It was a mistake many more experienced doctors--- unfamiliar with virology--- had made before and would make again, and Lassa usually killed even with the best treatment. There was no cure. But he knew he had been arrogant, so full of himself that he had not called for help until too late. He blamed himself. So much so that he had pressured the army to assign him to Fort Detrick to become an expert in virology and microbiology.
There, after he really understood the rarity of Lassa compared to malaria, he finally accepted his error as a risk of field medicine in distant and unfamiliar places. But the major had been Randi Russell's fiance, and Randi had never forgiven Smith, never stopped blaming him for his death. Now he had to tell her he had killed another person she loved.
He slumped back onto the couch.
Sophia. Soph. He had killed her. Darling Sophia. They would marry in the spring, but she was dead. He should never have brought her to Detrick. Never!
"Colonel Smith?"
Smith heard the voice as if from under miles of water at the bottom of a murky lagoon. He saw a shape. Then a face. And burst through the surface to blink in the hard light.
"Smith? Are you all right?" Brigadier General Kielburger stood over him.
Then it struck him and left him chilled to the marrow. Sophia was dead.
He sat up. "I have to be there at the autopsy! If---"
"Relax. They haven't started yet."
Smith glared. "Why the hell wasn't I told about this new virus? You knew damn well where I was."
"Don't use that tone with me, Colonel! You weren't contacted at first because the matter didn't seem urgent--- a single soldier in California. By the time the two other cases were reported, you were due home in a little over a day anyway. If you'd returned when your orders instructed, you would have known. And perhaps---"
Smith's stomach clenched into an enormous fist, and his hands followed suit. Was Kielburger suggesting he might have saved Sophia had he been here? Then he slumped back. He did not need the general to do what he was already doing himself. Over and over as he sat in the dawn waiting room he blamed himself.
He stood up abruptly. "I have to make a call."
He walked to the telephone near the elevators and dialed Randi Russell's home. After two rings the machine picked up, and he heard her precise, get-to-the-point voice: "Randi Russell. Can't talk now. After the beep, leave a message.... Thanks."
That "thanks" came grudgingly, as if an inner voice had told her to not be all business all the time. That was Randi.
He dialed her office at the Foreign Affairs Inquiries Institute, an international think tank. This message was even crisper: "Russell. Leave a message." No thanks this time, not even as an afterthought.
Bitterly, he considered leaving the same kind of message: "Smith here. Bad news. Sophia's dead. Sorry."
But he simply hung up. There was no way he could leave a death message. He would have to keep trying to reach her, no matter how much it hurt. If he could not get her by tomorrow, he would tell her boss what had happened and ask him or her to have Randi call him. What else could he do?
Randi had always been a sometime thing, frequently away on long business trips. She saw Sophia rarely. After he and Sophia grew close, Randi seldom called and never came around.
Back in the waiting room, he found Kielburger impatiently swinging a knife-creased uniform leg and polished boot.
Smith dropped into a chair beside the general. "Tell me about this virus. Where did it break out? What kind is it? Another hemorrhagic like Machupo?"
"Yes to all of that, and no to all of that," Kielburger told him. "Major Keith Anderson died Friday evening out in Fort Irwin of acute respiratory distress syndrome, but it was not like any ARDS we'd ever seen. There was massive hemorrhaging from the lungs, and blood in the chest cavity. The Pentagon alerted us, and we got blood and tissue samples early Saturday morning. By then two other deaths had occurred in Atlanta and Boston. You weren't here, so I put Dr. Russell in charge, and the team worked around the clock. When we did the DNA restriction map, it turned out to be unlike any known virus. It failed to react to any of the antibody samples we had for any virus. I decided to bring in CDC and the other