No Immunity

bait. “They’ve never heard a sound. They don’t even have a concept of what language is. They’d be ‘backroom boys,’ if their tribe had lived in more than one-room huts.” Grady had stood right here in this examining room, his wiry hair bleached almost white against his tanned face, his elbows barely bent to rest his hands on the boys’ shoulders. Next to Grady’s tough body, his let’s-try-it expression, the boys looked like third-graders, scared, fascinated, exhausted, amazed. Carlos and Juan, Grady called them, though, of course, he could have called them anything. What he did know, Grady insisted, was that Juan and Carlos had no future in the Panamanian rain forest. Their only chance was with her help in the United States . With her standing in the medical community—everyone liked her—she could get the boys the best diagnosticians, surgeons, specialists, therapists. She could change their lives. She could give them lives.
    She was intrigued by the challenge, the unlimited possibilities. She was hooked. What she hadn’t factored in was coming to care about them. But it was impossible not to.
    Juan was such a sparkler. His eyes were never still, always watching. Was he thinking like we do, she had wondered. Without words was there a mechanism to classify, speculate on experiences, on what other people did? When she got him a sign-language tutor, she would ask him. Could he really go from no concept of words as symbols of things, movements, feelings to philosophical inquiry? Some would say, “Impossible.” But if you limit your goals, you get limited results, and she always looked to the top, for her practice, for herself, and for Juan. She noted Juan’s delight at the refrigerator, and how he couldn’t wait to bring Carlos there and let him play with the door within the door. His face had lit up when he saw the photos of Central America in the coffee table book that had pride of place in the little barrio apartment Grady had set them upon. Homesick, poor kid. Then she had remembered—the Breadfruit Park , as people had labeled the place. It had tropical foliage, as close to the feel of the Panamanian rain forest as they’d find in Nevada . She had gotten Grady a pass and was delighted that he took the boys there—and gave her a day free of them.
    Grady had already flown back to Panama the first time when she realized that looking in on the boys, as she’d agreed to, meant more than the occasional ten-minute visit. It was shopping for them, cleaning for them, and cleaning up after them in the case of the first stove fire. After that it was either overseeing the cooking, cooking for them, or arranging for some kind of takeout that they might or might not find too foreign to eat.
    And then they got sick! She ran every test. Checked every source. But she was flying blind with them. Poor kids couldn’t even tell her where it hurt. In desperation she had brought them here to the clinic, where she never kept overnight patients, slept on the waiting-room couch, and watched over them like a mother. She had monitored their condition, kept records worthy of the CDC. Maybe she should have taken them to Children’s, but what kind of care would they get there, on an overcrowded ward? Two boys who couldn’t speak, couldn’t understand? She would spend more time there answering questions than she’d spent caring for the two of them here. Why didn’t you bring them sooner? Couldn’t you see the danger of contagion in an impoverished, overcrowded neighborhood? What kind of doctor...?
    She’d never meant to leave them alone. Never would have for anything less than the call from Anne Barrington, already in labor. You don’t tell the governor’s niece to make do with an intern because you can’t get a baby-sitter. The delivery should have taken an hour, not four. She was worried when she drove back here. But she never dreamed the boys would be gone. No way they could have walked out of the clinic with their killer fevers, and the bleeding through the skin. Grady, of course, had taken them. That became real clear when she picked up the police message about the break-in. She could have sicced the cops on Grady. But there’d be so many questions. What kind of doctor...?
    And if they were contagious...
    And now at five-thirty in the morning they were gone. Grady Hummacher could have taken them anywhere. Beyond her help. Two-legged time bombs.

CHAPTER 9

    Kiernan adjusted her mask, stepped back into