Something Deadly

Tim Roth hosted a fishing program. No one else from the station had wanted to come near the hospital, so the job had fallen to him. He didn’t look to be relishing his role. Joining him was Steve Chase, president of the territorial senate. Apparently Abel Roth, the governor, didn’t want to flirt with danger, either.

Chase, who held his job by virtue of his membership in one of the island’s elite families, wasn’t looking very healthy this morning. Declan studied the man’s ruddy face and wondered if his blood pressure had broken the bonds of beta blockers to hit the roof somewhere around 180 over 110. He would have to check on that.

And Tim Roth was looking like a man who needed to be in a hospital bed. His face was pale, despite his perpetual tan, and beads of perspiration glistened on his forehead.

He wore a white cotton shirt and shorts, the island’s interpretation of daytime formal, and kept fussing at his neck as if his open-throated shirt collar was too tight.

“Okay,” he said, turning to the camera. “In case anyone on the island hasn’t heard by now, Santz Martina was placed under quarantine yesterday before noon. If anyone doesn’t know what that means, it means that nobody gets on or off this island. If anyone tries to leave, the Coast Guard is going to stop them. So don’t even head for your boats, friends.”

Declan waited, saying nothing, knowing the best strategy was to see how things unfolded before jumping in.

“This decision,” Tim continued, “was made by one of our local doctors, Declan Quinn. As most of you know, Dr. Quinn is also the Territorial Medical Examiner and head of Emergency Preparedness, Medical Section. Apparently, the Centers for Disease Control, represented here by Dr. Joseph Gardner, agree with Dr. Quinn’s decision.”

“Yes,” Joe Gardner said. “At this point in time, we do. We can’t afford to take chances.”

Joe was a young hotshot—thirty, maybe—who’d made a point of letting Declan know he’d graduated from medical school at nineteen and specialized in rare communicable diseases of the Biohazard Level Four variety. The awful, terrible bugs, like hemorrhagic fever. Ebola. Marburg. The stuff of nightmares.

“But,” said Tim, stabbing his finger at Joe, “do you know it’s a disease?”

Joe took a moment to reply. “No,” he said finally, “we don’t. We don’t know what it is. But we have two people dead, and the symptoms don’t fit with any chemical exposure I’ve ever heard of. That leaves disease.”

“Is it contagious?”

Joe seemed to bite back anger at being challenged by a layman. “At this time we have no idea.”

“But if it is contagious, does it make sense to keep us all here so we might get exposed to it?”

Declan intervened, sensing that Joe’s patience was wearing out. “Tim, let me explain, please.”

Tim nodded, making an impatient gesture with his hand. “An explanation would be very much appreciated, I can tell you. You should have at least approached the Senate before you did this.”

“There was no time to waste. I’m sorry, Tim, but I had to act immediately. Now, if I can explain…” He cocked a brow, and Tim nodded.

“Very well. We don’t know what killed Carter or Marilyn Shippey. I can say with absolute confidence, and I’m sure Dr. Gardner will agree, that whatever killed them is something we’ve never seen before. Never.”

Joe Gardner nodded. “That’s a fact.”

“That’s comforting,” Tim said sourly.

“I know it isn’t,” Declan agreed. “Frankly, it terrified the hell out of me, too, when I started the autopsy yesterday. The thing is, we don’t know what it is. But what we do know is, if it’s contagious, a lot of people have already been exposed. Cart volunteered at the high school woodshop. Marilyn taught English there. That’s a couple of hundred kids they’d have had contact with. Plus they were active at church, and Cart was in the Rotary. Add in all the people they came into contact with there, and all their families and friends, and the odds are that if you live on this island, you’ve been exposed already.”

“You’re not making us feel any better, Dec.” This time Tim’s voice was less belligerent. Quieter, as if unhappiness was overtaking anger.

“I know I’m not. I wish I could be reassuring. But the simple fact is, if this is a contagious disease, this is the best place in the world for all of us to be.”

That evidently shocked Tim, and even Joe Gardner looked a little surprised.

“Think about it,” Declan continued. “If we find out it’s a disease, it’s only a short step or two to finding a cure or a treatment.” Gross exaggeration, but he didn’t want to start a riot. “If we’re all here, we can receive treatment quickly. If we’re scattered all over hell and gone, that won’t be true.”

Amazingly, Tim was nodding.

“Moreover,” Declan said, “we have a moral responsibility here. If this is a contagion, we can contain it here. So any way you look at it, the smartest thing we can all do is hunker down on the island and get through this together.”

Tim nodded again. Then he looked at Joe. “You agree, Dr. Gardner?”

“Yes, I do. I’ve treated outbreaks of some of the worst diseases known to man. I can assure you, even with Ebola, if you get treatment in time, you can survive. So it’s important that everyone remain here on the island. We will bring in whatever resources are necessary to solve this problem.”

Tim’s choler was fading a bit. “Why aren’t you wearing one of those fancy protective suits, Dr. Gardner? Aren’t you afraid?”

Joe Gardner smiled. “We’ve found no evidence the disease is airborne. The best analysis we can make right now is that it seems to spread by direct human contact.”

“How can you know that?”

“There’ve been two cases. The victims were married. We have no other patient reports. If it is a disease, it’s apparently hard to spread.”

Tim sank back in his chair. “I think that’s the best news I’ve heard since yesterday morning.”

“I agree,” Gardner said. “But it seems quite clear to me that if this disease were airborne or waterborne, we’d have other cases by now.”

That wasn’t entirely true, and Declan was sure Joe Gardner realized it. So much depended on incubation periods, as well as type and duration of exposure. Gardner was betting, a very dangerous bet indeed.

Outside the conference room, Dec took a minute to warn Steve Chase about his blood pressure and to tell him to come by that afternoon. Then he caught up to Joe Gardner, who was walking back to the lab.

“You’re a fool,” he said.

“Maybe,” Gardner replied. “But Carter Shippey hasn’t been off this island in months, has he?”

“No. He and his wife were planning a vacation, but they’d had to do a lot of work on their boat. It was banged up in a tropical storm last year.”

“And you don’t get a whole lot of strangers here?”

“Just occasional houseguests at the other end of the island. Deliveries at the airport and the harbor, but everyone there checks out clean.”

Joe nodded. “Then whatever it is started here. And it’s my bet that it can’t be highly contagious. No way. Anything highly contagious that had been introduced on this island over the past couple of months would have affected other people besides a retired fisherman.”

Dec nodded thoughtfully. “Do you have any ideas?”

“Not yet. So far we haven’t found a single living or partly living thing in Shippey’s body. Not so much as a prion.”

“What about chemicals?”

“Nothing unusual so far. But we’ll keep testing.” Joe yawned and stretched. None of them had slept since the previous morning. “So tell me again how this island works. If you had an outbreak of say, influenza, what kind of epidemiology would you expect to see?”

That was an easy question. The other doctors at the hospital had often talked about that, since they’d had an influenza outbreak two years before. “We all live pretty closely on this end of the island. I’d expect to see a number of cases reporting simultaneously, and then a rapid spread through the town and schools. It’d hit the other end of the island somewhat later, carried over there by household employees.”

Joe nodded. “How long?”

“Last time it was flu, and it only took a week for full contagion.”