12.21 Read Online Free PDF Page B

thinking. But most of the victims Stanton had seen simply succumbed from the devastation insomnia wreaked on their bodies.
    “Dr. Thane, was it you who came up with the idea of testing the amylase levels?” They had arrived on the sixth floor.
    “Yeah. Why?”
    “Putting FFI on the differential diagnosis list isn’t something most residents would’ve considered.”
    Thane shrugged. “Saw a homeless guy in the ER this morning who’d eaten eight bags of banana chips to make his potassium so high that we’d have to admit him. Spend a little more time in East L.A. You’ll see we have to consider just about everything.”
    Stanton noticed that every staff member smiled or nodded or waved at Thane as they approached the nerve center of the floor. The reception area looked as if it hadn’t been updated in decades, complete with ancient computers. Nurses and interns scribbled notes in fading plastic binders. Orderlies finished their rounds, clearing scratched trays from patients’ rooms.
    A security guard was posted outside room 621. He was middle-aged, with dark skin and a crew cut, and wore a pink mask over his face.
    “Everything all right in there?” Thane asked.
    “He’s not moving too much right now,” the guard said, closing his book of crossword puzzles. “Couple of short outbursts, but for the most part pretty quiet.”
    “This is Mariano,” Thane said. “Mariano, this is Dr. Stanton. He’ll be working the John Doe with us.”
    Mariano’s dark-brown eyes, the only part of his face visible above the mask, were trained on Stanton. “He’s been flailing around for most of the past three days. Gets pretty loud in there. He’s still saying
vooge vooge vooge
over and over.”
    “Saying
what
?” Stanton asked.
    “Sounds like
vooge
to me. Hell if I know what it means.”
    “I typed it in on Google and got nothing that made sense in any language,” Thane said.
    Mariano pulled the strings of his mask firmly behind his ears. “Hey, Doc, if you’re the expert, can I ask you a question about this?”
    Stanton glanced at Thane. “Of course.”
    “What this guy has,” the guard said. “It’s not contagious, is it?”
    “No, don’t worry,” Stanton said, following Thane into the room.
    “He’s got like six kids, I think,” Thane whispered once they were out of earshot. “He’s always talking about how he doesn’t want to pass on anything from here. I’ve never seen him without a mask.”
    Stanton pulled a fresh mask from a dispenser on the wall and fastened it to his face. “We should be following his lead,” he said, handing another mask to Thane. “Insomnia compromises the immune system, so we have to avoid infecting John Doe with a cold or anything else he won’t be able to fight off. Everyone needs masks and gloves when they go in. Post a sign on the door.”
    Stanton had seen worse patient rooms, but not in the United States. Room 621 contained two metal beds, cracked night tables, two orange chairs, and curtains with worn edges. Dispensers of Purell clung loosely to the wall, and there was water damage on the ceiling. Lying in the bed closest to the window was their John Doe: about five-foot-six, thin, with dark skin and long black hair that draped over his shoulders. His head was covered with tiny stickers, from which wires extended toward anEEG machine, measuring brain waves. The patient’s gown clung to him like damp tissue paper, and he was groaning softly.
    The doctors watched the patient tossing and turning. Stanton noted John Doe’s eye movements, the strange, staccato breathing, and the involuntary tremor in his hands. In Austria, Stanton had treated a woman with FFI who’d had to be chained to her bed because her tremor was so bad. By that time, her children were overcome by grief and helplessness and by the knowledge they might someday die the same way. It had been hard to watch.
    Thane bent down to flip the pillow beneath John Doe’s head. “How long can you live