Resonance - J. B. Everett (best novels to read for students TXT) 📗

paused while Jillian started scribbling furiously on her notepad, “third down the hall on the right. She was Joseph Finklestein’s roommate.”

 

Maddie continued - the second roommate was in the hospital in Sarasota with a broken hip. And the third roommate had moved to another home after developing a more severe case of emphysema. But Mrs. Levinson said she had numbers to reach all the current caretakers. Then she named names and rattled the numbers off from memory, impressing the hell out of Jillian.

 

Three hours later Jillian had about thirty folders pulled and open in various states of disarray around her. Jordan had about twenty more. They were getting somewhere. But God, if she had to look at these cream-colored walls for five more minutes she was going to spontaneously combust.

 

“Jordan?”

“Hmm?”

 

He didn’t look up from where he hunched over the files on the floor. He had graciously insisted that she take the only desk space. But in the hours in between he had sprawled, his jacket getting hung up over the inside doorknob, his tie loosening then disappearing. Now his sleeves were rolled up and he was in some unnatural position, chewing on the end of his red pen.

 

“I don’t know about you, but I need lunch.” She stood and stretched, ignoring the fact that her suit was wrinkled. That was okay, it wasn’t designed for stretching either.

 

When they finally pulled out of the driveway, they both began talking at once. “I think it’s a-”

 

“I’m positive it wasn’t staph.”

 

“Me, too.” She sighed, running her hand over her hair, smartly pulled back into a ponytail that looked as professional as a ponytail could.

 

“There’s no positive culture and nothing to link the three patients. No chain of infection.”

 

Jordan looked out the window at the passing communities of cookie-cutter bungalows, all labeled as “Sunset” this or “Retirement” that. “And I don’t know if you’ve watched these guys …” he trailed off and waited for her to shake her head. Of course Jordan had observed them in action. She wasn’t sure why the thought hadn’t even occurred to her. “They are fastidious. Every injection clean. Every surface wiped down.

 

Hugs and touching all the time, but I have never seen two people wash their hands so much.” He sighed, slumping a little lower into his seat.

 

“Do you think it was all just for show?”

 

“No way.” He turned to look at her, not doing his part to help find food anymore. “We walked in here, unannounced, just as we planned. There were already hand sanitizer bottles everywhere, sharps containers in every room, and if you noticed, both the Levinsons have very chapped hands, indicating this handwashing was going on long before we got there.”

 

Of course she hadn’t noticed.

 

What she did notice was a small sub stand with a name she didn’t recognize, and she pulled into the lot and climbed out. “None of the roommates has anything even resembling this. I called the nursing home and the hospital for the two that are gone. The hospital is ready to send the broken hip back to the Levinsons for the remainder of care.” She didn’t stop talking while she read the menu up and down. “So there’s nothing there to indicate it being airborne.”

 

Jordan sighed and pushed both his hands through his hair, adding his order right on the tail end of hers.

 

Only his was twice as big. “They have all the same symptoms that Eddie did. I don’t get it.”

 

Jillian waited until they were seated and Jordan had his head turned sideways, taking a huge sharklike bite from the sub. “They were the three most immuno-compromised patients in the home at the time.”

 

That made Jordan look up. But she still didn’t pick up her sandwich. “And get this: Bertha Martin was a leukemia survivor.”

 

Becky thought they probably looked odd, marching across the field, dressed for camping, snapping photos while they went. Melanie had suggested the disposable camera from the checkout at Home Depot this morning. And Becky had gotten two. You just never knew.

 

The real work was in getting all the equipment out there. Aaron had taken that upon himself; he looked like a hiker gone mad - or a serial killer - with the lumpy bags, the pack and the shovel. She, Brandon and Melanie followed like ducks, holding clear lexans of frogs that were finally returning to their home. But just to visit.

 

Once they arrived at the site, the frogs were set down and they all went to work with the compasses they had picked up. Melanie swung her little hammer, pounding a stake meant to hold garden edging into the soft ground near the stream. With the small mallet she hit at it until it was low, or until she mistakenly whacked some part of her body and swore a word that Becky wasn’t aware her sister knew.

 

Brandon was a more efficient force; he and Aaron both having seen the need for method early on. Baggy army pants oozing garden stakes, both guys walked a line designated by the compass in their left hand, periodically pulling a stake from some previously unused spot on their person and pounding it into the ground with one swift stroke. Of course, Brandon pulling stakes out of his pockets resembled a gunslinger, with a swagger and a little preening where Aaron was all efficiency of movement.

 

Aaron looked up at her right then. “Hey, Doctor Smartypants, get in here and help.”

 

“Aye, aye!” She crossed the creek on the old stones and set about mapping the other side. Within half an hour, all the loose ends had met up and they had an oddly shaped circle. Becky set Melanie to winding the tape from spike to spike clearly delineating the magnetic boundary, while the rest of them wandered the site, eyes glued to compass needles, looking for any smaller spots of greater activity.

 

That was an exercise in futility. There was nothing. Well, it was all or nothing. No one spot that gave a greater reading, or even caused the compass needles to jump or shimmy. No such luck.

 

“Okay, guys.” They lifted their heads from whatever they were meddling around with at the sound of her voice. “It’s hokey pokey time. Put all the frogs in the circle.”

 

Even Aaron got into it. Each of the four eagerly grabbed a lexan and walked inside the orange boundary.

 

They each set down the tupper with a flourish and waited for … nothing.

 

“Anyone?” Becky whispered.

 

“Nothing.” Aaron told her. His voice strong with certainty.

 

“Nothing.” Brandon repeated, bell clear.

 

Becky felt her heart sink. She had thought surely bringing the frogs back here would accomplish something. Melanie’s voice called out next. “Nothing! Nothing!”

 

That was a little too chipper. Wasn’t it true that the really smart ones always cracked?

 

“They aren’t doing anything Becky!”

 

“Duh, Dorko.” Brandon sneered, standing guard over his frog, legs spread, fists on his hips, sneer worthy of the schoolyard. “They’re just acting like normal frogs.”

 

“And they aren’t normal frogs!” Melanie was at a near fever pitch.

 

“Holy shit.” Becky whispered. “She’s right.” The frogs were no longer orienting. Reaching down, she turned the container. Aside from the usual the-world-is-rotating-underme shuffle that all frogs did, this one didn’t do anything. It didn’t reorient northwest. “Turn your frogs!”

 

This time even Aaron and Brandon caught on. “Okay, this is just too freaky.” Aaron looked up at her. “I like things neat and understandable. This is beyond my boundaries. Can I have these little green guys arrested for disorderly conduct?”

 

Becky laughed to herself. The disorderly conduct was what they were supposed to do. It was the lining-up-in-one-direction that was creepy.

 

She took a moment to write notes. Then had everyone take their frog out of the circle.

 

Alignment.

 

That got noted too.

 

Into the circle, in new spots, this time.

 

Disorder.

 

Out of the circle.

 

Alignment.

 

But this time there was more.

 

“Everyone, back in the circle.” At least they didn’t look at her like she was crazy. Something was drastically wrong in the spot where they were standing. Her breathing hitched.

 

“Okay, we’re going to take our frogs and walk out a bit.” Three nods. “Every one has compasses?” Three nods. “Good, now start walking, carefully, away from the site.”

 

She had lined each of them up in a different direction, so they backed out like four corners on a compass until Becky couldn’t see any of her siblings anymore. But, loud bunch that they were, vocal contact wasn’t an issue. She yelled out, “My frog is facing southwest. Aaron?”

 

“North-north-east.”

 

“Brandon?”

 

“South-east.”

 

“Melanie?”

 

“West!”

 

She hollered out to her sister, whose little voice was coming through the thick trees from somewhere on the left. “Melanie! Have you figured it out?”

 

“Yes! They’re all facing the site!”

Chapter 5

Jordan scribbled furiously on the pages of loose leaf paper spread out on the floor of the office with the awful mauve accents. He and Jillian had been here for two days, and he was never happier to not have a laptop. He had survived med school, ridiculed for his handwritten notes, but remembered everything far better than if he had typed it. And now this spreadsheet was taking over its eighth page, and he never would have accomplished this with the best notebook program.

 

Jillian watched while he organized and wrote and drew arrows in multiple colors. He started thinking out loud, “Okay, recap: Joseph Finklestein had lupus, Bertha Martin was a leukemia survivor, and Beatrice Weitzman had a kidney transplant and was on immunosuppressive drugs.”

 

Jilly picked up. “No other transplant patients here, according to files, the Levinsons, and patient report. No HIV positive patients. No one even close in immuno-status. So that gives us a set-up but what is it?” She chewed on the end of the marker she was holding. Normally that would have driven him nuts to watch, but he was too keyed up. He couldn’t sleep last night. And now he was running on pure caffeine.

 

“Go over Eddie’s case with me.”

 

Jillian nodded and started rattling stats again. She was better at that than any doctor he had ever met.

 

“Stomach ache, reported by wife, at seven days prior to death, vomiting at six days,”

 

Desperately, Jordan tried to push it out of his mind that this was Eddie she was so carefully reducing to a series of numbers and isolated incidents. But that was what would solve the case.

 

“Admitted for dehydration, in E.R., at day five. Given IV fluids and Raglan for nausea. Seemed to be doing better but was mildly disoriented and complaining of sleepiness. Nurses report that he was very sleepy and slept a good portion of his time in the ward. Nothing unusual there.

 

“Files indicated normal white counts, CBC and full Chem Panel show nothing out of the ordinary, in fact all numbers are very normal. Day three, patient goes to sleep and wife reports that he’s difficult to rouse. After medical intervention, a CT scan is performed and it is determined that the patient slipped into coma during sleep. On day one patient is put on ventilation due to oxygen sats being under eighty-four percent, and on day zero, all brain activity stops, and staff performs heroic measures to no avail. Patient dies at 2p.m.”

 

Jordan sighed.

 

There wasn’t much he could do at this point except sigh. He had arrows drawn to and from what he knew.

 

Joseph Finklestein hadn’t had vomiting. His decline had taken nine days from first complaint to