“A young volunteer girl, Heather Falberg, who gives out magazines and newspapers, is on the third floor with symptoms. She came through here about 20 minutes ago.”

            Barney and Mac remembered. Cute girl with a smile. No more than 17.

            All the rooms in the ER had infected patients. Heather Falberg. Stanford Ledger. Sal Pangione. Salina King. Wallace Beatts.

            All personnel were told to keep their distance from patients except when absolutely necessary to treat them.  

Outside of the ER, in the waiting room, Amy Solan, daughter of Sal Pangione, was tightly holding her daughter’s hand as she argued with the police officer who kept her from going through the Emergency Room doors. New patients arrived and were turned away, sent to Doctors Hospital. Most went quietly, sensing from the presence of the police that something was very wrong. They watched Amy Solan demand answers from Eleanor Wosniak.

            “We’ve got a potential epidemic,” Barney Fried explained to a trio of nurses, at least two of whom were far more experienced with ER disaster than he was.

            “Maybe a pandemic,” added Mac.

            “Doctors,” a nurse called from the room in which Sal Pangione lay.

            Barney and Mac hurried over to the room. The nurse nodded her head toward the bed.

            Sal Pangione, by far the oldest of the people stricken by the bird flu virus that had killed Cole Younger Smith, was sitting up.

            “What the hell happened to me?” he demanded loudly.

            “You were sick,” said Barney. “Flu.”

            “I feel better now,” Sal said. “A two-hour flu? Give me my pants and the rest of my stuff and I’m out of here. What happened to the guy who hit my car?”

            “He died,” said Mac.

            “I’m sorry,” said Sal. “Think you can get my pants now?”

            “We’d like you to stay a little while longer,” said Barney. “Just to be sure.”

            In the next hour, there were no new cases and all of the patients who were in the ER were feeling anywhere from better to much better to completely cured.

            Turner and Eleanor Wosniak strode down the hall toward Barney and Mac.

            “So what did we have here?” Barney asked.

            Eleanor Wosniak shook her head.

            “Seven dead people and another three that might not make it,” said Mac.

            “The girl, the volunteer, Heather?” asked Barney.

            “She’s feeling better,” said Mac. “Their immune systems are fighting it off.”

            “My guess? The mutated virus doesn’t survive,” said Turner. “Lethal but short- lived in humans.”

            “Like War of the Worlds?” asked Barney.

            “I wouldn’t push that analogy,” said Turner.

            Traffic shot by on Tamiami Trail. Cars trolled Hillview, looking for a parking space. At Bennigan’s about half a mile north on the Trail, a young man named George Favereau was trying to break the chili-eating record and not coming close.

            On television, the news was reported and commentators speculated about what was going on in the hospital. In a few days, the avian flu that had hit Sarasota would be, if not forgotten, at least put aside in the county’s collective memory.

            Yet it was coming. Not this time, but it was coming. It would come, probably not the virus they had seen today, and probably not as swiftly. It would come with very little warning. It would come with someone who had been in a market in Asia where chickens were bought, sold and slaughtered. Or it would come from the sky with a winged pattern of migrating ducks, and it was not likely to pass through with as little damage as they had just seen.

            If it came in their lifetime, Eleanor Wosniak and August Turner would be back.

            Dr. Barney Fried touched his face. He needed a shave, a shower, something with protein to eat and at least five or six hours of sleep. He had been awake for more than 24 hours, something he hadn’t done since he had been an intern in Boston. He looked up at the clock on the wall.

Eight hours from now his next shift would begin.

            He coughed. His throat was raspy from talking. His stomach roiled. He was hungry. He felt slightly warm. Maybe he was coming down with something.