The Deep Zone: A Novel (13 page)

“If you don’t mind my asking, why would your mother do that?”

“She didn’t, ma’am. It was my aunt.”

“Oh? And how was it that she did the naming?” Stilwell was still probing, examining.
Keep him talking
.

“My mother booked soon as she could get out of the hospital, ma’am. I never seen her. My aunt and uncle raised me.”

“I see. Well, why did she do it, then?”

“They never had a TV when she was growin’ up. She didn’t know anything about that show. Just liked the sound of the name.”

“I guess it could have been worse.”

“How so, ma’am?”

“She could have named you Festus.”

He gave her a blank look.
Too young
, she realized. “Another character on that show.”

“Oh yeah.” Dillon nodded, his face screwed up in distaste. “That
woulda
been worse. Sounds like a disease. ‘You got a case of acute Festus.’ ” He smiled briefly, but then his expression changed. “Ma’am, what’s that stuff doing now?”

She never lied to her patients. “It’s growing. But more slowly now that we’re getting the antibiotic into you.”

“So that drug’s helpin’ some, then?”

“It appears so, yes.”

“I’m glad, ’cause it fu—um, it messed up my stomach big-time. Can’t even keep water down.”

“The other IV will keep you hydrated. We can feed you that way too, if we have to.”

“Doc … you talked to my wife yet?”

“Not yet, Sergeant. Battalion has clamped down. No outgoing comm. I haven’t talked to my own family for five days.”

“They don’t want to freak people out, right? I can understand that. But, Doc, if you do talk to her?”

“Yes?”

Dillon had been in more firefights than she could count and seen more horrors than she could imagine. He was one of their best, career Army, a cold-eyed, efficient killer but a sensitive leader of men. Rare combination, that. Now his eyes filled with tears.

“Doc … look. No bull now. I don’t think I’m gonna make it. I know ’bout Wyman and Angel and the others. You’re good at hidin’ it, but … not that good. So, please don’t tell her how bad I am, hear? She got enough on her plate, dealin’ with the kids an’ all. Who knows? Maybe I’ll have one of them miraculous recoveries.”

She looked down. There were no lesions between the elbow and wrist. She gave his arm a long, firm squeeze.

“Marshell Dillon, you listen. There’s no way I think you’re going to die. I don’t want to hear you say that again. Roger that?” She delivered that stern-voiced, like an order, but her eyes were kind.

He smiled up at her, his own eyes still glistening. “Roger that, ma’am.”

Stilwell finished examining the eight cases in Ward B and headed for the four in Ward A. In the hallway between the two wards, a nurse in a Chemturion approached. Stilwell laid a hand on her plastic-covered arm.

“Pam.”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“What day is it?”

“What day? Tuesday, ma’am. Evening.”

“Thank you. I sort of lost track.”

“Um … ma’am? Permission to speak?”

Stilwell patted the nurse’s arm, smiled. “You always have that with me, Pam.”

“Yes. Thank you, ma’am. So, we’re worrying about you.”

“About me?”

“Yes, ma’am. It’s not only going around without a suit. You’re not taking care of yourself. Ma’am.” Through the hazy plastic hood, Stilwell saw genuine concern in the young nurse’s eyes. “You’re not eating enough or sleeping. We’re worrying.”

“If you didn’t have that suit on I’d give you a hug. I appreciate your concern, Pam. Really. But back in the day, when I was an intern, they called me ‘Superdoc.’ I could do more work than any two of the male doctors.”

Pam looked skeptical, but a bit less worried. “Is it true you used to run marathons, ma’am?”

“That is true. I never broke three hours, but I never ran a race I didn’t finish, either. Born with the stamina of a mule.” Her expression
turned serious. “Look, I’ll be careful. I know that if I go down, I’m no use to you or these sick kids. But if you do see me screwing up, say so. Understood?”

“Yes, ma’am. Understood.”

Stilwell patted her shoulder and sent the nurse on her way.
Now, where was I going? And what was I doing?

“Uh, Major, ma’am, excuse me, there’s a call.” Stilwell turned to see another nurse, a young specialist from Baltimore, Michael Demrock, very thin, corn-silk hair. Not the brightest one she’d ever had, but certainly one of the best-hearted.

“Thanks. I’ll catch it later. I’m going to—”

“It’s a colonel, ma’am. Full bird.”

“What does he want? Is he a fobbit?” Stilwell could feel her impatience heating up. She had never much cared for the fobbits, officers so called because they were denizens of the FOBs, forward operating bases, which were not really forward at all but were a world away to the rear. She disliked them for their tailored uniforms and Baskin-Robbins shops and McDonald’s and Starbucks and bars, all of which FOBs offered. When the fobbits came, it was always about some missing piece of paperwork or with an admonition about her outrageous MPPs—her minutes-per-patient ratio.

“He kind of sounds like one, yes ma’am.”

“What’s his name?”

“Ah, Rubbish, ma’am.”

“Rubbish? His name is Colonel
Rubbish
?”

“No, wait. That’s not it. Ribbesh. Or something like that. It’s kind of hard to hear in these suits.”

“Did he say what he wanted?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She waited. After a while she realized that Demrock was waiting, too.
Patience, Major. He’s just deferring to your rank
. “And what was it, Specialist?”

“You, ma’am. He said he wanted to talk to you.”

Round and round we go
, she thought. “Of course. You told me that already. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Major.”

In her closet-sized office, she dropped into the wooden chair behind her desk and picked up the phone. “Major Stilwell.”

“Colonel Ribbesh here, Major. They had to go a way to find you, apparently. I apprised them almost ten minutes ago of my need to speak with you.”

A fobbit for sure. And he wants an apology for keeping him waiting
. They were easy to spot when you could see them. Their uniforms were too clean, they had too much fat on them, and their skin was always too white. They were almost as easy to identify just from their voices. They never swore, didn’t drop
g
’s, sounded prissy, used words like ‘apprised.’ Lenora Stilwell detested them.

“How can I help you, Colonel?”

A beat, then another.
He’s surprised. Waiting for it
. She let him wait, glanced at her watch. She was overdue in Ward A. Those four soldiers would be waiting for her. Medicine was about drugs and scalpels and X-rays for sure, but healing was about heart; she had understood that long ago.

Finally he cleared his throat. “I’m battalion NBC liaison. I will be coming up to Terok. An inspection visit, orders from regiment. I wanted to apprise you of my ETA.”

Regiment. That meant from the one-star, an alcoholic martinet named Gremble. “Your ETA. I see. What is it, sir?”

“Day after tomorrow, zero eight thirty hours.”

Day after tomorrow. Fine. Great. From where she sat now, with a hundred things needing to be done in the next hour, that felt like a century away.

“Very well, Colonel. Thanks for letting me know.”

When the fobbit spoke again, his voice was different. “Major, can you apprise me of the conditions up there at Terok?”

“The conditions, sir?”
What the hell did he mean? The weather? The four-star accommodations?

He coughed again. “Yes.” Pause. “I gather this pathogen is quite deadly.”

He’s scared
. She could hear it in his voice.
Just tell him the truth
.

“It’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen, Colonel. You’ve heard of Ebola Zaire?”

“Of course.”

“Worse than that. More contagious, shorter incubation period, higher mortality rate.”

“My God.”

“Are you sure you need to make this trip, Colonel? We’ve got things under control here.”

“Orders, Major.” Ribbesh sounded like a miserable child who was being punished. She wondered what he had done to get on the one-star’s bad side. “So … would you recommend full Biosafety Level Four protection?”

She laughed before she could stop herself, but cut it off quickly. No need to insult the man. “Not if you remain outside the hospital confines, sir. If you want to come in, then definitely.”

Too late. He sounded very insulted. “All right, then. Thank you,
Major
. I will see you soon.” He emphasized her rank just enough to let her know that he was pissed.

“I’ll be here, sir.”

“I’m sure you will.” The line went dead.

She replaced the receiver and scrubbed her hands over her face, trying to push away the fatigue, the heaviness in her eyes and muscles and brain. In the drawer of her desk she found half a Butterfinger bar in its crumpled yellow wrapper. It might have been left over from the day before, or from some other, more distant time. She wasn’t sure. She gobbled it anyway and washed it down with a cup of the mud that passed for coffee here.

“Time to go, Major.” She pushed herself up and headed for Ward A.

• • •

They were no longer sending battle wounded into her hospital, of course, nor was Terok releasing any except under the strictest BSL-4 protocols. They
had
sent out infected soldiers before they understood what was going on, but there was no point in dwelling on that. Done deal. The four cases in A were the last to come in before ACE was identified. Two spec 4s, Ligety and Mayweather; Corporal Dancerre; and Sergeant Bighawk. All admitted initially with wounds—gunshots, fortunately, rather than blast damage—and all subsequently infected with ACE. She always began with the most serious first, and that was Sergeant Dane Bighawk, a twenty-four-year-old full-blooded Sioux from Nebraska. He had taken two AK rounds, one in the big right quadriceps muscle, the other in the right lower abdomen midway between his navel and his hip joint. Both were clean through-and-throughs. The thigh wound was nothing serious, but the abdominal wound was—or could have been. Passing through Bighawk’s body, the bullet had nicked his colon, cutting a dime-sized opening. That hole should have leaked fecal matter, which would have virtually ensured the onset of peritonitis.

But Bighawk had been lucky—if you could call taking two AK rounds lucky. The squadmate who had tended his wounds had stuffed in two tampons, just as DeAengelo Washington had done for Father Wyman. No one knew which soldier first had the idea of using a tampon that way, but one thing was sure—they worked beautifully, being the perfect size and shape for bullet-wound battle dressings, and now every combat soldier carried some. The tampon in Bighawk’s abdomen had stopped serious bleeding from that wound site and had also occluded the breach in his colon. Stilwell had explained that, and Bighawk had thought about it for a second. “So it kept the stuffing in the sausage.”

She’d laughed. “An unscientific but perfectly accurate description, Sergeant.”

That was the good news. The bad was that twenty-four hours after being wheeled in, Bighawk began to show the first signs of
ACE infection: spiking temperature, dropping blood pressure, searing sore throat, generalized pain. Lesions appeared about six hours after that, and now, a day later, the raw, red patches were spreading. Colistin was slowing ACE’s burn through the young soldier, but not stopping it.

Stilwell walked quietly to his bedside. Bighawk was sleeping, thank goodness, the IV ketamine still working. She watched, listened to, and timed his respiration, took his pulse—still strong and regular—and felt his forehead. The fever was up. She’d use a digital thermometer, of course, but she remembered exactly how warm his forehead had felt four hours earlier, and it was definitely hotter now.

Bighawk’s eyes opened, drooped, opened again. “Mom?” He blinked, looked at her from far away in a ketamine haze, yawned, then grimaced because that motion stretched one of the lesions on his left cheek. Relaxing again, he smiled up at Stilwell, reached for her hand. “Mom? What’re you doin’?” He dozed off.

I need you awake
, Stilwell thought. She put her hand on his muscular shoulder, squeezed softly, and his eyes opened again. This time he recognized her. “Hey, Doc. How’re you doin’? I was just havin’ a dream.”

“About your mom, right?”

His eyebrows went up. “How’d you know that?”

“We doctors have secret powers, Sergeant. We can read minds.”

He chuckled. “You’re kiddin’, I know, Doc. Must’ve been talkin’ in my sleep. But we Sioux know medicine people
do
have special powers. Some of the stuff I saw as a kid on the rez … Unbelievable.”

He closed his eyes, coughed, and Stilwell heard the pneumonic rattle in his chest.
What I wouldn’t give
, she thought,
for some
real
special power
.

“So how’m I doin’, Doc?”

Bighawk kept a brave face, but she could see the fear in his eyes.

“You’re doing, Sergeant. That antibiotic I told you about is retarding the bacteria’s spread.”

“But you got no cure for it, right?”

“Not now we don’t. But every lab and scientist at the government’s disposal is working around the clock. They’ll find one. Trust me.”

“I do trust you, ma’am. Not much else, but you for sure.”

Bighawk’s words were like a lance through Stilwell’s chest. She was the only thing standing between this good young man and a slow, agonizing death, and despite her reassurance, Stilwell was not at all certain that the government could find a cure for ACE. She wasn’t at all certain of anything just now.

Two hours later, groggy with fatigue but needing to do one more thing, she went to her cubbyhole office, closed the door, and booted up her laptop. She wanted to write an email before catching an hour’s sleep. She had written one to her husband and son during her last break. She wrote in time-saving email pidgin: