Pandemic Read online

  Leaning toward the Korean man and speaking sotto voce, David said: “Did you do what I suggested?”

  “Yes,” Kang-Dae said. He was a man of few words.

  “Once or several times?” David asked. As Wei’s trusted aide, Kang-Dae had unparalleled access to the entire complex. He still lived at Wei’s nearby private estate. He was more like an appendage than an aide.

  “Three times, like you suggested,” Kang-Dae said. “I put it in the drinking water. Will it work?”

  “There’s no way to know for sure,” David said. “This whole project is breaking new ground for all of us. But it was definitely toxic to human kidney cells in tissue culture, so if I had to guess, I’d say it is going to work very well—maybe too well!”

  PART 2

  SEVEN MONTHS LATER . . .

  MONDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 9:10 A.M.

  “Wait! Hold on!” Carol called out. She’d just entered the subway station at 45th Street in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, to see that the R train was already there. To her shock, it had arrived early, something New Yorkers did not expect the subway to do. Holding on tightly to her new miniature Gucci backpack, Carol started to run. It wasn’t easy, for reasons that had less to do with her attire, which was one of her favorite dresses and relatively high heels, than with her physical stamina. Any running was a feat that, until recently, she hadn’t been able to accomplish for more than a year. As she ran, she frantically waved her free hand in the hopes of catching the conductor’s attention to keep the doors ajar.

  As out of shape as she was, the effort was Herculean for Carol, and as she leaped onto the train she was seriously out of breath. She could also feel her heart pounding in her chest, which gave her a touch of concern, but she trusted it would soon subside, and it quickly did. Over the last month she’d been religious in her trips to the gym and was now up to twenty minutes every other day on the treadmill, which she considered fantastic progress. If someone had predicted four months ago that she’d be doing that much exercise at this point in her life, she would have considered them certifiably crazy. Yet, needless to say, she was thrilled. In many ways, being able to run again was like being reborn.

  No sooner had Carol gotten on the subway than the doors slid closed, and the train lurched forward in the direction of Manhattan. To keep her balance, Carol grabbed one of the upright poles that ran from floor to ceiling and glanced around for an appropriate seat. Since it was only the sixth stop from the train’s origin at 95th Street in Bay Ridge, and since it was now 9:11 and hence mostly after the morning rush hour, there were plenty of openings. But as an experienced subway rider, she knew that certain seats were better than others. Being hassled on the subway was not an infrequent event, and a bit of attention to detail was worth the effort. She quickly spied an auspicious spot only ten feet away.

  As soon as the train reached its desired speed, Carol made her way to the seat she had her eye on. There were no immediate neighbors. The closest people, each an empty seat away, were an elderly, well-dressed African American man and an attractive white woman who Carol guessed was close to her own age of twenty-eight. The slender woman impressed Carol with her style and the quality of her casual but elegant clothes. She had a haircut not too dissimilar from Carol’s, with a dark-brown-base undercut that was mostly covered by a bleached-blond combover. It made Carol wonder if they went to the same hairdresser. As Carol sat down she exchanged a quick glance and smile with the woman. It was a part of New York that Carol loved. You never knew who you might see. Life here was so much more interesting than it was in the boonies of New Jersey where she’d grown up. There people became set in their ways as teenagers and never tried anything new and exciting.

  Making herself comfortable, as she had a long subway ride ahead of her, Carol pulled her iPhone out of her backpack to go over the disturbing texts she’d been exchanging of late with Helen, the woman she had expected to marry if and when Carol’s serious health problems had been put behind them. The sad irony was that the health problems were almost resolved, whereas the relationship had been challenged and had taken a turn for the worse, so much so that Carol had recently moved from their shared apartment in Borough Park, Brooklyn, to her own studio in Sunset Park. It had all happened rather suddenly. Almost three months ago, while Carol had been in the hospital for her life-saving operation, Helen had invited a dear old high school boyfriend, John Carver, to stay with her, as he happened to be in New York and was in need of an apartment. She’d been looking for emotional support, someone to comfort her while she battled the fear that Carol might die, but then the unexpected had happened.

  Between the trying emotional circumstances and their close proximity, Helen and John’s old romantic relationship reawakened. When it had become clear that Carol was going to live, Helen had hoped she would be understanding and would embrace John as a permanent third party in their relationship.

  Although Carol was initially dismayed and shocked, her desperate need for love and acceptance after the stress of her hospitalization and near death inspired her to give the unconventional arrangement a good try over several months. But it wasn’t for her. At age thirteen she’d come to accept her sexual preference and adjusted, and she had just become more certain as the years had gone by.

  Rereading all the texts and reexperiencing the emotion they represented didn’t help Carol’s mind-set. It also made her look at the tattoo she had got together with Helen six months ago. It was hard for her to ignore, since it was on the under surface of her right forearm. The image was of a puzzle piece next to a matching image of the puzzle piece’s supposed origin. Both were drawn in perspective to make them look all the more real, and the base of the origin was done in a rainbow of colors. Helen’s name was on the puzzle piece, as Carol’s was on Helen’s tattoo. Carol had always loved the tattoo and had been proud of it until now, but her current goal on this trip was to return to the tattoo parlor in Midtown Manhattan where they had gotten the ink and have something done to erase the painful reminder of all that had gone wrong between them. Carol didn’t know what the options might be but assumed the tattoo artist would have some ideas. Besides, the trip gave her something to do, as she still had not gone back to her career in advertising. That wasn’t going to happen for another month. It had been a deal she’d made with her doctor.

  As Carol’s train made its way north through Brooklyn, people boarded at each of the many stations, with far fewer people getting off. By the time they were approaching the tunnel to Manhattan, the train was almost as packed as if it were rush hour. It was then that Carol got the first disturbing symptom—a shudder-inducing chill, as if a blast of arctic air had wafted through the subway car. It came on so suddenly that Carol instinctively looked around to see if other people had experienced it, but it was immediately apparent that it had come from within her own body. Her first instinct was to feel her pulse. With relief, she determined it was entirely normal. For a moment she held her breath, wondering if the unpleasant sensation would return. It didn’t, at least not at first. Instead she felt a sense of weakness come over her, as if she might have trouble standing up if she tried.

  Still holding her mobile phone, Carol checked to see if she had a strong signal. She did, and she contemplated calling her doctor out in New Jersey. But she hesitated, wondering exactly what she would say. Sudden weakness hardly seemed like an appropriate symptom to tell a doctor. It was much too vague. She was certain he would tell her to call back if it didn’t go away or if the chill returned. She decided to wait as she raised her internal antennae to seek out any abnormal sensations. She looked around at the faces she could see. No one was paying her any heed, as everyone was pressed together cheek to jowl.

  As the train entered Manhattan, Carol began to relax a degree. There was still the sense of weakness, but it hadn’t worsened, and although she got several more chills, they were nothing like the first. They were just enough to let her know she had probably developed a
slight fever. When the train stopped at Canal Street, she thought about getting off but was afraid to try to stand up. If she were to fall, it would be much too embarrassing. She felt the same at Prince Street, and then things went downhill. She began to experience difficulty getting her breath, which worsened quickly. By Union Square station, where there was to be a mass exit and mass boarding, she was beginning to feel desperate. She needed air, but her legs seemed not to want to respond.

  As the train’s doors opened, her phone slipped from her grasp and fell to the floor. In the blink of an eye it was snapped up by a scruffy sort who had been eyeing Carol’s behavior. The second he had the phone he melted into the people departing the packed car. Carol tried to call out that she needed help, but no words emerged as she attempted to breathe. A bit of froth appeared at the corners of her mouth. Pulling her legs under her, she marshaled her remaining strength and tried to stand, but as soon as she pushed off the seat, she collapsed, falling against the legs of the people standing immediately adjacent to the bench seat she had been sitting on. People tried to move to give her more room, but there was no place to go. One person tried to arrest her fall but couldn’t, as Carol was like a dead weight. Mercifully, she lost consciousness as she slumped like a rag doll, partially propped up against the legs of fellow riders.

  As quickly as her phone had disappeared, it was now time for her Gucci backpack to follow suit. Several of the other passengers tried to grab the offending individual, who also departed before the doors closed, but their attention was quickly redirected at Carol, who was twitching uncontrollably and turning blue. It was obvious to everyone that she was desperately ill and struggling for air. Nine-one-one was dialed on multiple phones. As the train lurched forward, another knowledgeable passenger notified the conductor. She came pushing through the crowd as she communicated the bad news to the engineer. As the conductor reached Carol, the intercom sprang to life to announce that a sick passenger was on the train and the train would be stopping at the upcoming 23rd Street station for an indeterminate amount of time. There were a few audible groans. It was a problem that happened far too often on the NYC subway system, inconveniencing thousands upon thousands of passengers who were not sick.

  The gravity of Carol’s condition was immediately apparent to the conductor, who was confused as to what she should do. With almost no first-aid training other than CPR, which didn’t seem to be indicated, since Carol had a pulse and was breathing, she felt helpless. It was quickly apparent to everyone present that there was no good Samaritan with medical training available. Meanwhile, up in the first car, the engineer alerted the rail control center to the emergency and was assured an EMT team was being dispatched to the station.

  Once the train was at 23rd Street, it took more than twenty minutes for masked EMT workers to arrive. Many riders had departed the train by then, seeking other transportation, and so the paramedics had a relatively clear path to Carol. What they found was a livid patient with an undetectable heart rate and blood pressure who was barely breathing, if at all, and had lost control of her bladder. After putting a mask on the patient and attaching her to an oxygen source, they quickly lifted her onto a gurney. They then whisked her off the train, up to the street, and into the waiting ambulance.

  With the siren blaring, they rapidly weaved their way across town to pull up to the ER unloading dock at Bellevue Hospital. As they unloaded her from the ambulance, a triage nurse corroborated that there was no heartbeat. One of the EMTs leaped up onto the gurney as the others rapidly propelled it into the depths of the Emergency Department and ultimately into one of the trauma rooms, calling out a cardiac arrest in the process. This unleashed a resuscitation team poised for such an emergency, which included a medical resident, a nurse practitioner, and a resident in anesthesia. With the history of breathing difficulty obtained from fellow subway passengers, the patient was intubated and given positive pressure. The assisted respiration required a shocking amount of pressure, suggesting the lungs were possibly consolidated, meaning ventilation was impossible.

  With no heartbeat and no ventilation, Carol was declared dead on arrival at 10:23 and covered with a sheet. The only trouble was that no one knew her name was Carol. When the ER clerk called the NYC Medical Examiner’s Office, she gave the deceased the temporary moniker of Jane Doe, explaining that there was no identification and the patient was unaccompanied. At that point, Carol’s gurney was unceremoniously parked in a corner to await the medical examiner’s van. Under the white sheet, she was still dressed in her finery, and the endotracheal tube still protruded from her mouth.

  1

  LATER THAT MORNING . . .

  MONDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 10:30 A.M.

  By 10:30 in the morning all eight autopsy tables at New York City’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, known colloquially as the OCME, were in use, as the team tried to catch up with demand. Over the weekend there had been a backup of ten bodies that had not been considered forensic emergencies and had been left for Monday morning. Besides those ten, six new cases had come in between late Sunday afternoon and early that morning. Table #1, the table farthest from the stainless-steel sinks, had seen the most action. This was the table favored by Dr. Jack Stapleton. Since he was almost always the first doctor in the “pit” in the morning, he got to choose his station, and he always told Vinnie Ammendola, the mortuary tech with whom he usually teamed, to nab it. Situated at the periphery, it was a little bit separate from the main commotion in the autopsy room when all the tables were in use. At that time Jack was already starting his third case. Most of the other tables were still on their first.

  “So!” Jack said, straightening up. He had just carefully shaved away the blood-soaked, matted hair from the right side of the victim’s head. He had been very careful not to distort the wound he wished to expose. What was now obvious was a completely circular dark-red-to-black lesion an inch or two above the woman’s right ear, surrounded by a narrow circular abrasion. The patient was on her back, with her head rotated to the left and propped up on a wooden block. She was naked and so pale she could have been mistaken for a wax-museum model.

  “Is the entrance wound round or oval?” Jack liked a didactic style and frequently used it even when other people weren’t listening, as often happened when he was working with Vinnie. Vinnie had a habit of zoning out on occasion. But this morning Jack had an attentive audience. Lieutenant Detective Lou Soldano, an old friend of Jack and Jack’s wife, Laurie, had shown up. Over the years Lou had come to truly appreciate the enormous benefits forensic pathology could provide to law enforcement, particularly when it came to homicide investigation, which was his specialty. Whenever there was a case that Lou thought could be helped by forensics, he made it a point to observe the autopsy. Although there hadn’t been any such cases for a number of months, that morning there had been three.

  “I’d say circular,” Lou said. Lou was standing across from Jack on the patient’s left side. Also on that side was Vinnie. Next to Jack was a second mortuary tech, Carlos Sanchez, who had been newly hired by the OCME and was now at the very beginning of his orientation and training. As one of the more experienced techs, Vinnie generally broke in newbies by having them work closely with him. Jack was accustomed to the routine and usually didn’t mind, provided it didn’t slow him down too much. Jack was one of those people who didn’t like to waste time and had little patience for incompetence. So far, he wasn’t all that impressed with Carlos. It wasn’t anything specific, more an attitude thing, as if the man wasn’t all that interested.

  “I agree,” Jack said. “Vinnie?”

  “Circular,” Vinnie said, rolling his eyes. Vinnie and Jack had worked with each other so many times over so many years that they could anticipate each other. Vinnie knew that the tone of voice Jack had used strongly suggested he was about to start a “teaching” session, which invariably meant the autopsy would end up taking considerably longer than otherwise, keeping Vinnie away f
rom the coffee break he always took after the third case was over. Vinnie was a coffee addict and his last cup had been just after seven that morning.

  “Mr. Sanchez?” Jack asked, ignoring Vinnie’s mild acting out.

  “Huh?” Carlos blurted.

  Jack turned to look into the eyes of the new hire, just visible through the man’s plastic face shield. “Are we keeping you from some other, more interesting engagement, Mr. Sanchez?” he asked sarcastically, but then let it go. He turned back to Lou. “It is definitely circular, meaning the bullet entered perpendicular to the plane of the skull. More apropos, it is certainly not what is described as stellate or jagged. Now, do you see any stippling around the periphery of the wound?” The little red dots in the skin that sometimes surrounded gunshot wounds resulted from gunpowder residue emerging from a gun barrel along with the bullet.