“God, what now?” asked Kennedy.
“We lost four patients last night, Kennedy. We need help. I’ve already called on Riley, Suzette, Gabi, and the entire senior crew to help. But we need more help,” said the woman.
“Layla, have you ever seen anything like this?” asked Virginia.
Layla, formerly Hala, had been raised in the middle east by her grandfather. She’d seen more than her fair share of horrors, disease, and illnesses that couldn’t be cured.
Staring at her colleagues, she wondered if this could be related at all.
“Maybe. Maybe once,” she said calmly. “If it’s what I think it is, there will be more that die before we can get this under control.” Kennedy frowned at the other women, staring at the chaos of the waiting room.
“Great.”
“We need to find patient zero. Who was the first person to exhibit symptoms, where were they, had they traveled, all the questions that we need answered. This could be as simple as a tourist who came through here and left us all a gift in New Orleans,” said Layla.
“Tell the team we need a group to head to the hospitals. Find out who the first patient was that was seen with these symptoms. How far back was it? And most importantly, did the patient survive?” said Layla.
“I’m going to let you lead this,” said Kennedy. “I’ll need for you to compare this to what you’ve seen before. Is it airborne or is this viral?”
“I don’t think we ever knew. It was there one day and gone the next,” said Layla.
“Damn. There has to be an explanation for this,” said Kennedy.
“I created a standard list of questions we need answered from the patients,” said Layla. “If we can all interview each of the patients as they come in, we might be able to trace this back somehow.”
“Then let’s get started,” said Ambry. “All of the nurses are back on staff, Lena, Ajei, Doc, Wilson, Claudette, Cruz, everyone. If we need more, we’ll put out a notification that we need temporary support.”
One by one, they interviewed the patients that were in the waiting room, as well as those already in the beds. The questions were the same for everyone.
Have you traveled out of the country in the last six weeks? If so, were you on a farm or in the city?
Have you eaten anything unusual in the last six weeks?
When did your symptoms first appear? What were you doing in the days prior to the symptoms emerging?
Do you remember shopping or eating near someone with a severe cough or someone who appeared to be sick?
What was the order of the appearance of your symptoms? Was it fever first? Gastrointestinal first?
On and on the questions persisted, hoping to be able to find a common thread. Except there wasn’t one. Not one single common thread.
The patients were from all over the New Orleans area. One or two had been to the same restaurant or grocery store but it wasn’t enough to create a clear connection. Not one patient had been out of the country, or for that matter, even out of the state.
There appeared to be no connection whatsoever. None.
“Kennedy? Layla? Can we come in?” asked Nine and Gaspar.
The women looked completely exhausted and defeated. They were lying on the sofas in the staff lounge, just taking a moment for themselves.
“Of course,” said Kennedy. “Were you able to find anything?”
“Nothing, honey. There isn’t one similarity to any of those people out there. I think we need to go bigger,” said Nine.
“How do we do that? We’re struggling just controlling the symptoms in front of us. I don’t even know if we should be letting these people back out into the general population. Even when they’re feeling better, are they really better?”
“You’ll figure this out,” said Gaspar. “You are all brilliant and you’ll figure this out.” Cruz walked into the room frowning and Kennedy knew.
“We lost another two. Fifty-one-year-old man and seventeen-year-old girl. No connections.”
