The Body Human Read Online Free PDF Page A

will be.”
    I snap, “From the staph germs or from the cure?”
    “Both.”
    “You want to make me sicker. With two bacteria. And hope one will kill the other.”
    “Not hope. I know . I actually saw…it on the electrom i crograph …” His eyes roll, refocus. “…could package just the lethal plasmid on a transpon if we had time…no time. Has to be the whole bacteria.” And then, stronger, “The CDC team is working on it. But I actually caught it on the electromicrograph !”
    I say, before I know I’m going to, “Stop congratulating yourself and give me the syringe. Before you die.”
    I move across the floor toward him, put my arms around him to prop him in a sitting position against the table leg. His whole body feels on fire. But somehow he keeps his hands steady as he injects the syringe into the inside of my elbow. While it drains sickness into me I say, “You never actually wanted me, did you, Randy? Even before Sean?”
    “No,” he says. “Not really.” He drops the syringe.
    I bend my arm. “You’re a rotten human being. All you care about is yourself and your work.”
    He smiles the same cold smile. “So? My work is what matters. In a larger sense than you could possibly imagine. You were always a weak sentimentalist, Elizabeth. Now, go home.”
    “Go home ? But you said…”
    “I said you’d infect everyone. And you will—with the bacteria that attacks staph. It should cause only a fairly mild illness. Jenner…smallpox…”
    “But you said I have the mutated staph, too!”
    “You almost certainly do. Yes…And so will everyone else, before long. Deaths…in New York State alone…passed one million this morning. Six and a half percent of the…the population…Did you really think you could hide on your side of…the…river…”
    “Randy!”
    “Go…home.”
    I strip off his lab coat and wad it up for a pillow, bring more ice from the refrigerator, try to get him to drink some water.
    “Go…home. Kiss everybody.” He smiles to himself, and starts to shake with fever. His eyes close.
    I stand up again. Should I go? Stay? If I could find someone in the hospital to take care of him—
    The phone rings. I seize it. “Hello? Hello?”
    “Randy? Excuse me, can I talk to Dr. Satler ? This is Cameron Witt.”
    I try to sound professional. “Dr. Satler can’t come to the phone right now. But if you’re calling about Sean Pulaski, Dr. Satler asked me to take the message.”
    “I don’t…oh, all right. Just tell Randy the Pulaski boy is with Richard and Sylvia James. He’ll understand.” The line clicks.
    I replace the receiver and stare at Randy, fighting for breath on the floor, his face as gray as Sean’s when Sean realized it was murder he’d gotten involved with. No, not as gray. Because Sean had been terrified, and Randy is only sick.
    My work is what matters .
    But how had Sean known to go to Sylvia? Even if he knew from Ceci who was on the other side, how did he know which people would hide him, would protect him when I could not, Jack could not? Sylvia-and-Elizabeth. How much did Sean actually know about the past I’d tried so hard to keep from touching him?
    I reach the elevator, my finger almost touching the button, when the first explosion rocks the hospital.
    It’s in the west wing. Through the windows opposite the elevator banks I see windows in the far end of the building explode outward. Thick greasy black smoke billows out the holes. Alarms begin to screech.
    Don’t touch the elevators. Instructions remembered from high school, from grade-school fire drills. I race along the hall to the fire stairs. What if they put a bomb in the stairwell? What if who put a bomb in the stairwell? A lot of people in dark clothing cross the back lawn and quietly enter Dan and Ceci’s house next door, carrying bulky packages wrapped in black cloth.
    A last glimpse through a window by the door to the fire stairs. People are running out of the building, not many, but the ones