Read Online Tampered by Ross Pennie - Free Book Online Page B

lip and shook her head. “Afraid not, Dr. Zol.”
    He was disappointed but not surprised. Things never came that easily. “Oh well,” he told her, “carry on.”
    Natasha had her clipboard and scribbler at the ready, but she didn’t need them for reference. She kept everything in her head. “As of today, we’ve had thirty-five cases of gastro reported to us from Camelot Lodge since the outbreak began two months ago on January eleventh.”
    â€œThat’s an awful lot of diarrhea,” Colleen said. “How many residents live at Camelot?”
    â€œThirty-eight,” Natasha said.
    â€œSo all but three have had diarrhea?” Colleen asked.
    â€œNatasha can give us the exact numbers,” Zol said. “But I know that Art and Betty and Earl have had it two or three times. Which means that more than just three of the residents haven’t been affected yet.”
    â€œForgive me for stating the obvious,” Colleen said, “but if residents are getting gastro more than once, the offending microbe isn’t stimulating the immune system to protect the body from further infections.”
    Again, Zol was impressed how quickly Colleen caught on to the medical stuff. Without any formal training, she’d run her late husband’s internal-medicine practice when they’d emigrated from South Africa. After his death, she’d not had the heart to cancel his weekly subscription to the
New England Journal of Medicine
. She read the editorials every week, filing the issues meticulously.
    â€œThat’s what’s got everyone at Camelot spooked,” Zol told her. “They recover, think they’re in the clear, then get sick with the same thing again. Or see their friends recover only to succumb the next time it hits them.”
    â€œSuccumb as in . . . you know?” Colleen asked. She was a strong, practical woman, but she never used the words
death
or
dying
. Not even
passed away
. She’d been touched too many times by violent death. Her only sibling was killed on his motorcycle at age eighteen. And her parents were bludgeoned by burglars in Cape Town, murdered in their own home for a television set and the equivalent of fifty dollars cash. Then, after she’d started life over as a newlywed in the promised safety of Canada, her husband perished when Swissair flight III caught fire and came down off the Nova Scotia coast. She hadn’t dated again until she and Zol met late last year.
    â€œThe outbreak is intensifying,” Natasha said. “Four of the six deaths have occurred in the past five days. We’re seeing a very high case fatality rate overall.” She glanced at her scribbler. “Seventeen percent.”
    â€œHell’s bells,” Hamish said. “That’s worse than pneumonia or meningitis. Must be a high-grade pathogen.”
    Zol turned to Natasha. “What about the culture of Nick’s rash? Any staph aureus there?”
    Natasha shook her head, her mouth sagging in disappointment. “Just the normal bacteria you’d find on anybody’s skin.”
    Hamish squinted in obvious puzzlement. “What’s that about?”
    Natasha explained their theory, now debunked, about staphylococcus aureus exotoxin making its way into Camelot’s meals from the infected-looking rash on the chef’s arm.
    â€œWhat else have you got, Natasha?” Zol asked.
    â€œWe took twelve samples from the kitchen on Tuesday,” she said. “Drains, surfaces, food. And at the same time, we collected seven stool specimens from the patients with active diarrhea.”
    â€œAnd?” Hamish said.
    â€œNo bacterial or viral pathogens in anything. Not even under the electron microscope.”
    â€œWhat about parasites?” Hamish asked.
    Natasha shook her head. “Routine staining for cryptosporidium was negative in the hospital’s lab. A parasite specialist next door at the university