“No pressure,” he said. “But as long as you stay behind the corner, where you were before, you won’t get any additional exposure.” I looked at Miranda, and she shrugged. Curiosity trumped caution, and we followed as Duane and the technician wheeled the shields toward the morgue.
Duane rapped on the door of the morgue a number of times—three quick knocks, then three slow ones, then three more fast ones—and I realized that the knocks were the Morse code distress signal, SOS. The door swung inward and Hank peered around the edge. He looked closely at Miranda and me and said, “Everybody okay?”
“We’ll see,” I said. “Detective Emert’s gone back to Oak Ridge. They’ll be taking blood samples from all of us every few hours to calculate our dose. They’ve admitted Dr. Garcia, because he got the highest exposure—four to five hundred rads.”
The dismayed look on Hank’s face made it clear that he realized how perilous Garcia’s situation was. He shook his head grimly, then turned to Johnson. “Okay,” he said, “let’s get that shit out of there.” Johnson and the tech wrangled the shields through the door, and once we were all inside, Hank locked it behind us.
Together, they reached for one of the shields, tipped it to the floor, then flipped it upside down beside the other. The shields were designed to protect the torso of a nuclear-medicine technician or nurse from the activity of radioisotopes being administered to nuclear-medicine patients. That meant the rectangular panel was raised a couple of feet off the floor, to the level of a hospital bed or operating-room table. In this case, though, partial coverage wasn’t enough. After flipping the shields upside down, they clamped one to the other, to create an unbroken layer of shielding from toe height to neck height. Next they clamped a smaller shield, fitted with a thick window of leaded glass, atop the upper shield. They had assembled a variety of tools as well, including long tongs—wrapped at the ends with what appeared to be duct tape, the sticky side facing out—and a small round mirror on the end of a telescoping metal shaft. I gathered they planned to use it as a periscope, so they could keep their heads behind the shielding at all times while peering into the sink. They also had a square metal case, about a foot on either side by maybe eighteen inches high. The case appeared to be made of steel, but from the way the two men grunted and strained as they moved it, I suspected the inside was lined with a thick layer of lead.
Just as they were about to wheel the makeshift shielding toward the autopsy suite, Hank’s cell phone rang with an urgent warbling tone. He looked startled as he glanced at the display. “REAC/TS, Hank Strickland.” After a moment, he said, “You guys don’t waste any time, do you?” He listened a bit more. “That’s right…. About a hundred curies.” He glanced at Miranda and me, then looked away. “Too soon to tell; one of the four took quite a hit.” A longer interval of listening. “I understand…. I will; thanks. Have a safe flight.”
He hung up the phone. “Well, that was interesting. That was—”
His words were interrupted by a loud knocking at the locked door. “This is Captain Sievers, UT Medical Center Police. Open the door, please.” It didn’t really sound like a request; more like a command.
“I’ll get it,” I said.
Sievers, whom I’d known for years, looked surprised to see me; mostly, though, he looked upset. “We got a report,” he began, but then he stopped speaking as his eyes swept the room and took in the tableau of people and equipment: Miranda and me, still in our scrubs, and three moon-suited figures, clustered around a collection of lead shields, radiation meters, and other worrisome paraphernalia. “What the hell is going on in here?”
“We had an autopsy take an unexpected turn—” I started to explain.
“What Dr. Brockton means,” cut in Hank, “is that we’re simulating a radiological contamination event. It’s a cooperative exercise between the Forensic Center and our emergency-response team in Oak Ridge.”
Sievers stared at Hank, then at me, then at Johnson. “Bull. Shit,” he said. He pushed past me and the others, heading toward the autopsy suite.
“I wouldn’t do that,” said Hank.
“You said it’s a drill,” shot back Sievers.
“Stop now,” said Hank.
“You’ve got about five seconds to tell me why I should,” said Sievers.
Hank sighed, then pulled out his cell phone and hit the LAST CALL button. “It’s Strickland, with REAC/TS,” he said. “We have a slight complication here. Would you mind talking with Captain Sievers, of the medical center police?…Yes, the hospital has its own police…. No, he’s not a rent-a-cop…. Sievers. Captain Sievers.”