Читать книгу The Maverick Doctor and Miss Prim - Scarlet Wilson, Scarlet Wilson - Страница 8

“WHO ARE YOU and where is Callum Ferguson?” Not waiting for an answer, the man with the shaggy hair pushed past her and looked behind her. With his broad frame and pale green eyes, on another occasion she might have looked twice. But she didn’t have time for this.

Great. The welcoming party. And he was obviously delighted to see her.

She struggled to set the box down on the reception desk. There was only one person this could be. And she intended to start the way she meant to continue. This was business.

“Here are the N95 masks. Make sure anyone that goes into the room with those kids wears one. And make sure it’s fitted properly, otherwise it will be useless.”

He hadn’t moved. He was still standing directly in her path. “I asked you a question.”

She almost hesitated but that would do her no good. She needed to establish who was in charge here. And it was her.

“Matt Sawyer? I’m Callie Turner and I’m leading the team.” She turned towards the door as the rest of the team fanned in behind her, carrying their equipment.

It was like an invasion. And the irony of that wasn’t lost on her.

She tilted her head. “I’d shake your hand but you’re already an infection control hazard, so forgive me.”

Did she look confident? She certainly hoped so, because her stomach was churning so much that any minute now she might just throw up all over his Converses.

She walked around behind the desk and started pulling things out of the boxes being deposited next to her. “Lewis, Cheryl, set up here and here.” She pointed to some nearby desks.

“I’m only going to ask you one more time. Where is Callum Ferguson?”

He was practically growling at her now. And that hair of his was going to annoy her. Why didn’t he get a decent haircut? Wouldn’t long hair be an infection control hazard? Maybe she should suggest he find an elastic band and tie it back, though on second thoughts it wasn’t quite long enough for that.

She drew herself up before him. This man was starting to annoy her. Did he think she was hiding Callum Ferguson in her back pocket? “I’m sorry to tell you, Dr. Sawyer, that Dr. Ferguson became unwell on the plane en route.”

He actually twitched. As if she’d just said something to shock him. Maybe he was a human being after all.

“What happened?”

“We think he had an MI. He’s been taken to the cardiac unit at St John’s. I heard it’s the best in town.”

She waited for a second while he digested the news. Would he realize she’d checked up on the best place to send her colleague, rather than just send him off to the nearest hospital available? She hoped so. From the expression on Sawyer’s face she might need to win some points with him.

Why did the thought of being quarantined with this man fill her with impending doom?

Sawyer was about to explode. And Miss Hoity-Toity with her navy-blue suit, pointy shoes and squinty hairdo was first in line to bear the brunt of the impact.

It was bad enough that he was here—but now to find out that the one person in the DPA he absolutely trusted wasn’t going to be here?

The thought of Callum Ferguson having an MI was sickening. Sawyer had almost fallen into the trap of thinking the man was invincible. He’d spent the last forty years investigating outbreaks and coming home unscathed.

Please let him be okay.

He scowled at Callie Turner as she issued orders to those all around him. Did she realize her hand was trembling ever so slightly? Because he did. And it wasn’t instilling him with confidence.

He planted his hand on his hip. “How old are you exactly?”

He could see her bristling. Her brain was whirring, obviously trying to think up a smart answer. She walked straight over to him and put both of her hands on her hips, mirroring his stance.

“Exactly how old do you want me to be, Sawyer?”

He couldn’t wipe the smile from his face. Smart and sassy—if a little young. The girl showed promise.

“So what happened to the hair?”

He’d already caught her tugging self-consciously at one side of her hair. As if she wasn’t quite used to it yet. “Were you halfway through when you took my call?” He took a piece of gum offered by nearby Miriam and started chewing as he watched her. He could tell she was irritated by him. Perfect. Maybe if he annoyed Miss DPA enough, he could get out of here.

Except it didn’t work like that and he knew it. Still, he could live in hope.

She dumped a final pile of papers on the desk from her box, which she picked up and kicked under the desk. Yip. She was definitely mad.

She grabbed the heavily clipped document on the top of the pile, strode over and thrust it directly against his chest. It hit him square in the solar plexus, causing him to catch his breath.

“My haircut cost more than you probably make in a month. Now, here—read this. And it isn’t from me. It’s from Callum. He said to make sure it was the first thing I gave you—along with the instructions to follow it to the letter.”

He pulled the document off his chest. The DPA plan for a smallpox outbreak. All three hundred pages of it. He let it go and it skidded across the desk towards her.

“I don’t need to read this.”

She stepped back in front of him. “Yes. You do. You’ve already broken protocol once today, Dr. Sawyer. You should have contacted the state department before you contacted us. But, then, you know that, don’t you? You don’t work for the DPA anymore, Dr. Sawyer.”

He cracked his chewing gum. “Well, that’s at least one thing we agree on.”

She glanced at her watch. “So, that means, that as of right now—five thirty-six p.m.—you work for me. You, and everyone else in here. This is my hospital now, Dr. Sawyer, my jurisdiction, and you will do exactly what I tell you.” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “And it’s all in that plan. So memorize it because there’ll be a pop quiz later.”

She kicked her navy-blue platforms beneath the desk and started to undo her shirt. “Where are the scrubs and protective clothing?” she shouted along the corridor.

“In here,” came a reply from one of the nearby rooms.

“Let’s go see these kids,” she barked at Sawyer over her shoulder as she headed to the room.

Organized chaos was continuing around him. Piles upon piles of paper were being pulled from boxes, new phones were appearing and being plugged in all around him. He recognized a couple of the faces—a few of the epidemiologists and contact tracers—standing with their clipboards at the ready.

He could hear the voices of the admin staff around him. “No, put it here. Callie’s very particular about paperwork. Put the algorithms up on the walls, in the treatments rooms and outside the patient rooms. Everyone has to follow them to the letter.”

So, she was a rules-and-regulations girl? This was about to get interesting.

He wandered over to the room. Callie was standing in her bra and pants, opening a clean set of regulation pale pink scrubs. Last time he’d worn them they’d been green. Obviously a new addition to the DPA repertoire.

The sight made him catch his breath. It was amazing what could lurk beneath those stuffy blue suits and pointy shoes. The suit was lying in a crumpled heap on the ground, discarded as if it were worthless when it easily clocked in at over a thousand dollars. He could see the label from here. Maybe Miss Hoity-Toity did have some redeeming features after all.

Her skin was lightly tanned, with some white strap marks on her shoulders barely covered by her bra. She was a matching-set girl. Pale lilac satin. But she didn’t have her back to him so from this angle he couldn’t tell if she favored briefs or a thong …

Her stomach wasn’t washboard flat like some women he’d known. It was gently rounded, proving to him that she wasn’t a woman who lived on salad alone. But the most intriguing thing about her was the pale white scar trailing down the outside of her leg. Where had that come from? It might be interesting to find out. His eyes lifted a little higher. And as for her breasts …

“Quit staring at me.” She pulled on her scrub trousers. “You’re a doctor. Apparently you’ve seen it all before.” She tossed him a hat. “And get that mop of yours hidden.”

She pulled her scrub top over her head and knelt in the corner next to her bag. She seemed completely unaffected by his gawping. Just as well really.

Sawyer reluctantly pulled on the hat and a disposable pale yellow isolation gown over his scrubs. She appeared at his side a few seconds later as he struggled to tuck his hair inside the slightly too big cap.

“Want one of these?” She waved a bobby pin under his nose with a twinkle in her eye. She was laughing at him.

“Won’t you need all of them to pull back that one side of your bad haircut?”

She flung a regulation mask at him. “Ha. Ha. Now, let’s go.”

They walked down the corridor where the lights were still dimmed. She paused outside the door, her hand resting lightly on his arm.

“Let’s clarify before we go in. How many staff have been in contact with these kids?”

He nodded. He would probably answer these questions a dozen times today. “Main contact has been myself and Alison, one of our nurses. We’re estimating they were only in the waiting room around ten minutes. One of the triage nurses moved them through to a room quickly as the kids were pretty sick.”

Her eyebrows rose above her mask. “I take it that you’ve continued to limit the contact to yourselves?”

“Ah, about that.”

“What?” Her expression had changed in an instant. Her eyes had narrowed and her glare hardened.

“There’s a problem.”

“What kind of problem?”

“Alison’s pregnant. Eighteen weeks.”

She let out an expression that wasn’t at all ladylike. He hadn’t known she had it in her.

“Exactly. I haven’t let her go back in. She’s adamant. Says there’s no point exposing anyone else to something she’s already breathed in anyway. But I wasn’t having any of it.”

He could see her brain racing. There was the tiniest flicker of panic under that mask. “But the vaccine …”

He touched her shoulder. “I know. We don’t know the effects it could have on a fetus.” He shrugged. “I don’t know if you’ve come up with any new research in the last six years, but I wouldn’t want to be the doctor to give it to her.”

She nodded. “Leave it with me. I’ll take it up with the team.” She turned back to the room. “We need to get some samples.”

“It’s already done.”

“What?” She whipped around. “Why didn’t you say so?”

He sighed. “What do you think I’ve been doing these last few hours? I’m not that far out of the loop that I don’t know how to take samples. Besides, the kids were used to me. It was better that I did it.”

She nodded, albeit reluctantly. “And the parents?”

“I’ve taken samples from them too. They’re all packaged and ready to go. Let’s find out what we’re dealing with.”

“I want to see the kids first.”

Now she was annoying him. “You think I made their spots up? Drew them on their faces and arms?”

“Of course I don’t. But, like or not, I’m the doctor in charge here. I need to see the spots for myself. Get some better pictures than the ones snapped on your phone. I need to be clear that you’ve ruled out everything.”

She was only saying what he would have said himself a few years ago. She was doing things by the book. But in his eyes, doing things by the book was wasting time. That was why he hadn’t bothered with the call to the state department. Best to go right to the source.

And this family might not have that time to waste. Just like his hadn’t.

It made him mad. Irrationally mad. And it didn’t matter that the voices in his head were telling him that. Because he wasn’t listening.

“For goodness’ sake. Don’t you have any confidence in my abilities? I’ve been doing this job since you were in kindergarten. I could run rings around you!”

She pushed her face up next to his. If it weren’t for the masks, their noses would be practically touching. “You’re not quite that old, Matt Sawyer. And it doesn’t matter what I think about your doctoring abilities. I’m in charge here. Not you. We’ve already established you don’t work for the DPA any more and I do. You know how things work. You know the procedures and protocols. You might not have followed them but I do. To the letter.” She put her hand on the door. “Now, do your job, Dr. Sawyer. Take me in there and introduce me to the parents.”

Callie leaned back against the wall in the sluice room. She’d just pulled off her disposable clothing and mask and dispensed with them in line with all the infection control protocols.

She let the temperature of the cool concrete seep through her thin scrub top. Thank goodness. With the air-conditioning turned off this place was getting warm. Too warm. Why couldn’t this outbreak have happened in the middle of the winter, when Chicago was knee deep in snow, instead of when it was the height of summer? It could have made things a whole lot simpler for them. It could also have made the E.R. a whole lot quieter.

Those kids were sick. Sawyer hadn’t been kidding. They were really sick. She’d really prefer it if they could be in a pediatric intensive care unit, but right now that was out of the question.

And even though it seemed like madness, in a few minutes’ time she was going to have to inoculate them and their parents with the smallpox vaccine.

Then she was going to have to deal with the staff, herself included.

There wasn’t time to waste. The laboratory samples were just away. It could be anything up to forty-eight hours before they had even a partial diagnosis and seven days before a definitive diagnosis. She didn’t want to wait that long.

She knew that would cause problems with Sawyer. He would want to wait—to be sure before they inflicted a vaccine with known side-effects on people who might not be at risk. But she’d already had that conversation with her boss, Evan Hunter. He’d told her to make the decision on the best information available. And she had.

She wrinkled her nose, trying to picture the relationship between the man she’d just met and Callum Ferguson, a doctor for whom she had the utmost respect. How on earth had these two ever gotten along? It just didn’t seem feasible.

She knew that Sawyer had lost his pregnant wife on a mission. That must have been devastating. But to walk away from his life and his career? Why would anyone do that? Had he been grief stricken? Had he been depressed?

And more to the point, how was he now? Was he reliable enough to trust his judgment on how best to proceed? Because right now what she really needed was partner in crime, not an outright enemy.

If only Callum were here. He knew how to handle Sawyer. She wouldn’t have needed to have dealt with any of this.

Her fingers fell to her leg—to her scar. It had started to itch. Just as it always did when she was under stress. She took a deep breath.

She’d made a decision. Now it was time to face the fallout.

“Are you crazy?”

“No. I’m not crazy. I’ve already spoke to my boss at the DPA. Funnily enough, he didn’t want you sitting in on that conference call. It seems your reputation has preceded you.”

“I don’t care about my reputation—”

“Obviously.”

“I care about these staff.”

He spun around as the crates were wheeled into the treatment room and the vaccine started to be unloaded. One of the contact tracers came up and mumbled in her ear, “We’re going to start with a limited number of people affected. The kids, their parents, Dr. Sawyer, yourself and these other four members of staff who’ve had limited contact.”

“What about Alison?”

The contact tracer hesitated, looking from one to the other. “That’s not my decision,” he said as he spun away.

Callie swallowed. She could do with something cool to drink, her throat was dry and scratchy. “Alison will have to make her own decision on the vaccine. There isn’t enough data for us to give her reliable information.”

She saw the look on his face. He looked haunted. As if he’d just seen a ghost from the past. Was this what had happened to his wife? Had she been exposed to something that couldn’t be treated because of her pregnancy? This might all be too close to home for Matt Sawyer.

“Okay.” He ran his fingers through his hair. It hadn’t got any better now it had been released from the cap. In fact, it seemed to have grown even longer. “Do me a favor?”

She lifted her head from the clipboard she was scribbling on. “What?”

“Let me be the one to talk to Alison about it. If there hasn’t been any more research in the last six years, then I’m as up to date as you are.”

She took a deep breath. She didn’t know this guy well enough to know how he would handle this. He was obviously worried about his colleague. But was that all? And would his past experience affect his professional judgment?

“You can’t recommend it one way or the other, you understand that, don’t you?”

She could tell he wanted to snap at her. To tell her where to go. But something made him bite his tongue. “I can be impartial. I’ll give her all the facts and let her make her own decision. It will come better from someone she knows.”

Callie nodded. He was right. The smallpox vaccine came with a whole host of issues. She was already questioning some of the decisions that she’d made.

Alison was at the end of the corridor in a room on her own, partly for her own protection and partly for the protection of others. She’d been in direct contact with the disease—without any mask to limit the spread of the infection. In theory, because she hadn’t had prolonged exposure in a confined space, she should be at low risk. But she’d also been exposed to—and had touched—the erupting spots. The most infectious element of the disease. Pregnant or not, she had to be assessed as being at risk. “You know I have to do this, right?”

He was glaring at her, his head shaking almost imperceptibly—as if it was an involuntary act.

“We have the three major diagnostic criteria for smallpox. This is a high-risk category. Those parents look sick already. They’re probably in the prodromal stage of the disease.”

The implication in the air was there, hanging between them. If they waited, it could result in more casualties and the DPA being slaughtered by the media for wasting time. That was the last thing anyone wanted.

“Callie? We have a problem.”

Both heads turned to the DPA contact tracer standing at the door. “What is it, Hugo?”

She stepped forward and took the clipboard from his hand.

“It’s the parents. They can’t say for sure if the rash came out during or after the plane trip home.”

“You’re joking, right?” Callie felt the hackles rise on the back of her neck. This was one of the most crucial pieces of information they needed. Once the rash was out, the person was infectious. This was the difference between three hundred passengers on a plane being at risk or not.

Hugo looked pale. “Mrs. Keating is sure they didn’t have a rash before they got on the plane. And she’s almost sure they didn’t have it on the plane, because the kids slept most of the journey. They went straight home and put the kids to bed—she didn’t even get them changed. It wasn’t until the next day she noticed the rash, but it could have been there on the plane.”

Callie cringed, as Sawyer read her mind. “Prodromal stage. Did they sleep because they were developing the disease or did they sleep because it was a long flight?” He put a hand on Hugo’s shoulder. “You have to establish if she noticed either of the kids having a fever during the journey.” He paused, then added, “And make sure they didn’t change planes anywhere.” Sawyer rolled his eyes to the ceiling, “Or our contact tracing will become a nightmare.”

Hugo nodded and disappeared back through the door.

Sawyer watched her as she fiddled with the clips in her hair. She was consulting the plan again. There seemed to be one in every room he entered. A list of procedures. A multitude of flow charts.

She didn’t like it when things weren’t exactly to plan. Then again, she’d never been in charge of an epidemic before.

He could be doing so much more for her. He could be talking her through all this, helping her out. Liaising more with the team back at the DPA—even if that did mean dealing with Evan Hunter.

He knew all this stuff inside out and back to front.

But he just couldn’t.

It didn’t matter that he was stuck in the middle of all this. There was a line he didn’t want to cross. He had to take a step back. He had to focus on the sick children.

He picked up another disposable gown and mask. “The IV fluids on the kids probably need changing. I’m going to go and check on them.” He paused and turned his head just as he left. “You need to go and make an announcement to all the staff. You need to bring them up to date on the information that you have.” He hesitated, then added something else.

“It’s not only the natives that will be getting restless. We’ve got patients here who’ve been quarantined. They won’t understand what’s going on. They won’t know what to tell their relatives.”

She gave the slightest nod, as if the thought of what she was going to say was pressing down on her shoulders. He almost withered. “There’s a public address system at the front desk—use that.”

His phone beeped and he headed out of the room and down the corridor, pulling the phone from his pocket.

Violet.

He should have known.

No, he should have texted her first. She must be frantic.

He flicked the switch to silent and pushed it back into his pocket. She would just have to wait. He would deal with her later.

Callie could hear the raised voices as she strode down the corridor. “Why can’t I leave? I’m fine. If I stay here, I’ll get sick. You can’t make me stay!”

It was inevitable. People always reacted like this when there was an outbreak. It was human nature.

The hard part was that Callie didn’t want to be here any more than they did. But she couldn’t exactly say that, could she?

The reality check was starting to sink in. She was in a strange city, in the middle of a possible outbreak of a disease that had supposedly been eradicated. She wasn’t ready for this. If she closed her eyes for just a second, she could see Isabel in the middle of all this. This had been her dream from childhood—to work at the DPA at the cutting edge of infectious disease. She wouldn’t be feeling like this. She wouldn’t be feeling sick to her stomach and wanting to go and hide in a corner. Isabel would be center stage, running everything with a precise touch.

But Isabel wasn’t here.

And that was Callie’s fault. Her beautiful older sister had died six years earlier. Callie had been behind the wheel of their old car, taking a corner too fast—straight into the path of someone on the wrong side of the road. If only she hadn’t been distracted—been fighting with her sister. Over something and nothing.

That was the thing that twisted the most. It was the same argument they’d had for years. Pizza or burgers. Something ridiculous. Something meaningless. How pathetic.

She fixed her gaze on the scene ahead. Isabel would know exactly how to handle a man like Sawyer. She would have had him eating out of her hand in five minutes flat.

Okay, maybe not five minutes.

Sawyer probably wasn’t the type.

But, then, Isabel had been a people person. She’d known how to respond to people, she’d known how to work a crowd. All the things that Callie didn’t have a clue about.

The voices were rising. Things were reaching a crescendo.

It was time to step up. Whether she liked it or not, it was time to take charge.

She pushed her way through the crowd around the desk and jumped up onto the reception area desk. “Is this the PA system?”

The clerk gave her a nod as she picked up the microphone and held it to her mouth. Adrenaline was starting to course through her system. All eyes were on her. She could do this. She pressed the button on the microphone and it let out a squeal from automatic feedback. Anyone who hadn’t been listening before was certainly listening now.

“Hi, everyone. I’m sure you know I’m Callie Turner from the DPA. Let me bring you up to speed.”

The anxiety in the room was palpable. The eyes staring at her were full of fear.

“You all know that we’re dealing with two suspected cases of smallpox. That’s the reason why the E.R. has been closed and we’ve enforced a quarantine. The samples have been collected and sent to the DPA lab for identification. The laboratory tests for smallpox are complicated and time-consuming. We should hear back in around forty-eight hours what type of virus it is—whether it’s a type of pox or not—but it takes longer to identify what strain of virus it is. That can take anything up to seven days. So, until we know if it’s a pox or not, we need to stay here. We need to try and contain this virus.”

“I don’t want to be in isolation,” one of the men shouted.

“You’re not,” Callie said quickly. “You’re quarantined—there’s a difference. Isolation means separating people who are ill with a contagious disease from healthy people. The children who are affected have been isolated. Quarantine restricts the movement of people who have been exposed to someone or something, to see if they will become ill. That’s what we’re doing with all of you.” Her hand stretched out across the room.

She could still feel the tension. Anxious glances being exchanged between staff and patients. She could see the questions forming on their lips. Best to keep going.

She tried to keep her voice calm. “The incubation period for smallpox is around twelve days but it can range from seven to seventeen days. Smallpox is spread person to person by droplet transmission. It can also be spread by contact with pustules or rash lesions or contaminated clothing or bedding.

“A person with smallpox is considered infectious when the rash appears, but at the moment we’re going to consider any affected person infectious from the onset of fever. This should help us control any outbreak. It’s important to remember that only close contacts—those who were within six or seven feet of the infectious person should be at risk.”

She was talking too quickly, trying to put out too much information at once. She was hoping and praying that someone wouldn’t pick up on the fact that they could be quarantined together for seventeen days.

“Should? What do you mean, ‘should’? Don’t you know?”

Callie took a deep breath. She didn’t blame people for being angry. She would be angry too. But as she opened her mouth to speak, Sawyer got in there first. He’d appeared out of nowhere, stepping up alongside her, his hand closing over hers as he took the PA microphone from her.

“This isn’t like some disaster movie, folks. A person with smallpox doesn’t walk, coughing and spluttering, through a crowd and infect everyone around them. For a start, most people infected with smallpox don’t cough anyway. And the last data available from the DPA shows that the average person affected can infect around five to seven people. And those would only be the close contacts around them. Let’s not panic. Let’s keep this in perspective.”

She was watching him, her breath caught her in throat. He was doing what she should be doing. He was keeping calm and giving them clear and easy-to-understand information.

Part of her felt angry. And part of her felt relief.

She was out of her depth and she knew it.

The DPA was a big place. And she was a good doctor—when she was part of a team. But as a leader? Not so much.

Put her in a room with a pile of paperwork and she was the best. Methodical, good at interpreting the practical applications of a plan.

She could do the patient stuff—she could, obviously, or she wouldn’t have made it through medical school or her residency. Actually, some of it she had loved. But she’d enjoyed the one-to-one patient contacts, patients a physician could take time with, understand their condition and give them long-term advice. Not the hurried, rushed, wide perspective of the DPA.

But, then, the DPA had been Isabel’s dream, not hers. She’d never wanted this for herself.

And now? She was stuck with it.

“So, that’s it folks. We’ll let you know as soon as we hear back from the labs. In the meantime, we’ll have arrangements in place to make everyone more comfortable with the facilities we have here.” He raised his eyebrows at her. “It could be that in a few hours we move to somewhere more suitable?”

She nodded wordlessly. He must have known that Callum would already have put the wheels in motion to set up a category C facility for containment.

“In the meantime, follow the infection control procedures on the walls around you. Take a deep breath and show a little patience. We’re all scared.” He pointed at the figures lining the walls with their clipboards, “It’s important we help these guys out. Tell them everything you know.” He looked back at Callie. She was sure that right now she must resemble a deer caught in a set of headlights. “And if you have any questions, Dr. Turner is in charge. That’s it for now.”

He jumped off the table and headed back down the corridor.

The room was quieter now, the shouting had stopped. Her legs were trembling and she grabbed hold of a hand offered to her as she climbed down off the table. Heads were down, people working away, going about their business. One of the security guards was helping one of the nursing aides carry linen through to another room to help set up some beds.

Callie knew she couldn’t leave this. She knew she had to talk to him. Even though he was trying to put some space between them.

“Sawyer.” She was breathless, running down the corridor after him. “I just wanted to say thank you. For back there.”

His green eyes fixed on hers, just for a second, before they flitted away and he ran his fingers through that hair again. Her heart clenched, even though she couldn’t understand why. He was exasperated with her. “That was a one-off, Callie. Don’t count on me to help you again.” He turned and strode back down the corridor, leaving her standing there.

Alone.