Germ

"An ambulance is bringing in a gunshot victim now," the nurse explained. "They called it in a few minutes ago. Should be here in about two minutes."

"An ambulance?" She was having trouble thinking.

"Wait here," the nurse said sternly and darted away. Almost immediately she started talking again, but not to Julia.

"Dr. Parker. You got my page," she said to a man coming down the hall.

Everything about the man commanded attention. An unbuttoned white smock blew back under his arms, revealing immaculately tailored clothes: a gray dress shirt with subtle black and purple pinstripes and pleated slacks the color of ancient tombstones. Dishwater blond hair, trendily coiffed long on top and short on the sides, swept back from a broad forehead. Bushy eyebrows rode a strong crest above squinting gray eyes. His nose, straight but with a faint left-ward bend at the tip, fit his face well. His stride was long, his gait confident.

The nurse reached him and turned to escort him toward a door next to one of the treatment rooms, apprising him of the situation as they walked. The pace of her speech had accelerated dramatically. "The trauma team's tied up in 1 with a boy who fell off his bike and suffered deep head lacerations and a concussion. Dr. Bridges is in 3 with a knife wound—"

"Somebody finally stabbed Dr. Bridges?" asked the man called Dr. Parker. His voice was deep but somehow soft, as if he'd considered each word and deemed it too important to rush or abuse. In such solemn surroundings, it took Julia a few seconds to realize that the physician was joking, despite the gravity in his tone and the scowl on his face.

The nurse giggled dutifully, then continued: "I thought you were still in the hospital. We have a GSW en route. Extensive chest trauma."

Gunshot wound! She's talking about Goody!

"The GSW is to the head, neck, chest, and abdomen," the nurse explained. "ETA any second. He's been boarded, intubated, and they got in two large-bore peripheral IVs—"

The two walked through a windowed door across from the nurses' station. A hydraulic closing mechanism hissed as it pulled the door shut behind them.

The wound sounded more severe than Goody had let on over the phone. And why an ambulance? He would have told her if the injury was that debilitating.

Julia looked through the door's window. The nurse was talking animatedly while the doctor slipped on green latex gloves. She stepped in. The doctor saw her and flashed a winning and obviously well-rehearsed smile.

The nurse made a beeline for her: "You can't come in here. You're—"

"I just talked to him," Julia said to the doctor, sidestepping the nurse. "He said he was hurt bad, but not—"

The nurse was insistent. "Dr. Parker, the patient's GCS is eight."

Julia turned to her. "What's that mean, GCS? Eight?"

Dr. Parker came up behind her and touched her arm. "It means he's verbally nonresponsive, close to comatose. Not a good sign, but we'll see when he comes in. I'm Dr. Parker, Allen Parker."

The nurse walked up with a glove stretched open and ready for him to insert his hand.

"Julia Matheson," Julia answered. She stuck her hand into her jacket pocket for her CDC-LED identification when a warbling siren reached her. It quickly rose in volume. Julia stepped into the hall.

Within seconds, an ambulance braked hard outside. Car doors slammed, and the automatic doors of the emergency entrance slid open on cue. Two uniformed EMTs, like a toboggan team at the top of a run, bounded noisily into Erlanger's emergency department pushing a gurney. One attendant held a clear plastic bag of fluid over the patient. The other pressed his hands against the patient's wounds, afraid, it seemed to Julia, of what might come out if he didn't. A steady stream of blood poured off the gurney, leaving a thick trail in its wake.

"Roll 'im in 2!" the nurse yelled, coming around Julia, pointing at the portal where open double doors revealed a bright, immaculate room waiting to be bloodied. Its tiled floor and walls, the grated floor drain, the smooth metal surfaces of the equipment—all betrayed the gorefest the room was designed to accommodate and contain.

Julia turned from it and rushed to meet the stretcher, anxious to let Goody know she was there for him. But the body on the gurney wasn't Goody—it couldn't be. It was drenched in red. Clothes and flesh hung in strips. She saw an arm that looked filleted. The part of the face she could see was . . . gone. She ran up to the gurney, in front of the attendant holding the bag. He crashed into her, and the whole production stopped.

"Hey!" the attendant yelled.

She leaned over the body, straining to see more of the face. An eye fluttered open, stared at her, closed again.

It was Goody.

She nearly screamed. Her hand clamped over her mouth. She felt her body go limp, as though someone had popped her spirit the way you pop a balloon.