Saturday
Ginny glanced at the kitchen calendar. Saturday. The medical school library wouldn’t open until ten so there was plenty of time to get some other stuff done first. She pulled out the phone and called her brother.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Sandy. Am I disturbing you?” The nickname had been bestowed by their grandparents and was still used within the family.
“Not at all. How’s everything in Dallas?”
“Fine.”
“Mom okay?”
“She’s fine. That’s not why I’m calling. I want to ask a favor.”
“What kind of a favor?”
Ginny grinned at the note of wariness that had appeared in his voice. They were, after all, siblings.
“A colleague of yours was down here yesterday.”
“You mean Chip? Yes, I heard he was in Dallas. What’s going on?”
“We had an unexplained death in my ICU.”
“Your ICU?”
“Yes.”
“I hadn’t realized you were involved. What was he looking for?”
“He wouldn’t tell us. That’s why I’m calling you. I’d like to know what they think we’ve been exposed to.”
Ginny could almost hear her brother frown over the telephone.
“Tell me about your patient.” He sound worried.
Ginny told him what she had told the investigator.
“It doesn’t sound like anything I’ve heard of before. Certainly not one of the known problem viruses. Is anyone else sick?”
“No, but we don’t know what kind of incubation period this thing may have.”
“I don’t suppose you were in isolation or anything of that sort?”
“Standard precautions, but I doubt if I was very good about it. We thought we knew what we were dealing with and the man was someone I knew personally. It didn’t seem likely this very stuffy old man would be carrying anything dangerous. You know.”
“Yes.”
Ginny had heard her brother talk about the way most people reacted to the threat of a deadly virus. Disbelief produced more deaths than any other factor. There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line. Ginny waited for him to continue.
“All I know at the moment is Chip called and asked for some extra investigators. I almost came myself, except the boys have a game today and I promised I’d be there.”
“Much as I would love to see you, I’m just as glad you didn’t come. I hate to think of you bringing a really nasty bug home to them one day.”
“What about me? Don’t you care if I get the creeping shimmies?”
Ginny grinned into the phone. “Nope. It’s your job and you knew the risks going in.”
She heard Alex snort. “So much for sisterly affection. So what do you want me to do?”
“I want you to cozy up to Chip Galloway and pick his brain. Find out what he suspects and call me back. Can you do that?”
“If he’s conducting an investigation in Dallas, he won’t be back in Atlanta any time this week, but I’ll tackle him when he returns. In the meantime, how about if I go into the lab and see if I can find out what the analysts are doing?”
“That would be great, and let me know as soon as you have anything, positive or negative.”
“Sure. As soon as I can, and Ginny—” He hesitated.
“Yes?”
“Take care of yourself. If you start having symptoms, get into treatment and call us ASAP.”
Ginny’s smile faded. “Don’t worry, I will. Hugs and kisses all around. Bye.”
She hung up the phone, sobered by Alex’s warning. Until they were sure no one had picked a bug up from Professor Craig, they wouldn’t know what to expect, not even what symptoms to watch for. There was going to be a higher than average number of false alarms in the E.R. this week. Well, she couldn’t let that interfere with her routine. She changed clothes and headed out to the park.
* * *
Ginny picked herself up off the pavement, her cheeks glowing from equal parts exercise and embarrassment. She hadn’t fallen off a bicycle in twenty years and shouldn’t have done so now. She hauled the thing back over the curb and onto the sidewalk, assessing the damage. Several small cuts on her hands, one on her shoulder, a scraped knee, but all the joints still working and no damage to the bike. Nothing to keep her from completing the nine-mile circuit of the lake.
She pulled up at the first water fountain she came to and washed the cuts and scrapes in the cold water, then stashed the bicycle in the shade of a large oak, and climbed atop one of the picnic tables. Turning her back on the houses that ran along this section of frontage road, she stretched her injured leg out and settled down to gaze out over the water.
It was a brilliant day, the sky swept clean by the freshening breeze. “October’s bright blue weather,” her mother called it. Dark greens still held sway in the trees, it being too early in the year for autumn colors in Dallas. White sails dotted the surface of the lake, heeling over and looking in danger of getting wet. Birds hung on the air, noiseless, defying gravity. In the thick ground cover animals moved incuriously, used to strangers in their park. It was quiet. Calm. Peaceful.
“Did you hurt yourself?”
Ginny started, twisting in the direction of the voice. Her eyes widened as she saw Jim Mackenzie, in shorts and a golf shirt. “It’s nothing.”
He came around and took up a position in front of her, his eyes dropping to her knee. “Mind if I take a look?”
“It’s just a scrape.”
“It ought to be cleaned, at least.”
Ginny nodded. “I plan to do that as soon as I get home.”
“I can do it here, if you like,” he said. “I brought a first aid kit with me.”
Ginny looked at him, amused. “Do you always carry a first aid kit around with you?”
“No. I saw you from Grandfather’s house. He lives just across the way, there.” Jim gestured toward the corner lot.
Ginny turned and found it was so. Like most of the houses that lined the lakeside, the Laird’s home boasted picture windows that allowed the occupants to sit inside and watch the parade of cyclists, sailors, joggers, and picnickers who enjoyed the park. “How did you know I was injured?”
“I saw you get off your bike and limp over to the table. It wasn’t hard to figure out what must have happened.” Jim smiled at her. “Now, may I look at that knee?”
Ginny nodded. “All right, if you want to, but I assure you it’s not necessary.”
“Then indulge me.” He put the first aid kit down on the table, straddled the bench, and set to work, his gloved fingers exploring the expanding bruise. “Does it hurt?”
“Not much.”
He glanced up at her face, then back down at the knee, manipulating the joint skillfully. He sponged the blood off, cleaned the wound and blotted the area dry, then took out an instant ice pack, activated it, and held it against the joint. Ginny winced.
“It will control the swelling.”
“I know.”
While he worked, Ginny took a good look at the man who had spent so much of the last evening at her side. She’d been too busy sparring with him to notice anything beyond the obvious, and the dress clothes hadn’t done justice to the broad shoulders and the strong, muscular legs she now saw planted firmly on either side of the bench. He would look good in his kilt, she thought, then wondered if he even owned one. He’d been away from the Loch for a long time.
He wrapped an elastic bandage around her knee and anchored it in place. “Any other damage?”
Ginny held out her hands, palms up. He inspected them and the scrape on her shoulder.
“When was your last tetanus?”
“Last year.”
He nodded. “Okay. It doesn’t look bad, but it wouldn’t hurt to keep some antiseptic ointment on those abrasions for a couple of days.”
Ginny nodded. “I was planning to.”
She watched as he rose from the bench and cleared away the mess, putting his equipment back in the pack, and throwing away the bloodied articles. “You handled that as if you knew what you were doing,” she said. Her eyes narrowed as a memory climbed sluggishly towards the surface of her brain.
He smiled. “I’ve had some practice.”
“Boy Scouts?”
“Emergency Room.”
“Oh!” Ginny sat bolt upright and stared at the man in front of her. “I’ve got it now! Mackenzie. You’ve just signed on at Hillcrest Regional.” She studied him with a good deal more than casual interest.
He nodded. “Right. Didn’t Hal tell you?”
“No. Not a word.”
“Then where—” His brow furrowed.
“Your name was on Professor Craig’s chart.”
Jim nodded. “The man the CDC is so interested in. I took care of him when he came through the emergency room, but where did you run across his chart?”
“In the ICU. He was my patient.”
Jim’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re a nurse.”
She nodded. “Critical care, adult, at Hillcrest.”
He gave her a hard look. “You never said.”
“You never asked.”
“No, I didn’t, did I?” The corner of his mouth twitched. “The truth is I was enjoying a night away from it all. It was very pleasant, having you show me around the house, not thinking about medicine, not worrying about—” He stopped suddenly, staring at Ginny. “Your patient.”
“Yes.”
“But that means you’re—”
Ginny nodded ruefully. “—the girl most likely to catch whatever he had. Yes. That’s why I fell off the bicycle. I was thinking about that rather than paying attention to where I was going.”
Jim Mackenzie frowned. “I don’t suppose there’s any news?”
“It’s too soon for anything official, but I have my spies working on it.”
“Your spies?”
Ginny told him about her brother.
Jim stood in the shade of the oak tree, his arms crossed on his chest, and chewed his lip. “So he doesn’t think it sounds bad.”
“He didn’t say that, and he did make a point of my paying attention to any vague symptoms that may develop.” She sighed. “It’s enough to make you a hypochondriac.”
Jim laughed. “That’s what happened in medical school. Every time we were introduced to a new disease, someone in the class would come down with it.”
Ginny nodded. “The human mind is so suggestible you can talk yourself into almost anything.”
“That’s one of the things that makes diagnosing patients so interesting. You have to really listen to them, before you even know what tests are needed.”
“What about a compound fracture?”
“Even then, you need to know how it happened to know what collateral damage may have been done.”
Ginny’s eye had been caught by one of the sailboats. She smiled as the spinnaker was released, exploding into sudden brilliant color.
Jim followed her gaze out over the water. “Do you sail?” he asked.
“No. I’ve been out in them, but I don’t know much about it.”
“I’ll teach you, if you like.”
Ginny turned and smiled at him. “I think I would like that very much,” she said. “I’ll look forward to it. And now,” she accepted his hand as she climbed down off the picnic table, “thank you very much for the first aid, but I must be getting home. I’ll see you around the hospital, I’m sure.”
“When do you have to go back to work?”
“Monday night.”
“Then, if you have no other plans, may I take you to lunch?”
She looked at him and hesitated. He was still an unknown quantity and she had a lot to think about. “I was planning to go down to the medical school library and brush up on viruses this afternoon.”
Jim nodded. “That’s not a bad idea. Maybe I could join you?”
She studied him for a full minute before answering. “I expect you’d find it quite boring. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “You weren’t the only one exposed, you know. I promise I won’t get in your way.”
She smiled. “All right. Come along if you want.”
He smiled in return. “Good! Where shall we meet, and when?”
“In front of your grandfather’s house?”
He nodded. “Let’s say eleven thirty. That will give you time to get changed and still give us an hour for lunch and three or four hours in the library. Will that do?”
“Perfectly. See you then.”
* * *