“I can’t eat,” Pia complained. “Feeling I’m in control is important to me. I don’t feel in control. My life is coming apart. I’ve got to see Rothman. I have to.”

Security was essential to Pia, as was control. At the moment she felt neither.

“Is he allowed to have visitors?”

“I don’t even know if he’s conscious. But I’m not a visitor, I’m concerned about the course of treatment he’s on.”

“I’ll come with you,” George said.

Pia didn’t know whether she wanted him to come or not.

“Don’t you have things to do?”

“Nothing important. I want to help you.”

“Whatever!”

Pia jumped up from the table, leaving her tray of food untouched. George stuck her turkey sandwich, still in its wrapper, in his jacket pocket and hustled after Pia. As she marched to the hospital, George trailed along in her wake. He tried to talk to her but gave up when she wouldn’t answer. She was on a mission.

The floor housing Rothman and Yamamoto was bustling with staff and orderlies. There were few patients in evidence. Most were too sick to be up and about. Pia found the resident on duty, Dr. Sathi De Silva. As the sole infectious disease resident, she had her hands full, not just with her two celebrity patients but a ward full of others, and several more people in the emergency room awaiting her attention. Pia and George were in their medical school white coats so Dr. De Silva accepted them as students most likely on their internal medicine rotation. Dr. De Silva took her teaching responsibilities very seriously, so when Pia started asking questions about Dr. Rothman, she stopped what she was doing. “To answer your question, both Dr. Rothman and Dr. Yamamoto are dangerously ill. They’re both delirious and uncommunicative.”

“I understand they’re on chloramphenicol. What’s your feeling about such a choice?”

Dr. De Silva shrugged. “I think it’s a good choice. Yes. It’s a unique situation because there are newer antibiotics, but in this case we have sensitivity studies that show the involved strains of salmonella to be uniquely sensitive. Dr. Springer believes it’s our best hope. We’re monitoring for side effects, but we haven’t seen anything. If there are any problems, we can always switch to one of the newer, third-generation cephalosporins.”

“Strange case,” Pia commented.

“One of the strangest,” Dr. De Silva agreed. “And not a little ironic.”

“Do we know how they got infected?”