No Immunity

open?”
    “Oh, yes.” It was a moment before Tremaine continued, his voice shaky. “Throat’s almost closed. You remember in Africa talking about raw hamburger, how the Africans were so fascinated by the picture of cellophaned package after package on the open freezer shelf that they lost the point?”
    “The point that the patient’s throat looked like hamburger? Are you saying this woman’s throat’s that bad?”
    “All esophageal definition is gone.”
    Kiernan tilted her head so that she could see into the nose. “Oh, God, poor woman. The edema in the sides of the nose is so extreme, her nose is swollen shut.” It all fit with hemorrhagic fever. If that conclusion held, beneath the skin every organ would be a weck, jammed with platelets, fluids, dead cells, droplets of fat. Her heart would be clogged with platelets that the body had produced in one last desperate effort against the overwhelming forces of the virus. Platelets would be backed up into the arteries and veins. Lungs would be so jammed with fluid, death could have been from asphyxia. Liver, spleen, kidneys would look like plum aspic. “It’s got all the markers of hemorrhagic fever. But the nose! I’ve never seen anything that bad. It’s not a condition Lassa patients present.”
    “So, you think this is not Lassa?”
    “I don’t know what it is. It could be Lassa with a new symptom. Or, and here’s the really frightening possibility, that the nasal sensitivity could be connected to airborne transmission.”
    Jeff swayed back against the cabinet, his buttocks coming to rest on the edge. He was staring at the dead woman, but Kiernan could tell his attention was within himself, asking the same questions she had after the needle prick in Africa : Am I coming down with this woman’s fever or is it just hot in here? Or is it nerves? And that itch in my throat, is it the first indicator of my throat closing? By tomorrow will my eyes be bleeding and my face swollen beyond recognition? When I die—”
    “Jeff, you treated hundreds of cases of Lassa and other fevers in Africa and you’re still alive. In all your time there you must have let down your guard, been too tired to wash up properly, too rushed to bother with a mask, right? You may be one of the nonsusceptibles. Whatever, you don’t look sick to me.”
    “I’m not!” Which could be translated as “Leave me alone.”
    “Surely you’ve thought where the dead woman might have come from—”
    “Of course,” he snapped. “My guess—it’s not going to do any good—there’s a woman, up in the hills. She runs a safe house. Mostly for prostitutes on the run. They get stranded in brothels—trailers—in the middle of nowhere, and they’re no more than slaves. Word is she takes gamblers, too, in over their heads. Guys on the run from the law or the mob. This close to Vegas she could do a booming business. Vegas is built on dreams, and there are plenty of nightmares to go around.”
    “So you think she was protecting this woman and dropped her off when she got too sick?”
    “Yeah, I think. But, makes no difference. I’ve got no idea where that safe house is. No one does. She’s been running it for twenty years. She wouldn’t have lasted one minute if she let out word how to find her.”
    “How do the ones who need her find her, then?”
    “Grapevine of need.” Tremaine shrugged.
    She straightened up. “Jeff, this is a waste of time. Without lab work we’re not going to know whether this is Lassa, Junin. or some new virus, or something else.”
    “I don’t want—”
    “You’re a doctor, you have to report this. You don’t have a choice.”
    “I didn’t have a choice with Hope. There was no choice left.”
    Kiernan’s breath caught. She’d heard it before, but the words still cut through her mask, the protective clinical setting, her skin.
    “I sat with her, Kiernan, every day as her fever soared, as her throat closed. I was there when her fever spiked, and no amount of ice made any difference. I dabbed a local on her throat, trying not to touch her flesh because it was so painful, trying to anesthetize her throat enough to let her swallow water. I held her hands when she couldn’t stop the shaking. She was a doctor, Kiernan. She’d watched her people bleed out and die. She knew what was coming.” He swallowed hard, but it didn’t clear his thick voice. “I lied to her then, but I’m such a lousy liar. She wanted to believe me, but she