Exposed (12 page)

USAMRIID
Fort Detrick, Maryland

They called it “the Slammer,” and Maggie knew about it only from rumor. She would have preferred to leave it that way.

The Slammer was actually a Biosafety Level 4 containment hospital, an isolation ward within USAMRIID at Fort Detrick. The Army used it for patients suspected of having an infectious disease or of being exposed to a biological agent. Those patients, until proven otherwise, were also suspected of being highly contagious.

For the most part, Maggie understood that the Slammer was used, or ready, primarily in case any one of USAMRIID’s scientists was accidentally exposed in one of the research labs. USAMRIID housed frozen specimens of all kinds of nasty organisms, viruses and diseases. At one time during the Cold War USAMRIID’s chief assignment was to collect and design biological warfare. These days, as far as Maggie knew, it was solely dedicated to developing vaccines and controlling, or rather containing, any exposures or outbreaks. And after 9/11 and the anthrax scare that followed, it was also USAMRIID’s job to come up with remedies for any terrorist threats that might include contaminations or deadly pathogens.

If one of their own pathologists or veterinarians or microbiologists got pricked with a contaminated needle or cut by a broken test tube or bitten by a lab monkey they had to be able to treat them. They wouldn’t be able to transport them to an area hospital and risk further exposure or media. So they’d take them here, to their own hospital that they, themselves, had nicknamed the Slammer, because it was exactly that, a biological solitary confinement. Maggie realized that Assistant Director Cunningham probably had no idea that when he agreed to the Army taking control of the situation it meant committing himself and Maggie to the Slammer.

At first glance the rooms appeared to be ordinary hospital suites, if you didn’t mind one of the walls being a full-glass viewing window and having double steel doors locked from the outside. Maggie suspected that she and Cunningham would each get their own room, their own solitary confinement. Mary Louise and her mother were also here somewhere. Maggie hoped they were together.

A woman in a blue space suit escorted Maggie to her room through a series of staging areas. Each had thick heavy doors. Each slammed shut behind them, but it wasn’t until the last door, when the air locks sucked in, sealing the door shut, that Maggie felt a panic begin. It started slowly, quietly, ticking in the back of her mind like a heartbeat, only a heartbeat that didn’t seem to belong to her. The air was different inside this room. Different from the hallway. Different from the inner staging areas they had just passed through.

Maggie told herself it was just a slight bit of claustrophobia. She’d be fine. Maybe if she told them she had been stuffed into a freezer last year by a madman, they would sympathize and let her go?

Probably not.

To be fair, the panic had actually begun earlier back at Mary Louise’s house. It started when Maggie watched the two orange spacemen take Mary Louise’s mother out the back door of her suburban house sealed inside a sort of bubble stretcher, what almost looked to Maggie like a plastic body bag. That’s when Maggie felt her skin go clammy and sweat trickle down her back. She worried they intended to take all of them out in plastic body bags and she knew she wouldn’t last a minute inside. It didn’t matter that the contraption had its own oxygen supply. She would panic. She would want to claw her way out. And she had already started to feel her heart racing and her breathing start to become labored. Yes, that was when the panic started.

The spaceman, who she later learned was Colonel Platt, must have seen the terror in Maggie’s eyes. He had already had to settle a screaming child and load up a sick and bleeding woman. Had he been worried that he might have another person in hysterics, clawing her way out of his expensive contraption?

Later Maggie would learn they simply didn’t have enough bubble stretchers for all of them, so Cunningham and Maggie ended up getting a decon shower in the kitchen. The spray misted their clothes, their skin, their hair but didn’t soak through their clothes. Her plastic bag tucked up under the back of her shirt and coat remained safely in place and out of sight, damp and sticking to the sweat of her skin. She could still smell the bleach. It seemed to stay inside her lungs, stinging if she dared to take a deep breath.

“OVERNIGHT,” the woman in the space suit yelled at Maggie over the hissing of her air blower. She handed Maggie a hospital gown that had been folded on the chair. “WE’LL NEED TO KEEP YOU OVERNIGHT.”

Then she motioned for Maggie to sit up on the bed while she unwrapped a plastic tongue depressor and cotton swab. She set aside a sealed syringe. “I NEED TO TAKE A THROAT CULTURE AND THEN DRAW SOME BLOOD,” she shouted, mouthing and exaggerating the words slowly in case Maggie still couldn’t hear her. Then showing her a specimen cup she said, “AND I’LL NEEDYOU TO FILL THIS.”

Beyond the glass wall Maggie could see others watching. But the woman in the space suit must have misunderstood Maggie’s misgivings and pointed to the corner where Maggie could see she, at least, had her own bathroom.

Still, she wondered if it was normal that she could hear her heart beat so loudly. How long had it been pounding this hard against her chest? There was no doubt now. This one, this heartbeat, did belong to her. She tried not to listen. She tilted her head back when the woman was ready, and opened her mouth, trying not to concentrate on not being able to swallow, to breathe, even if it was for a few seconds. The woman was good, experienced, fast.
Thank God
.

She bagged the swab then picked up the syringe. Maggie looked away while the needle pricked and sunk into her skin. She could see tubes and equipment along the other walls, a camera in the corner of the ceiling, monitors blinking and beeping even though they weren’t attached to her yet.

The last time she was in a hospital room, shortly after the freezer incident, she remembered waking up, startled to find tubes and wires connected to her body, bags of fluids hanging above her, monitors bleeping out the rhythm of her heartbeat. She was told that another minute or two of hypothermia and the freezer would have been her ice coffin.

They had drained all the blood out of her to warm up and then put back in. She wasn’t sure how that was possible. She didn’t like to think about it even with her medical background. For weeks afterward she had nightmares about the procedure. Otherwise she remembered little about the entire ordeal, except for the cold, the panic, the claustrophobia, all of which culminated in an overwhelming exhaustion.

The woman in the space suit capped one tube of blood and began to fill yet another, Maggie focused on the window. At least it wasn’t a one-way view. She could see the faces on the other side. There were four, maybe five people, punching keyboards, watching monitors, computer screens. All were occupied except for one. One who must have just joined them because she hadn’t noticed him until now.

He stood close to the window, watching her. Having someone she recognized calmed her even if he did have a furrowed brow and worried eyes. She released a sigh and realized it was almost as if she had been holding her breath.

She smiled at R. J. Tully and he gave her a stiff wave, his face lined with concern. She remembered the envelope, double-bagged and swaddled, carefully hidden within her neatly folded jacket. She’d have to find a way to get it to him. But for now she mouthed to him, because she knew he’d never be able to hear her through the thick wall of glass, “Harvey. Please check on Harvey.”

He simply nodded.

USAMRIID
Fort Detrick, Maryland

They called it “the Slammer,” and Maggie knew about it only from rumor. She would have preferred to leave it that way.

The Slammer was actually a Biosafety Level 4 containment hospital, an isolation ward within USAMRIID at Fort Detrick. The Army used it for patients suspected of having an infectious disease or of being exposed to a biological agent. Those patients, until proven otherwise, were also suspected of being highly contagious.

For the most part, Maggie understood that the Slammer was used, or ready, primarily in case any one of USAMRIID’s scientists was accidentally exposed in one of the research labs. USAMRIID housed frozen specimens of all kinds of nasty organisms, viruses and diseases. At one time during the Cold War USAMRIID’s chief assignment was to collect and design biological warfare. These days, as far as Maggie knew, it was solely dedicated to developing vaccines and controlling, or rather containing, any exposures or outbreaks. And after 9/11 and the anthrax scare that followed, it was also USAMRIID’s job to come up with remedies for any terrorist threats that might include contaminations or deadly pathogens.

If one of their own pathologists or veterinarians or microbiologists got pricked with a contaminated needle or cut by a broken test tube or bitten by a lab monkey they had to be able to treat them. They wouldn’t be able to transport them to an area hospital and risk further exposure or media. So they’d take them here, to their own hospital that they, themselves, had nicknamed the Slammer, because it was exactly that, a biological solitary confinement. Maggie realized that Assistant Director Cunningham probably had no idea that when he agreed to the Army taking control of the situation it meant committing himself and Maggie to the Slammer.

At first glance the rooms appeared to be ordinary hospital suites, if you didn’t mind one of the walls being a full-glass viewing window and having double steel doors locked from the outside. Maggie suspected that she and Cunningham would each get their own room, their own solitary confinement. Mary Louise and her mother were also here somewhere. Maggie hoped they were together.

A woman in a blue space suit escorted Maggie to her room through a series of staging areas. Each had thick heavy doors. Each slammed shut behind them, but it wasn’t until the last door, when the air locks sucked in, sealing the door shut, that Maggie felt a panic begin. It started slowly, quietly, ticking in the back of her mind like a heartbeat, only a heartbeat that didn’t seem to belong to her. The air was different inside this room. Different from the hallway. Different from the inner staging areas they had just passed through.

Maggie told herself it was just a slight bit of claustrophobia. She’d be fine. Maybe if she told them she had been stuffed into a freezer last year by a madman, they would sympathize and let her go?

Probably not.

To be fair, the panic had actually begun earlier back at Mary Louise’s house. It started when Maggie watched the two orange spacemen take Mary Louise’s mother out the back door of her suburban house sealed inside a sort of bubble stretcher, what almost looked to Maggie like a plastic body bag. That’s when Maggie felt her skin go clammy and sweat trickle down her back. She worried they intended to take all of them out in plastic body bags and she knew she wouldn’t last a minute inside. It didn’t matter that the contraption had its own oxygen supply. She would panic. She would want to claw her way out. And she had already started to feel her heart racing and her breathing start to become labored. Yes, that was when the panic started.

The spaceman, who she later learned was Colonel Platt, must have seen the terror in Maggie’s eyes. He had already had to settle a screaming child and load up a sick and bleeding woman. Had he been worried that he might have another person in hysterics, clawing her way out of his expensive contraption?

Later Maggie would learn they simply didn’t have enough bubble stretchers for all of them, so Cunningham and Maggie ended up getting a decon shower in the kitchen. The spray misted their clothes, their skin, their hair but didn’t soak through their clothes. Her plastic bag tucked up under the back of her shirt and coat remained safely in place and out of sight, damp and sticking to the sweat of her skin. She could still smell the bleach. It seemed to stay inside her lungs, stinging if she dared to take a deep breath.

“OVERNIGHT,” the woman in the space suit yelled at Maggie over the hissing of her air blower. She handed Maggie a hospital gown that had been folded on the chair. “WE’LL NEED TO KEEP YOU OVERNIGHT.”

Then she motioned for Maggie to sit up on the bed while she unwrapped a plastic tongue depressor and cotton swab. She set aside a sealed syringe. “I NEED TO TAKE A THROAT CULTURE AND THEN DRAW SOME BLOOD,” she shouted, mouthing and exaggerating the words slowly in case Maggie still couldn’t hear her. Then showing her a specimen cup she said, “AND I’LL NEEDYOU TO FILL THIS.”

Beyond the glass wall Maggie could see others watching. But the woman in the space suit must have misunderstood Maggie’s misgivings and pointed to the corner where Maggie could see she, at least, had her own bathroom.

Still, she wondered if it was normal that she could hear her heart beat so loudly. How long had it been pounding this hard against her chest? There was no doubt now. This one, this heartbeat, did belong to her. She tried not to listen. She tilted her head back when the woman was ready, and opened her mouth, trying not to concentrate on not being able to swallow, to breathe, even if it was for a few seconds. The woman was good, experienced, fast.
Thank God
.

She bagged the swab then picked up the syringe. Maggie looked away while the needle pricked and sunk into her skin. She could see tubes and equipment along the other walls, a camera in the corner of the ceiling, monitors blinking and beeping even though they weren’t attached to her yet.

The last time she was in a hospital room, shortly after the freezer incident, she remembered waking up, startled to find tubes and wires connected to her body, bags of fluids hanging above her, monitors bleeping out the rhythm of her heartbeat. She was told that another minute or two of hypothermia and the freezer would have been her ice coffin.

They had drained all the blood out of her to warm up and then put back in. She wasn’t sure how that was possible. She didn’t like to think about it even with her medical background. For weeks afterward she had nightmares about the procedure. Otherwise she remembered little about the entire ordeal, except for the cold, the panic, the claustrophobia, all of which culminated in an overwhelming exhaustion.

The woman in the space suit capped one tube of blood and began to fill yet another, Maggie focused on the window. At least it wasn’t a one-way view. She could see the faces on the other side. There were four, maybe five people, punching keyboards, watching monitors, computer screens. All were occupied except for one. One who must have just joined them because she hadn’t noticed him until now.

He stood close to the window, watching her. Having someone she recognized calmed her even if he did have a furrowed brow and worried eyes. She released a sigh and realized it was almost as if she had been holding her breath.

She smiled at R. J. Tully and he gave her a stiff wave, his face lined with concern. She remembered the envelope, double-bagged and swaddled, carefully hidden within her neatly folded jacket. She’d have to find a way to get it to him. But for now she mouthed to him, because she knew he’d never be able to hear her through the thick wall of glass, “Harvey. Please check on Harvey.”

He simply nodded.