H10N1 Read Free Page B

so unbelievable that she got the uneasy feeling it might be true.
     
    * * *
     
    Clutching the arms of his desk chair, Tom Johnson, the hospital’s pathologist, hunched close to his monitor, studying a blank screen. Taeya leaned past his shock of brown hair to see if she was missing something.
    “Maybe you should change channels,” she said.
    “Sanchez!” Johnson swiveled around. “What took you so long?”
    She straightened and curled her upper lip. “I’ve been listening to Doctor Sherman’s plans to wipe out the remaining survivors of the five boroughs.”
    “Come on, Sanchez. When are you going to turn in that bleeding heart for reinforced Kevlar like mine? The Brookhaven facility is reporting that some of our Green Codes are coming down with infections they picked up out in that line. It’s time to give up. I guarantee no one is going to come back to haunt you for slipping a Nexinol into their juice.”
    “Sorry, Johnson. When I took this position, I didn’t see genocide in the job description.”
    “And I’ll bet you told them all that.”
    Taeya didn’t feel like rehashing her outburst against Doctor Sherman at the departmental meeting. She knew she’d gone too far when she slapped the tabletop and asked Sherman if they would be replacing the Medical Center sign with something like Auschwitz. None of the other department heads ever stuck their neck out, but true to form, as soon as the meeting ended, they came running to her with their comments. When Taeya asked why they didn’t bring up their objections during the meeting, they always gave her the same tired excuse. “It wouldn’t do any good.” What they really meant was they didn’t want to get bumped to second shift, or have their credits reduced.
    She rubbed the tension out of her forehead. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
    “You’re going to love this one.” Johnson turned back to his keyboard, clacked a few keys, and in the sealed examining room beyond, a mechanical arm drew a tissue sample from one of two cadavers on stainless steel gurneys.
    “I thought Monicolitis was a good mutation,” he said, “but this one is perfect.”
    Johnson had been naming new viral strains as they came along. Monicolitis had been named for his ex-wife Monica because the virus attacked the alimentary system and he’d always said she was a pain in the butt.
    With precision, Johnson guided the mechanical arm to a petri dish and an image of squamous epithelium appeared on his screen. “Healthy enough, wouldn’t you say?”
    The irregular mosaic design of cells looked like a cluster of fried eggs, their nuclei protruding from each center.
    “Watch this.” Johnson guided the mechanical arm and drew a sample of blood from the second cadaver. He released a drop into the tissue sample and within seconds Taeya watched the nuclei shrivel and disappear. “This is why Sherman came up with the new directives.”
    Johnson switched off the program and the screen went blank again. “If this is airborne, I can guarantee anyone downwind of this sucker will be dead tomorrow.”
    Taeya could only stare at the screen.
     
     

CHAPTER TWO
     
     
    Exhausted, Taeya unlocked the door to her living quarters in the nurses’ wing. Not a day went by that she didn’t smart from the insult. She tried to tell herself she was lucky, that seven doctors had been dismissed while she had only been demoted to second shift. But mostly, she berated herself for speaking her mind to Doctor Sherman. Even today, she’d jumped into the fray without thinking, telling Sherman he was no better than a third world dictator, an executioner. Now she wondered if Sherman had been baiting her, giving him a good excuse to bump her down again.
    Many times her husband Randall had warned her about her volatility. In fact, when they first started working together, she’d questioned his procedures and motives. But with most of the world in chaos now, maybe Randall would understand her need to