Page 14 of Chaos Destiny
“Fever? Was she bitten?”
“No, and we checked her four times.”
“Anything else I need to know?”
“They found infant formula in the camper.”
Inside the classroom-turned-patient room, a brown-skinned woman lay on a hospital bed, her skin freckled with sweat. She lay so motionless, she looked comatose, but I could hear each time she inhaled. At least, each time she tried to.
From what I’d witnessed at the CDC and after the outbreak, NPmS-14 didn’t affect the lungs; none of the patients we saw at the CDC ever developed a cough, shortness of breath, or anything respiratory-related. It was what had led us to believe that a rare pathogen could be the culprit. Something either brand new or older than tuberculosis. The genius tech guy on the team, whose name I could no longer remember, had even suggested an infectious agent initially kept out of circulation by permafrost.
Then, it melted.
Carolyn handed me a stethoscope. I slipped on a mask and walked over to listen to the woman’s lungs for myself.
“Has she said anything?” I asked.
“Nothing that makes sense. She keeps talking about some kind of ‘gauge.’”
“Where’s Allen?”
“I’m right behind you, babe.”
I glanced at the man standing in the entryway. The look on his face told me that he wanted to discuss why I’d left the gates, but I didn’t have time for that. While there was no way this woman was who I’d run into at the clinic, something told me that this woman and that person were connected via that baby.
“Those sound like pneumonia lungs, and with the pus in her sputum and how far it’s progressed…” I removed the earpieces and looped them around my neck. “Allen, do we have the juice for an X-ray?”
It was a small private college, but it was well-stocked. The goal had been to set it up as a military medical camp, but things went south faster than the state anticipated. Those who’d heard about the camp still set out, hoping to find shelter and supplies. Allen was one of the first to arrive. He’d been a hospital administrator, so he used his leadership and delegative skills to rise to the position of pseudo-president.
Allen nodded. “Yes. Do whatever you have to.”
“Carolyn, get the X-ray machine ready,” I instructed. “I’d like to take a look at her lungs. And have someone drop off a vial of azithromycin.”
Carolyn hurried from the room.
I dosed out the amoxicillin we had on hand, and Memphis dropped off azithromycin from the stash we accumulated from the rural clinic. The entire time I worked, Allen watched me until I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Are you going to stand around or help?”
“Stand around,” he said. “Not sure I could be of any help.”
“Get another IV bag ready. We found a haul today.”
I added the medication to the drip already going into a vein in the back of the unnamed woman’s hand.
“We need to talk about that haul.”
“Get another bag ready, Allen.”
When he realized I wouldn’t be budging anytime soon, he grabbed a second bag filled with clear, untainted saline solution.
“Carolyn said you found her in a camper?” I asked. “Did she look like she might have been alone?”
“Considering the state she was in, there was no way she was surviving on her own.” He sent a bent wire hanger throughthe slot at the top of the bag. “And it looked like she recently hunkered down there.”
“I want to go to that camper.”
“It’s raining.”
