Taji's Syndrome (8 page)

“I’m glad you’re here,” said Plaiting. “Working late like this, I get scared sometimes.” It was no more than the truth, and he said it with feeling, but he knew that Pablo Muñoz took it as a compliment and a sign of respect.

“You don’t need to be with my staff and me around. We haven’t had any trouble in more than three years.” He took justifiable pride in this, for most medical buildings in the San Fernando Valley had some kind of theft or vandalism on an average of every fourteen months; Muñoz’ record was excellent.

“Thank goodness.”

“I’ll tell my man in the parking lot to keep an eye on your car. It’s that new methane Saab, isn’t it?” This query was only for good manners—Muñoz had the make and license plate number for every person working in the Victory Plaza Medical Building.

“That’s the one.”

“What do you think of it? I don’t like gas lines, but I don’t know about the methane engines,” said Muñoz, not moving from his place in the door.

“I like the car. It handles well and gets good mileage; you don’t have to wait at the methane stations and there’ll be more of them in a year or two.” He sighed. “And we aren’t going to run out of methane for a long, long time.”

Muñoz nodded. “My wife is after me to get one of the methane vans. She keeps talking about the tax incentives, but I worry that they haven’t got the bugs out of them yet.” He nodded. “Well, thanks, Doctor Plaiting.” He backed out of the door and closed it, leaving Gerald alone once more.

By midnight he was no closer to answering his steadily multiplying questions. He rose and turned off the desk light, stretching to get the worst of the stiffness out of his muscles. He thought ruefully of the time not so long ago when his knees and elbows never popped, and his muscles were springy as new rubber bands. “Hazards of age,” he said, with his forty-third birthday facing him in a week. Then he winced inwardly, for there were six of his patients who would never see twenty, let alone forty-three. He stared at the eight folders and willed them to give up their secrets.

As he drove home to a cul-de-sac condo in Sherman Oaks, Gerald went over the cases once more. The first had been Eric Harmmon, who had died New Year’s Day. The next had been Estrella Cincel, the star gymnast at her junior high school; she had died last week. Then George Layton, who had died on his sixteenth birthday, two days ago. There were three more kids with the baffling, lethal symptoms, and two adults, each growing more debilitated every day, until the body simply could not keep going. Technically whatever was wrong with them had not actually killed them, it had merely created a physical condition where death was inevitable. Death, he realized, was a side effect. Gerald ground his teeth as he turned off of Ventura Boulevard.

As he drove up to his condo, he felt the usual pang of loneliness that was the legacy of his divorce two years ago, but his fatigue was more demanding than the darkness of the town house. He parked his car in front of the garage and stumbled toward the front door, ignoring the mailbox and a UPS delivery tag on the security gate. As he fumbled with the light switches in the hall, he wondered again if he ought to get the kind of circuits that would unlock the door and turn on the lights at the sound of his voice, but the notion passed quickly as he went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, staring at its contents before deciding on a cup of comfrey tea and a hot bath.

By morning, some of Gerald’s depression had lifted, but he had not yet come to any greater understanding of the disease that was claiming his patients. He coddled two eggs, adding sweet butter and a dash of paprika to the cup before sinking the coddler in hot water. While he made tea he made up his mind to send out a general inquiry to other physicians in the area to see if any of them had patients with similar symptoms. Perhaps he ought to be safe and include all of southern California; he was not eager to be branded an alarmist, but at the same time he could not bear to think that his negligence might add one more fatality to the list. He was still weighing these considerations when the phone rang.

“Plaiting,” he said as he picked up the receiver.

“This is Joel Price at West Valley Medical,” said his caller. “I’m with the Woodland Hills Clinic.”

“I remember you,” said Plaiting, frowning at the congealing mass of yolk at the bottom of the coddling cup.

“Look, I know that this is a little irregular, but I understand from Katherine Dial that you’ve had some cases recently that—”

“Anemia, lethargy, low fevers,” Plaiting interrupted. “Is that the one?”

“Sounds like it,” said Price. “I’ve had two admissions in the last week. I was wondering if you could spare me some time this evening. We’re listing this as toxic reaction, but I’m not so sure it is.”

“Okay; I was planning on calling Public Health and Environmental Services in any case. I’ll hold off until we talk.” He was relieved to find another doctor as troubled as he was, although the news that there were more cases did nothing to lessen his alarm. “How about eight?”

“Where?” asked Price. “I can come to you.”

“Do that, will you?” Plaiting asked. “I have some test results that I’m expecting. It might help us.”

“And it might not,” said Price. “All right. I know where you are. I’ll try to be there at eight, but if I’m going to be held up I’ll give you a call.”

“Great. Thanks.” He started to hang up, then said, “Are your two still alive?”

“So far, but . . .” His words faded.

“Yeah, I know the feeling,” said Plaiting. “Can you get more blood work done on your two today? We’ll have current results to compare and that might tell us something.” He reached for his cup. “If you have information on toxic waste dumps in your area, bring it along. We might be able to figure something out from that.”

“I haven’t got it, but I can try to get it by this evening,” said Price. “Thank you for the help. I don’t like to sound weird, but this one has a very bad feel about it.”

“I know what you mean, and it doesn’t sound weird to me,” said Plaiting. “I hope we’re both wrong.”

“So do I,” admitted Price. “Okay. I’ll see you this evening. And maybe we can learn something.”

As Gerald Plaiting made his way through the morning traffic, he decided that he would program the medical records of his dead patients once more in the hope that he might discover what they had in common. “Even a bad case of flu ten years ago,” he said to the windshield. Terminal diseases had been triggered by stranger things, he knew, and he sensed that he could not afford to overlook anything in this instance. “There’s a key, there’s a key, there’s got to be a key,” he chanted in cadence with the tune on his radio. He turned off Ventura Boulevard and signaled to change lanes. Outside the sky was grey, some of it from winter cloud cover, some from the continuing battle with smog that was the bane of the greater Los Angeles area. “I wonder if it’s nothing more than smog?”

Reynaldo Bata was on duty at the parking lot entrance, and saluted Gerald as he raised the barrier. “Morning, Doc,” he called out. “How’s it going?”

“Okay. And you?”

“One of my kids has a bug, but other than that everything’s fine.” He consulted his watch and made a note in his log. “You going out again this morning?”

“Over to the hospital.” He drove to his parking space and pulled in. As he locked his car, he noticed that Cindy Chung was getting out of her little British Lancer and he waved to her. “Cindy!”

“Gerry,” she called out, returning his wave. “How are you?”

“Fine, fine,” he said, and for the moment it was almost the truth. He joined her at the elevator doors. “How’re things in the wonderful world of ophthalmology?”

“Optical,” she said, grinning at him. “Are you busy this weekend?”

“I don’t know,” said Plaiting. “Am I?”

“Call me tomorrow; I’ll know something then,” she said as the elevator doors opened. “You look a little tired,” she observed as they rode up.

“Probably. I’ve had a couple tough cases recently. You know what that can be like.”

“Not the way you do,” she corrected him. “It’s not the kind of thing I deal with.”

“Count your blessings,” said Plaiting with more emotion than he realized. “Call me,” he added as the doors opened at her floor.

“You, too.” She left him with her remarkable smile to keep him company all the way to his office. As he looked over his schedule for the day, Plaiting permitted himself a brief fantasy: what would his good Protestant Irish family think if he showed up with a Chinese bride? His ex-wife had come from the same background he had, and their marriage had been a calamity from the first. Perhaps they would see Cindy Chung as a breath of fresh air, a new influence in a hidebound family. Then he laughed aloud once, and reminded himself that he had only been out with the woman once, had done nothing more than kiss her twice. And if his family didn’t like it, then the hell with them.

“Doctor Plaiting, Helen Miller is in room two,” said his nurse from the door, her tone slightly admonitory since Plaiting appeared to be dawdling.

“Tell her I’ll be there in a minute. Have you got the—”

“Blood pressure, temperature, chest index all recorded,” she said with brisk efficiency.

“Thank you, Missus Shepherd,” he said. “I needn’t have asked.”

“She’s got a low fever and some slight bronchial congestion,” added Cynthia Shepherd. “She complains of loss of appetite and malaise; nothing specific.” She paused. “Her color is pasty.”

There was a sudden coldness in Plaiting’s chest. “I’d better look at her,” he said, all too certain of what he would find.

—Samuel Jarvis—

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Sam Jarvis asked Harper Ross. “You’re still in shock about Kevin, and taking on more study right now . . .” He cocked his head and watched the other man with skeptical interest.

“I have to do something.” Harper shook his head slowly. “I can’t just let him die and do nothing. I can’t leave it at that.”

“Are you sure you aren’t simply looking for an acceptable escape?” Sam asked gently. “Harper, I know how hard it is to lose a child—Lorna and I lost our boy fourteen years ago and it still hurts—but you can’t let it weigh you down this way.”

“That’s what I mean,” said Harper, his eyes sharpening. “I don’t want to be weighted down, and for me, that means getting to the bottom of what killed him. I admit that I never thought I’d be doing something like this, but I do have some skills and they can be of some use to you, I know they can.” He braced his elbows on the desk and leaned forward. “I know how to investigate crimes—that’s what I teach and I’m fan-fucking-tastic at it—and Kevin’s death
is
a crime. I’d be wasting my skills if I didn’t help out in finding his killer.”

Sam sucked his lower lip before he answered. “I won’t say we can’t use the help, because we can. I won’t say you can’t help us, because I’ve got a hunch you can. But I do want you to think about this for a while. Don’t insist, not quite yet. Take a week to think about this, because once we get started, I don’t want you pulling out. If you sign on, you’ve got to sign on for the whole schimoola.”

“I’ve already thought about it, Sam,” said Harper. “I’ve talked to Phil and he said he can arrange a leave of absence for me if I require it.” He pushed his knuckles together. “I’ve told him that I want it, and with the option of an extension if it’s necessary.”

“Let’s hope that it won’t be,” said Sam. “But I meant that about taking a week to consider,” he cautioned his friend. “It isn’t just for you, it’s for Susan. Unless I miss my guess, this would be harder on her than on you—am I right?”

Harper closed his eyes briefly, and when he opened them, he looked toward the sleety window and the distant freeway down the hill. “She wants no part of this. She wants to forget about it. I’ve tried to explain, but—”

“You ought to talk to her, Harper. You know as well as I do that she’s entitled to your support. If she’d be hurt by your working with us on this, you should think about what it might mean if you—” This time it was Sam who was cut short.

“She has my support, and she knows that. Shit, Sam, I did everything I could think of while Kevin got sicker and sicker. I’ve promised her that we’ll get away next winter, and I intend to keep that promise, no matter what. But if I don’t do something now, I don’t think I could live with myself. That’s got to be part of it. Doesn’t it?” At last he looked at Sam again. “Doesn’t it?”

“Sure,” said Sam heavily. “Sure. Why not?”

Harper got up and paced down the room. “I’ve talked it over with her, and with Grant and Mason. Susan hasn’t said much. Grant— well, who knows what Grant really thinks? Mason is very sympathetic. If he were a little bit older, he’d probably want to work with us.”

“Mason’s a very bright kid,” said Sam carefully. “That’s often a mixed blessing.”

Harper nodded. He was standing by the tall bookcases that filled the far end of the room. “Where do I start?” he asked as he indicated all the texts.

“Next week, next week,” Sam insisted. “I mean that. You need to think about this a little longer.”

“Tell me something to read in the meantime, and I’ll go along with your orders.” Harper ran his hand over the spines of the books on the fourth shelf from the floor. “Which one should I start with?”

“I’d recommend waiting, Harper,” warned Sam, although he knew it was useless. “You’re not ready yet, not the way you think you are. You do need more time.”

“If I don’t get the books from you, I’ll try the library. There must be some basic texts on the diagnostic techniques used in cases like Kevin’s. Or what they’ve done with other mysterious diseases they could not identify. There must be something on how they found the vaccine for AIDS, at least.” Harper’s eyes were wet, but he went on as if everything were normal. “I think that it would be best for me to start with methodology, don’t you? That way I can adapt my own field to yours. Do you think I should try virology as well, or—”

“Harper,” said Sam in a quiet, penetrating way, “go home. That’s what I think you ought to do. Go home. I want you to take one full week and think about this. Talk it over with Susan and with the boys. Determine if you want to get involved. I mean it, Harper. As your physician as well as your friend, I want you to know what you’re getting into. Do I make myself clear?”