With the MD...at the Altar?

Chapter Three

By midmorning, Luke’s team and the volunteers had not only managed to clean and sanitize the kitchen and thirty small residential rooms in the west wing of the monastery, they’d also moved the patients from the clinic and police station into their new quarters.

The three Violents—Aztec Wheeler, boat mechanic Doug Allen and Jake Welstrom, a father of four whose symptoms had been identified during one of the house-to-house sweeps, thankfully before he hurt his family or himself—were locked in stone-walled rooms with barred windows, located at the back of the west wing.

The eight other patients—including Rox’s clinic assistants, Jeff and Wendy Durby, as well as all four members of the Prentiss family plus librarian Cheryl Proctor and gas station attendant Henry Wylde—were housed in the middle of the west wing, in well-ventilated rooms under lighter precautions.

The doctors had staked out rooms close to the entryway, giving them equal access to the patient rooms and the kitchen, which would serve as both mess and lab. There, the members of the CDC team were working on processing the first set of blood and urine samples for analysis.

The outbreak response was up and running, and Rox knew she should be incredibly grateful. Instead, as she stood in the middle of the entryway watching the organized chaos that would hopefully put her town on the road to recovery, she felt a pang of resentment.

She’d barely been keeping ahead of the symptomatic treatments on her own, never mind being able to investigate the sickness or its cause, but there was a part of her that didn’t want the others involved. She kept feeling as though she should’ve been able to handle this by herself, in her own clinic.

“Bug has the first set of blood samples spinning down,” Luke said, appearing in the archway leading to the kitchen wing. “We should have some preliminary results in fifteen minutes or so, and that’ll give us a starting point for figuring this thing out.”

He’d changed out of the dust-smeared clothes he’d been wearing the last time she’d seen him, into jeans and one of the long-sleeved button-down shirts they’d both favored on assignment. Made of a high-tech nylon composite, the garments looked like cotton, but wicked away sweat and heat, and were nearly indestructible.

The sight of the shirt—and the fact that she’d long ago donated hers to Goodwill because she would never need them again—sent a little jab beneath Rox’s heart.

Luke made a wide gesture to encompass the monastery, which was slightly less creepy in the light of day. “What do you think?”

“I think you made good on your promise to get this done by morning,” she said, and her thoughts of a moment before made her voice sharper than she’d intended, lending accusation to the words.

“As opposed to other promises I didn’t make good on, you mean?” Boots ringing on the stone floor, he moved to face her, expression resigned and maybe a bit impatient. “Go ahead. Ask me why I left you the way I did.”

In other words, he was willing to talk about it if she wanted to fight. He might even be willing to say he was sorry for the way he’d left, though not for the actual act of leaving. But she could tell from his expression that it was going to be the same sort of circular argument they’d excelled at during the last few weeks before she got sick, the ones that never ended with a winner or a loser, just the incompatibility of two people who had great sex but wanted different things out of life.

She’d been looking to slow down and scale back to something more intimate at a time when his career had been poised to take off. Part of her had known the end was coming for them even before he’d left, but she had never expected—and could never forgive—how he’d abandoned her in a field hospital, sick and alone.

“I don’t need to ask,” she said calmly. “You left because the CDC put out an emergency call. Fine, I get that. But if you’ve got a guilty conscience because you weren’t man enough to tell me goodbye to my face, you’re just going to have to live with it. You earned it.”

They locked eyes for a long moment. Finally, he nodded. “Fair enough.”

“Fair enough,” she echoed. In a deliberate effort to shift the subject back to where it belonged she said, “Have you had a chance to check out my patient notes?”

He nodded, both to her question and, she suspected, to her change of topic. “They’re pretty good, given the circumstances.”

She didn’t bother to defend her scribblings because she figured “pretty good” was an accurate assessment. By the time she’d figured out she had a major problem on her hands, the patients had been coming in so quickly and their symptoms had been so severe that she’d been hard-pressed to do more than scrawl a few details on each chart.

“I was thinking I’d talk to the families and get a better idea of what the patients have been exposed to lately,” she said. “We still haven’t seen any evidence that it’s transmitting person-to-person so I’m betting on a toxin.”

“Of course it’s a toxin,” he said, as if that should’ve been obvious. But his eyes lit with the same adventurer’s interest she’d seen in Thom’s expression the night before, the same kind she used to live for. “Question is, which one, and where is it coming from?”

When she felt that same adventurer’s excitement stir sluggishly in her blood, she shoved it aside, telling herself that the mystery had mattered in a different lifetime, to a different woman. Not now, and not to the person she’d worked hard to become.

“I’ll ask around town, get a victim profile and get back to you.” She turned away, suddenly needing to get out of there, to get away from him and his teammates.

“Hey, Roxie?” he said, calling her back.

She turned, hoping he couldn’t read her emotions the way he once had. “Yeah?”

“You still have the twenty-two?”

She patted the pocket of her light windbreaker. “Right here. I hate to admit it, but I feel safer carrying it, especially after what happened last night with Aztec.”

“Good. You’ve got my number, right?”

She grimaced. “Don’t count too heavily on cell phones. The coverage is pretty spotty out here, and there are dead zones like you can’t believe.”

“Then watch yourself, and be back by dark.” He paused, and something moved in his expression. “You and I are on night shift together.”

He turned and disappeared into the kitchen wing before she could ask whether that had been his idea or someone else’s. She didn’t call him back, though, because she was pretty sure she didn’t want to know either way.

WHEN LUKE REACHED the utilitarian kitchen, he was relieved to find the large space deserted, save for a bank of portable auto-samplers doing their thing on the first set of patient blood samples. That gave him a moment alone to lean on the wide farmer’s sink and look out the window, seeing nothing but Rox’s face in his mind’s eye.

He saw the terror on it when she’d run from the Violent. He saw the defiant expression she’d worn just now as she stood up to him. Even more, he saw the woman he’d known back then, and how her face had been so much more open, her laugh so much easier than it was now.

Back then, she’d said she wanted to slow down, to do something smaller and more intimate than the relief work they’d both loved. I want to belong somewhere, she’d said, as though belonging to him hadn’t been enough.

Well, she was a part of Raven’s Cliff now, and the way she’d interacted with the police chief and the volunteers—even the blowhard mayor—suggested that she belonged.

So why did he get the feeling she still wasn’t happy?

“She’s living in the middle of an outbreak site, you idiot,” he said aloud.

These people were her responsibility, which made it personal for her in a way he’d never ever wanted to experience. But because it was personal for her, and dangerous for her, and hell, his damn job, he’d do his best to figure out what was making her people sick, and how to stop it. And then…

And then nothing. He’d leave, which was exactly what she wanted. She’d made it clear just now that she didn’t need an explanation or an excuse from him, didn’t need an apology. She wanted her town healed and him gone.

“I can do that.” Ignoring a faint sense of disquiet, he strode to one of the auto-samplers and hit a few buttons harder than necessary, making the machine beep in protest.

“That’s not going to get it to work any faster,” Bug said from the outer kitchen doorway, which led to a small courtyard. “Science takes the time it takes.”

“I know.” Luke turned away from the machine to glare at the stocky, bearded geneticist. “And don’t quote me to myself.”

“Sorry. Just thought you might need a dose of rational detachment and good old scientific perspective.” Bug crossed the flagstone kitchen to check how many minutes were remaining on the analytical program. Way too casually, he said, “You going to put me on bedpan duty for the rest of the year if I ask about her?”

Luke muttered a curse under his breath. He’d known his teammates would ask about him and Rox. He’d just been hoping it would be later rather than sooner.

The four members of the outbreak response team spent too much time in close quarters not to know each other well. May, their most intuitive member by far, had picked up on the vibes right away, and had asked him about it the night before. “Rox and I have a history,” he’d answered, and hoped she’d tell the others what he’d said, and they would leave it at that.

Apparently not.

“Maybe not bedpans,” Luke said, “but dishwashing at the very least.”

Bug pretended to think about it. “I can live with that. So what’s the deal? You two are giving off enough sparks to power a couple of sequencers and a cryofridge.”

Luke would’ve winced, but he couldn’t deny the observation. Things between him and Rox had never been subtle. Something that strong just couldn’t be hidden. Unfortunately, it couldn’t be controlled, either. Couldn’t be trusted to last.

“She and I used to have a thing.”

“No kidding.”

“I ended it.”

“And from the looks of it, not very well.”

This time it was Luke’s turn to say, “No kidding.” He didn’t bother trying to explain. Rox didn’t want to hear it, and it wasn’t anyone else’s business but theirs. So he said simply, “We’re here to do the job, end of story.”

Bug seemed to consider that for a moment before nodding. But as he turned away and busied himself removing small tubes from the centrifuge and placing them in a rack, he said, “If you want to talk about it sometime, you know, I wouldn’t mind. I used to be married.”

Luke couldn’t tell if Bug thought that made him an expert on relationships or exes. “Used to be?”

“She wanted to stay home and do the family thing, and she didn’t want to do it alone, so she found a guy who didn’t disappear for weeks at a time on zero notice.” The geneticist’s shrug conveyed a sense of inevitability. “I don’t blame her, and I don’t blame the job. I love the job. The two just weren’t compatible.”

“Sorry to hear it.” Sorry but not surprised. It was something of a theme in their line of work—the couples who made it were typically the ones who worked together, not the ones who struggled to keep things going long-distance. Then again, the couples who worked together also had a nasty habit of flaming out in public. It was a completely no-win situation as far as he could tell.

Just then, the auto-sampler beeped to announce that it had finished its first run. Relieved, Luke reached out and clapped Bug on the shoulder. “Let’s see what we’ve got here.”

He’d rather solve an unsolvable outbreak than try to figure out interpersonal relationships any day.

The two men peered at the computer screen, where the results of the preliminary blood and urine tests were displayed.

“What the hell?” Bug recoiled in surprise, then leaned back in for a second look. “Their hormone levels are off the charts!”

And it wasn’t just one or two of the levels that were elevated, Luke saw. The plasma levels of cortisol, aldosterone, testosterone, DHEA, estrogen and several others had spiked in every one of the sick people. More important, the levels were nearly double in Violents compared to the nonviolent patients.

“Not just any hormones,” Luke said grimly. “Steroid hormones.”

“The Violents are on a ’roid rage?” Bug said, surprised. But then he nodded. “It fits the symptoms, sort of.”

“Doesn’t account for the fever, the red-eye or the jaundice,” Luke said, punching a few keys to bring up another data screen. “The white blood cell counts are within normal limits, so it’s not an infection. Or at least not one the patients’ bodies are recognizing yet and mounting an immune response against. Maybe something is attacking their thermoregulatory functions.” Along with several other systems, he realized, as the skewed lab results continued to almost—but not quite—explain the symptoms.

“We’re still missing something,” Bug said, frowning at the results.

“Yeah. The trigger.” Luke ordered the computer to print up the results. “Let’s sit down with May and Thom and put our heads together. We need to go through all the environmental toxins and poisons, natural and unnatural substances that could have these effects. Hell, maybe we’re even looking at a mixture of agents, a pesticide or something. DDT messes with estrogen levels in pregnant women. Maybe our answer is something along those lines.”

Bug paused at the doorway. “You want me to invite Roxanne to sit in?”

“Don’t even try matchmaking,” Luke said without rancor. “And no, leave her out of this. She’s in town interviewing family members. With any luck, she’ll come up with a common thread. If we can figure out the ‘what’ and she finds the ‘how,’ we should be able to nail this illness before anyone else dies.”

And then he could get the hell out of Raven’s Cliff.

“HOW MUCH LONGER will Henry be unconscious?” Mary Wylde asked. Jiggling a tow-headed toddler on one hip, the young mother looked exhausted. Her gas station attendant husband had been sick for nearly four days. Thankfully he wasn’t among the Violents, but his vitals weren’t good.

If he didn’t turn around soon, Rox feared he might not recover. “I don’t know how much longer,” she said honestly, “but a team of specialists is working on him now.”

“Oh.” Mary’s expression relaxed fractionally. “Thank God.”

Rox had heard a version of that reaction from every family member she’d spoken to so far, and she was trying not to let it bother her. Be grateful for the help, she kept telling herself. What matters most is saving lives and preventing new cases. Ego doesn’t come into it.

Still, she couldn’t help feeling as though she’d failed the town, and herself. She’d spent the past two years trying to make herself part of Raven’s Cliff, yet many of the townspeople seemed to have more faith in the CDC outsiders than in her. Maybe it was because they remembered her fly-by-night father and his wild schemes. Maybe because some of them were still old-school enough to have more faith in a male doctor than a female.

Or maybe, in the end, it was because she just didn’t belong anywhere in particular, no matter how hard she tried.

“Well, if there’s nothing else…” Mary said, starting to ease back and shut the door as another baby began to wail inside.

“Wait.” Rox held up a hand. “I just have a couple of quick questions.” She ran Mary through the survey she’d come up with, mostly focusing on the patient’s habits and how they differed from those of the family members who hadn’t gotten sick.

Mary answered the questions as quickly as she could, casting glances back in the direction of the escalating cries. She pointedly didn’t invite Rox inside so they could continue their conversation, but that was okay. The young mother’s answers only confirmed what Rox had begun to suspect three houses ago.

She was pretty sure the Curse had something to do with locally caught fish.

The day before the symptoms began, three of the victims had eaten fish and chips prepared at the Cove Café. Two others, including Mary’s husband, had eaten fish purchased at Coastal Fish, a seafood market located adjacent to the piers. Mary, on the other hand, had eaten a salad because she was trying to lose ten pounds before beach season.

Rox’s gut told her she had the beginnings of a pattern. Maybe she should’ve seen it sooner, but seafood was a staple of the local diet, and the symptoms were nothing like typical food poisoning. It hadn’t been until she had the time to really compare her patients’ diets that the obvious answer had jumped out at her.

Okay, so I’ve got a pattern, she thought as she headed away from Mary’s house, jotting notes as she walked. Now what?

She had several other people to interview, but she was less than a block away from Coastal Fish. Instinct told her she should keep following up with the families, but her gut told her she already had her answer, and what could be a better next step than going directly to the source?

Knowing that working with a team meant being part of the team, and liking the feeling of connectedness, even if it came with Luke and their shared baggage, she pulled out her cell phone, intending to call and let him know what she’d discovered. But when she flipped open the unit, she saw the searching icon displayed.

No signal.

“Damn it.” She looked around, halfway thinking she’d head to her clinic and call from there, but the clinic phone was still down from the night before—it looked like Aztec had ripped the cable out of the exterior wall before he’d knocked on her clinic door…which was scary enough that she was trying not to think about it.

Besides, Rox thought, the reception was even worse out by the monastery, so Luke’s phone probably wasn’t receiving, either. Odds were it would be a wasted effort.

Deciding that her best bet was to obtain samples of the various catches before driving back to the monastery, she headed for Coastal Fish.

The shop front was the epitome of New England kitsch, decorated with netting, weather-beaten buoys, lobster traps and plastic lobsters. When she pushed through the swinging door, she found the air inside cool and faintly moist, carrying the good scent of fresh seafood. With racks of sauces and bread crumbs on two walls and the third dominated by a huge glass display case, the place was unpretentious but did a brisk business because the prices were good and the fish came straight off the boats, which literally docked at the back door of the shop.

The owner of Coastal Fish, Marvin Smith, stood behind the counter wearing a crisp white apron and a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. In his mid-sixties, stick-thin and balding, Smith had been the mainstay of the fishing community for many years until he’d retired to run the fish store. He was still the fishermen’s unofficial spokesman when things needed doing around town, which was both good news and bad for Rox.

The good news was that if the fishermen had noticed anything strange lately, he’d know. The bad news was that she wasn’t sure he’d tell her, because he’d find anything that threatened local fishing to be a personal threat, as well.

She checked, but saw no red tinge to his irises as she stepped up to the counter, where a glass display case offered a wide selection of local favorites arranged on fresh greens, with plastic lemons strategically placed for a hint of color.

“I hear you brought in some medical detectives from out of town,” Smith said in a gravelly voice. “Couldn’t take care of a few fevers on your own? Business is off, you know. Much more of this and word’s going to get around. It’s the start of summer—we can’t afford to lose the tourists.”

“We’re talking about far more than a few fevers here,” she said, stung. “People are dying.”

“Then why aren’t you off running tests or something?”

I am, she thought, but knew she would have to tread lightly if she wanted to get anything out of the combative ex-fisherman. “We’ve split up to pursue various angles of the investigation. I’m collecting samples from the main food sources in town.” She gestured to the door behind him, which led to a long, narrow room where the fish were filleted and weighed out. “Can I get back there? It won’t take long.”

“What won’t take long?” It took a second for Smith to process her intention. When he got it, he narrowed his eyes. “You want to take my fish?”

“I just need a small sample of each type,” she assured him, though she fully intended to take samples from multiple fish of each variety. The fact that the disease hadn’t struck everyone who’d eaten fish over the past bunch of days suggested the source might be a certain type of fish, or maybe even one specimen that had yielded multiple cuts, or had gone through a certain processing machine.

“You going to pay for it?”

“Of course,” she said, though it irked her to do so. A call to the police chief or the mayor probably would’ve cleared her way, but she preferred to handle things on her own. Besides, Mayor Wells had plenty to cope with right now—besides the outbreak, he was dealing with a vociferous group of locals who, at the town meeting the night before, had started pushing him to let local businessman Theodore Fisher buy and refurbish the burned-out Beacon Lighthouse, which some residents believed was the seat of all the bad luck Raven’s Cliff had suffered in recent months.

Rox didn’t put much stock in curses, but if rebuilding the lighthouse gave the town a common goal she didn’t see why it was such a bad idea. The mayor, however, was doing his damnedest to block the project for some reason.

“Okay,” Smith finally said, reluctance etched in his body language as he flipped up the pass-through and let her come behind the counter, then led her through the door to the processing area. “I guess I can’t stop you from buying fish, can I?”

“Thanks.” She moved among the big ice chests, trying not to make it obvious that she was checking each thermostat, each coolant line, looking for malfunctioning equipment that might be associated with the illness. “Do you supply the Cove Café?” she asked, trying to keep her voice casual.

“Why?”

“Just curious. I had an amazing cod sandwich there the other day and I was wondering if they purchased their fish through you.” That wasn’t entirely a lie—she’d had a good fish sandwich at the café, but it’d been more like a month ago, and she hadn’t particularly cared where the fillet had come from. She was looking for an easy connection among the sick people.

He shook his head. “Nope. They buy straight off the boats.”