds again and began putting one foot in front of the other. Now, working out at the gym several times a week, intimately involved in her granddaughter's life, doing volunteer work at PAVE, and functioning as the lone consumer representative on the blue ribbon federal panel evaluating the experimental supervaccine Omnivax, she was running on all cylinders.
Ellen lucked into a parking space not half a block from PAVE headquarters. For a few years after its inception in the mid-eighties, PAVE had been a true grassroots organization, run from the kitchen tables of its two founders — Cheri Sanderson and Sally Lynch, both of whom were convinced that their children had been irreparably damaged by vaccinations. One family at a time, the two mothers discovered they were not alone. And now, through vision, patience, and hard work, PAVE had become a major force, with interest and even some support up to the highest levels of Congress, in addition to tens of thousands of supporting members. The words 'Research,' 'Education,' and 'Choice,' emblazoned on their logo, expressed the agency's goals.
'We are not a bunch of Carrie Nations charging into immunization centers with axes,' Cheri had explained during Ellen's first volunteer-orientation session. 'But we are tough when we have to be. We will not stop until the powers that be recognize the need for research on the immediate and long-term effects of vaccines, as well as the critical need for public education and ultimately parental choice when it comes to vaccinating our children.'
PAVE had its vehement detractors in the scientific, pediatric, infectious disease, and political arenas, but with each passing year, morbidity statistics; clinical disasters; well-attended, PAVE-sponsored scientific conferences; and parents who experienced what they felt certain was a cause-effect relationship between vaccinations and their children's disabilities added to the organization's influence, membership, and war chest.
In the early nineties, the now tax-exempt corporation moved its extensive library, dozens of drawers of case files, seven-person staff, and cadre of committed volunteers to the second floor of a brown-stone on 18th Street between DuPont Circle and Adams-Morgan. Following the disaster with Lucy, Ellen had begun to send in modest donations. Later, she took the intensive workshop for volunteers conducted by Cheri and became qualified to man the phones. Then, a year or so after that, word was passed on to PAVE of the establishment of a consumer seat alongside the scientists and physicians on the federal commission evaluating Omnivax.
Ellen was told by Cheri and Sally that, as a retired middle school science teacher without a track record of militancy and confrontation on the vaccine issue, she would be the perfect person for the job. Ultimately, the powers at the FDA agreed. Ellen suspected that those who offered her the appointment were certain either that she would remain relatively silent, or that the scientists and physicians on the panel could easily preempt her views if they had to. Not that it mattered. She was only one vote out of twenty-three, and support for the megavaccine and its thirty components was overwhelming from the start. Even if she opposed the project, which in fact she did, it was clear from the first meeting of the committee that the final tally would stand at twenty-two to one.
The door to the PAVE offices opened into a crowded work area with half a dozen desks, all manned at the moment. As Ellen stepped into the room, the staff on hand rose as one and applauded. She did her best to wave them all back to their seats, then smiled good-naturedly and bowed. Over the past two-plus years, they had all received frequent briefings of the Omnivax sessions, and at times verbatim transcripts. They had all heard stories of how, armed with epidemiological and research data she had painstakingly accumulated, as well as affidavits from experts supporting the PAVE positions, she had stood up to some of the leading proponents of expanding the scope of immunizations. And as often as not, she seemed to have held her own.
'Please, please,' she said, 'that's almost enough applause. You there, a little louder, please. Much better. Now, those of you who desire to, and have washed themselves according to my protocol, may come forward, kneel, and kiss my ring.'
'Hey, where you been?' Sally Lynch called out from the doorway.
'A little trouble with Lucy at school,' Ellen replied. 'Nothing serious.'
'Well, Cheri's late, too, for a change. She'll be here in a few minutes unless she isn't. She says she has big news for us.'
In her mid-forties, Sally, tall, dark-haired, and businesslike, was more introspective and far less flamboyant than her co-director. It was a perfect match — one working behind the scenes, the other in front of the cameras, yet both possessing a high degree of intelligence, compassion, and drive. If Sally had a shortcoming, it was her extreme intensity, which sometimes clouded her judgment and at other times overwhelmed her patience. But that ferocious commitment was understandable. Within hours of receiving his routine vaccination shot, her six-month-old son, Ian, developed a temperature of over 106, had a seizure, and died. Just like that.
Sally's office was as well organized and neat as Cheri Sanderson's was cluttered. On one wall was a professionally made, three-foot-square, multicolored graph showing that the number of autistic children seeking state services in California more than doubled in the eighties and nearly quadrupled in the nineties. The other walls
