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Grace grabbed the little hand in hers, thought about it for two seconds then lifted the toddler into her arms. The child looked around two and a half and wasn’t in the least bit worried about being in the arms of a perfect stranger.
Donovan had moved into full team-leader mode. The chaos didn’t seem to worry him at all—in fact, he might even be thriving on it.
‘John, I want you to find who is in charge of finding our primary source and co-ordinate with them. We need environmental controls in place to stop the spread of disease.’ John nodded as if this were an everyday request and disappeared into the melee of people. ‘David, set up communications with our labs and find out who is charge of the lab facilities here. I need you to start doing some provisional testing to move things along.’ He spun round and caught sight of Grace, who had perched the toddler on the reception desk. ‘Grace, what are you doing?’
‘It seems like I’m looking after a lost child.’
He wrinkled his nose and shook his head. ‘Hold on.’ He walked over to the desk and grabbed the Tannoy system. ‘Anyone lost a little boy, around two years old? Brown hair, red T-shirt.’ His voice boomed around the waiting room and crowded ER. Heads turned from every direction. Donovan’s wasn’t a voice to ignore.
There was a shriek from the corner, where a woman was waiting with another child in her arms. ‘Mason!’ she yelled, as she pushed her way through the crowd with one arm outstretched and the other clamped around the other child. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t even notice he’d vanished.’ She promptly burst into tears as Grace handed the little boy over.
‘Don’t worry, he’s fine and it’s bedlam in here.’ She squinted at the other child, who was older but whimpering and lethargic in his mother’s arms, with a distinct tinge of yellow to his skin.
She glanced at Donovan but didn’t wait for his response and bent down, ‘Are you waiting for someone to see your son?
The woman nodded. ‘We’ve been waiting for three hours.’
Grace did the sums in her head. It was after midnight. This woman had been here since nine p.m. with a sick kid. Not good.
She smiled. ‘Okay, I’m going to show you to a cubicle then have a look at your son. Does he attend kindergarten? Was he on the trip the other day?’
Donovan seemed to be talking to three people at once, but he gave her a little nod and pointed her in the direction of an empty cubicle. Grace didn’t need to take instruction from him; she knew exactly what she should be doing. The staff around here obviously couldn’t cope with the influx of patients and would need the assistance of the DPA staff. She might not be a paediatrician but she was an experienced doctor and could do a basic assessment on a kid.
She dragged her suitcase behind her and dumped it in a corner. She could retrieve it later. Right now, she had a job to do.
The assessment took minutes. She charted the little boy’s obs, took some bloods, set up an IV line and ordered some further tests.
By the time she joined Donovan a few minutes later he’d managed to acquire himself a clipboard, which he handed to her.
‘Everything okay?’
She nodded. ‘I’m pretty sure he’s going to be another case. He’s five and was on the cave trip with the kindergarten class and is clinically dehydrated and showing signs of jaundice.’
She looked around. ‘Is there somewhere we can admit him?’
Donovan held up his hands. ‘Right now, that’s the million-dollar question. I’ve just spoken to the hospital director. He looks as if he’s ready to have a heart attack. They are reorganising some patient areas to try and give us two ward areas for patients who are affected.’
‘Do you have a number?’
The lines in his forehead seemed to have deepened in the last few minutes. ‘Yeah, around thirty-seven. Thirty-eight if we count your latest. I’ve contacted the DPA for another team with some specialist paediatric staff. It’ll be around twelve hours before they can get here, though.’
Grace understood. Until the rest of the team arrived, they were it. ‘I’ll manage,’ she said swiftly. ‘I can do a basic assessment and prescribe drugs and put in IVs for kids.’
Donovan was looking at her with those blue eyes. He should look tired because it was late. But he didn’t. Instead, he looked invigorated. She’d heard that about him. About how he thrived on his job. Thrived on the pressure of it all.
She had to admit to feeling a little buzz herself on this first field assignment. But was the buzz from the job or from being around Donovan? The man was infectious. She liked the way that energy radiated from him. She liked the way his brain never seemed to stop thinking about the next task. Did he even have an off switch?
She looked at the list of names he’d given her. ‘What do you want me to do with these?’
His voice was serious. ‘I realise this is your first assignment, but I really need you to hit the ground running. You don’t need to work up backgrounds or histories on any of the patients—John will be doing that. I need to check they’ve had all the bloodwork they should have, make sure the samples get sent to David at the lab, and keep an overall note on the condition of the patients. We need to keep on top of things here. The situation could become very volatile. Paediatric patients can deteriorate very quickly—we’ve already lost one older patient—and I’m assuming most people don’t know that. If they did, we’d have a whole host of hysterical parents to deal with.’
His eyes swept around the room. ‘This hospital only has sixty beds. It’s usually only used for basic surgeries and medical complaints. Up until today there were only five paediatric beds. Anything major usually gets transferred to Panama City. If we have any kids that need ITU facilities, we’ll need to transfer them.’
Grace nodded. She understood how serious the situation was, and how easily it could get out of control. For the next twelve hours Donovan needed a team he could rely on. It didn’t matter that her stomach was currently churning. It didn’t matter that she’d doubted for a few seconds if she could actually get the IV into the five-year-old’s tiny vein. One look at that mother’s face had given her all the determination she needed.
It was strange. Around twenty minutes ago all she’d wanted to do was drag her case somewhere, find her pyjamas and lie down for half an hour. She’d hit that point—the one that usually hit medics in the early hours, when it seemed as if everyone in the world was sleeping but them and they would kill for a bed. But the adrenaline surge had hit since then. Things were looking up. Maybe if she could grab some food she would get her second wind.
She took the clipboard and swallowed hard. So many names, so much information to gather. She gave him her best smile. ‘This will be fine, Donovan. I’ll give you a shout if I run into any problems.’
He gave her a tight-lipped smile. Maybe not. Looked like she’d better deal with any problems herself. She pressed the clipboard to her chest. ‘See you soon.’ She kept the smile plastered on her face as she walked down the corridor. She could almost feel his eyes drilling a hole into her back.
She could do this. She could. Sleep was for amateurs.
* * *
He was watching her again. Watching the swing of her hips in that red dress. Darn it. He needed to tell her to change into a pair of scrubs. That way most of her curves would be hidden beneath the pale green material and he could concentrate on the things he needed to.
The Marburg Virus outbreak was much worse than first expected. One fatality already and a whole host of possibilities with a class of kindergarten kids all exposed. He’d already reported to Callum Ferguson, who was orga
nising another team to come and assist. In the meantime, he had to try and get a handle on how to treat these patients and stop the spread of the virus. This place was a logistical nightmare. The lab facilities were basic. The staff were already run off their feet. Judging by the number of people in the ER they were going to run out of beds soon. The hospital facilities were fair, but there were no specialist facilities for any of the kids if their conditions deteriorated quickly.
Above all, he needed to communicate with the staff who were here. And he needed to do it quickly to make sure everyone was working from the same page.
John appeared at his side. ‘We need to have a briefing for staff. Can you collect all the available staff on duty and we’ll give them an overview of what we’re dealing with and how they can contain the risk and stay safe?’
John moved quickly. He was used to this, and he was a professional. Donovan could rely on him.
In around ten minutes the staff were gathered in one of the large nearby treatment rooms. There were around twenty of them—some nurses, some care assistants, two onsite doctors, admin staff and the hospital director. Most of them looked anxious and at least one woman was heavily pregnant.
Donovan stood in the doorway. ‘Hi, folks. Thanks for stopping for a few moments. I’m Donovan Reid, a team leader at the Disease Prevention Agency. David Coles is working in your lab, John here will be doing case histories and Grace Barclay, one of our doctors, will be reviewing the patients and looking at symptom control.
‘Most of you already know that we suspect we’re dealing with the Marburg virus. We’ve had two confirmed laboratory cases and we’re waiting for the results of others. Marburg virus can also be called Marburg haemorrhagic fever. We treat it the same way we treat other viral haemorrhagic fevers. Most patients are infected at source.’ He glanced over at John. ‘We’re still establishing where that it is, but at the moment we suspect it’s some bat caves in the local state park. Previous sources of infection for this virus have been African fruit bats.’ All eyes in the room were watching him. He wanted to make this brief but comprehensible.
