Reflex (36 page)

"And your name, ma'am?"

Millie looked up. There were at least four video cameras in the trauma reception area.
Shit, they've recorded me jumping!
For a brief moment she considered finding the machines that recorded the video feed but she knew nothing about the technology. The security office could be anywhere in the entire massive cluster of buildings or, worse, off premises. There was no point in lying. She wished she'd at least had time to put on the wig and glasses before bringing Padgett in, but she was the short-haired blond in contacts.
So much for
that
disguise.

"Millicent Harrison-Rice. Mention my name if Ms. Martingale has any doubts about the identity of your patient."

"And your address?"

"I'm not the patient and I'm not assuming financial responsibility," she said.

"Ma'am, I need this information. Mr. Padgett may be contagious. You could be exposed, not only in danger of contracting his disease yourself, but also of spreading it. You are required by law to give us this information!"

Well, who doesn't know our Stillwater address?
After all, it was where she'd found Padgett and certainly the NSA had been there. Surely the FBI could figure it out—it was a matter of public record.

She gave the clerk the Stillwater address and phone and her work phone at the clinic though she doubted she'd ever be able to work there again after this night's work.

"But you're staying here in DC, I take it, someplace? A hotel? A friend."

"Oh, no."
I commute.
"Just got here. No local address."

"I'll give Ms. Martingale a call, why don't I," said the clerk when she'd taken down the info.

Millie expected her to go back to the admissions office adjacent to the waiting room but she simply reached below Millie's line of sight, picked up a phone handset, and dialed.

I should go.
But Millie stayed. She wanted to know how Padgett was. No matter that he was her enemy, that he was one of those who'd taken Davy. She felt responsible for Padgett's current condition. She also wanted to know
what
was wrong with the man. She found it odd that he'd gone into convulsions the moment he'd actually revealed something to her. And then there was the possibility Padgett was carrying some kind of contagious disease. She wanted that cleared up.
Typhoid Mary would have nothing on me as a disease vector.
Millie pictured herself jumping from city to city, coughing and sneezing and leaving loci of infection strung behind her.

Better to know.

She could afford to wait—they didn't have much chance of stopping her when she did decide to leave, but this thought, initially comforting, suddenly sent a cold chill through the very core of her being.
That's almost certainly what Davy thought right before they took
him.

The admissions clerk's side of the phone conversation came clearly through the grill. "Ms. Becca Martingale? My name is Sarah Lewinski. I'm with patient intake at George Washington University Hospital. We just admitted a Lewis Padgett and we were told you could help us complete our intake information. You do know Mr. Padgett?"

"Well, a Ms. Millicent Harrison-Rice told us you might know more about him than she did."

"Yes, Ms. Harrison-Rice is right here. She brought Mr. Padgett in."

"Sorry, they just arrived. I don't know what Mr. Padgett's condition is. Can you help me with any of Mr. Padgett's information—his social or employer or insurance provider?"

Special Agent Martingale had apparently finished asking questions and was now talking at length, for the admissions clerk had her mouth shut and her eyes open. Then she said, "Yes, ma'am. I'll tell security immediately." She hung up the phone and said in a mildly accusatory tone to Millie, "You didn't say Ms. Martingale was an FBI agent."

Without waiting for a response she stepped out of the booth and called the security guard over. Millie couldn't hear what she said to him but when she was done talking, the guard unhooked his belt radio and began speaking into it as he headed back for the treatment room where they'd taken Padgett.

Millie started to step back out of her side of the interview booth to get an update on Padgett when a siren, previously distantly audible, suddenly swelled to a nearly earsplitting level as the vehicle entered the ambulance driveway. Fortunately the driver turned off the siren almost immediately but Millie could see blue lights bouncing off the walls. Her first thought was that an ambulance was delivering a trauma patient but that scenario was dispelled when four soldiers in hooded gas masks and full chemical warfare protective gear came through the door.

A doctor came running from the treatment rooms to meet them. Talking rapidly, he gestured first back toward the treatment rooms and then pointed directly at Millie.

What the hell?

Two of the soldiers followed the doctor back to treatment and the other two turned to Millie. She stepped back involuntarily as they approached.

The one in the lead waved an instrument the size of a large hardback with an off-center projecting nozzle and an LCD readout. He stepped into the other side of the isolation booth, the room the admissions clerk had used, and waved it around, watching the screen. After studying it for a moment he lifted the gas mask and shoulder draping hood up, revealing mild looking eyes and bifocal glasses. He used the speaker. "Good evening, ma'am. How are you?"

"Well, until you guys showed up in your gas masks, I was fine. Then I almost had a heart attack. Who are you and why are you here?"

"Ah. Well, my name is Sergeant Ferguson of the C/BRRT—the Chemical/Biological Rapid Response Team. We're here because the trauma center reported a possible occurrence of nerve agent."

"Nerve gas? Like sarin?"

"Or tabun or soman or VX. Or the most common is organophosphate pesticide, so it doesn't have to be something sinister. I'm going to put my mask back on and use this," he held up the instrument, "to check you and your clothing for any traces of nerve agent."

"Have you detected any out there yet?" She gestured at the room beyond the glass.

He smiled. "Not a trace, thank God."

She gestured. "By all means, check away."

He redonned his mask, did a quick check on the seal, and came over to her side of the booth, pushing the instrument through the door first. When it was apparently negative, he came on in. She stood as directed and he checked her from head to foot. He had her hold up her shoes one by one so he could check the soles and then exhale as he held the instrument before her mouth. This close, she could hear a small fan sucking air in through the nozzle.

From a pocket he pulled a charcoal gray foam packet with pressed seams and a Velcro closure, and set it on the counter. His voice, muffled by the mask, said, "You seem all clear, ma'am, but I'm sure they'll want you to stay in here until they've totally ruled it out or any biological agent."

He exited, consulted briefly with his associate, and went back into the other side of the booth. His mask back off, he smiled and said, "On the very long chance you've been exposed, I've left an antidote kit on the counter there. If you start salivating and your nose starts running, if you feel a pressure in your chest, if you have trouble focusing on close objects, or if you feel nauseated, sing out. If we're not immediately available, there are two autoinjectors in there—one has 2 mg of atropine, and the other has six hundred milligrams of 2-PAM, pralidoxime chloride. Remove the protective cap and press them into your thigh about four inches above your knee. Don't worry about your clothes—the autoinjector will push the needle right through, all right? Atropine first, 2-PAM second."

"You're scaring me, here."

"To be perfectly honest, I don't think you have a thing to worry about."

"Then why are
you
here?"

He grinned. "To make
sure
you don't have anything to worry about." He gestured back toward the trauma center. "I see why they called it in—your friend had several of the symptoms of acute nerve agent exposure. He was crashing—respiratory and cardiac failure—but he responded pretty well to atropine, but since atropine is good for a host of different problems it's not a definite indicator for nerve gas. It's just that we're less than half-a-mile from the White House here. That's why my little unit is on detached duty here in D.C. instead of back with the rest of the team up in Maryland. Better we should overreact a little—we've all seen the consequences of under-reacting.

"I'm going to check with my boss, Captain Trihn—he's in with the trauma team—and we'll know more. Specialist Marco there," he pointed to the other soldier outside, "will stay here. Let him know if you start experiencing any of the reactions I listed."

She nodded and he put his mask back on, then walked back up the hall toward the trauma theaters. The fact that he walked calmly, rather than trotted, reassured her more than anything he'd said.

A few minutes later Special Agent Becca Martingale entered the emergency room with a team of six agents—all neatly labeled F-B-I, in white letters across dark navy windbreakers. The medical staff apparently expected them, though her chemical warfare attendant, Specialist Marco, did a serious double take when he saw the shotguns three of them were carrying.

This is getting crazy. I should jump out of here.
But she hesitated—there were things she wanted to know, both from the medical staff and from the FBI.

Becca gave Millie a nod as she passed, but clearly her first priority was securing Padgett. Millie almost wished she could be there when the different agendas of the medical staff, the FBI, and the C/BRRT all collided.

She stared at the packet Sergeant Ferguson had left with her. MARK I NERVE AGENT ANTIDOTE KIT. She shuddered. It didn't seem possible—not only had she been exposed to everything that Padgett had—they'd even eaten the same food—he'd been totally isolated.
He did have his clothes. The old suicide capsule in a hollow button?
She'd been watching him the whole time. The only thing he'd put in his mouth was the food she'd brought him—food she'd also eaten.

The walls of the isolation booth were closing in on her and she felt her heart beating faster.
Oh, my god, I've got it, or it's got me.
Her hand closed convulsively on the kit—then she forced herself to release it. Her hand was shaking.

Idiot.

She of all people should recognize the psychosomatic expression of physical symptoms. She wasn't salivating. Her mouth, if anything, was dry as a bone.
Though if I obsess about it long enough, I'm sure I could express most of the symptoms the sergeant listed for me.

Her tension was relieved when the sergeant, himself, came back from the trauma theater. He'd stowed his gas mask in its belt case and his chemical oversuit was zipped open to the waist.

He opened her side of the isolation booth and picked up the antidote kit. "All clear, at least as far as we're concerned."

"Not nerve gas?"

"No traces on our equipment. They found an implant—some kind of vagus nerve stimulator—it's going haywire, apparently. There was a scar and they palpated a hard lump," he tapped his upper chest, just below his collarbone, "so they took a chest x-ray. The device and a wire going up his neck showed up on the film. They're pretty sure that's the problem."

Millie blinked. She'd seen the scar on Padgett, but considering the man's history, she'd thought it a war wound, from his days with Executive Outcomes. "Why would he have something like that?"

"The trauma surgeon said it's a treatment for some kinds of epilepsy and there's also some experiments with it in treating depression. But he says there's nothing in the literature about one doing this. If it's the FDA-approved implant, from Cyberonics, it should've failed completely rather than give the over-voltages that caused these symptoms."

"What do you think?"

He shrugged. "Don't know. My boss likes it. Captain Trinh is an MD—a toxicologist. He says vagal stimulation would account for the symptoms the patient did express
and
the symptoms he didn't." He tucked the antidote kit back in one of his pouches. "So, we're standing down—the Secret Service was very relieved." He rolled his neck around. "We were ninety percent sure when we got here, actually, but we went through the whole nine yards, though, because of the hallucinations."

"Hallucinations? Padgett was seeing things?"

"No. The patient has never been conscious. Some of the staff seemed to be seeing things, though, so we thought there was some kind of nerve agent involved and enough
on
him to contaminate the first responders. They said you disappeared, then reappeared with the patient." He smiled. "Might be working too hard. Either that or admin needs to inventory the drug cabinets."

Millie smiled weakly. "So I can leave this booth?"

"As far as
I'm
concerned. The captain and the attending seem pretty sure it's not biological, either. But the FBI might want to talk with you. Wonder why they're here?"

"Didn't they tell you?"

"Maybe they told the captain. I'm just a working man."

"Padgett—the patient—was involved in the attempted kidnapping of two women here in D.C., last week. The FBI were watching and when they moved in, he shot an agent to escape."

"Get outta here!"

"No, really."

"I didn't read anything about that. How did you hear about it?"

"I was one of those women," she said. "What are they going to do for Padgett?"

"Pull the implant, I believe. They were prepping him and waiting for a neurosurgeon to come over from the next building."

"And if he's epileptic?"

"Doesn't matter. The thing will kill him if it keeps firing like it is. Better seizures than dead. He survives, he can get a new implant that works right."

Maybe it
is
working right.
Millie shuddered. "Well, thanks for proving it
wasn't
nerve gas."

Sergeant Ferguson nodded and, as he turned away, he said, "I wouldn't have it any other way. I get nightmares as it is."