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THE MONDAY MORNING meeting dealt with the practicalities, what correspondence needed to be sent out and a review of the previous week’s test results. Lucas and Thea had then retreated to their desks to ponder the less straightforward matters.
‘It’s puzzling.’ He was frowning, staring at the white-board on the wall, which listed all the people at the school who had tested positive.
He was in what Thea privately called ‘overview mode’. She was beginning to get used to his knack of pulling back from the personal, disregarding the individual and looking at the big picture. At first she’d thought it cold—but there was an obscure symmetry in the way that Lucas’s mind worked now, which she was still struggling to pin down.
‘I don’t know if I can help you there.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘What makes you think that?’
‘Because…I’m just a working doctor. I can’t see what you see in charts and paperwork.’
‘The chart’s meant to make it all simpler.’ He studied the complex maze of blobs for individuals and different coloured lines, representing contact. ‘I’ll agree that it really needs to be in 3D.’
Thea chuckled. 3D wasn’t going to help. ‘I meant that you seem to see trends and meanings. All I see is circles and lines.’
He shrugged. ‘Helps if you let your eyes go slightly out of focus when you look at it.’ He narrowed his eyes to demonstrate.
‘No. It helps if you have the ability to have a kind of detachment.’
‘Is that what you think?’ He jerked around to face her. It was obviously still something of a sore point in Lucas’s eyes. ‘That I’m detached?’
‘That you have the ability to step back and look at the whole problem, instead of just parts of it. I don’t have that gift.’
‘You have the gift of keeping me honest. You always did.’ His eyes seemed to be seeing someone else. The Thea he’d first met maybe.
‘You never needed to be kept honest, Lucas. You were always an idealist.’ Thea wondered if she’d get the same answer that he’d given before. ‘I got real.’
‘If you want to change the world, it helps if you know the right strings to pull.’ He sighed, as if something had been lost. Shook his head slightly, as if he’d decided that it was beyond his reach. ‘Returning to the matter in hand, I can’t see which strings to pull here.’
Thea followed his gaze, looking at the chart again. ‘Okay, so one active case, that’s Derek. And eight probable latent cases, all of whom had regular contact with him.’
‘And where did Derek get it from? We’ve confirmed that this is the same strain as the Birmingham outbreak.’
‘Birmingham’s not so far. People travel between there and here all the time.’
‘True, but that’s not the point. Which person in particular? I’ve been through all the contact information from the cases up there, and I can’t find anything that links with Derek.’
‘So there’s someone else out there that we haven’t found yet who gave it to Derek. And he gave it to these new cases at the school.’
‘Maybe. But just because the new cases are latent, it doesn’t mean that they haven’t had the infection for as long as Derek—just that he developed active TB and they didn’t. Could be that there’s another contact for one of the latent cases, who also gave it to Derek.’
‘Hmm. It’s a lot more difficult with these long timescales. If you get a cold you can be pretty sure that it’s the person who sneezed on you last week who gave it to you.’
He laughed. ‘Maybe. Or maybe that’s just our perception.’
‘Don’t start, Lucas, it’s already complicated enough. So what do we do now?’
His eyes took on the bright gleam that was Lucas’s characteristic response to a challenge. ‘We try harder.’
* * *
Trying harder didn’t yield any immediate results, apart from allowing them to inform two of the pupils and their families that, in the light of further tests, they were free of any infection. Which left six people, who had to be advised and reassured, and for whom an individually tailored drug regime had to be structured. It was the start of long and arduous treatment and the TB nurses would need to provide support all the way.
‘You’ve seen Isobel?’ Lucas arrived at the hospital late on Friday afternoon, after being called to a meeting elsewhere.
‘Yes, I said I’d go with her to see Maggie as she didn’t want to go on her own. It was a good session. Maggie’s doing what she can to provide emotional and practical support for Isobel and her mother.’
‘But you’ll be seeing her again.’ Lucas grinned at her. He already knew the answer to that.
