The Slip

Chapter 6

6

“SIR, WE HAVE ANOTHER CALL coming in, this one from Northwestern Hospital in Chicago reporting multiple suspect patients,” said Maddy.

“Take down the details. I need to go talk to the Secretary,” Edward responded standing up to put on his suit coat. Edward was the deputy assistant at the Center for Disease Control. As per protocol hospitals reported in upon receipt of patients with unusual symptoms or rare diagnoses. They had been monitoring an uptick in reports over the past couple of days but today there was an explosion of reports and it wasn’t even noon yet. Edward knew that exponential growth of this magnitude was indicative of an epidemic, but the reports were not isolated to a single virus or disease.

What the hell is going on? Edward thought. It was time to escalate.