Lethal Exposure (8 page)

CHAPTER 10

Tuesday, 7:49 P.M.

Fox River Medical Center

Despite his insistence, Trish refused to let Dumenco go outside for a walk. “You have to take care of yourself. Rest, conserve your strength.”

“Take care of myself!” he said, partly amused, partly outraged. “I am dying—I am already dead. What does it matter? I wish to go outside and breathe the air, see the trees, listen to the river.”

Finally, she agreed to take him in a wheelchair. Grabbing their coats, she wheeled him out onto the sidewalks where he could watch the stars.

The hospital was surrounded by ancient oak trees that had shed brown and yellow leaves on the cropped grass and across the pavement. Acorns and dry twigs crunched as she pushed the wheelchair. Dumenco’s eyes were bright and alive, drinking the details like a condemned man absorbing his last meal. In a way, Trish found the comparison very appropriate.

The air was chill with autumn, the sounds of the town somewhat quiet. Aurora was one of those midwestern cities that all but rolled up its sidewalks and went to sleep after business hours. A soft wind rustled the oak trees above. Dumenco looked up, then stared at the sky as the stars seeped into the eastern twilight.

“Thank you,” he said. “I will remember this for the rest of my life . . . such as it is.” Dumenco seemed to be making a wry joke, and Trish didn’t know how to respond. She marveled at the thoughts that must be swirling behind that high forehead.

Long ago, she remembered seeing him in his element, talking to him over in the Ukraine during the days of her post-Chernobyl research. Georg Dumenco had been such a different person then, in control of his life, uncovering the secrets of the universe. Even then, he had been buried in his research for the Soviet government, unwilling to talk about it.

Living in the shadow of Chernobyl, Dumenco had been terrified of radioactive fallout, afraid of its effect on his family. She had not been surprised to learn of his defection to the U.S.

Those experiences in the Ukraine had affected her life, driving her to a deep suspicion at the complacent way many scientists viewed radiation use and exposure. Trish vented her own frustration and alarm through her work in the PR-Cubed. She had also kept in occasional contact with Dumenco himself and followed his work in Fermilab, had even visited him shortly before his accident.

And now she had to attend him as he died from the very thing she feared the most.

Dumenco appeared to be resigned to his fate, interested in what would happen to him from a coldly analytical point of view. “I want to know all the details, my dear lady,” he said. Under the light of the sidewalk lamps on the hospital grounds, he looked at the reddening skin of his hands, his swollen joints. He licked his dry and cracked lips, which were already purple from hemorrhages underneath.

“It’s not going to be pleasant, Georg,” Trish answered, distracting herself by pushing him along. “Maybe it’s better if you don’t know.”

The sidewalk sloped gently downhill, toward the Fox River that curled slowly across the farmlands. Joggers ran by, with steam puffing out of their mouths. A young couple sat on a bench, looking out at the dark river, more absorbed in each other than in the scenery.

“Of course it won’t be pleasant,” he said. “This is death. It’s not supposed to be pleasant. But I’m also a scientist, and I have what you might call a morbid curiosity as to the sequence of events. I am, after all, about to experience them far more intimately than I had ever wanted to know.”

Trish swallowed hard, trying to act professional, to look at him as a patient rather than a human being she admired. At least she had dragged him away from his intense scrutiny of the recent accelerator results.

“If this helps you to prepare. . . there’s nothing I can do to help you.”

“I understand that, my dear lady,” Dumenco said. “But knowledge is still more comforting than ignorance.”

“You might not say that in a minute,” Trish said, but her faint edge of humor became brittle. “Within the first hour or so, you started experiencing what we call the ‘prodromal’ syndrome, erythema or redness of the skin, fever, nausea, weakness, cramps, and diarrhea. We treated those effects with intravenous fluids to prevent dehydration, antiemetics to control the nausea and vomiting. Fortunately, we haven’t had to use vasopressors to constrict blood vessels and keep your blood pressure up to a safe level. So far the IV fluids have been enough.”

She continued, focused on the lighted sidewalk ahead, listening to the crackle of dry leaves under her shoes, under the wheels of Dumenco’s chair.

“Your bone marrow is also destroyed, your immune system ruined. Your number of white blood cells and platelets are both going down already, and your body won’t make any more of them. That means you won’t be able to resist infections, and you’ll bleed easily—especially inside your body. Although no more red blood cells will be made either, that really doesn’t matter. Even the high radiation dose you received didn’t much affect the ones you already have, and red blood cells usually live for three or four months. But you won’t be around long enough to become anemic. Bone marrow transplants were tried at Chernobyl, but in most cases did not prove to be helpful.”

Dumenco shuddered. “My family is . . . not available as bone-marrow donors, even if it would help.”

Trish knew that Dumenco’s wife and children had not come with him when he fled to this country, and their whereabouts were in question. Trish had been contacted by a member of the PR-Cubed, a Ukrainian in fact, who had been searching for Dumenco’s family, citing a study on family effects of Chernobyl survivors. But she had no information to give the man, despite his persistent questions. Dumenco had never spoken to her about what had happened to his family. She expected they had succumbed to something more terrible than radiation, back in Eastern Europe.

She turned back to the problem at hand, as if reciting a report. “We can do nothing to alleviate the central nervous system damage you received. Your symptoms may include apathy, fatigue, apprehension. You’ll be unsteady, your hands will shake, your ears will ring constantly. As you degenerate, you may suffer from convulsions of increasing severity. I anticipate . . . death will follow from respiratory arrest.

“And even if the radiation injury to your brain isn’t severe enough to kill you, in a few days the damage you received to your immune system and the lining of your intestines will probably make you go into septic shock. When that happens, treating you with powerful antibiotics might keep you alive maybe a day or so longer—but it would just be delaying the inevitable.”

He swallowed hard. “At least my hair won’t fall out.”

“No, that would take a few weeks.” She hesitated. “You won’t last nearly that long.”

When she finished, Trish felt ashamed of what she had done. Instead of telling him in gruesome detail, she should have had a better bedside manner. Dumenco could have been made to feel comfortable and at peace.

At times she let herself get carried away, especially with the Physicians for Responsible Radiation Research, thinking more about abstract social solutions instead of
individuals
like Dumenco. Sometimes Trish knew she went too far; she acted without thinking, then had to face the consequences.

“How do you know all this information?” he asked. “From test animals?”

“Treatment of radiation exposure is not an exact science. Every case is drastically different,” she said. “We have a lot of general mortality data from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but many of those victims died from flash burns and infections, lack of proper medical treatment—not directly from the radiation. These are more controlled circumstances.” She noticed her voice growing flatter, like a lecturer instead of a compassionate doctor.

“We certainly had enough victims at Chernobyl,” he said.

Trish squeezed his bony shoulder. She had been there too. She had seen the horror in Dumenco’s eyes, the fear for his wife and children, for himself and his beloved Ukraine.

“You received a
supralethal
exposure, Georg—in the neighborhood of two thousand rads. Orders of magnitude higher than anyone at Chernobyl.”

Dumenco turned his head to look at her expectantly. “So what other cases
are
relevant? Or is this entirely guesswork?”

Trish turned down another path, past a line of rose bushes. Squirrels crashed through the fallen leaves, searching for acorns and scampering up the rough bark of the oak trees.

“Our best data comes from two accidents at Los Alamos, part of early nuclear weapons work. The first radiation fatality occurred in 1945, two days after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. An experimenter was hand-stacking tungsten-carbide bricks as neutron reflectors around a plutonium sphere, a core for a third atomic bomb just in case Japan didn’t surrender after the first two.” She stared off into the distance. The river seemed so peaceful, the sunset so quiet, the air so fresh.

“He accidentally dropped the last brick on top of the sphere, which made the setup supercritical. He even saw the blue flash of the radiation burst. Even though the man knew he’d been massively exposed, he meticulously unstacked the bricks, put them away, then walked to the hospital and turned himself in, where he died twenty-eight days later. He received about eight hundred rads.”

“Amazing the man could be so calm,” Dumenco said. He coughed, “But then . . . you know us scientists.”

Trish walked slowly, pushing the wheelchair. Other patients and their families were enjoying the night air, though many made their way back inside as it grew cooler.

“The other accident occurred nine months later, in May 1946, when a safety trainer was demonstrating how to perform a critical experiment with a beryllium cap over a plutonium sphere. He used a flat-bladed screwdriver to keep the cap from completely covering the plutonium, showing just how close he could come without bringing the core to criticality.

“Unfortunately, the screwdriver slipped, the cap fell closed, and the plutonium went supercritical for an instant before the cap blew off. The safety trainer marked where all the observers had been standing, then calculated everyone’s estimated dose. The others received varying exposures, and the safety trainer died nine days later.”

Oddly, Dumenco smiled at her. Trish smiled back, trying not to let the horror show on her face. His exposure was massive enough that he would die long before the more horrendous symptoms manifested themselves, the bleeding gums, loosening teeth, loss of hair, suppurating skin.

Dumenco patted her forearm. “Even with the hazards of nuclear material, that industry still has the best safety record of any, including chemical or electrical. Look on the bright side, my dear lady, you can add my story to your arsenal of horrifying anecdotes. But please put it in correct perspective. And I shall do my best to describe my symptoms to you, to make one last contribution to science. It’ll give you a broader benchmark for radiation medicine. Perhaps so people would not be so irrationally afraid.”

Trish shook her head, angry at his attitude. “You’ve already contributed plenty to science, Georg. The Nobel Prize committee doesn’t consider just anyone.”

Dumenco looked embarrassed. She knew he was an introspective man, trying to unlock the mysteries of the Universe, not for any fame or glory; but he had been immensely proud when his work became recognized, since so much of his earlier research in the Soviet Union had been locked up and classified.

“Have we heard from Bretti?” he asked. “He is on his fishing trip, and I wonder if he even knows about my accident.”

“Not a word,” Trish said. “I’ll do my best to contact him. Maybe Craig can track him down.”

“That would be most kind,” he said. “My great achievement would have been to win the Nobel Prize . . . I had fantasized about it many times.” He looked up at the dark sky, but saw something else, something far away.

“Sweden, in winter. The Nobel Prizes are presented on the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death. December tenth, I believe, in the Stockholm Concert Hall. His Majesty the King of Sweden hands each Laureate a diploma and a medal, then the Ceremony is followed by a banquet for a thousand people.” He smiled wistfully. “I hear it is quite an event.”

“I’ll bet it is,” Trish agreed. She turned his wheelchair and headed back toward the hospital. Many lights had winked on in the windows.

“It would have been nice to be there,” Dumenco said with a sigh and a feigned smile, trying to keep a stiff upper lip. “I’ll be long dead by the time the ceremonies take place. The Nobel Prize is not given posthumously, but they make an exception if the scientist is already under consideration at the time of his death. I can take consolation in that loophole at least.”

“Oh, Georg,” Trish said, but didn’t know what else to say. She pushed the wheelchair faster. The air had become suddenly colder.

“I’ve accepted the award many times in my dreams. Luckily I have a vivid imagination . . . as all high-energy physicists must. That will have to be adequate for me.”

As Trish looked down at him, she felt anger and helplessness again, frustration boiling beneath the surface. She had already done much work with PR-Cubed, but they had been ineffective. Trish and others had been just another organization pointing a finger at the evils of the world. They spoke at dinner clubs and community service organizations, and the audiences briefly agreed with their cause . . . but then a different group came to their next meeting and made a different plea for a different problem. . . .

Radiation accidents didn’t have a cute but pathetic poster child around whom the people could rally, like a pretty white harp seal. Maybe, in death, Dumenco could accomplish that for them. But he did have a point—compared to chemical spills, high voltage accidents, and industrial poisonings, the likelihood of anyone receiving a fatal radiation dose was practically zero.

Still . . . Trish had been to Chernobyl herself. She had seen the devastating effects of the fallout. She had treated other victims of radiation exposure, and to her this seemed even more insidious than smallpox or the bubonic plague—because
humans
caused this. Mankind brought the misery upon itself. But was she championing a cause that affected too few people, when her talents might make more of an impact elsewhere?