Lost Immunity by Daniel Kalla (free reads TXT) 📕

“Is Kevin in yet?” Lisa asks about the department’s publicist.

“Haven’t seen him.”

“Tell him to drop by as soon as he gets in.”

“OK.” Ingrid begins to turn away, but then stops. “Oh, there’s a Dr. Miriam Khan looking for you. From Children’s Hospital. She left a message. I’ll forward you her contact info.”

“Thanks, but I’ve got her number,” Lisa says, wondering why her old friend from medical school didn’t call her directly.

Lisa sits at her desk, pulls her phone out, and locates Miriam’s cell number. The pediatric infectious-disease specialist answers on the third ring. “Miriam, hi. It’s Lisa Dyer.”

“Oh, Lisa! It’s been too too long. I miss you, honey.” Miriam’s voice is as perky as ever and still holds a trace of her Farsi accent.

“Likewise, honey. But why did you go through my assistant to reach me?”

“Your assistant?” Miriam says.

“You left a message for me in my office at Public Health.”

“Oh no. I was looking for Angela Chow.”

“You haven’t heard? Angela’s on medical leave. I’m the public-health officer now.”

“You are? Oh, wonderful! Obviously, I hope Angela gets well, but you understand. I’m so proud of you.”

“It’s not exactly a dream job right now. Trust me. Not with this meningitis outbreak.”

“This is exactly why I was calling, Lisa,” Miriam says. “The situation is a disaster here at Children’s Hospital.”

“I’ve been following. Those kids from Bellevue, right?”

“You heard about the new family, then?”

“Family? No.”

“Three siblings. They came in last night. All have meningococcus.” Miriam’s voice quiets. “The youngest one—only five years old—she died just a few minutes ago.”

An entire family with meningitis? “They’re from Bellevue? Part of that cluster?”

“Very much so. The middle boy played on the same baseball team as one of the previous victims who died here.”

“Mason Pickering?”

“Precisely.”

“If he was a contact of Mason’s, then surely the boy would’ve been given prophylactic antibiotics?”

“He was! It didn’t prevent the infection. This is why I called your office.”

Not another one. “I’ll come to you!” Lisa is already on her way out the door as she ends the call. She gets in her car and races over to Children’s Hospital.

Miriam is waiting for her just inside the PICU, Children’s Hospital’s state-of-the-art pediatric intensive care unit, which is bathed in natural light from window wells and skylights. Miriam wears a white lab coat that is, just as it was in medical school, too long for her petite frame. Her deep brown eyes light at the sight of Lisa, and she wraps her in a tight hug, enveloping her in a rose scent.

Miriam pulls Lisa by the hand past four adjoining glass-walled rooms. Inside each, a child lies on a stretcher connected to a ventilator and multiple intravenous drips, while everyone else in the room wears a mask, a face shield, and a protective gown. The parents are easy to distinguish from the staff through their anguished body language alone.

“Meningococcus,” Miriam says, shaking her head. “Every one of them.”

She stops in front of the fifth room, where the curtains are drawn inside the glass. Lisa doesn’t even need to ask. Miriam grabs two folded yellow gowns off the shelf and hands one of them to Lisa.

Once they’re both gowned, masked, and gloved, Lisa follows Miriam into the room. It’s empty aside from the little girl with a round, cherubic face who lies lifeless on the stretcher, covered up to her neck by a sheet. A disconnected ventilator tube pokes out between her pale lips as a reminder of the failed resuscitation.

A year younger than Olivia.

“Nora, the youngest of the three Hawthorn children,” Miriam explains as she steps up to the head of the bed. “She wasn’t even showing symptoms when the parents brought the two older brothers into the ER last night, both with fevers. Mom and Dad are next door with Stefan, the older brother, who’s fighting so hard to hang on.”

“The speed this bug strikes with…”

“Awful. None of these children should’ve been infected, Lisa. Stefan was treated with a full course of antibiotic prophylaxis after his exposure.”

Lisa appreciates that there’s nothing accusatory in her friend’s tone, but she can’t help feeling somehow responsible. “This is the second failed contact prophylaxis, Miriam.”

“The second?”

“There’s another case. A fifteen-year-old who’s at Harborview now.”

“Maybe we need to change the protocol? Add a third antibiotic to the regime?”

“Maybe. But there will still be failures. No matter what antibiotics we give them.” Lisa’s thoughts turn to Nicola Ford, the asymptomatic carrier who ended up spreading the infection to Bellevue. “Besides, there will be other contacts who are too scared, too lazy, or too ignorant to even take the prophylactic antibiotics.”

“What about this new vaccine?”

“So far, it’s been universally effective in raising the recipients’ antibody titers to what we believe are protective levels.”

“Then we need to vaccinate every child in this city! We have to create herd immunity.”

“Agreed.”

Miriam clears her throat, and when she speaks again, her voice is resigned. “I’ve managed children suffering from COVID, cholera, malaria, flesh-eating disease… you name it, Lisa. But I have never seen anything as aggressive as this strain of meningococcus.”

Lisa and Miriam leave Nora’s room, strip out of their PPE, and walk out of the PICU together. Promising to see each other soon, and realizing they probably won’t, they part ways after hugging again beside the elevators.

As Lisa is pulling out of the hospital’s parking lot, she calls her sister on her car’s hands-free phone.

“Funny,” Amber says. “I was just about to call you.”

“What’s up? Olivia OK?”

“She’s fine. But I was just reading about the girl with the vaccine injury.”

“It wasn’t an injury,” Lisa snaps. “The shot didn’t break her arm.”

“Reaction. Whatever. It sounds awful.”

“It is,” Lisa admits. “But it’s also the only major adverse effect we’ve seen among thousands of inoculations.”

Amber is quiet for a moment. “And you still think I should get Olivia vaccinated?”

“I do.”

“You’re not worried about the risk?”

Lisa thinks of Nora’s round, lifeless face. “I’m way more concerned about the risk of not getting Liv vaccinated.”

Amber silently digests the comment for a short while. “Another girl from