Executive orders - Tom Clancy [539]
Grumbles about the federally imposed travel restrictions died the same day as the golfer in Texas and the recreational vehicle dealer in Maryland. Interpersonal contact, which had first been cut way back, then started to grow again, was restricted to the family-member level. People lived on telephones now. Long-distance lines were jammed with calls to ascertain the well-being of relatives and friends, to the point that AT&T, MCI, and the rest ran commercial messages requesting that such calls be kept short, and special-access lines were set aside for government and medical use. There was a true national panic now, though it was a quiet, personal one. There were no public demonstrations. Traffic on the streets was virtually nil in the major cities. People even stopped heading for supermarkets, and instead stayed at home, living out of cans or freezers for the time being.
Reporters, still moving around with their mobile cameras, reported on all that, and in doing so, they both increased the degree of tension, and contributed to its solution.
IT'S WORKING, GENERAL Pickett said over the phone to his former subordinate in Baltimore.
Where are you, John? Alexandre asked.
Dallas. It's working, Colonel. I need you to do something.
What's that?
Stop playing practitioner. You have residents to do that. I have a working group at Walter Reed. Get the hell over there. You're too big an asset on the theoretical side to waste in a Racal suit doing sticks, Alex.
John, this is my department now, and I have to lead my troops. It was a lesson well remembered from his time in green suits.
Fine, your people know you care, Colonel. Now you can put the damned rifle down and start thinking like a goddamned commander. This battle's not going to be won in hospitals, is it? Pickett asked more reasonably. I have transport waiting for you. There should be a Hummer downstairs to bring you into Reed. Want me to reactivate you and make it an order?
And he could do that, Alexandre knew. Give me half an hour. The associate professor hung up the phone and looked down the corridor. Another body bag was being carried out of a room by some orderlies in plastic suits. There was a pride in being here. Even though he was losing patients and would lose more, he was here, being a doctor, doing his best, showing his staff that, yes, he was one of them, ministering to the sick, taking his chances in accordance with the oath he'd sworn at the age of twenty-six. When this was over, the entire team would look back on this with a feeling of solidarity. As horrible as it had been, they'd done the job.
Damn, he swore. John Pickett was right. The battle was being fought here, but it wouldn't be won here. He told his chief assistant that he was heading down to the next floor, which was being run by Dean James.
There was an interesting case there. Female, thirty-nine, admitted two days earlier. Her common-law significant other was dying, and she was distraught, and her blood showed Ebola antibodies, and she'd presented the classic flu symptoms, but the disease hadn't gone further. It had, in fact, seemed to stop.
What gives with this one? Cathy Ryan was speculating with Dean James.
Don't knock it, Cath, he responded tiredly.
I'm not, Dave, but I want to know why. I interviewed her myself. She slept in the same bed with him two days before she brought him in-
Did they have sex? Alex asked, entering the conversation.
No, Alex, they didn't. I asked that. He didn't feel well enough. I think this one's going to survive. And that was a first for Baltimore.
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