'If those cultures were starting to grow something-and I really doubt they were-whatever it was would be the slowest-growing virus I've ever encountered.'
'It's probably nothing. I appreciate your telling me, Chris. And also how cooperative you've been. I'll drop a note to Dr. Blankenship and tell him the same thing.'
'Thanks. After this disaster, I'll need it.'
Rosa fished two Extra-Strength Tylenols from her purse, swallowed them with a drink from one of MCB's ubiquitous tepid-water bubblers, and left the hospital. The steamy afternoon heat radiating up from the pavement and off the tree trunks reminded her of home. It also reminded her that no one-not her boss, not her children, not her husband-had wanted her to return to Boston. No one except Rosa herself. Now, despite the contamination of the tissue cultures, she sensed that maybe, just maybe, her hard work was beginning to pay off.
A previously unexamined diary and a log book containing possibly positive cultures. Not much, but certainly more than she had just a few hours ago.
By the time she reached her bed and breakfast, the underarms and neckline of her dress were soaked. She handled the obligatory conversation and progress report to Mrs. Frumanian with even terser responses than usual. Then she trudged up the stairs to her room, grateful that her landlady hadn't taken the small window fan away.
After changing into shorts and a T-shirt, Rosa checked the coded cultures Chris Hall had starred. There were two of them-172A and 172B-both grown in fibrocyte cell tissue culture. The code key, which she kept inside one of her textbooks, identified the source of both specimens as serum taken from what little remained of Lisa Grayson's blood work. Rosa skimmed through the rest of the log book and then called Ken Mulholland in Atlanta. The virologist reported no growth of any of the specimens she had sent, in fibrocytes or any other cell type. Dead end.
Rosa put her feet up, closed her eyes, and tried to nap as she had planned. Within minutes she gave up. There would be plenty of time to sleep when this whole affair was over. She set a pen and legal pad on the bed beside her, worked her large spectacles back onto the still-reddened bridge of her nose, and opened Constanza Hidalgo's diary.
The journal, a five-year record, had entries nearly every day. Some of them were just a few words long. Some were typed pages stapled to the appropriate date. A few of the names were initials only, or some other kind of shorthand. And throughout the pages there were drawings, faces mostly-small sketches that were really quite good.
The entries began on Connie's seventeenth birthday and ended near her twenty-second. The tone of the first entry made it sound as if a similar volume had preceded this one. Immediately Rosa was immersed in the sad life and painful fantasies of a shy, ill-educated girl, living with a mother who had little time for her and a stepfather who, for years, touched her far too often and much too intimately. As she read along, Rosa vowed to keep the diary from Maria Barahona at all costs. Somehow, Connie had managed to fend off most of Fredy Barahona's advances. And by her twentieth birthday, there was no further mention of them. If Maria had not learned any of this while Connie was alive, there was no reason she should be exposed to such anguish now.
Visits to various clinics at the Medical Center of Boston were mentioned from time to time. There were, as Maria Barahona had related, occasional sore throats and headaches. There was also one episode of gonorrhea at age eighteen. It was treated in the emergency room, and gotten from someone named T.G. who 'lied to me when he said he loved me, but I knew he was lying. Oh well,' Connie had written at the bottom of that entry, 'it was fun while it lasted. And beggars can't be choosers.'
Rosa was again beginning to tire, and was about to set the diary aside when she noticed another mention of a visit to MCB. This one occurred when Connie was nineteen.
April 3 At MCB medical clinic today for headaches. Strange little Dr. Dr. S. came up to me… an Arab or something, I think. He says I don't have to be fat anymore. I told him diets don't help me, but he said I wouldn't have to diet except just a little. He wants to see me in a week. I don't think I'll go. But maybe I will. He's sort of nice.
Suddenly Rosa was wide awake. Many more visits to the clinic to see Dr. S. followed. Several times there was mention of a diet powder of some kind. And most impressively, there was weight loss. Over just four months, Connie Hidalgo dropped nearly fifty pounds! In all, she lost seventy over about six months, finishing at 108. That remarkable transformation was, in and of itself, impressive. But even more intriguing to Rosa was the realization that the date of Connie's initial visit with Dr. S., and the ones that followed it, fell within the pages missing from her hospital record. There was nothing beyond the missing pages that connected Connie's visits to Dr. S.-whoever he was-with her violent death. But if there was such a connection, Rosa had no doubt she would find it.
She was working her way through the rest of the diary when Ken Mulholland called from Atlanta.
'Rosa, I hope I didn't wake you,' he said. 'You sounded bushed before.'
'I was, Ken, but I'm perking up. Down one minute, up the next. You know how it is with us old ladies.'
'We should all be old like you are. Listen, Rosa, after we talked, I went back and ran a quick spectro on a couple of the specimens you mentioned. One of them-just one-has a funny piece of DNA floating around. My tech is checking it again now. I think it might be viral, but the tissue culture seems clean, and there's just not enough of the stuff present to tell. Is there any way you can get me some more specimen?'
'From the same patient, maybe,' Rosa said. 'But she was sick at the time that serum was obtained, and she's not sick now.'
'I see.'
'Listen, the best I can do is convalescent serum, so that's what I'll try for. But I'm not at all sure I can get that either. The patient in question is suing one of the doctors at this hospital for malpractice. She may not be too anxious to cooperate at this point.'
'What about the other patients with the same problem?'
'They're both dead.'
'And there are no other cases?'
'Nope,' Rosa said. She hesitated, and then added, 'At least not yet there aren't.'
By the time Matt returned her call, Sarah was home, curled up on the sofa, wearing her most comfortable, torn, unprofessional pair of jeans and working on her second glass of Chardonnay. She had filed reports with hospital security and the police, and left a note for Glenn Paris, who was away at some sort of meeting. Then she signed out to the resident on call and accepted a ride home from the OB/Gyn unit secretary. The dictation, she decided, could wait.
'Any idea who could have done it?' Matt asked after she had sketched the events of the past few hours.
'Nobody. Everybody. Those three girls have friends and relatives. To say nothing of the everyday, run-of- the-mill nutcakes, who see some thirty-second news clip on TV and become instant crusaders. I'm not a cynic, Matt, but I do know that people can be very ugly.'
'Amen to that. You said you've made a decision about the case. Want to tell me over the phone or in person?'
Sarah had hoped the question would be asked and had already decided on her response.
'Would you like to come over here?' she asked. 'I enjoy cooking and almost never get to do it anymore. There's enough stuff here to put some sort of meal together provided you're not too picky. And you can do your part by keeping me from finishing this bottle of Chardonnay by myself.'
'Deal. I can be there in half an hour. Do you want to give me a hint as to what you've decided?'
'I think I can do better than that,' she said. 'I can tell you that I've decided that I can't agree to settle this case under any circumstances.'
'You know, Matt, I thought I knew what I had to do when I left you this afternoon,' Sarah said. 'Then, the moment I saw what they'd done to my bike, I was sure.'
They sat on her sofa, drinking decaf and eating what remained of a Sara Lee pound cake she had found in the recesses of her freezer. Dinner-mushroom chicken crepes and some stir-fried vegetables-had gone over reasonably well. Still, she was not nearly as relaxed as she would have liked. The incident at the hospital was one reason, of course. But another was that Matt was the first man she had been alone with in her place in almost two years.
'Listen, whatever you say is what we're going to do,' he said.
If he was upset by her decision to go against his recommendation, he hid it well.
