Authors: Robin Cook
A housekeeper picked up the phone. When Jack asked for Mr. Hard, he was told Mr. Hard was at the office. Jack dialed the second number.
This time it was answered by a secretary. Jack had to explain who he was and was then put on hold. “I’m amazed,” Jack said to Chet, his hand over the receiver. “The man’s wife just died and he’s at work. Only in America!”
Maurice Hard came on the line. His voice was strained. He was obviously under great stress. Jack was tempted to tell the man he knew something of what he was feeling, but something made him hold back. Instead he explained who he was and why he was calling.
“Do you think I should talk to my lawyer first?” Maurice asked.
“Lawyer? Why your lawyer?”
“My wife’s family is making ridiculous accusations,” Maurice said. “They’re suggesting I had something to do with Susanne’s death. They’re crazy. Rich, but crazy. I mean, Susanne and I had our ups and downs, but we never would have hurt each other, no way.”
“Do they know your wife died of an infectious disease?” Jack questioned.
“I’ve tried to tell them,” Maurice said.
“I don’t know what to say,” Jack said. “It’s really not my position to advise you about your personal legal situation.”
“Well, hell, go ahead and ask your questions,” Maurice said. “I can’t imagine it would make any difference. But let me ask you a question first. Was it plague?”
“That still has not been determined,” Jack said. “But I’ll call you as soon as we know for sure.”
“I’d appreciate that,” Maurice said. “Now, what are your questions?”
“I believe you have a dog,” Jack said. “Is the dog healthy?”
“For a seventeen-year-old dog he’s healthy,” Maurice said.
“I’d like to encourage you to take the pet to your vet and explain that your wife died of a serious infectious disease. I want to be sure the dog isn’t carrying the illness, whatever it was.”
“Is there a chance of that?” Maurice asked with alarm.
“It’s small, but there is a chance,” Jack said.
“Why didn’t the hospital tell me that?” he demanded.
“That I can’t answer,” Jack said. “I assume they talked to you about taking antibiotics.”
“Yeah, I’ve already started,” Maurice said. “But it bums me out about the dog. I should have been informed.”
“There’s also the issue of travel,” Jack said. “I was told your wife didn’t do any recent traveling.”
“That’s right,” Maurice said. “She was pretty uncomfortable with her pregnancy, especially with her back problem. We haven’t gone anywhere except to our house up in Connecticut.”
“When was the last visit to Connecticut?” Jack asked.
“About a week and a half ago,” Maurice said. “She liked it up there.”
“Is it rural?” Jack asked.
“Seventy acres of fields and forest land,” Maurice said proudly. “Beautiful spot. We have our own pond.”
“Did your wife ever go out into the woods?” Jack asked.
“All the time,” Maurice said. “That was her main enjoyment. She liked to feed the deer and the rabbits.”
“Were there many rabbits?” Jack asked.
“You know rabbits,” Maurice said. “Every time we went up there there were more of them. I actually thought they were a pain in the neck. In the spring and summer they ate all the goddamn flowers.”
“Any problem with rats?”
“Not that I know of,” Maurice said. “Are you sure this is all significant?”
“We never know,” Jack said. “What about your visitor from India?”
“That was Mr. Svinashan,” Maurice said. “He’s a business acquaintance from Bombay. He stayed with us for almost a week.”
“Hmm,” Jack said, remembering the plague outbreak in 1994 in Bombay. “As far as you know, he’s healthy and well?”
“As far as I know,” Maurice said.
“How about giving him a call,” Jack suggested. “If he’s been sick, let me know.”
“No problem,” Maurice said. “You don’t think he could have been involved, do you? After all, his visit was three weeks ago.”
“This episode has baffled me,” Jack admitted. “I’m not ruling anything out. What about Donald Nodelman? Did you or your wife know him?”
“Who’s he?” Maurice asked.
“He was the first victim in this plague outbreak,” Jack said. “He was a patient in the Manhattan General. I’d be curious if your wife might have visited him. He was on the same floor.”
“In OB-GYN?” Maurice questioned with surprise.
“He was on the medical ward on the opposite side of the building. He was in the hospital for diabetes.”
“Where did he live?”
“The Bronx,” Jack said.
“I doubt it,” Maurice said. “We don’t know anyone from the Bronx.”
“One last question,” Jack said. “Did your wife happen to visit the hospital during the week prior to her admission?”
“She hated hospitals,” Maurice said. “It was difficult to get her to go even when she was in labor.”
Jack thanked Maurice and hung up.
“Now who you calling?” Chet asked as Jack dialed again.
“The husband of my first case this morning,” Jack said. “At least we know this case had plague for sure.”
“Why don’t you let the PAs make these calls?” Chet asked.
“Because I can’t tell them what to ask,” Jack said. “I don’t know what I’m looking for. I just have this suspicion that there is some missing piece of information. Also I’m just plain interested. The more I think about this episode of plague in New York in March, the more unique I think it is.”
Mr. Harry Mueller was a far cry from Mr. Maurice Hard. He was devastated by his loss and had trouble speaking despite a professed willingness to be cooperative. Not wishing to add to the man’s burden, Jack tried to be quick. After corroborating Janice’s report of no pets or travel and no recent visitors, Jack went through the same questions concerning Donald Nodelman as he had with Maurice.
“I’m certain my wife did not know this individual,” Harry said, “and she rarely met any patients directly, especially sick patients.”
“Did your wife work in central supply for a long time?” Jack asked.
“Twenty-one years,” Harry said.
“Did she ever come down with any illness that she thought she’d contracted at the hospital?” Jack asked.
“Maybe if one of her co-workers had a cold,” Harry said. “But nothing more than that.”
“Thank you, Mr. Mueller,” Jack said. “You’ve been most kind.”
“Katherine would have wanted me to help,” Harry said. “She was a good person.”
Jack hung up the phone but left his hands drumming on the receiver. He was agitated. “Nobody, including me, has any idea what the hell is going on here,” he said.
“True,” Chet said. “But it’s not your worry. The cavalry has already arrived. I heard that the city epidemiologist was over here observing this morning.”
“He was here all right,” Jack said. “But it was in desperation. That little twerp hasn’t the foggiest notion of what’s going on. If it weren’t for the CDC’s sending someone up here from Atlanta, nothing would be happening. At least someone’s out there trapping rats and looking for a reservoir.”
Suddenly Jack pushed back from the desk, got up, and pulled on his bomber jacket.
“Uh-oh!” Chet said. “I sense trouble. Where are you going?”
“I’m heading back to the General,” Jack said. “My gut sense tells me the missing information is over there at the hospital, and by God I’m going to find it.”
“What about Bingham?” Chet said nervously.
“Cover for me,” Jack said. “If I’m late for Thursday conference, tell him...” Jack paused as he tried to think up some appropriate excuse, but nothing came to mind. “Oh, screw it,” he said. “I won’t be that long. I’ll be back way before conference. If anybody calls, tell them I’m in the john.”
Ignoring further pleas to reconsider, Jack left and rode uptown. He arrived in less than fifteen minutes and locked his bike to the same sign-post as the day before.
The first thing Jack did was take the hospital elevator up to the seventh floor and reconnoiter. He saw how the OB-GYN and medical wards were completely separate without sharing any common facilities like lounges or lavatories. He also saw that the ventilation system was designed so as to preclude any movement of air from one ward to the other.
Pushing through the swinging doors into the OB-GYN area, Jack walked down to the central desk.
“Excuse me,” he said to a ward secretary. “Does this ward share any personnel with the medical ward across the elevator lobby?”
“No, not that I know of,” the young man said. He looked about fifteen with a complexion that suggested he had yet to shave. “Except, of course, cleaning people. But they clean all over the hospital.”
“Good point,” Jack said. He hadn’t thought of the housekeeping department. It was something to consider. Jack then asked which room Susanne Hard had occupied.
“Can I ask what this is in reference to?” the ward clerk asked. He had finally noticed that Jack was not wearing a hospital ID. Hospitals all require identification badges of their employees, but then frequently do not have the personnel to enforce compliance.
Jack took out his ME badge and flashed it. It had the desired effect. The ward secretary told Jack that Mrs. Hard had been in room 742. Jack started out for the room, but the ward clerk called out to him that it was quarantined and temporarily sealed. Believing that viewing the room would not have been enlightening anyway, Jack left the seventh floor and descended to the third, which housed the surgical suites, the recovery room, the intensive-care units, and central supply. It was a busy area with a lot of patient traffic.
Jack pushed through a pair of swinging doors into central supply and was confronted by an unmanned counter. Beyond the counter was an immense maze of floor-to-ceiling metal shelving laden with all the sundry equipment and supplies needed by a large, busy hospital. In and out of the maze moved a team of people attired in scrubs, white coats, and hats that looked like shower caps. A radio played somewhere in the distance.
After Jack had stood at the counter for a few minutes, a robust and vigorous woman caught sight of him and came over. Her name tag said “Gladys Zarelli, Supervisor.” She asked if he needed some help.
“I wanted to inquire about Katherine Mueller,” Jack said.
“God rest her soul,” Gladys said. She made the sign of the cross. “It was a terrible thing.”
Jack introduced himself by displaying his badge, then questioned whether she and her co-workers were concerned that Katherine had died of an infectious disease.
“Of course we’re concerned,” she said. “Who wouldn’t be? We all work closely with one another. But what can you do? At least the hospital is concerned as well. They have us all on antibiotics, and thank God, no one is sick.”
“Has anything like this ever happened before?” Jack asked. “What I mean is, a patient died of plague just the day before Katherine. That suggests that Katherine could very well have caught it here at the hospital. I don’t mean to scare you, but those are the facts.”
“We’re all aware of it,” Gladys said. “But it’s never happened before. I imagine it’s happened in nursing, but not here in central supply.”
“Do you people have any patient contact?” Jack asked.
“Not really,” Gladys said. “Occasionally we might run up to the wards, but it’s never to see a patient directly.”
“What was Katherine doing the week before she died?” Jack asked.
“I’ll have to look that up,” Gladys said. She motioned for Jack to follow her. She led Jack into a tiny, windowless office where she cracked open a large, cloth-bound daily ledger.
“Assignments are never too strict,” Gladys said. Her finger ran down a row of names. “We all kinda pitch in as needed, but I give some basic responsibility to some of the more senior people.” Her finger stopped, then moved across the page. “Okay, Katherine was more or less in charge of supplies to the wards.”
“What does that mean?” Jack asked.
“Whatever they needed,” Gladys said. “Everything except drugs and that sort of stuff. That comes from pharmacy.”
“You mean like things for the patients’ rooms?” Jack asked.
“Sure, for the rooms, for the nurses’ station, everything,” Gladys said. “This is where it all comes from. Without us the hospital would grind to a halt in twenty-four hours.”
“Give me an example of the things you deal with for the rooms,” Jack said.
“I’m telling you, everything!” Gladys said with a touch of irritation in her voice. “Bedpans, thermometers, humidifiers, pillows, pitchers, soap. Everything.”
“You wouldn’t have any record of Katherine going up to the seventh floor during the last week or so, would you?”
“No,” Gladys said. “We don’t keep records like that. I could print out for you everything sent up there, though. That we have a record of.”
“Okay,” Jack said. “I’ll take what I can get.”
“It’s going to be a lot of stuff,” Gladys warned as she made an entry into her computer terminal. “Do you want OB-GYN or medical or both?” she asked.
“Medical,” Jack said.
Gladys nodded, pecked at a few more keys on her terminal, and soon her printer was cranking away. In a few minutes she handed Jack a stack of papers. He glanced through them. As Gladys had suggested there were a lot of items. The length of the list gave Jack respect for the logistics of running the institution.
Leaving central supply, Jack descended a floor and wandered into the lab. He did not feel he was making any progress, but he refused to give up. His conviction remained that there was some major missing piece of information. He just didn’t know where he would find it.
Jack asked the same receptionist to whom he’d shown his badge the day before for directions to microbiology, which she gave him without question. Jack walked unchallenged through the extensive lab. It was an odd feeling to see so much impressive equipment running unattended. It reminded Jack of the director’s lament the day before that he’d been forced to cut his personnel by twenty percent.