Chance
Chance favors the prepared mind. What happens when the NIH staff members are roped into a prank war of epic proportions? Who will survive with their dignity intact? Is anyone safe? Find our here! Please review!
Disclaimer: We do not own Medical Investigation nor are we affiliated with anyone who does. Clear? Good.
Chapter 7: Quarantine
Stephen sat at his desk, thinking about how to get the ladies back for their last prank. It wasn't going to be easy to top having your underwear flying around on a flagpole and your clothes dyed mauve. He looked at the clock on his desktop. The girls wouldn't be in to work for another hour or so. Stephen grinned. He stood up from his desk and decided to try the coffee prank again. The girls wouldn't suspect it, since there were no repeats allowed, but this time he would put a spin on it. Stephen carefully scooped about three times as much coffee into the coffeemaker as was really necessary and added only enough water to make three cups of coffee. He let it drip as he walked away to plan his next idea. Stephen sat at his desk and suddenly the phone rang. He picked it up on the first ring.
"Connor," Stephen said shortly.
"Connor, its Miles. I've got an idea," Miles said briskly.
"Where are you?" Stephen inquired.
"I'm just pulling up into the parking lot. Listen, can you gather up some duct tape and caution tape and get your computer and the printer, as well as the laminator going?" Miles asked.
"I'm on it. See you soon," Stephen replied.
The two men hung up and Stephen did what had been asked of him. A few minutes later Miles entered Stephen's office and smiled brightly. He sat down in the chair opposite his superior and glanced over the supplies.
"Excellent," Miles chuckled.
Stephen raised a quizzical eyebrow.
"Okay, I'll bite. What's excellent?" He queried.
"I've got the perfect plan for revenge. It's going to embarrass the hell out of the girls. All you have to do is distract them so that I can get a hold of their car keys. I'll take care of everything else. I'll need you once they find my signs, though. Just to make it look convincing, we'll have to put them up on our office doors, too. I've already got Frank coming in and running around all day in a hazmat suit all day," Miles explained.
"Sounds easy enough, anyway. Okay, I'll do it," Stephen agreed.
Miles grinned and stood up, walking around to the other side of Stephen's desk. He leaned over the keyboard and went straight to his email inbox, opening up a file attachment and hitting print. Stephen took one look at the sign and grinned, too. He looked at the clock and realized that they had only a half hour before the girls would be in to work. Miles grabbed the prints from the printer and headed off down the hall to laminate them. Stephen took the rolls of both duct and caution tape and left the office with his keys and other necessities. Meanwhile Miles laminated the numerous signs and grabbed a couple of N-95 masks from a box in the hallway. He made his way back over to Stephen.
"Got everything?" Stephen asked.
"Yup," Miles replied.
"Good," Stephen shot back.
Miles handed Stephen two signs and a mask while Stephen handed Miles a roll of each duct and caution tape. They headed off in opposite directions to put their plan into motion. Stephen and Miles both placed large caution tape X marks on both their and the girls' office doors. They then taped signs to the doors in the middle of the X marks. It was perfect. Miles and Stephen put on their filtration masks and met in the hallway between their offices.
"Mission accomplished," they said in unison.
Just then, Frank rounded the corner and approached the two men from the far end of the hallway, completely decked out in a blue hazmat suit. He shook his head as he approached them.
"I can't believe I'm doing this," he muttered.
"Nice to see you, too, Frank," Stephen chuckled.
"The guy from public health should be here any moment. Ah, speak of the devil," Miles said.
Another man wearing a hazmat suit came around the corner. Miles grinned.
"Hey John, long time no see," he said happily.
"Miles, my man! No, this is all wrong! If you want to be convincing we need to get you two into isolation and strap quarantine bracelets onto you!" John said disapprovingly.
Both Miles and Stephen sighed. It was a lot to go through but it would be worth it. Just then, Miles got an idea.
"John, what if you put me in isolation, say I'm infected and then let Stephen off the hook so that he can be the one to break this to Eva and Natalie. That way he can have the last laugh when he gets to do the rule out on the ladies," Miles suggested.
John seemed to think it over for a moment before nodding.
"Sounds like a good plan," John replied. "Let's do it."
The three other men nodded. Frank headed for the end of the hallway to meet the ladies when they got in. In the meantime he pulled out his cell phone and called them, letting them know that they had to come in immediately for testing. He shook his head and wished that he hadn't gotten involved. Miles and Stephen followed John down the hall and got prepared for the ladies to arrive. John strapped a quarantine bracelet onto Miles' wrist and led him into a secluded room behind glass. He had Miles put on a mask to make it look convincing that he was contagious. Miles gave Stephen and John the thumbs up through the window. Stephen grinned and went to put on his N-95 mask, a gown and gloves while John stood around, looking official.
Eva and Natalie had gone for coffee before coming into work that morning and walked into the NIH headquarters building together with smiles on their faces. They stopped dead in their tracks when they noticed Frank in his hazmat suit. Neither of them had received Frank's pages or voice messages. They looked at him and raised quizzical eyebrows as they approached him.
"Good morning Frank. Making a fashion statement?" Eva asked.
Frank shook his head and looked at them somberly.
"No, I'm afraid not. You two have to come with me," Frank said lightly.
Eva and Natalie exchanged worried and confused looks as they walked with Frank down the empty hallway. As they passed Miles and Stephen's offices they noticed the large, official looking signs.
WARNING: ASBESTOS REMOVAL. KEEP OUT.
Eva and Natalie swallowed thickly. Both women knew what that meant. Natalie was afraid to admit that she hadn't been feeling too well in the past few days for what it implied. She and Eva obediently followed Frank down the hallway to a quarantined off section of the building. They saw Stephen talking to a man in a Hazmat suit. He was wearing an N-95 mask and was fully gowned and gloved. The two women stood beside him and noticed Miles sitting in an isolation room with a quarantine bracelet on. The women looked at Stephen, their eyes pleading for answers.
"You've got to be joking," Natalie deadpanned.
"I'm afraid not," Stephen replied. "We've got asbestos happening here. You two have to be quarantined until we can do the blood work and rule everything out. Come on."
Stephen walked down the hallway with the two women in tow, towards another set of isolation rooms. He let Eva into one and Natalie into the other. Both women were up to speed with protocol and didn't even have to be instructed on what to do. Stephen stepped into Natalie's room a few minutes later and sat down next to the bed. The questioning begins.
"Well Nat, let's see here. Have you noticed any sort of symptoms lately? Coughing, fever, headache shortness of breath, general malaise?" He asked.
Natalie was silent for a few long moments. She had seen this coming from a mile away the second the word 'asbestos' reached her ears. She sighed and nodded.
"The general malaise and headaches ring a bell," she replied.
Stephen nodded.
"How long?" He asked.
"A couple of days, maybe a week," she replied. "I thought it was just fatigue."
"Okay, well, let's see what we've got to work with," Stephen said professionally.
If he was going to get personal now, he knew he would start laughing and the cat would be out of the bag. Stephen quickly got around to checking Natalie's pulse and blood pressure. After a thorough examination that left Natalie just a little bit ruffled and uncomfortable, Stephen sat back in the chair and noted some things in the chart. He pulled out a vial, tourniquet and needle, ready to draw some blood.
"Now that you're sick I have to do this myself," he chuckled. "I'll be gentle, I promise."
He grinned and quickly tied the tourniquet, drawing the samples that he needed. Okay, the samples that she would think he needed. With that, Stephen stood up and left the room. He walked into Eva's room, handing the blood off to Frank, and sat down. He went through the same motions with her and got the same reaction. After Stephen had finished everything he walked into Miles' room where the young man was getting dressed. Stephen laughed and sat down on the bed.
"Mission accomplished. Now all we have to do is sit around and drink coffee until enough time passes for it to be convincing that we actually ran the screens instead of just tossing the blood out with the rest of the biohazards to be incinerated," he stated.
"You do know that they're going to physically bludgeon us to death once they figure out they were quarantined needlessly," Miles deadpanned.
"It'll be worth it," Stephen said firmly. "Trust me, it will."
Miles nodded and finished buttoning the last button on his shirt. Stephen stood up and the two men walked down the hallway to get some coffee. They sat in the break room and Frank came in, stripping off his hazmat suit. He sat down with them and poured himself some coffee.
"Natalie and Eva really aren't happy right now," he said lightly. "You guys are so dead."
"Scared, Frank?" Miles asked.
"Damn right I'm scared," he replied. "You should be, too. Hell hath no fury like a woman's scorn."
The men laughed and drank their coffee for a couple of hours, doing nothing of importance, as they waited for the "toxicology reports" to come back. After a long while, Stephen stood up and stretched, putting his gown, gloves and mask on again.
"Alright then, let's go and quarantine the ladies," he chuckled.
Miles headed to his office to do some reading while Stephen and Frank headed for the isolation rooms. Frank lingered outside as Stephen stepped in to see Natalie first. He walked over to her bedside and looked down at her, sitting there, disgruntled and worried looking. He grinned inwardly.
"Well Nat, I'm sorry to say it but I have to quarantine you. You've been exposed, you have a low number of the asbestos antibodies. I have to keep you in here until the incubation period is up. If you're asymptomatic at the end of that, you're free to go, but in the meantime I'm going to need to keep a close eye on you," Stephen said apologetically.
Natalie buried her face in her hands, sighing exasperatedly.
"Great, just what I needed," she growled. "I have patients, Stephen. I have studies to do. I can't be in quarantine for a week."
"Not up to me, Nat, you know its protocol," Stephen said lightly. "Besides, if it was me in your shoes, you would be saying the same thing. Now, you just get some rest. I'll be back later to check on you."
By the time Stephen left Natalie's room, Miles was back in isolation, making things look less conspicuous. They had decided to let Eva go free and if she saw Miles up and about then she would know that something was screwy. No, Miles would have to suffer for the good of humanity. Stephen entered Eva's room and took off all of his protective gear, smiling.
"Well Eva, you're free to go," he said warmly. "Get dressed. We'll need you working PR overtime to keep this under wraps. It wouldn't look good if news of an asbestos epidemic in the NIH building got out."
Eva nodded, relieved. She waited until Stephen left before stripping out of her gown and putting her clothes back on. Eva left the room and gasped when she realized that they had quarantined Natalie. This definitely wasn't going to end well. The situation was dire and Eva felt the need to take one for the team and put an end to the nonsense of the prank war. She walked up to Stephen and tapped him on the shoulder. When he turned to face her, she reached out a hand to shake his.
"Okay, truce," she stated. "We can't think about whom the top pranksters are when the lives of two of our teammates are on the line. Do we have a truce?"
Stephen took her hand and shook it with a nod.
"Truce," he replied.
Eva smiled and walked away. Stephen waited until she was out of hearing range before he laughed out loud. Oh, how naïve she was. Stephen couldn't believe she had actually fallen for that! Truce? Over his dead body. No, this was just the beginning.
He couldn't wait to see Eva's reaction when she realized all of this was a hoax. He couldn't wait to see how they would retaliate. It was going to be classic.
A.N.: Hey guys! I'm so terribly sorry this one took so long! I was extremely caught up with final exams and projects at school, and I just started a full time summer job. Please tell me what you think! -Jules-