Friday August 16
Grand Ballroom, The Plantation, Atlanta Georgia
Jennifer O’Neale sat uncomfortably at the table. She looked around the room searching in vain for a familiar face in the sea of strangers. She was thankful that she sat about as far away from the dais as possible without being in the kitchen. At this point, she would have gladly given up her place and retreat to anonymity. What had compelled her to accept the invitation to come here tonight? She could have resorted to any number of excuses, most of which would be true about just having moved Atlanta, boxes that needed to be unpacked, and exhaustion from the cross-country plane ride.
Logic had lost out to curiosity as she had jumped at the opportunity to see so many people that she knew of only by reputation. Of course, the problem with seeing people in a setting like this was that it was all too likely that you would end up meeting some of them. She was not a neophyte and had the appropriate initials prominently displayed on her nametag. While she had struggled with the boards exams to earn her medical license, ultimately, she had passed the exam and virtually no one would ever know what the final score was. To the outside world, she appeared competent having graduated from a prestigious medical school and excelled in her pediatric internship. Still her confidence in her own abilities wavered as she expected at any moment someone would come up to her and begin quizzing her over a potential diagnosis of some exotic disease. Tonight she felt as if she were sitting at the kids table at Thanksgiving dinner. The grownups were the famous names, since she had yet to make the connection to identify their faces, the leadership in her division at the Centers for Disease Control, research scientists waiting to receive their first, or in some cases second, Nobel Prize, or multi-billionaires from pharmaceutical companies.
Jennifer had been in Atlanta less than twenty-four hours and was living out of suitcase since everything she owned was still in an overwhelming mountain of heavy-taped boxes, all marked fragile, and in the second bedroom of the apartment she had seen for the first time the previous night. Any opportunity to get to know anyone in her division on her first day was blocked by the need to dot every “i” and cross every “t” on pages upon pages of forms documenting her past life and the beginning of her two-year assignment as a field officer in the Epidemiology Intelligence Service.
The meal had been unbelievable, authentic southern cooking with an amazing zest of flavor. She imagined that at some point in the future, most likely distant future, she would be able to pay for a dinner like this on her own. Tonight however, she was here as a guest invited solely because of her newly appointed position in infectious diseases – influenza team. She had been worried about accepting the invitation to the free dinner because of the government prohibition at accepting gifts in her official capacity, as if anything that she had done that day have been more official than signing her name enough times to aggravate her carpal tunnel.
She had even turned down the first invitation to dinner thinking that it was some type of hazing test to determine if she had the ethical backbone to serve as an EIS officer. It was only after much reassuring from Robert that the request had come personally from Dr. Norman Frederickson, the team leader and that any refusal would be an outright insult to the honoree, the team, the infectious disease branch, and the CDC. Given the level of effort that Robert made in convincing her to attend the dinner she would not have been surprised if he had added God and country as well. It did not seem that all of this was possible, but since her only contact with Dr. Frederickson had been over the phone before accepting her position, she was not sure what to believe. Her continued reluctance at accepting the invitation seemed to push the exuberant administrative assistant into an even more frenzied state, and rather than trigger a premature heart attack she had relented.
Even now as waiters cleared the tables and the evening almost over, Robert was bouncing around the room in constant motion. To a casual observer he appeared to be in his late twenties but his weight, which bordered on gross obesity, made him seem much older. As Jennifer watched his erratic movements, she switched automatically from a casual observer into a medical professional. He appeared sweaty and the normal reddish tinge to his face had turned to an ashen bluish hue. The room was full of physicians but no one else seemed to notice his distress. She may not be the smartest person in the room, but she knew when to trust her instincts.
As Robert came racing through the room toward the door to the lobby immediately behind her table she rose to assist him. “Are you alright?” she asked in genuine concern.
His momentum continued to carry him forward as his eyes lazily gazed toward her without recognition. Jennifer stepped back behind the protection of her table as stumbled past. He continued to mumble to himself, “I’ve gotta get him, I’ve gotta get him,” before disappearing through the French doors into the lobby.
Jennifer followed him out but he escaped into the men’s room. She hesitated briefly before convincing herself that she was a physician and there might be a patient in need. Before she could reach the door, it swung open as Robert was almost dragging a tuxedo-clad man out of the room. If Robert had looked ill, this man looked downright morbid. Her mind rapidly switched gears from male, late twenties, ashen and sweaty appearance to multiple patients, with rapid onset of symptoms. Simultaneously her thoughts shifted from possible heart attack to food poisoning, and she wondered if she had exposed herself by eating the same thing.
“What did you eat?” she asked as they approached.
The man in the tuxedo looked perplexed at the question and stopped suddenly only to be propelled forward by the onrushing Robert. “I had the prime rib, medium rare…” he answered over his shoulder as he tried to avoid crashing through the glass panes of the door.
“There is no time to talk,” gasped Robert. “We are running late already. We have to get started or the entire evening will be ruined.”
Previous: Chapter 3
Next: Chapter 5
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