HIV had always given Jack the creeps. He wasn’t generally given to looking for or finding conspiracies, but HIV was so damned efficient. An infection that attacks the very weapons the body uses against infections… the concept had such an engineered feel about it.

Jack felt he could protect those two people in there against just about anything. But not a virus. And they were putting themselves right in its way.

If either one of them should catch it… he didn’t know what he’d do.

HIV was something he could not fix.

Jack pulled himself away and walked back the way he had come.

He saw the heavyset Gladys leading a line of preschoolers down the hall. She smiled and nodded as she passed, a huge goose with her goslings. He spotted Hector bringing up the rear.

“Hey,” he said, pointing. “Who’s that kid with the mad buzz cut?”

Jack had expected another offer to “feel my buth cut,” or a smile at least. But Hector’s eyes were dull when he looked up at Jack. And then he staggered against the wall and dropped to his knees. Before Jack could react, Hector vomited.

“Whoa!” Jack yelled. “Trouble here!”

Gladys was there in a second. “Stay back,” she told Jack as she pulled on latex gloves that seemed to appear from nowhere.

She picked up a hall phone, spoke a few words, then knelt beside Hector. Jack couldn’t hear what she said, but he saw Hector shake his head.

And then Raymond appeared—he too was wearing latex gloves. He gathered Hector up in his arms and carried him back down the hall. As Gladys directed the other children back into their playroom, a janitor appeared and began mopping up the mess with a solution that reeked of antiseptic.

Jack moved on. He’d been a frozen observer, not knowing what to do. The staff here had its own set of rules and protocols that Jack was not privy to. He felt like a stranger in a foreign country, with no knowledge of the language or the culture.

He quickened his pace. Hector had been smiling and bubbling less than an hour ago, and just now he’d looked like a little rag doll with all its stuffing vacuumed out.

The happy sounds of the children in the day-care rooms attacked Jack as he moved. Each shout felt like a shot, each laugh a knife thrust. Death hovered over every one of them, a fatal infection lurked around every corner, but they didn’t know about that. And just as well. They were kids, and they should be happy while they could.

Especially the crack babies. Their short lives had been full of pain from day one, while a virus chewed away at their immune systems.

And now someone had stolen their toys!

Jack felt his jaw muscles bunch. Don’t worry, kids… Uncle Jack may not know what to do when you’re sick, but he’s not quite as useless as he looked a few minutes ago. He’s going to get your toys back. And in the process he sincerely intends to have a heart-to-heart chat with the oxygen waster who took them.