Lemuria by Burt Clinchandhill (most popular novels of all time .txt) 📗

from the four corners. As the paper came off, he held it high to prevent it from dropping onto the wet floor. “Help me set the table back up straight.” With the table on all four legs again, he turned the paper and stretched it out over the tabletop. “I’ll be damned.”

“Well, that’s unexpected,” Lindsey uttered. “What do you think?”

Bishop rolled up the piece of paper and handed it to Lindsey. “I think we need to take this with us and inspect it in daylight. In the meantime, we can see if Lucy has any other interesting things for us to find.”

Lindsey nodded. “Let’s do that.”

Chapter 7 – Naegleria Fowleri

Boston, MA, Six Months Ago

Sylvia Porter passed a row of parked ambulances before heading to the entrance of the Massachusetts General Hospital’s Cox building in Boston. With 999 beds, the third oldest hospital in the country was the original teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School and ranked the number two hospital in the U.S., with an annual research budget of over $1 billion.

The gray eight-story concrete building looked a bit worn down, and nothing like the prestigious Tropical Medicine Practice Sylvia read about on the website on her way here. Mass Gen’s Tropical Medicine Practice was part of the Infectious Diseases Division, specializing in the diagnosis, treatment and care of people with illnesses and infections most common to tropical climates. When you traveled from a developing world and contracted some kind of fungal, viral, bacterial, mycobacterial, parasitic or ectoparasitic infection, Mass General was the place to be.

It had taken her Uber three hours to get there from her home in New Haven. Above the large glass doors, the sign read, ‘Cox Entrance.’

As Sylvia passed under the sign, she wondered why they brought her daughter here. On the phone, they wouldn’t tell her anything but the fact that Jennifer fell ill during a presentation at her university almost two days ago. They told her Jennifer was first brought to the Yale-New Haven Hospital near her home, but after triage, she was rushed to the Boston hospital to receive specialized treatment at the Tropical Medicine Practice. Of course, she knew that her daughter traveled to Africa and South America for her work in the past year, but what could be wrong with her? Jennifer was always very precise in taking the advised preventive medication against diseases like hepatitis, typhoid and, of course, malaria.

Sylvia arrived at the circular desk in the center of the entrance. “I’m looking for Jennifer Porter.”

“One moment,” the woman at the desk replied as she typed on her computer’s keyboard. “Room 716. Take the elevator behind you to the seventh floor and exit to your right.”

“Thank you.” Sylvia turned just as the elevator doors began to close. “Please hold,” she called, and before the doors closed, a hand grabbed the door from the inside, causing the doors to slide open. In her late 60s with gray hair, Sylvia, who had a slender build, was still fit from practicing Tai Chi and Jane Fonda’s yoga and fitness videos daily. In a few quick, big steps, she reached the elevator doors and got in. “Thank you,” she said to the man who had risked his hand between the elevator doors.

“You’re welcome, Ms. Porter,” the man, who wore a white coat and stethoscope around his neck, replied.

Sylvia tilted her head. “Do I know you?”

“I’m sorry, no. My name is Dr. Elder. David Elder. Seventh?” He put his finger on the floor button. Sylvia nodded. “It’s quite a coincidence, actually. I know your daughter. I met her a few years ago at the Al-Ahli Hospital in Hebron, Israel, when I interned there, and your daughter was admitted after a car accident.”

“But how do you know me?” Sylvia asked.

The doctor grinned. “I overheard you asking for her at the desk, and I took a guess based on the resemblance.”

“Do you know what’s wrong with my daughter?”

“Actually, I’m one of her attending physicians, so if you follow me, I will take you to her room, and we can talk there.” The elevator doors opened again, and they both stepped out.

“A car accident, you said?” Sylvia followed the doctor, now taking big steps, all the way to the other side of the floor.

“You sound surprised. She didn’t tell you?”

Sylvia shook her head. “No, nothing.”

“It wasn’t too serious. She had a slight concussion, nothing else. I believe she was with friends from Yale, doing research.”

Sylvia shook her head. A few years ago, her husband, Jennifer’s father, had died under strange conditions. Though it always had seemed Jennifer knew more about the circumstances, her daughter had never told her much about what had happened. The only thing that she’d told her was that despite suspicions they might have had, he died of natural causes. Sylvia had always felt there was more to it than that, but she had let it go. Her husband had been very sick in his final months, so his death had been for the best, or so she told herself.

They stopped outside Jennifer’s room.

“Now, before we go in,” the doctor said, “she will be asleep. But that’s nothing to worry about. We kept her sedated to give the brain rest. But she can come to any moment now. Please come in.”

The room was a typical sterile hospital room with a single bed and two comfortable looking chairs next to it, on a colorful laminate floor. Behind the bed was an empty corkboard and a lightbox with what looked like an X-ray of a head, on the otherwise spotless white wall.

Next to the bed, a tube from an infusion device ran drops of liquid to the needle attached to Jennifer’s wrist. On her head, a white net spread with electrodes covering her long blonde hair was wired to an EEG machine next to the bed. On an attached monitor, a pattern of lines represented the young woman’s brainwaves.

Sylvia stepped up to the bed and took Jennifer’s hand. “What’s wrong with here? Is she going to be