Protecting What's Mine(66)

Mack laughed. She’d bonded fiercely with her crew on the bird that had crash-landed in the dirt and dust in the middle of the damn desert in Afghanistan. And she’d spent most of her career surrounded by soldiers who’d never heard the phrase “don’t kiss and tell.” But this was something different.

“We’re just happy for you,” Tuesday promised. She had her hair woven into some complex side-part braid thing that looked like it had walked off a Pinterest board. “And thank you for the latte.”

“Heard that fire was a doozy last night. But no fatalities, thanks to your manfriend,” Freida mused.

“Maybe think about ordering a new chair?” Russell suggested as he herded Freida and Tuesday out her door. “And thank you for the coffee.”

Left alone with Freddy Mercury, Mack kicked the chair before righting it. She weighed her options and then sat gingerly, avoiding the backrest while she reviewed the appointments scheduled for today.





Six-year-old Dalton McDowell presented with a fever that had started earlier in the week and spiked overnight.

“We took him to urgent care on Tuesday night,” his mother, a harried woman in a misbuttoned white cardigan, explained. “They said it was most likely strep and gave us a prescription, but he’s not getting any better. And last night he threw up.”

The poor kid was shivering in his little hoodie. “Let’s take a look. Dalton, buddy, do you have any pain?”

His eyes were red, she noted.

He shrugged listlessly. “I threw up a lot,” he said.

“Have you been hungry?”

He shrugged again.

“He doesn’t have his usual appetite. He hasn’t asked for a snack in days,” Mrs. McDowell reported.

“Let’s check your temperature, okay?”

He nodded and sat slump-shouldered while Mack slid the thermometer in his mouth. She turned to the laptop and made a few notes. “Has he been around anyone else with similar symptoms?”

“I haven’t heard about anything going around school, and I would. The parents in his class are pretty tight, and when one of them gets the stomach bug, we all prepare for it.”

Mack skimmed the patient record and caught the note at the very bottom. Interesting.

“Have you guys been camping lately?” she asked, turning back to the boy.

Dalton’s mom smiled through her anxiety. “This weekend. All five of us in one tent. We went hiking, didn’t we, bud?”

He nodded, and the thermometer beeped.

104.2.

She felt the quiet revving of her brain as it made a tentative connection. That last medical journal that she’d restlessly skimmed before she picked up the novel last night.

“I know you’re probably pretty cold, but I need to take a look at your arms and your feet. So can we take your sweatshirt and shoes off for a minute? You can put them right back on,” she promised.

“I guess,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.

“This is so unlike him,” his mom said in a low voice. “I’m worried it’s something serious.”

Together, she and Mrs. McDowell pulled off the sweatshirt, sneakers, and socks.

He shivered as Mack skimmed her hands over the boy’s arms and turned his palms up to look at them. She did the same with his feet.

No rash.

“Do you remember getting bitten by anything while you were camping?” she asked him, handing him back his sweatshirt. Rather than putting it on, Dalton used it as a blanket and laid down on the exam table.

“We all had some mosquito bites,” Mrs. McDowell reported. “We forgot the bug spray the first night and had to send Dad home for it, didn’t we?” She shifted her attention back to Mack. “You don’t think this is some kind of West Nile, do you?”

“I’m thinking it might be tick-borne,” Mack said, pulling an adult gown out of the cabinet and draping it over the boy. He drew it around him like a cape.

“Like Lyme disease?” the mother asked, wide-eyed.

“Mrs. McDowell, have you heard of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever?”

“Rocky Mountain what?”

“Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. It’s a bacterial infection caused by a tick bite. It’s rare but on the rise. Most people who get it don’t even remember getting bitten. Most people also present with a rash.”

“Dalton doesn’t have a rash.”

“There’s a small percentage of patients that don’t get it, and that makes it much harder to diagnose. But I’m betting one of those bites wasn’t a mosquito. Your son is very sick.”

Mrs. McDowell wrapped her arms around her son as if she could protect him from the bacteria that swam through his system. “Oh, God. What do we do?”

“You did the right thing bringing him in,” Mack said, standing up. “We’re going to start a course of oral antibiotics right now, and then I’m sending you over to the emergency department. I want Dalton monitored. Okay?”

“Is he going to be okay?” she asked.

“If I have anything to say about it, he will be.”

Mack didn’t feel good about making Mrs. McDowell drive herself, so she put mother and son in her SUV, swung by the pharmacy, poured the first dose into the boy’s mouth herself, and sped to Keppler Medical Center’s emergency department, calling the ED on her way in.