Eventually, she had not been able to make it out of bed, and that was where I found her, in a room upstairs with rosebud wallpaper and a rocker by the window overlooking her street. The full-length mirror was shrouded with a sheet, as if she could not bear to see her reflection anymore. Hoyt, old-world physician that he was, had respectfully pulled bed covers over the body without disturbing anything else. He knew better than to rearrange a scene, especially if his visit was to be followed by mine. I stood in the middle of the room, and took my time. The stench seemed to make the walls close in and turn the air black.
My eyes wandered over the cheap brush and comb on the dresser, the fuzzy pink slippers beneath a chair that was covered with clothes she hadn’t had the energy to put away or wash. On the bedside table was a Bible with a black leather cover that was dried out and flaking, and a sample size of Vita aromatherapy facial spray that I imagined she had used in vain to cool her raging fever. Stacked on the floor were dozens of mail-order catalogues, page corners folded back to mark her wishes.
In the bathroom, the mirror over the sink had been covered with a towel, and other towels on the linoleum floor were soiled and bloody. She had run out of toilet paper, and the box of baking soda on the side of the tub told me she had tried her own remedy in her bath to relieve her misery. Inside the medicine cabinet, I found no prescription drugs, only old dental floss, Jergens, hemorrhoid preparations, first-aid cream. Her dentures were in a plastic box on the sink.
Pruitt had been old and alone, with very little money, and probably had been off this island few times in her life. I expected that she had not attempted to seek help from any of her neighbors because she had no phone, and had feared that if anyone had seen her, they would have fled in horror. Even I wasn’t quite prepared for what I saw when I peeled back the covers.
She was covered in pustules, gray and hard like pearls, her toothless mouth caved in, and dyed red hair wild. I pulled the covers down more, unbuttoning her gown, noting the density of eruptions was greater on her extremities and face than on her trunk, just as Hoyt had said. Itching had driven her to claw her arms and legs, where she had bled and gotten secondary infections that were crusty and swollen.
“God help you,” I muttered in pain.
I imagined her itching, aching, burning up with fever, and afraid of her own nightmarish image in the mirror.
“How awful,” I said, and my mother flashed in my mind.
Lancing a pustule, I smeared a slide, then went down to the kitchen and set my microscope on the table. I was already convinced of what I’d find. This was not chicken pox. It wasn’t shingles. All indicators pointed to the devastating, disfiguring disease variola major, more commonly known as smallpox. Turning on my microscope, I put the slide on the stage, bumped magnification up to four hundred, adjusted the focus as the dense center, the cytoplasmic Guarnieri bodies, came into view. I took more Polaroids of something that could not be true.
Shoving back the chair, I began pacing as a clock ticked loudly from the wall.
“How did you get this? How?” I talked to her out loud.
I went back outside to where Crockett was parked on the street. I didn’t get close to his truck.
“We’ve got a real problem,” I said to him. “And I’m not a hundred percent sure what I’m going to do about it.”
My immediate difficulty was finding a secure phone, which I finally decided simply was not possible. I couldn’t call from any of the local businesses, certainly not from the neighbors’ houses or from the chief’s trailer. That left my portable cellular phone, which ordinarily I would never have used to make a call like this. But I did not see that I had a choice. At three-fifteen, a woman answered the phone at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID, at Fort Detrick, in Frederick, Maryland.
“I need to speak with Colonel Fujitsubo,” I said.
“I’m sorry, he’s in a meeting.”
“It’s very important.”
“Ma’am, you’ll have to call back tomorrow.”
“At least give me his assistant, his secretary . . .”
“In case you haven’t heard, all nonessential federal employees are on furlough . . .”
“Jesus Christ!” I exclaimed in frustration. “I’m stranded on an island with an infectious dead body. There may be some sort of outbreak here. Don’t tell me I have to wait until your goddamn furlough ends!”
“Excuse me?”
I could hear telephones ringing nonstop in the background.
“I’m on a cellular phone. The battery could die any minute. For God’s sake, interrupt his meeting! Patch me through to him! Now!”
Fujitsubo was in the Russell Building on Capitol Hill, where my call was connected. I knew he was in some senator’s office but did not care as I quickly explained the situation, trying to control my panic.
“That’s impossible,” he said. “You’re sure it’s not chicken pox, measles . . .”
“No. And regardless of what it is, it should be contained, John. I can’t send this into my morgue. You’ve got to handle it.”
USAMRIID was the major medical research laboratory for the U.S. Biological Defense Research Program, its purpose to protect citizens from the possible threat of biological warfare. More to the point, USAMRIID had the largest Bio Level 4 containment laboratory in the country.
“Can’t do it unless it’s terrorism,” Fujitsubo said to me. “Outbreaks go to CDC. Sounds like that’s who you need to be talking to.”
“And I’m sure I will be, eventually,” I said. “And I’m sure most of them have been furloughed, too, which is why I couldn’t get through earlier. But they’re in Atlanta, and you’re in Maryland, not far from here, and I need to get this body out of here as fast as I can.”
He was silent.
“No one hopes I’m wrong more than I do,” I went on in a cold sweat. “But if I’m not and we haven’t taken the proper precautions . . .”
“I’m clear, I’m clear,” he quickly said. “Damn. Right now we’re a skeleton crew. Okay, give us a few hours. I’ll call CDC. We’ll deploy a team. When was the last time you were vaccinated for smallpox?”
“When I was too young to remember it.”
“You’re coming in with the body.”
“She’s my case.”
But I knew what he meant. They would want to quarantine me.
“Let’s just get her off the island, and we’ll worry about other things later,” I added.
“Where will you be?”
“Her house is in the center of town, near the school.”
“God, that’s unfortunate. We got any idea how many people might have been exposed?”
“No idea. Listen. There’s a tidal creek nearby. Look for that and the Methodist church. It has a tall steeple. According to the map there’s another church, but it doesn’t have a steeple. There’s an airstrip, but the closer you can get to the house, the better, so we don’t have to carry her past where people might see.”
“Right. We sure as hell don’t need a panic.” He paused, his voice softening a little. “Are you all right?”
“I sure hope so.” I felt tears in my eyes, my hands trembling.
“I want you to calm down, try to relax now and stop worrying. We’ll get you taken care of,” he said as my phone went dead.
It had always been a theoretical possibility that after all the murder and madness I had seen in my career, it would be a disease that quietly killed me in the end. I never knew what I was exposing myself to when I opened a body and handled its blood and breathed the air. I was careful about cuts and needle sticks, but there was more to worry about than hepatitis and HIV. New viruses were discovered all the time, and I often wondered if they would one day rule, at last winning a war with us that began with time.
For a while, I sat in the kitchen listening to the clock ticktock while the light changed beyond the window as the day fled. I was in the throes of a full-blown anxiety attack when Cr
ockett’s peculiar voice suddenly hailed me from outside.
“Ma’am? Ma’am?”
When I went to the porch and looked out the door, I saw on the top step a small brown paper bag and a drink with a lid and a straw. I carried them in as Crockett climbed back inside his truck. He had gone off long enough to bring me supper, which wasn’t smart, but kind. I waved at him as if he were a guardian angel, and felt a little better. I sat on the glider, rocking back and forth, and sipping sweetened iced tea from the Fisherman’s Corner. The sandwich was fried flounder on white bread, with fried scallops on the side. I didn’t think I’d ever tasted anything so fresh and fine.
I rocked and sipped tea, watching the street through the rusting screen as the sun slid down the church steeple in a shimmering ball of red, and geese were black V’s flying overhead. Crockett turned his headlights on as windows lit up in homes, and two girls on bicycles pedaled quickly past, their faces turned toward me as they flew. I was certain they knew. The whole island did. Word had spread about doctors and the Coast Guard arriving because of what was in the Pruitt bed.
Going back inside, I put on fresh gloves, slipped the mask back over my mouth and nose and returned to the kitchen to see what I might find in the garbage. The plastic can was lined with a paper bag and tucked under the sink. I sat on the floor, sifting through it one item at a time to see if I could get any sense at all of how long Pruitt had been sick. Clearly, she had not emptied her trash for a while. Empty cans and frozen food wrappers were dry and crusty, peelings of raw turnips and carrots wizened and hard like Naugahyde.
I wandered through every room in her house, rooting through every wastepaper basket I could find. But it was the one in her living room that was the saddest. In it were several handwritten recipes on strips of paper, for Easy Flounder, Crab Cakes and Lila’s Clam Stew. She had made mistakes, scratched through words on each one, which was why, I supposed, she had pitched them. In the bottom of the can was a small cardboard tube for a manufacturer’s sample she had gotten in the mail.
Getting a flashlight out of my bag, I went outside and stood on the steps, waiting until Crockett got out of his truck.
“There’s going to be a lot of commotion here soon,” I said.
He stared at me as if I might be mad, and in lighted windows I could see the faces of people peering out. I went down the steps, to the fence at the edge of the yard, around to the front of it and began shining the flashlight inside the cubbyholes where Pruitt had sold her recipes. Crockett moved back.
“I’m trying to see if I can get any idea how long she’s been sick,” I said to him.
There were plenty of recipes in the slots, and only three quarters in the wooden money box.
“When did the last ferry boat come here with tourists?” I shone the light into another cubbyhole, finding maybe half a dozen recipes for Lila’s Easy Soft-Shell Crabs.
“In a week ago. Never nothing since weeks,” he said.
“Do the neighbors buy her recipes?” I asked.
He frowned as if this were an odd thing to ask. “They already got theirs.”
Now people had come out on their porches, slipping quietly into the dark shadows of their yards to watch this wild woman in surgical gown, hair cover and gloves shining a flashlight in their neighbor’s cubbyholes and talking to their chief.
“There’s going to be a lot of commotion here soon,” I repeated to him. “The Army’s sending in a medical team any minute, and we’re going to need you to make sure people stay calm and remain in their homes. What I want you to do right now is go get the Coast Guard, tell them they’re going to need to help you, okay?”
Davy Crockett drove off so fast, his tires spun.
Nine
They descended loudly from the moonlit night at almost nine P.M. The Army Blackhawk thundered over the Methodist church, whipping trees in its terrible turbulence of flying blades as a powerful light probed for a place to land. I watched it settle like a bird in a yard next door as hundreds of awed Tangiermen spilled out onto the streets.
From the porch, I peered out the screen, watching the medical evacuation team climb out of the helicopter as children hid behind parents, silently staring. The five scientists from USAMRIID and CDC did not look of this planet in their inflated orange plastic suits and hoods, and battery-operated air packs. They walked along the road, carrying a litter shrouded in a plastic bubble.
“Thank God you’re here,” I said to them when they got to me.
Their feet made a slipping plastic sound on the porch’s wooden floor, and they did not bother to introduce themselves as the only woman on the team handed me a folded orange suit.
“It’s probably a little late,” I said.
“It can’t hurt.” Her eyes met mine, and she didn’t look much older than Lucy. “Go ahead and put it on.”
It had the consistency of a shower liner, and I sat on the glider and pulled it over my shoes and clothes. The hood was transparent with a bib I tied securely around my chest. I turned on the pack at the back of my waist.
“She’s upstairs,” I said over the noise of air rushing in my ears.
I led the way and they carried up the litter. For a moment, they were silent when they saw what was on the bed.
A scientist said, “Jesus. I’ve never seen anything like that.”
Everyone started talking fast.
“Wrap her up in the sheets.”
“Pouched and sealed.”
“Everything on the bed, linens, gotta go in the autoclave.”
“Shit. What do we do? Burn the house?”
I went into the bathroom and collected towels off the floor while they lifted her shrouded body. She was slippery and uncooperative as they struggled to get her from the bed inside the portable isolator designed with the living in mind. They sealed plastic flaps, and the sight of a pouched body inside what looked like an oxygen tent was jolting, even to me. They lifted the litter by either end and we made our way back down the stairs and out onto the street.
“What about after we leave?” I asked.
“Three of us will stay,” one of them replied. “We got another chopper coming in tomorrow.”
We were intercepted by another suited scientist carrying a metal canister not so different from what exterminators use. He decontaminated us and the litter, spraying a chemical while people continued to gather and stare. The Coast Guard was by Crockett’s truck, Crockett and Martinez talking to each other. I went to speak to them, and they were clearly put off by my protective clothing, and not so subtly stepped away.
“This house has got to be sealed,” I said to Crockett. “Until we know with certainty what we’re dealing with here, no one goes in or near it.”
He had his hands in the pockets of his jacket and was blinking a lot.
“I need to be notified immediately if anyone else here gets sick,” I said to him.
“This time of year they have sickness,” he said. “They get the bug. Some take the cold.”
“If they get a fever, backache, break out in a rash,” I said to him, “call me or my office right away. These people are here to help you.” I pointed to the team.
The expression on his face made it very clear he wanted no one staying here, on his island.
“Please try to understand,” I said. “This is very, very important.”
He nodded as a young boy materialized behind him, from the darkness, and took his hand. The boy looked, at the most, seven, with tangles of unruly blond hair and wide pale eyes that were fixed on me as if I were the most terrifying apparition he had ever seen.
“Daddy, sky people.” The boy pointed at me.
“Darryl, get on,” Crockett said to his son. “Get home.”
I followed the thudding of helicopter blades. Circulating air cooled my face, but the rest of me was miserable because the suit didn’t breathe. I picked my way through the yard beside the church while blades hammered, and scrubby pines and weeds were ripped by the loud wind.
/> The Blackhawk was open and lit up inside, and the team was tying down the litter the same way they would have were the patient alive. I climbed aboard, took a crew seat to one side and strapped myself in as one of the scientists pulled shut the door. The helicopter was loud and shuddering as we lifted into the sky. It was impossible to hear without headsets on, and those would not work well over hoods.
This puzzled me at first. Our suits had been decontaminated, but the team did not want to take them off, and then it occurred to me. I had been exposed to Lila Pruitt, and the torso before that. No one wanted to breathe my air unless it was passed through a high efficiency particulate air filter, or HEPA, first. So we mutely looked around, glancing at each other and our patient. I shut my eyes as we sped toward Maryland.
I thought of Wesley, Lucy and Marino. They had no idea what was happening, and would be very upset. I worried about when I would see them next, and what condition I might be in. My legs were slippery, my feet baking, and I did not feel good. I could not help but fear that first fateful sign, a chill, an ache, the bleariness and thirst of fever. I had been immunized for smallpox as a child. So had Lila Pruitt. So had the woman whose torso was still in my freezer. I had seen their scars, those stretched, faded areas about the size of a quarter where they had been scratched with the disease.
It was barely eleven when we landed somewhere I could not see. I had slept just long enough to be disoriented, and the return to reality was loud and abrupt when I opened my eyes. The door slid open again, lights blinking white and blue on a helipad across the road from a big angular building. Many windows were lit up for such a late hour, as if people were awake and awaiting our arrival. Scientists unstrapped the litter and hastily loaded it in the back of a truck, while the female scientist escorted me, a gloved hand on my arm.
I did not see where the litter went, but I was led across the road to a ramp on the north side of the building. From there we did not have far to go along a hallway until I was shown into a shower and blasted with Envirochem. I stripped and was blasted again with hot, soapy water. There were shelves of scrubs and booties, and I dried my hair with a towel. As instructed, I left my clothes in the middle of the floor along with all of my possessions.