The Body Human Read Online Free Page A

Not yet .” He hangs up. “Cam will hunt around and call back. Now will you put that stupid gun away, Elizabeth?”
    “You still don’t say thank you for anything.” The words just come out. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
    “To Cam, or to you for not shooting me?” He says it evenly, and the evenness is the only way I finally see how furious he is. People don’t order around Dr. Randy Satler at gunpoint. A part of my mind wonders why he doesn’t call security.
    I say, “All right, I’m here. Give me a dose of endozine , just in case.”
    He goes on staring at me with that same level, furious gaze. “Too late, Elizabeth.”
    “What do you mean, too late? Haven’t you got endo z ine ?”
    “Of course we do.” Suddenly he staggers slightly, puts out one hand behind him, and holds onto a table covered with glassware and papers.
    “Randy. You’re sick.”
    “I am. And not with anything endozine is going to cure. Ah, Elizabeth, why didn’t you just phone me? I’d have looked for Sean for you.”
    “Oh, right. Like you’ve been so interested and helpful in raising him.”
    “You never asked me.”
    I see that he means it. He really believes his total lack of contact with his son is my fault. I see that Randy gives only what he’s asked to. He waits, lordly, for people to plead for his help, beg for it, and then he gives it. If it suits him.
    I say, “I’ll bet anything your kids with your wife are turning out really scary.”
    The blood rushes to his face, and I know I guessed right. His blue eyes darken and he looks like Jack looks just b e fore Jack explodes. But Randy isn’t Jack. An explosion would be too clean for him. He says instead, “You were stupid to come here. Haven’t you been listening to the news?”
    I haven’t.
    “The CDC publicly announced just last night what medical personnel have seen for weeks. A virulent strain of staphylococcus aureus has incorporated endozine -resistant plasmids from enterococcus.” He pauses to catch his breath. “And pneumococcus may have done the same thing.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “It means, you stupid woman, that now there are highly contagious infections that we have no drugs to cure. No antibiotics at all, not even endozine . This staph is resistant to them all. And it can live everywhere.”
    I lower the gun. The empty parking lot. No security to summon. The man who wouldn’t get on the elevator. And Randy’s face. “And you’ve got it.”
    “We’ve all got it. Everyone…in the hospital. And for forcing your way in here, you probably do, too.”
    “You’re going to die,” I say, and it’s half a hope.
    And he smiles .
    He stands there in his white lab coat, sweating like a horse, barely able to stand up straight, almost shot by a woman he’d once abandoned pregnant, and he smiles. His blue eyes gleam. He looks like a picture I once saw in a book, back when I read a lot. It takes me a minute to r e member that it was my high school World History book. A picture of some general.
    “Everybody’s going to die eventually,” Randy says. “But not me right now. At least…I hope not.” Casually he crosses the floor toward me, and I step backward. He smiles again.
    “I’m not going to deliberately infect you, Elizabeth. I’m a doctor . I just want the gun.”
    “No.”
    “Have it your way. Look, how much do you know about the bubonic plague of the fourteenth century?”
    “Nothing,” I say, although I do. Why had I always acted stupider around Randy than I actually am?
    “Then it won’t mean anything to you to say that this mutated staph has at least that much potential”—again he paused and gulped air—“for rapid and fatal transmission. It flourishes everywhere. Even on doorknobs.”
    “So why the fuck are you smiling ?” Alexander. That was the picture of the general. Alexander the Great.
    “Because I…because the CDC distributed…I was on the national team to discover…” His face changes again. Goes even whiter. And he