The First Eagle

room without donning a filtration mask.

Delano, Howe, and Woody had drifted down the hall beyond Shirley's eavesdropping range, but the tone of the conversation suggested an agreement of some sort had been reached. More work for her, probably. She stared at the sheet covering Nez, remembering the man under it racked by sickness and wishing they'd move the body away. She'd been born in Farmington, daughter of an elementary schoolteacher who had converted to Catholicism. Thus she saw the Navajo 'corpse avoidance' teaching as akin to the Jewish dietary prohibitions—a smart way to prevent the spread of illnesses. But even without believing in the evil chindi that traditional Navajos knew would attend the corpse of Nez for four days, the body under the sheet provoked unhappy thoughts of human mortality and the sorrow death causes.

Howe reappeared, looking old and tired and reminding her as he always did of a plumper version of her maternal grandfather.

'Shirley, darlin', did I by any chance give you a long list of special stuff we were supposed to do on the Nez case? One thing I remember was he wanted a bunch of extra bloodwork. Wanted measurement of the interleukin- six in his blood every hour, for one thing. And can't you just imagine the screaming fit the Indian Health Service auditors would have if we billed for that?'

'I can,' Shirley said. 'But nope. I didn't see any such list. I would have remembered that interleukin-six.' She laughed. 'I would have had to look it up. Something to do with how the immune system is working, isn't it?'

'It's not my field either,' Howe said. 'But I think you're right. I know it shows up in AIDS cases, and diabetes, and the sort of situations that affect immunity. Anyway, we shall let the record show that the list didn't reach your desk. I think I must have just wadded it up and tossed it.'

'Who is this Dr. Woody anyway?' Shirley asked.

What's his specialty? And why did it take so long to get

Nez in here? He must have been running a fever for days.'

'He's not a doctor at all,' Howe said. 'I mean he's not a practicing physician. I think he has the M.D. degree, but mostly he's the Ph.D. kind of doc. Microbiology. Pharmacology. Organic chemistry. Writes lots of papers in the journals about the immune system, evolution of pathogens, immunity of microbes to antibiotics, that sort of stuff. He did a piece for Science magazine a few months ago for the layman to read, warning the world that our miracle medicines aren't working anymore. If the viruses don't get us, the bacteria will.'

'Oh, yeah,' Shirley said. 'I remember reading that article. That was his piece? If he knows so much, how come he didn't see that fever?'

Howe shook his head. 'I asked him. He said Nez just started showing the symptoms. Said he had him on preventive doxycycline already because of the work they do, but he gave him a booster shot of streptomycin and rushed him right in.'

'You don't believe that, do you?'

Howe grimaced. 'I'd hate to,' he said. 'Good old plague used to be reliable. It'd poke along and give us time to treat it. And, yeah, that was Woody's article. Sort of don't worry about global warming. The tiny little beasties will get us first.'

'Well, as I remember it, I agreed with a lot of it,' Shirley said. 'It's downright stupid the way some of you doctors prescribe a bunch of antibiotics every time a mama brings her kid in with an earache. No wonder—'

Howe held up a hand.

'Save it, Shirley. Save it. You're preaching to the choir here.' He nodded toward the sheet on the gurney. 'Doesn't Mr. Nez there just prove we're breeding a whole new set of drug-resistant bugs? The old Pas-teurella pestis, as we used to call it in those glorious primitive days when drugs worked, was duck soup for a half dozen antibiotics. Now, whatever they call it these days, Yersinia pestis I think it is, just ignored everything we tried on Mr. Nez. We had us a case here where one of your Navajo curing ceremonials could have done Nez more good than we did.'

'They just brought him in too late,' Shirley said. 'You can't give the plague a two-week head start and hope to—'

Howe shook his head. 'It wasn't two weeks, Shirley. If Woody knows what the hell he's talking about, it was more like just about one day.'

'No way,' Shirley said, shaking her head. 'And how would he know, anyway?'

'Said he picked the flea off of him. Woody's doing a big study of rodent host colonies. National Institutes of Health money, and some of the pharmaceutical companies. He's interested in these mammal disease reservoirs. You know. Prairie dog colonies that get the plague infection but somehow stay alive while all the other colonies are wiped out. That and the kangaroo rats and deer mice, which aren't killed by the hantavirus. Anyway, Woody said he and Nez always took a broad-spectrum antibiotic when there was any risk of flea bites. If it happened, they'd save the flea so he could check it and do a follow-up treatment if needed. According to Woody, Nez found the flea on the inside of his thigh, and almost right away he was feeling sick and running a fever.'

'Wow,' Shirley said.

'Yeah,' Howe agreed. 'Wow indeed.'

'I’ll bet another flea got him a couple of weeks ago,' she said. 'Did you agree on the autopsy?'

'Yeah again,' Howe said. 'You said you know the family. Or know some Nezes, anyway. You think they'll object?'

'I'm what they call an urban Indian. Three-fourths Navajo by blood, but I'm no expert on the culture.' She shrugged. 'Tradition is against chopping up bodies, but on the other hand it solves the problem of the burial.'

Howe sighed, rested his plump buttocks against the desk, pushed back his glasses and rubbed his hand across his eyes. 'Always liked that about you guys,' he said. 'Four days of grief and mourning for the spirit, and then get on with life. How did we white folks get into this corpse worship business? It's just dead meat, and dangerous to boot.'

Shirley merely nodded.

'Anything hopeful for that kid in Room Four?' Howe asked. He picked up the chart, looked at it, clicked his