Read Online Up in Smoke by Ross Pennie - Free Book Online

at his watch and reached for his shoes. “If that’s all, Miss Sharma, I’ve —”
    â€œActually, Mr. Vorst, this is just the beginning.” She held up her checklist. “I’ve got a long list of questions for every student, every teacher, every employee at this school.”
    â€œBut —”
    â€œIn outbreaks like this, especially when emotions are running high, I find it best to invite everyone concerned to a fact-sharing session.”
    â€œYou mean —”
    â€œOur team would like you to gather all your students, parents, and employees in one place.”
    â€œI can’t think when we could do that. It would have to be at a convenient time and not interfere with the upcoming midterms.”
    She glanced at her watch. It was too late to get the parties assembled today. “We need to do this as soon as possible. No later than tomorrow. And as early in the day as possible.”
    â€œTomorrow? Imposs —”
    â€œDr. Szabo says we should start at ten a . m . In your auditorium.” It usually helped to drop her boss’s name at the right moment.
    There was a knock at the door and the tearful secretary who’d greeted her earlier padded in. A sheet of paper trembled in the woman’s hand. At the same time, Natasha’s mobile phone chimed the arrival of a text message from Dr. Zol: Simcoe General was reporting another ECC student admitted through emergency with jaundice, dark urine, bleeding gums, and confusion. They were sending the girl to Toronto General by helicopter.
    Vorst glanced at the paper. He pulled a wadded Kleenex from his pocket and wiped his forehead. “Noreen,” he said. “Activate the telephone tree. Emergency meeting in the auditorium. Tomorrow morning. Nine o’clock. Sharp.”

CHAPTER 8
    Hamish Wakefield strode into his academic office at the rear of his lab at Caledonian Medical Centre. He locked the door behind him and dropped his briefcase onto the desk. He fumbled with the key as he struggled to unlock the tall, custom-made wardrobe. He got the door open and lifted out the ironing board. He extended its legs, then removed the iron and filled it with distilled water. He set the iron on the board and plugged it in, then slipped off his lab coat and wiped his sweaty hands with a towel. As the iron heated up, his anxiety began to subside.
    He opened his briefcase and removed the folded shirt he’d placed there this morning before breakfast. As usual, this was an exact match to the shirt he’d been wearing all day. He always bought dress shirts in pairs. One for the mornings, its identical twin for the afternoons. He washed and ironed on Sundays, preparing for the week ahead. He loved the feeling of a clean, freshly pressed shirt. The only way to sustain that crispness, especially in a line of work that confronted him with a steady stream of germs, was to change his shirt twice a day. But a folded shirt lost its freshness when tucked into a briefcase. Creases slashed its front and wrinkled its sleeves. He fixed that with the hot iron. Today, his morning clinic had run late and delayed his ritual, had made him feel edgy. No one at the medical centre knew about his two-shirt habit, or the ironing apparatus locked in the wardrobe. People wouldn’t understand. They would think he was overly fastidious. Or plain weird. And he had no interest in defending himself over something as calming as a warm, perfectly pressed shirt.
    Al knew. And understood. Over the past six and a half months, he and Hamish had grown closer. Not in spite of each other’s quirks, but because of a mutual delight in them. They’d first met during karaoke night at the Reluctant Lion pub. Hamish, a choir boy until his voice cracked at age fourteen, had hidden behind the beer glasses piling up on the table. But Al Mesic, a
Hamilton Spectator
reporter with a toned body and a Frank Sinatra voice, raised the audience to its feet with