Pandemic by Jesse F. Bone (smart ebook reader .TXT) 📕

He moved a handler and picked up a heavy scalpel from the instrument rack. "There's a certain advantage to this," he said as he moved the handler delicately. "These gadgets give a tremendous mechanical advantage. I can cut right through small bones and cartilage without using a saw."

"How nice," Mary said. "I expect you enjoy yourself."

"I couldn't ask for better equipment," he replied noncommittally. With deft motion of the handler he drew the scalpel down across the chest and along the costal margins in the classic inverted "Y" incision. "We'll take a look at the thorax first," he said, as he used the handlers to pry open the rib cage and expose the thoracic viscera. "Ah! Thought so! See that?" He pointed with a small handler that carried a probe. "Look at those lungs." He swung a viewer into place so Mary could see better. "Look at those abscesses and necrosis. It's Thurston's Disease, all right, with secondary bacterial invasion."

The grayish solidified masses of tissue looked nothing like the normal pink appearance of healthy lungs. Studded with yellowish spherical abscesses they lay swollen and engorged within the gaping cavity of the chest.

"You know the pathogenesis of Thurston's Disease?" Kramer asked.

Mary shook her head, her face yellowish-white in the glare of the fluorescents.

"It begins with a bronchial cough," Kramer said. "The virus attacks the bronchioles first, destroys them, and passes into the deeper tissues of the lungs. As with most virus diseases there is a transitory leukopenia—a drop in the total number of white blood cells—and a rise in temperature of about two or three degrees. As the virus attacks the alveolar structures, the temperature rises and the white blood cell count becomes elevated. The lungs become inflamed and painful. There is a considerable quantity of lymphoid exudate and pleural effusion. Secondary invaders and pus-forming bacteria follow the viral destruction of the lung tissue and form abscesses. Breathing becomes progressively more difficult as more lung tissue is destroyed. Hepatization and necrosis inactivate more lung tissue as the bacteria get in their dirty work, and finally the patient suffocates."

"But what if the bacteria are controlled by antibiotics?"

"Then the virus does the job. It produces atelectasis followed by progressive necrosis of lung tissue with gradual liquefaction of the parenchyma. It's slower, but just as fatal. This fellow was lucky. He apparently stayed out of here until he was almost dead. Probably he's had the disease for about a week. If he'd have come in early, we could have kept him alive for maybe a month. The end, however, would have been the same."

"It's a terrible thing," Mary said faintly.

"You'll get used to it. We get one or two every day." He shrugged. "There's nothing here that's interesting," he said as he released the clamps and tilted the table. For what seemed to Mary an interminable time, the cadaver clung to the polished steel. Then abruptly it slid off the shining surface and disappeared through the square hole in the floor. "We'll clean up now," Kramer said as he placed the instruments in the autoclave, closed the door and locked it, and pressed three buttons on the console.

From jets embedded in the walls a fine spray filled the room with fog.

"Germicide," Kramer said. "Later there'll be steam. That's all for now. Do you want to go?"

Mary nodded.

"If you feel a little rocky there's a bottle of Scotch in my desk. I'll split a drink with you when we get out of here."

"Thanks," Mary said. "I think I could use one."

"Barton! Where is the MacNeal stain!" Kramer's voice came from the lab. "I left it on the sink and it's gone!"

"It's with the other blood stains and reagents. Second drawer from the right in the big cabinet. There's a label on the drawer," Mary called from the office. "If you can wait until I finish filing these papers, I'll come in and help you."

"I wish you would," Kramer's voice was faintly exasperated. "Ever since you've organized my lab I can't find anything."

"You just have a disorderly mind," Mary said, as she slipped the last paper into its proper folder and closed the file. "I'll be with you in a minute."

"I don't dare lose you," Kramer said as Mary came into the lab. "You've made yourself indispensable. It'd take me six months to undo what you've done in one. Not that I mind," he amended, "but I was used to things the way they were." He looked around the orderly laboratory with a mixture of pride and annoyance. "Things are so neat they're almost painful."

"You look more like a pathologist should," Mary said as she deftly removed the tray of blood slides from in front of him and began to run the stains. "It's my job to keep you free to think."

"Whose brilliant idea is that? Yours?"

"No—the Director's. He told me what my duties were when I came here. And I think he's right. You should be using your brain rather than fooling around with blood stains and sectioning tissues."

"But I like to do things like that," Kramer protested. "It's relaxing."

"What right have you to relax," Mary said. "Outside, people are dying by the thousands and you want to relax. Have you looked at the latest mortality reports?"

"No—"

"You should. The WHO estimates that nearly two billion people have died since Thurston's Disease first appeared in epidemic proportions. That's two out of three. And more are dying every day. Yet you want to relax."

"I know," Kramer said, "but what can we do about it. We're working but we're getting no results."

"You might use that brain of yours," Mary said bitterly. "You're supposed to be a scientist. You have facts. Can't you put them together?"

"I don't know." He shrugged, "I've been working on this problem longer than you think. I come down here at night—"

"I know. I clean up after you."

"I haven't gotten anywhere. Sure, we can isolate the virus. It grows nicely on monkey lung cells. But that doesn't help. The thing has no apparent antigenicity. It parasitizes, but it doesn't trigger any immune reaction. We can kill it, but the strength of the germicide is too great for living tissue to tolerate."

"Some people seem to be immune."

"Sure they do—but why?"

"Don't ask me. I'm not the scientist."

"Play like one," Kramer growled. "Here are the facts. The disease attacks people of all races and ages. So far every one who is attacked dies. Adult Europeans and Americans appear to be somewhat more resistant than others on a population basis. Somewhere around sixty per cent of them are still alive, but it's wiped out better than eighty per cent of some groups. Children get it worse. Right now I doubt if one per cent of the children born during the past ten years are still alive."

"It's awful!" Mary said.

"It's worse than that. It's extinction. Without kids the race will die out." Kramer rubbed his forehead.

"Have you any ideas?"

"Children have less resistance," Kramer replied. "An adult gets exposed to a number of diseases to which he builds an immunity. Possibly one of these has a cross immunity against Thurston's virus."

"Then why don't you work on that line?" Mary asked.

"Just what do you think I've been doing? That idea was put out months ago, and everyone has been taking a crack at it. There are twenty-four laboratories working full time on that facet and God knows how many more working part time like we are. I've screened a dozen common diseases, including the six varieties of the common cold virus. All, incidentally, were negative."

"Well—are you going to keep on with it?"

"I have to." Kramer rubbed his eyes. "It won't let me sleep. I'm sure we're on the right track. Something an adult gets gives him resistance or immunity." He shrugged. "Tell you what. You run those bloods out and I'll go take another look at the data." He reached into his lab coat and produced a pipe. "I'll give it another try."

"Sometimes I wish you'd read without puffing on that thing," Mary said.

"Your delicate nose will be the death of me yet—" Kramer said.

"It's my lungs I'm worried about," Mary said. "They'll probably look like two pieces of well-tanned leather if I associate with you for another year."

"Stop complaining. You've gotten me to wear clean lab coats. Be satisfied with a limited victory," Kramer said absently, his eyes staring unseeingly at a row of reagent bottles on the bench. Abruptly he nodded. "Fantastic," he muttered, "but it's worth a check." He left the room, slamming the door behind him in his hurry.

"That man!" Mary murmured. "He'd drive a saint out of his mind. If I wasn't so fond of him I'd quit. If anyone told me I'd fall in love with a pathologist, I'd have said they were crazy. I wish—" Whatever the wish was, it wasn't uttered. Mary gasped and coughed rackingly. Carefully she moved back from the bench, opened a drawer and found a thermometer. She put it in her mouth. Then she drew a drop of blood from her forefinger and filled a red and white cell pipette, and made a smear of the remainder.

She was interrupted by another spasm of coughing, but she waited until the paroxysm passed and went methodically back to her self-appointed task. She had done this many times before. It was routine procedure to check on anything that might be Thurston's Disease. A cold, a sore throat, a slight difficulty in breathing—all demanded the diagnostic check. It was as much a habit as breathing. This was probably the result of that cold she'd gotten last week, but there was nothing like being sure. Now