Resistant (21 page)

“Not bad. Think we need get away from chemical antibiotics. Kill the Doomsday Germ with phage before it can adapt.”

“Your approach was rejected?”

Humphrey had to rest several minutes before he resumed typing.

Kazimi and I had a heated online exchange. As I said, I had always given him the utmost amount of respect, but on this point I firmly believed he was headed down the wrong road. He was like Puchalsky, locked into familiar notions and traveling well-worn paths, fixated on established approaches, blind to the fact that this germ plays by a different set of rules.

“So, why haven’t I heard much about this germ? It’s sensationalist stuff. You’d think it would be in all the papers.”

Humphrey’s expression darkened.

Do you think the government wants this sort of news widely known? Think of the panic it would cause. There are outbreaks of SARS or infections like SARS all the time, all over the world, but we rarely hear about them because of the damage it would do to tourism and consumer confidence.

We count on the vigilance of our scientific community to sound the warning bells, but in this case the most brilliant minds don’t even believe the germ is real, while the hospitals are under a gag order to keep it out of the public domain. I know this for a fact.

“How do you know?”

“Very good with computers,” Humphrey understated. “Have ways. Exchanges between our hospital and FBI following initial case.”

“You hacked the hospital.”

“Not so hard.”

Humphrey laughed merrily.

“What makes you think Kazimi won’t come around to seeing it your way?”

“He’s cut me off—gone silent. No word since argument.”

“Are you sure he’s all right? Could something have happened to him?”

Humphrey returned to his joystick.

He’s working for the government. I’m certain they are keeping him closely guarded. Unless I miss my guess, at the moment, Kazimi is hard at work in some secret lab. And he’s failing, just as our friend Puchalsky is failing. But you and I, Lou, we’re going to succeed. I can develop the treatment that will save Cap Duncan’s life and the lives of anybody infected with this Doomsday Germ. But I can’t do it without your help.

“My help?”

Humphrey gestured to himself.

“Look at me, Lou,” he said, eschewing his shorthand speech for emphasis. “I have aides to help me get dressed, eat my meals, and go to the bathroom. I can’t even unpack these boxes let alone set up a lab or get any significant work done in it.”

He sank back, gasping for breath, utterly spent.

“But you do your job here at Arbor General, and do it well from all I can tell.”

“Thank God for Bat-chair, and Americans with Disabilities Act, and all who load and unload my med cart.”

Lou was unable to get a total read on Humphrey’s emotions, but the bitterness was clear.

“Where did you get all this equipment, anyway?” he said, angling to lessen the tension.

“Stockpiling for a while. Inefficient purchase order system here.”

“Humphrey, that’s like grand theft.”

Again, a laugh.

It’s not theft when everything purchased is still here in the hospital. Besides, the end will justify the means. I’m sure of it. If you don’t help me, Lou, you’ll be leaving the fate of your friend to Puchalsky or Kazimi or maybe others. All will fail. I promise you that. I also promise you that there is a terrorist attack happening right now, right under our noses, and I am the only person who can stop it. Will you help me?

Lou was pacing now among the cartons. He wasn’t concerned about the criminality of what Humphrey had done—he had crossed that line in the past and if he had to, he would cross it again. No, his concern was more about Humphrey Miller, himself—whether, in fact, he was something of a misguided megalomaniac, driven by the anguish and frustration over his profound disability, layered on what was undeniable, but vastly underappreciated, genius.

“Why not do this aboveboard?” Lou asked. “Tell someone what you know.”

I tried telling Kazimi, and look what it got me. Lou, nobody will find out about this lab, if that’s what you’re worried about. Hardly anyone ever comes down to this floor, and when they do, they never have any reason to look in here. In fact, their keys won’t even work. My engineer friend and I have seen to that. Maintenance will give up long before they go running around looking for an explanation or a solution.

“I need some time,” Lou said, turning his back.

“You saw how quickly Cap’s deteriorating.”

The man was pushing—the surest way to get Lou, or most other docs for that matter, to dig in and resist. He gazed up at the drop ceiling and ran his hands through his hair. He had connections at the D.C. hospitals.

Becoming Humphrey’s arms and legs would be time-consuming and possibly counterproductive, to say nothing of what might happen should they get caught and arrested. Humphrey’s chess demonstration was certainly compelling. Now, Lou was wondering if it was possible to get any further information about the man and his offbeat theories on using various bacteriophage to destroy an indestructible germ. The ones who kept crossing his mind were Dr. Sam Scupman and his associate Vicki Banks.

“Tell me, Humphrey, what were you doing for this Kazimi if you couldn’t work any lab equipment?”

“Computer modeling. Heady stuff that you wouldn’t really understand.”

“Make me.”

“What?”

“I was near the top of my class in med school. If you want me to be your assistant, make me understand your work.”

Humphrey thought for a time, then wheeled to a far corner of the room where a small, built-in desk was set up. On it was a cup of pens, pencils, and markers, as well as a laptop. He used his extender to open the drawer.

“Take out the notebook,” he said.

Lou removed a thick, green three-ring binder, filled with what looked like articles and printouts. Humphrey took most of ten minutes to type out an explanation.

This notebook contains the basis of my theories and an instruction manual on the bacteriophage I believe will do the job. Read it over carefully. Take notes. Be ready to ask questions. I’ve used advanced computer models to predict the response to the phages, and bacterial growth based on various levels and combinations of treatment. The mathematics will not be easy for you despite your intelligence, but take it from me, it is irrefutable. I ask that you take care of this. It is the only hard copy in existence, although I can duplicate it from my computer.

Lou thumbed through the pages, impressed by the depth of the research.

“I want to look it over,” he said.

“Trust you be discreet and careful who share this with. But I need you.”

“How much time do I have?”

“Have another look at your friend, Dr. Welcome. Then you tell me.”

CHAPTER 27

           To extinguish the fires of American prosperity, we need only to suffocate them under a blanket of government programs.

        
—LANCASTER R. HILL,
A Secret Worth Keeping
, SAWYER RIVER BOOKS, 1937, P. 1

Lou spent the night holed up in his hotel room, examining Humphrey’s research notebook a page at a time. The task would have been near impossible had Humphrey not included a five-page summary of the most significant papers and professional exchanges.

By 3:00
A.M.
, not even the discipline acquired through medical school and residency could keep him focused, or keep a deep melancholy from taking hold. Despite his commitment to Cap, he missed his life in D.C.—his place above Dimitri’s Pizza, the ER, and most of all, Emily. He also worried about his docs at the PWO. Walter Filstrup’s precipitous action was forcing him to acknowledge how much of his identity revolved around that now defunct job.

A man doesn’t know what he has until he loses it.…

The tune took up residence in his head and began a loop. Where did it come from? A musical, maybe. Whatever. If the identical situation had come up again, even knowing that his job at PWO was on the line, he would have done nothing any different.

This was where he was supposed to be, and helping Cap in any way he could was what he was supposed to be doing. Arbor General was a world-class institution, but it and other hospitals were being outwitted, outmatched, and outgunned by an organism just a couple of microns in diameter. And at the core of the struggle, almost six feet tall, and as powerful for his age as any man had the right to be, was Cap Duncan. Seeing his mentor so depleted continued to fuel Lou’s resolve to do everything in his power to save him, even if that everything included helping Humphrey Miller run an unsanctioned, illegal laboratory, dedicated to turning theory into reality—abstract beliefs into lives saved.

From what Lou could glean from the notebook, Humphrey had done meticulous and incredibly well-documented research. What he did not know, and could not know without some expert guidance, was if the brilliant pharmacy tech’s approach really did have as much or more chance of succeeding than the traditional ones.

One thing seemed certain—Dr. Ivan To-Drink-Your-Blood was not up to the task, nor would he take Humphrey’s work seriously, even if he had done research on bacteriophage. Puchalsky would never be able to see the genius imprisoned within Humphrey’s tangled body. Still, some sort of expert evaluation of Humphrey’s proposals seemed like the only way to go at this point.

With that in mind, Lou had contacted Vicki Banks and arranged a time when she and her boss, Sam Scupman, could meet with him. Seven more hours, and he might have some answers.

Now, if only he could sleep.

*   *   *

IT SEEMED
like a year since Lou last sat in the library conference room of the CDC’s newly constructed Antibiotic Resistance Unit. Certainly, in terms of eventfulness, it had been. As before, he had been escorted to the room by an armed security guard and informed of a delay in Dr. Scupman’s and Dr. Banks’s schedules. While he waited for them to arrive, he once again skimmed the five-page abstract of Humphrey Miller’s thesis, the only part of the thick notebook he had chosen to bring. After hours of study, he sensed he was getting a handle on things. And what he was understanding, he liked.

Humphrey’s bacteriophages—
bacterio
for the target germ, and
phage
meaning to devour—were three of thousands of types of viruses, readily available in soil, shallow ocean water, and other ecosystems, capable of invading specific bacteria and interfering with their reproduction. The irony of a flesh-eating bacteria being eaten from within by another microorganism was not at all lost on Lou. Prior to their discovery in 1917, phages had been linked to miracle waters—rivers in India and other places with the power to cure diseases from leprosy to cholera. Only later did scientists, examining a naturally occurring treatment for dysentery, discover these “cures” were phages, feasting on and eradicating the disease-causing bacteria. Use of cultured phages to fight bacterial infections had not been without controversy, and had not at all enjoyed universal acceptance. Humphrey’s proposal would push the boundaries of what the virus could do beyond all known limits.

But Lou sensed the theory was solid, and very well might work. With time running out for Cap, it simply
had
to.

While Lou worried Scupman might balk at offering his professional assessment based on the five-page summary, he was equally concerned with revealing Humphrey’s identity. Humphrey had left it up to him, but they both knew that the wrong word to the wrong person might mean the end of his lab before it was even up and running.

Ten minutes later, Sam Scupman entered the conference room, followed two minutes later by Vicki Banks. Scupman was even more frazzled and unkempt than Lou remembered, and had probably not changed his knee-length lab coat since then. Lou took extra notice of the dark circles encasing the man’s green eyes. Nothing like a flesh-eating, untreatable infection to induce insomnia in a microbiologist. For her part, Banks looked as interesting and unflappable as before, with her heavy, black-framed glasses and her raven hair knotted in a bun. If there was any change in her since their last meeting, it was that she seemed less reserved than Lou remembered, and quicker with a smile.

“Dr. Welcome,” Scupman said. “Nice to see you again. You’re the one who asked that excellent
Pseudomallei
question.”

“Thank you for remembering.”

Lou shook hands with the two scientists before they took their seats at the conference table. Banks’s hand was smooth, and despite the air-conditioning, quite warm.

Scupman spoke first. “In your phone conversation with Dr. Banks, you mentioned wanting to speak with us about a special type of bacteria. I admit your caginess pertaining to the specifics intrigued me. Unfortunately, my time today is short so we’ll have to get right to the point.”

“Not a bacteria, Dr. Scupman. A bacterio
phage
.”

“Oh?”

The scientist seemed to perk up.

“A patient at Arbor General named Hank Duncan is in trouble. He had a compound fracture of his femur a little over two weeks ago, and is now toxic from a flesh-eating bacteria for which it appears there is no treatment. Hank runs a gym in D.C. and is known around the city as Cap. He is my closest friend.”

“The splint!” Banks exclaimed.

“Pardon?”

“You’re the ER doctor who splinted the fracture in the wilderness north of here, aren’t you?”

Lou couldn’t completely pin down the expression in her eyes, but it was one he liked.

“It appears the Arbor General grapevine moves information as fast as ours does in D.C,” he replied. “I splinted the leg, but couldn’t have done it without my friend’s help.”

“So I heard,” Banks said. “Quite a story. Sorry there have been complications.”

“Thanks. That’s why I’m here. The ID specialist consulting on the case, Dr. Ivan Puchalsky, used the term
Doomsday Germ
when he spoke with me.”

Lou passed across two copies he had made of Humphrey’s abstract.