As Jack rounded the final corner, it was immediately apparent that things were abnormal at the hospital. Several wooden police sawhorses stood on the sidewalk, and two New York City uniformed policemen lounged on either side of the main door. Jack stopped to watch them for a moment, since they seemed to be spending more time talking with each other than anything else. Feeling confused about their role, Jack went up to them and asked.
“We were supposed to discourage people from going into the hospital, one officer said. “There was some kind of epidemic in there, but they think it’s under control.”
“We’re really here more for crowd control,” the other officer admitted. “They were expecting trouble earlier when they were toying with the idea of quarantining the facility, but things have settled down.”
“For that we can all be thankful,” Jack said. He started forward, but one of the officers restrained him.
“You sure you want to go in?” he asked.
“Afraid so,” Jack said.
The officer shrugged and let Jack pass.
The minute Jack entered through the door he was confronted by a uniformed hospital security officer wearing a surgical mask.
“I’m sorry,” the officer said. “No visitors today.”
Jack pulled out his medical examiner’s badge.
“Sorry, Doctor,” the officer said. He stepped aside.
Although calm outside, the inside of the hospital was still in a minor furor. The lobby was filled with people. What gave the scene a surrealistic aura was that everyone was wearing a mask.
With the sudden cessation of new meningococcal cases some twelve hours earlier, Jack was reasonably confident that a mask was superfluous. Yet he wanted one, not so much for protection as for disguise. He asked the security officer if they were available. He was directed to the unmanned information desk, where he found several boxes. Jack took one out and put it on.
Next he located the doctors’ coatroom. He entered when one of the staff doctors was exiting. Inside he took off his bomber jacket and searched for an appropriately sized long white coat. When he found one, he put it on, then returned to the lobby.
Jack’s destination was central supply. He felt that if he was to learn anything on this visit, it would be there. He got off the elevator on the third floor and was impressed with how much less patient traffic there was than there had been on his visit the previous Thursday. A glance through the glass portal on the OR suite doors told him why. Apparently the OR’s had been temporarily shut down. With some knowledge of hospital cash flow, Jack surmised that AmeriCare must be having a financial stroke.
Jack pushed through the swinging doors into central supply. Even there the level of activity was a quarter of what it had been on his first visit. He only saw two women near the end of one of the long aisles between the floor-to-ceiling shelving. Like everyone else he’d seen so far, they were wearing masks. Obviously the hospital was taking this last outbreak particularly seriously.
Avoiding the aisle with the women, Jack set off for Gladys Zarelli’s office. She’d been receptive on his first visit, and she was the supervisor.
Jack couldn’t think of a better person with whom to talk.
As he walked through the department, Jack eyed the myriad hospital supplies and equipment stacked on the shelves. Seeing such a profusion of items made him wonder if there had been anything unique sent from central supply to the index cases. It was an interesting thought, he reasoned, but he couldn’t imagine how it would matter. There was still the question of how the women in central supply could have come in contact with the patient and the infecting bacteria. As he’d been told, the employees rarely, if ever, even saw a patient.
Jack found Gladys in her office. She was on the phone, but when she saw him standing at her door, she motioned exuberantly for him to come in. Jack sat down on a straight-back chair opposite her narrow desk.
With the size of the office, he could not help overhearing both sides of Gladys’s conversation. As he might have imagined, she was busy recruiting.