Outbreak by Robin Cook Read Free Book Online Page A

exposed to the agent from handling infected material from the existing cases.
    The ER personnel had placed the new patient in one of the psychiatric cubicles. There was a Do Not Enter sign on the door. Marissa read the technician's chart. He was a twenty-four-year-old male by the name of Alan Moyers. His temperature was 103.4. After donning protective gown, mask, hat, gloves and booties, Marissa entered the tiny room. The patient stared at her with glazed eyes.
    "I understand you're not feeling too well," said Marissa.
    "I feel like I've been run over by a truck," said Alan. "I've never felt this bad, even when I had the flu last year."
    "What was the first thing you noticed?"
    "The headache," said Alan. He tapped his fingers against the sides of his forehead. "Right here is where I feel the pain. It's awful. Can you give me something for it?"
    "What about chills?"
    "Yeah, after the headache began, I started to get them."
    "Has anything abnormal happened to you in the lab in the last week or so?"
    "Like what?" asked Alan, closing his eyes. "I did win the pool on the last Lakers game."
    "I'm more interested in something professional. Were you bitten by any animals?"
    "Nope. I never handle any animals. What's wrong with me?"
    "How about Dr. Richter? Do you know him?"
    "Sure. Everybody knows Dr. Richter. Oh, I remember something. I stuck myself with a vacu-container needle. That never happened to me before."
    "Do you remember the patient's name on the vacu-container?"
    "No. All I remember is that the guy didn't have AIDS. I was worried about that, so I looked up his diagnosis."
    "What was it?"
    "Didn't say. But it always says AIDS if it is AIDS. I don't have AIDS, do I?"
    "No, Alan, you don't have AIDS," said Marissa.
    "Thank God," said Alan. "For a moment there, I was scared."
    Marissa went out to find Dr. Navarre, but he was occupied with a cardiac arrest that had just been brought in by ambulance. Marissa asked the nurse to tell him that she was going back to the fifth floor. Returning to the elevators, Marissa began organizing her thoughts to call Dr. Dubchek.
    "Excuse me."
    Marissa felt a tap on her arm and turned to face a stocky man with a beard and wire-rimmed glasses. "Are you Dr. Blumenthal from the CDC?" asked the man.
    Nonplussed at being recognized, Marissa nodded. The man stood blocking her entrance to the elevator. "I'm Clarence Hems, with the L.A. Times. My wife works the night shift up in the medical ICU. She told me that you were here to see Dr. Richter. What is it the man has?"
    "At this point, no one knows," said Marissa.
    "Is it serious?"
    "I imagine your wife can answer that as well as I."
    "She says the man is dying and that there are six other similar cases, including a secretary from medical records. Sounds to me like the beginnings of an epidemic."
    "I'm not sure that 'epidemic' is the right word. There does seem to be one more case today, but that's the only one for two days. I hope it will be the last, but no one knows."
    "Sounds scary," said the reporter.
    "I agree," said Marissa. "But I can't talk longer. I'm in a hurry." Dodging the insistent Mr. Hems, Marissa boarded the next elevator and returned to the cubicle behind the fifth-floor nurses' station and put through a collect call to Dr. Dubchek. It was quarter-to-three in Atlanta, and she got Dubchek immediately.
    "So, how's your first field assignment?" he asked.
    "It's a bit overwhelming," said Marissa. Then, as succinctly as she could, she described the seven cases she'd seen, admitting that she had not learned anything that the Richter Clinic doctors didn't already know.
    "That shouldn't bother you," said Dubchek. "You have to keep in mind that an epidemiologist looks at data differently than a clinician, so the same data can mean different things. The clinician is looking at each case in particular, whereas you are looking at the whole picture. Tell me about the illness."
    Marissa described the clinical syndrome, referring frequently to her