Infectious Love: An Mpreg Romance (Silver Oaks Medical Center Book 1)

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  Infectious Love

  (Silver Oak Medical Center Book 1)

  Aiden Bates

  Cover Designed by Duong Covers

  Important information…

  This book, “Infectious Love” is the first book in the Silver Oak Medical Center. However, this book and every other book in the series can be read as a stand-alone. Thus, it is not required to read the first book to understand the second (as so on). Each book can be read by itself.

  Table of Contents

  Important information…

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Preview (Silver Oak Medical Center Book 2): Deliver Me

  Chapter One

  Dave made sure he was wearing his disposable gown before he went in to meet with the patient. He'd been vaccinated, of course. Everyone in the emergency department had, but that didn't necessarily mean anything. There were thirteen different serogroups that could cause meningococcal disease, and only five could be prevented with vaccines.

  It wasn't quite so virulent that he needed to go in with the full hazmat suit. Patients didn't even need to be quarantined. He just needed to use an abundance of caution.

  Understanding the technicalities was one thing. He could go through the proper protocols of hundreds of contagious diseases. It was his job. But there was a difference between knowing the treatment protocols and walking into a room with a patient who was suffering from one of these illnesses.

  Nick Barrett was a short Le Moyne student, a little overweight for his height, with long, curly brown hair that stuck to his head with sweat. His hazel eyes were glazed with fever as they turned to Dave, and his cheeks were flushed. Dave knew Barrett wouldn't remember much, if any, of what Dave had to say.

  Fortunately, he had someone with him. The tall, rail-thin blond sitting in the other chair in his treatment bay with his arms crossed over his chest didn't look all that affectionate, but that was who Dave had to work with. "Hi. I'm Dr. Stanek. Are you a family member?"

  Blondie shifted in his seat. "I'm Barrett's RA. I'm the one who had a car on campus, so I got to bring him in here."

  Dave winced. "How come they didn't call for an ambulance?"

  Blondie yawned. "Student health insurance doesn't cover that."

  Dave just gaped for a long moment. "Okay, ah, Mr. RA. You're going to need a round of prophylactic antibiotics, just to be on the safe side, and I'm going to need your vaccination records. And if Mr. Barrett has a roommate, I'm going to recommend the same for him, for any romantic or sexual partners, close friends, teammates or lab partners."

  Blondie sat up straighter. He wasn't yawning anymore. "Wait, what's going on here? He's just got, like, mono or something, right?"

  "Mr. Barrett has meningitis. Bacterial meningitis, to be specific. We've already started the paperwork to admit him here. They'll move him up to a room in a few moments." Dave glanced at Barrett, who appeared to be completely unmoved by the announcement. A fever like his could do that to a person. He probably wouldn't even remember the diagnosis. "What's your name?" he asked, in a softer tone.

  Blondie rubbed at his face. "Curt," he said, after a second. "Curt Abel."

  "Okay. Curt, this sounds scary. And it is scary. I'm going to have to ask you a lot of questions, and you're probably not going to know the answers to all of them. That's okay. No one expects you to have a complete picture of all your residents' daily lives, right?" He managed a little grin. "Do you know how long he's been ill?"

  "A few days." Abel looked down and away. "I got a call from his advisor that he hadn't been at any of his classes in a few days. He's a freshman, and sometimes freshmen have a hard time coping with being at college. I checked with his roommate, and he said he thought Barrett was on a bender."

  Dave nodded. Thank God for modern technology. It meant he didn't have to sit there and try to puzzle out his own notes. He could just record this guy and sort things out later. He could focus on Abel now. "Mm-hm. And you went to check on him?"

  "Yeah. If folks who are under twenty-one are using alcohol or drugs on campus, I have to do something about it, you know?" He rubbed at the back of his neck. "I found the poor guy burning up with fever and dragged him down to Health Services. We used a laundry cart, me and Kaye Glen. She's another freshman, lives on the floor."

  "I'm going to need to see the roommate and this Kaye Glen. Meningitis is a serious illness. It can be fatal, if left untreated for too long. It's kind of an abundance of caution, but when everyone's living in close quarters like a college dorm, we can't be too careful. In the US, college dorms are where outbreaks happen most often." Dave gave Abel a small little smile. "So you got him down to Student Health. Then what?"

  "We milled around for a little while and when they couldn't get his fever down they decided to send him here. We talked about the ambulance, but our health insurance doesn't cover ambulance trips and Barrett never has any money." Abel wasn't just rubbing at the back of his neck now. He was massaging it.

  Dave frowned and leaned forward. "How are you feeling, Mr. Abel? Is your neck at all stiff?"

  "Well, maybe a little." Abel huffed out a little laugh. "I might have strained something getting Barrett into that laundry cart. I don't want to speak ill of someone who's sick, but I mean he's not exactly a featherweight. And he was pretty much dead weight at the time."

  Dave pressed his lips together. He'd been in infectious disease for years, but he still didn't know quite where the line was between causing panic and impressing a patient with the seriousness of a potential case. "So, do you have a headache, too?"

  "Maybe a little one." Abel knit his brows together. "Are you suggesting…?"

  "I'm strongly suggesting that you let us do a lumbar puncture. The sooner we know if you're infected, the sooner we can start treatment." He patted Abel on the shoulder. "I'm hopeful it's just a hangover and a little bit of a neck strain, but I'd rather be safe than sorry, right?"

  "I don't drink." Abel stared at a spot on the floor.

  Thankfully, none of the turmoil at the higher levels of hospital administration had any effect on the way the patient delivery units ran. Maybe they didn't have a functioning executive office right now. That didn't mean they couldn't get a call tree going. Nurses from a host of other departments volunteered to reach out to Le Moyne's administration and to alert the media. Emergency room personnel stood by to triage frightened students.

  Sometimes that meant holding their hand while they went through an unpleasant lumbar puncture. Sometimes that meant holding their hand and explaining that living in a completely separate dorm from the two people known to be infected, having no classes with them, and having no friends in common, meant they had a low risk of being infected themselves. If their vaccines were up to date, and they were for the most part, they should be fine.

  Dave, fortunately or unfortunately, didn't have to do that. Dave got the pleasant task of notifying the Center for Disease Control down in Atlanta. They weren't too alarmed about the outbreak. These things happened o
n college campuses. They appreciated being informed, but they didn't see a reason to send in the big guns just yet. Their resources would be available, should things get out of hand in Syracuse.

  Dave couldn't think of a situation in which a meningitis outbreak would get out of hand. It was a serious illness, but it was easily brought under control.

  Nick Bennett had been brought in at one o'clock in the afternoon. By five, when Dave would normally have gone home, Silver Oak had three confirmed cases of meningitis. All three were directly connected to Nick Bennett—Bennett himself, his RA, and a guy by the name of Strudwick from his Spanish class. Apparently they'd gotten into it during their Spanish Lit class and gone toe to toe.

  Strudwick was less than enthusiastic about learning he'd contracted meningitis from Bennett. "You mean to tell me not only did this jackass try to copy from my exam, but now he's put me in the hospital? I'm going to kick his ass if we survive this."

  Dave couldn't really fault him for his anger. After all, Strudwick had caught a potentially fatal illness. "We'll make sure you're on a different floor." It was all he could do, other than prescribing antibiotics and confining him to a room.

  By six o'clock, Dave had an additional duty to attend to. He had the joy and fun of getting up on a small platform, in front of a bunch of cameras with a bunch of reporters next to them and answering questions. This, too, was part of his job. Thankfully, Rick Wade was with him. Rick made him feel safer than most other folks did. He was kind of awesome that way.

  Once he and Rick had been seated, they were able to begin. Dave started the conference. "Hi, everyone. Thank you for coming this evening. This is a mostly informational conference to talk about an outbreak of meningitis that was discovered at Le Moyne College today. I want to make two things very clear before we get started with questions and answers, and then I'll answer as many of your questions as I can. First of all, meningitis can look like just about anything in the early stages, to include just a bad case of the flu. So unless we get some truly damning new information in the next few days, we shouldn't go pointing fingers at the administration or at Health Services.

  "Second," Dave continued, letting his eyes roam around the audience, "meningitis outbreaks are pretty rare in this country. Where they do occur, they're limited in scope to a handful of people and they're diseases of crowding." He grinned. "So your Corcoran high school freshman is at relatively low risk from an outbreak at Le Moyne College. If you think there's a danger, definitely give your primary care doctor a call. But unless you show symptoms, or you've been in close contact with someone who's had exposure to meningitis, you're probably okay."

  The reporters shifted and one brave soul raised her arm. "Dr. Stanek, is there any truth to the rumor that the outbreak affects thirty people?"

  Dave shook his head and smiled. This question was easy. "We've got thirty people we're treating with antibiotics as a 'just-in-case' kind of measure. They're people who had close contact with one of the three people who've been diagnosed with meningitis. Again, only three people have shown any signs of being ill and they've all been admitted to Silver Oak. Their families have been notified."

  Rick cleared his throat and leaned into his mic. "College campuses are kind of a hot spot for outbreaks like this," he said, in that Texas drawl of his. "It's all those people living on top of one another that does it. That's why colleges generally insist on a meningitis vaccine for incoming students."

  Another reporter raised his hand. "What is the prognosis for treatment, Doctor?"

  Dave glanced at his boss, but Rick shrugged. This one was on Dave. "I'm not going to get into specifics about any one patient." An image of Barrett, already on oxygen, sprang to his mind. "Meningitis can be fatal if left untreated and it can lead to potentially serious complications, but we're feeling confident about good outcomes for the three patients who've been diagnosed so far."

  A different reporter, this one with only a DSLR camera and operating alone, raised his hand. "Dr. Stanek, is there any possibility that this outbreak could be related to terrorism?"

  A pained little gasp made its way around the room, and Dave winced. That was the thing with infectious disease in the modern era. Once people had just been worried about keeping themselves safe and free from contamination. That had its own headaches, of course, but it had been easier to deal with. Now there was an extra layer of paranoia to contend with.

  And they had to take it seriously, no matter what.

  Dave tilted his head to the side and looked up at the ceiling. "Anything could be terrorism, I suppose," he said, after a moment. "I think most bad actors have a wider range of options at their disposal, of diseases that are more virulent and more harmful, than meningitis, if they wanted to do the bioterror thing. I've worked with the CDC on bioterror, it's not exactly uncharted territory for me, so I'm being honest when I tell you that yes, it's a possibility, but it's a remote possibility at best. Meningitis happens, sometimes. It's unfortunate, and it's something we have to fight, but I can't think of a single instance when it's been used as a weapon."

  The first reporter raised her hand again. "Does the turmoil at the top—the acquisition of Silver Oak by Regent Healthcare—have any impact on how you're handling this case?"

  Dave couldn't resist a smirk. "I think that's a question for our Director of Emergency Services."

  Rick rolled his eyes. "Thanks for throwing me under the bus, there, Dave. Don't think I won't remember that when bonus time rolls around." The reporters tittered. "The short answer to your question is no. The longer answer is that all of the departments at Silver Oak have a pretty autonomous structure, and the Emergency Department has more freedom than most. We have to, if we want to be able to respond quickly to an emerging situation. Believe it or not, we expect a certain level of public health challenge every year from vulnerable populations. We're prepared to handle this." He grinned, dark and handsome.

  The hospital's Public Information Officer, who was almost certainly going to be losing her job when the team from Cleveland took over in a couple of months, smiled at the reporters. "Thank you all for coming. I'm sure you all received the graphics and information packets we sent out prior to this briefing. If we receive any new information, or if the outbreak spreads, we'll let you all know right away. We see you all as partners in public health. If we can't keep the public informed, a lot of people are going to have a lot of problems. Thank you."

  And with that, the briefing was over. Dave was free.

  He and Rick got up from their table and headed back toward Emergency. Dave had no idea what Rick's plans were. He knew he'd had a long day, personally. He wanted nothing more than to sit back at home with a beer and maybe watch a little bit of Top Model.

  Finding a cop standing in the middle of Rick's office wasn't exactly unusual. Syracuse had some big-city problems for a smaller-sized city and cops showed up all the time. That wasn't what made Dave's hackles rise. The cops in the emergency room weren't usually wearing vests labeled "Incident Command" for one thing.

  And they never, ever, looked that good. Incident Command was average height, with short black hair and a square jaw Dave would love to nibble on. His arms were thick with muscle, enough that Dave could ignore the part of him that laughed at anyone wearing short sleeves in February. And he was armed to the teeth, from the pump-action shotgun in his hand to the gun strapped to his thigh in an honest-to-God thigh holster.

  "I think we can put the hardware away, can't we?" Rick wasn't impressed by the display but, then again, Rick was from Texas. For all Dave knew, thigh holsters and shotguns were considered proper breakfast attire out there. "This is a hospital, not a shooting range. You should have taken the left turn at Albuquerque."

  The cop's square jaw tightened. "This isn't a game. They found a glass vial in one of your patient's belongings. It's tested positive for meningitis."

  ***

  Ken had seen a lot in his thirty-something years. He got that people had different reactions to stress.
Doctors weren't immune. They liked to think they were, but at the end of the day they were just like everyone else—basically chickens with their heads cut off until someone with half a clue showed up and told them where to go and what to do.

  These two docs didn't freak out. They didn't throw their hands in the air and scream. They didn't try to puff themselves up by taking control of the situation either. They just looked at one another and frowned. "I'm sorry," said the shorter one. He had this downstate accent, Manhattan through and through, and it set Ken's teeth on edge. "That doesn't make a lick of sense. That would mean someone deliberately released meningitis at Le Moyne, as a kind of attack."

  "And?" Ken raised his hands. He'd forgotten about the shotgun.

  The taller doctor stepped forward. "How about you just… put down the gun, maybe? There we go, no one needs that thing to go off accidentally." His smile was bright and snappy. His gray eyes were a tempest, and who the hell was he to sit there and judge Ken? "Anyway, meningitis would be an unusual choice for a bioterror attack."