“One-thirty.”
Robert put his daughter in her bed. “I think I’ll go call her. She needed something.”
“I’ll stay with your girls.”
Once Robert got to the cell phone room on the floor, he called Debbie. It rang and rang.
Debbie could feel her phone vibrating under her body. Finally, she realized what it was and answered. “Helloo…” Her voice was slow and raspy.
“Deb, it’s Robert. I’m wondering where you are. I got your text earlier saying you needed something. What is it?”
The phone started to slide out of Debbie’s hand. “Robert… I need you. I need… help…”
Robert stood straight up, realizing there was something wrong with her. “Where are you? Tell me where you are.”
There was only silence.
“Debbie, where are you?” he asked in a louder voice.
“In… bed… dying…”
“I’m coming.”
Robert dashed out of the room and back to Gini. John was standing over the baby.
“John, I have to go home.” He tried to whisper, but it sounded like he was shouting. “Something is terribly wrong with Debbie.”
“Go,” John said. “I’ll make sure everything is good here. Go and let me know what’s going on.”
“I will.” Robert grabbed his jacket as he passed the chair.
When he got to Debbie’s room, he slightly tapped and called to her. Then he opened the door. She was groaning on the bed. The minute he touched her, he knew she had a high fever.
“My gut,” she said. “It’s ripping apart.”
Robert got his bag and started an exam. Her fever was 104, pulse was racing, and he could see she was in great pain. The first thing that came to mind was appendicitis.
“Debbie, do you think you can get to the car, or do you want me to call an ambulance?”
“Car…”
He got Gini’s wheelchair and pulled it up next to the bed, then to her closet and found a robe, and gathered up a couple of blankets. Once on the road, he called the med center.
“This is Dr. Robert Young. I’m bringing nurse Debbie Pierce to the ER. She has a high fever with severe abdominal pain.”
“Dr. Young, we’ll be ready for you.”
He reached over and squeezed Debbie’s hand. She was rolling her head back and forth on the seatback.
“Just relax,” he said. “We’re going to get you better.”
The traffic was light, and he got there in fifteen minutes. She was rushed off to an examining bay. Appendicitis was immediately ruled out. They swabbed Debbie’s mouth.
“Why the swab?” Robert asked.
“Checking for the Coch virus.”
“Coch?” Robert almost gasped. He recalled he’d read a news story on how three cases had been reported a couple of weeks before on Long Island. The Coch virus had been an issue for the last three years. It usually hit suddenly and hard around the Christmas holidays. But this last winter there had been only a few reports of the illness in Connecticut, the epicenter of the first epidemic. Robert’s first thought was of Gini. She’d had the virus twice, one year after the next. The disease was a deadly one. Over the years the CDC had come up with several serums. The last experimental dose seemed to have been effective, since there were only a few cases in January and no deaths.
“The virus is out there?” Robert asked.
“We had ten come in last night, and five more this morning. Many people are going to the ERs all over the Boston area. Just in the last few days, Connecticut has reported twenty deaths. It’s bad this time. Just boom, it hit and hit hard. We’ve set up a wing on the eighth floor to quarantine the patients.”
Robert wiped down his face with his hand. He was now contaminated if Debbie had the virus.
“Positive,” a nurse said sticking her head inside the curtain. “We’ll get her up to the eighth floor.”
The virus was a mysterious one, affecting each victim differently. That was why it was so hard to come up with a vaccine. From what they could tell from Gini’s records, both of her infections had been in either her head or her eyes. And another baffling fact was the virus came back in the same people year after year, as well as being spread to new patients.
“The CDC has sent over some immune-boosting injections. I suggest you get one,” the ER doctor told Robert.
Robert immediately was given a shot. Then he got out his tablet and looked up Coch virus.
Two of the three men in New York had died, but there had been no other infections in that region. The surviving victim had been given an experimental serum. There was no way of knowing if the combination in the injection was what saved his life. But the CDC was asking for volunteers, for both well people at risk and infected patients, to take the vaccine.
The sudden outbreak the last week or so had taken everyone by surprise. There was something in the New England area that had to be causing the infection to bloom. No other part of the US, other than the Northeast, had had any cases.
Robert called John and told him the news.
“I can’t risk being around Gini,” he said sadly. “I… can’t.”
“Robert, I’m so sorry to hear about Debbie. She’s strong; she’ll pull through.”
“What do you think about the new serum? Should she take it? Should I, or Gini? Just because she hasn’t been exposed doesn’t mean it won’t come back on her.”
“We’ll watch her closely. It’s so experimental, I think I have an issue administering it to Gini. You should talk to Debbie about it. You two can make your own decisions. But for now, let’s hold off for Gini.”
“Okay.” Robert was pacing in his office. “I might as well
