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wasn’t leaving until she had taken care of her.
    Out of breath and in a cold sweat, Lisbeth skidded around the corner. Her patient’s worried husband paced outside the room from which medical personnel silently filed out. He jostled a crying toddler. “Dr. Hastings, what’s going on?”
    “I promise I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.” Lisbeth shot past him and burst into the silence that consumes a room where death is the victor. “What happened, Nelda?”
    “Convulsions.” The charge nurse handed Lisbeth fresh gloves, then quietly started closing drawers on the red crash cart.
    Lisbeth plowed through the litter left by the team of airwayspecialists, nurses, and ICU attendings. During her residency, she’d assisted on hundreds of Code Blues. Heroic measures to prolong a life always inflicted unavoidable trauma on the crashing patient. Yet, when she reached the still body lying on the bed, she couldn’t help but gasp at her patient’s total loss of dignity.
    Damp, blond strands stuck to the woman’s face. Red-rimmed eyes. Blue lips. Fiery pustules that made her look like some kind of distorted monster. Her hands limp as if life had slipped through her fingers. Lines of all sorts tethered her rigid frame to silent machines. And most disconcerting of all: she reeked of an odor similar to plucked chicken feathers.
    Two days ago, this perfectly healthy woman, her beautiful two-year-old, and her handsome husband were enjoying Disney World when she suddenly spiked a fever. A measles diagnosis meant this young mother was contagious the day her family flew home from Orlando, the three days they were in the theme park before her rash appeared, and on the initial trip to their vacation destination. Lisbeth could not let herself think about how many lives this woman had touched between Dallas and Florida in the past six days or she’d lose what was left of the sandwich she’d choked down ten hours ago.
    Lisbeth brushed a strand of hair from the woman’s forehead. Body still warm but slowly cooling. She pulled a penlight from her pocket and flicked the beam across glassy eyes. Foolish, she knew, but she wanted a reaction, needed this young wife and mother to wake up and prove her theory wrong. Any trace of the former eye color had been pushed away by the large, black holes of pupils blown beyond repair. Lisbeth clicked off the pen.
    “Dr. Hastings?” Nelda maneuvered around the equipment and handed her the chart. “You want to tell the husband?”
    “Tell him what? ‘Merry Christmas, and oh, by the way, you’re a single father now’? ” Powerlessness shook her insides. “It’s hardenough to tell someone their spouse died, but when it might have been prevented, what do you say?”
    Two decades without a single case of measles reported in Texas. Now this was the third death presenting similar symptoms in the past twenty-four hours. The first two had been kids. Their deaths she could attribute to the increasing fear surrounding the safety of vaccinations or the possibility they had medical conditions that prevented inoculations. But how had this woman slipped through the immunization cracks?
    “I’m sorry, Nelda. It’s not your fault.” She took a step back from the bed. “Drop your gown and gloves on the floor. Cordon off this room.”
    “Do we need to quarantine the father and daughter?”
    Lisbeth nodded. “And get their shot records, including those of the deceased.” Her mind double-timed a new plan. “And contact the CDC.” The tiled walls seemed to be closing in, squeezing the breath from her chest. She would not let this happen again. “We could have an outbreak on our hands.”
    *   *   *
    LISBETH WHIPPED her rusty, old Toyota into the parking garage of her downtown loft apartment. She killed the engine, but its usual hiss and bang continued. She dropped her head onto the steering wheel. She was only a year younger than the mother who’d died, but failing to prevent these senseless