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'em books and send
'em to college . . ." she hinted at the old joke. She kissed my cheek.
"Give me a break," I said. "I've been mostly dead all day!"
I only waved and smiled and said that I was fine as they rolled my stretcher
by the press corps at
Edwards. Then I shook the Vice President's hand as he thanked me for what I'd
done for the country. I
never got to discuss the state of world affairs with him. He must be a busy
man. Tabitha and I did get about thirty minutes with the Joint Chiefs and with
some guys from agencies that didn't exist. They basically told us that they
had "top men" working on it. I was beginning to understand how Indiana Jones
must've felt.
The general premise was that "black bag" guys and Special Ops could retrieve
whatever was lost and discredit anything left behind. Tabitha and I weren't as
confident in that assessment. I tried to make myself clear on that point, but
arguing while lying in a gurney isn't a real power position.
So, we went home and Tabitha checked me into Huntsville Hospital for a few
days of observation.
The second morning let's see that would be four days after the
space-warp Tabitha and I were eating breakfast in my room when Jim finally got
around to seeing me.
"Jim! What took you so long?" I asked.
"Hi there slacker. How you doing? Tabitha is he really just goldbrickin'?" Jim
replied.
"Oh absolutely, Jim. He is the laziest S.O.B. I ever met." Tabitha laughed and
clutched her ribs.
"Forget him, how are you feeling?" Jim asked Tabitha.
"Side hurts when I laugh or sneeze, but I'll make it."
"Jim," I started, "it worked! Can you believe it? It worked." Tabitha gave me
a dirty look, meaning that we weren't supposed to discuss the space warp
outside of a secure area.
"Cool." Jim smiled and winked.
I noticed Jim was looking rather tired and that his clothes looked slept in,
peaked around the gills as my dad might have said. So I asked, "Jim, you been
out partying or something? You look kind of rough."
Jim looked at me with tears in his eyes, "No, Doc. I've been here all night.
'Becca's not doing so well."
"What do you mean?" I asked. Tabitha held my hand and I could tell that she
was holding back tears as well.
"Anson, she's in the intensive care unit. About five days ago she took a turn
for the worse with all of her asthma and allergy symptoms as well as some sort
of flulike thing. She's been incoherent for the past two days and running very
high fevers. Nobody knows what to do here and the doctors don't have much
hope." Jim's head sunk and he cried.
"What!?" I rose from my bed and threw the covers off of me. "She is here?"
"Anson sit down!" Tabitha started.
"Tabitha, can it. No way I ain't going to see her." I stood up and dressed.
About that time a nurse came to collect my tray and give me my dose of daily
antibiotics and pain meds. She asked where I was going and I told her that I
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needed a drink and that the stuff they served in this bar was watered down.
She "harrumphed" and exited. I pulled on my pants and a T-shirt that was in my
overnight bag. Tabitha had even brought my toothbrush.
By the time I was dressed, the nurse had returned with a doctor and a much
larger nurse or maybe he was an orderly.
"Mr. Clemons I suggest that you stay in bed a while longer," the doctor told
me.
"Sorry Doc, I'm going up to the ICU to see a friend. You can join me if you
like." I told him. The orderly stepped between me and the door to my room.
"Perhaps you should listen to the doctor," the orderly said.
I looked at Jim and Tabitha as I stretched my arms slowly and yawned. I needed
to see how strong I
felt. I felt fine just very sore. I rolled my head around to loosen my neck
and then stepped toward the door. The orderly placed a hand on my chest.
"Sir, you should reconsider." He smiled.
"Doctor, I am paying for medical attention and this room, not for
imprisonment." I said as I
wrist-locked the orderly's hand and twisted his hand backward and showed him
his own palm. He must not have like the way his palm looked because he
collapsed to his knees in either disgust or pain.
Probably, pain. I walked past him and let go of his wrist. Jim and Tabitha
never said a word. They just followed me.
"Lead the way, Jim." I motioned him around me.
The three of us found the elevators, then up to the ICU. There was some slight
resistance until I told a nurse that Tabitha and I were Rebecca's parents. She
didn't seem to care if I was lying or not and let us through to see her.
'Becca had an I.V. in her and several other machines appeared to be connected
to her. I touched her hand and nearly cried.
"Hang in there, girl," Tabitha said and hugged up behind me.
"Jim, what do the doctors say?" I asked.
"Well, her pathologist thinks she has some sort of weird virus. He asked where
all we went on the cruise but nothing seems to add up. I still think she's
never been fully well since the bronchitis after the accident."
Jim was right. Although she had been well at times, 'Becca had never been as
sick as much as she had the last two years.
"Jim, did the doctors say anything about opportunistic infections?" Tabitha
asked.
"That's exactly what we thought it was," a voice from behind me said. I nearly
jumped out of my skin.
"Dr. Reese, this is Professor Clemons and Colonel Ames," Jim introduced us to
'Becca's physician.
"The astronauts?" Reese asked. Tabitha and I just nodded.
"It's a pleasure to meet you both." He shook our hands. "As I was saying, we
thought it was just
multiple opportunistic bacteria coupled with allergic reactions but not any
longer." He looked at his pad.
"We sent several blood samples to Atlanta. The CDC has isolated some new
mutated flulike virus. It is the first time it has ever been reported. CDC is
trying to develop a cure but it would help if we knew where she caught it. Its
host might have antibodies."
"What exactly does flulike mean?" I asked.
"Well, it's a flu virus with something else attached to it. Here's a print out
of the electron microscope image Atlanta emailed me." He held his pad where we
could see it and began explaining what we were looking at.
"You see this filament shape here that's a typical looking influenza filament.
But there's something funny about these glycoprotein spikes that extrude from
the filament. On this picture here," he flipped the page, "zooming in on the
spike you can see that there's a shape instead of a single spike like would be
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expected. Instead of a spike it's more the shape of a . . . I dunno a . . ."
"A dumbbell," I said. I suddenly felt as if the weight of the world rested on
my shoulders, again.
Tabitha, and Jim said in unison, "Holy shit!" Then neither of us said a word
for a long moment. Dr. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]