Infected

A third wave of nausea hit him. There was nothing left to vomit, but his stomach didn’t care. It clenched with explosion-violent fury that doubled him over, pus.h.i.+ng his head almost into the toilet bowl.

His face scrunched as tight as his clamped diaphragm. His stomach refused to relax for a full five seconds, preventing him from drawing a breath. When it finally relaxed and air filled his lungs, he opened his watering eyes just in time for the pain to slam into his head like a seventymile-per-hour semi truck squas.h.i.+ng a baby racc.o.o.n. He saw a few black spots, then his face slid back onto the cool linoleum.

25.

"DELUSIONAL PARASITOSIS"

Morgellons disease.

Margaret stared in disbelief at the CDC report. The disease that wasn’t a disease at all, but believed by the majority of the health-care community to be "delusional parasitosis."

"Delusional," Margaret said. "Get a load of that."

"Seems the vast majority of the cases are," Amos said. "Symptoms range from feelings of biting or stinging to things crawling under the skin. Some cases have the strange fibers, and most involve some form of mental condition: depression, acute onset of ADHD, bipolar disorder and... take a guess at the last three."

"Paranoia, psychosis and psychopathy?"

"You’re just racking up the cee-gars these days, Margo."

Margaret, Amos and Clarence Otto waited in the hospital director’s office, a plaque-lined room with warm wood paneling and four wellgroomed potted ficus trees. The director had been asked to leave by the persuasive Agent Otto, who apologized for the intrusion while at the same time leaving no possible way for the director to say no. Margaret thought Otto was a born salesman — a guy who could make you do whatever he wanted while making you think it was your idea the whole time. Margaret and Amos sat on a leather couch, both looking at pages of a report spread out on a coffee table. Otto had taken the director’s chair, behind the ornate wooden desk. He spun the chair in slow circles and seemed to relish the implied authority of the spot — smiling like a little kid playing grown-up boss.

Murray was

"I know I’m the dummy of the bunch," Otto said. "So pardon me for asking — but you have a CDC report. What you’re saying is the stuff you guys have been studying for the past few days, that turns out to be a known factor?"

Amos shook his head. "No, not even close. This Morgellons thing, people don’t know if it’s real or a kind of group delusion. It took years of pressure from victims’ groups to force the CDC to at least pretend to take it seriously. The CDC created a task force, but so far they don’t even have a clear case definition of what Morgellons is. Most of the cases actually do turn out to be delusional parasitosis. People think they’re infected with something, organisms that can only be observed by the patient. In fact, the term Morgellons has been around for just a few years, and since it started to get publicity, more and more people report the symptoms."

"Which means it’s spreading," Margaret said.

"Not necessarily. It could mean that, or it could mean that once unstable people hear about the disease, their minds decide that’s what they have. They invent the symptoms in their own brain — hence the ‘delusional’ part."

Otto spun in the director’s chair, three full circles as he spoke. "So the more people that claim to have this disease, the more publicity it gets, then more people hear about it, and then more people think they have it."

"Full circle of nuttiness," Amos said.

"G.o.dd.a.m.n Murray," Margaret said. "He’s right about keeping this quiet. This is exactly what he said would happen if word got out. And that’s just for this itchy thing, the bugs-under-the-skin thing. Just imagine what the response is going to be like if people see pictures of the triangles."

"Or get wind of grannies slicing up their kids, then playing all Scarface with the cops," Otto said. "Psycho grandmamas would definitely upset Mister and Missus Average American."

Amos nodded. "Murray does have a point, I suppose. There were a dozen Morgellons cases five years ago, now there are over fifteen hundred, reported in all fifty states and in Europe."

"So why haven’t we heard more about the triangles?" Margaret asked. "We know this isn’t delusional. We’ve seen the little b.u.g.g.e.rs, and we’ve seen the chemical imbalances in Brewbaker’s brain. This is real, Amos."

"Because most of the cases are delusional, but not all. It’s the fibers, Margaret. There are doc.u.mented cases with blue, red, black and white fibers that are made up of cellulose. There have been three instances where doctors had the fibers a.n.a.lyzed over the past four years, and guess what — they had the exact chemical composition as Brewbaker’s. Exact, as in down to the molecules."

"Your fizzles."

Amos smiled. "Yes, the fizzles. We have the triangle cases we’ve seen in the past few weeks. Let’s a.s.sume those are cases where the organism made it to the larval stage. However, this Morgellons research indicated there have been multiple cases, over several years, where we see the fibers, where we see fizzles. It’s possible there were full-blown larval infections before the last few weeks, sure, but if they existed, no one has heard about them."

Agent Otto whipped himself in circles. He seemed to be trying to see how many spins he could get off of one push. "So the fibers have been around for a while, but only now are reaching this larval stage? Does that mean they’re evolving?"