Free Panacea by F. Paul Wilson

his eyebrows were gone.
    â€œYou know why we’re here, Leo?” Pickens said.
    Ashcroft’s nod seemed to sap most of his energy.
    Nelson held up one of the vials. “You need to drink this. One dose, that is all.”
    â€œIt’ll help?” His voice was a faint croak.
    Nelson and Pickens spoke simultaneously.
    Nelson: “Yes.”
    Pickens: “We hope so.”
    Achcroft raised a shaky hand. “Give.”
    â€œTell you what,” Nelson said, suddenly afraid the man might drop the vial. “Let me pour it into your mouth. We don’t have any backup doses.”
    Ashcroft opened his mouth as Nelson pulled the rubber stopper, then poured the fluid onto Ashcroft’s tongue and watched him swallow. His eyes bored into Nelson’s with a pleading look, then glanced away.
    Nelson felt a tug on his arm: Dr. Forman. He followed him into the hall.
    â€œKim is next. Let’s get this charade over with.”
    He saw Pickens holding out his hand. “The tube. Give it.”
    â€œBut—”
    â€œNow.”
    Nelson had no choice but to comply.
    They then followed Forman on another twisty-turny path to an isolation area. Through the glass behind a nurses’ station, Nelson saw an Asian man lying on a hospital bed, a sheet drawn up to the bottom of his rib cage. His upper body lay bare except for patches of yellow-stained gauze adhering here and there to his arms and torso. The areas without gauze were marred by golf-ball-size swellings, angry red, occasionally oozing. A capped, gowned, masked, gloved nurse attended him. The hand-lettered card on the wall next to the door read J. Kim .
    Jason Kim and his super-resistant staph.
    Dr. Forman said something to the nurse at the desk. She handed him a small plastic medicine cup into which he emptied the second vial of panacea. The nurse took it, then placed it on a tray jutting from a slot in the wall. She pressed a button and the tray slid through the slot, carrying the cup with it.
    The nurse inside must have been expecting it. She took the cup and upended it between Kim’s lips. He swallowed, then closed his eyes. Tears slipped from beneath his lids as his chest heaved in a single sob.
    â€œDoctor Forman,” Pickens said. “The tube, please.”
    Forman handed it over and Nelson watched Pickens pocket it. Why was he collecting the tubes?
    â€œI’ll never forgive you for this,” Pickens said, leaning close and speaking through clenched teeth.
    Nelson was more concerned with a Higher forgiveness, but the vehemence in his superior’s tone startled him.
    â€œI don’t understand. I’m—”
    â€œYou’re giving them hope where there is none.”
    He realized he’d lost all credibility with this man. Well, that would change.
    â€œLet’s wait until tomorrow, shall we?”
    Tomorrow, Lord willing, he would force a one-eighty spin on the deputy director’s attitude.

 
    4
    Mom had gone a little bit nuts. The first thing she did was call Dad. They’d split right after Christmas last year. Tommy guessed that Dad had stayed around till then so as not to ruin the holidays for him, but they fought so much over every little thing that Christmas was pretty much ruined anyway.
    Dad had said he was coming over on his lunch hour to see for himself. He didn’t visit very often, so that was kind of cool.
    But nothing was as cool as being able to walk all alone on his own two feet with no crutches or wheelchair. He wanted to go for a run but his legs were too weak. That was why he’d been going to physical therapy. Chet had told him it would keep his muscles from getting astrofeet … or something like that. It meant weak and wasted.
    Good old Chet. He’d been telling the truth about that magic potion. Tommy had been wrong to think it would work in a flash. It took a whole night, but it could have taken a week or two for all Tommy cared. What mattered was it