Ebola Fate, Chapter One.

Ebola Fate

Chapter 1

September 20, 2014 10:45 AM

"I have escaped Hell," Thomas Duncan thought to himself as he collected his carry-on bag from the overhead compartment. He quietly inserted himself into the aisle, surrounded by nervous fellow travelers, many of whom were probably having similar thoughts. His plane had just arrived from Liberia at Love Field.

Liberia was, at this time, in the throws of the worst outbreak of Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever that the world had ever witnessed. Just five days prior, Duncan had helped carry his landlord's daughter to the hospital. She was bleeding profusely, and died the following day. There were rumors floating around Africa that Ebola wasn't real, that it was a lie told by Westerners. He knew the horrible truth.

September 24, 2014 7:23 PM

Thomas's mind was feeling a little hazy, and his eyes felt hot. He poked around the vanity, looking for some aspirin. He found some Tylenol, and decided it was probably good enough.

September 26, 2014 3:37 AM

"Sir, I think what you've got is sinusitis. This just means your sinuses are inflamed, probably due to bacterial infection. You're swallowing a lot of postnasal drip, which is why your stomach hurts, and the inflammation is causing your headache. Here's a scrip for some antibiotics. Now look, when you take antibiotics, you've got to take all of them. Don't stop halfway through, because that encourages evolution, and we don't want you creating a superbug, okay?"

September 28, 2014 10:07 AM

"Thomas Duncan: Age 45, diarrhea, abdominal pain, and fever." The paramedic was fighting the urge to vomit; the smell was horrendous, and he just wanted to dump Duncan off and get the hell out of there.

September 28, 2014 10:22 AM

"Nobody noticed this guy just got here from Liberia?! Jesus Christ. Get him isolated, stat, and let's figure out what the CDC protocol is after that. We're gonna need to test him for Ebola. Find somebody to start tracing his contacts. He was here two days ago?! What the fuck!"

October 5, 2014

The past week had been a blur for Dr Liddell. Duncan had Ebola, to be sure. She had expected the CDC to show up in so-called "bunny suits," and take over. She'd seen Outbreak, after all, and any number of Hollywood productions where the big Federal Government came in and saved the day. To her disappointment, she learned that isn't really how the CDC works. They're primarily a research and funding organization. They had compiled a "what to do" list of recommendations, but didn't have a crack team of expert doctors waiting in the wings to come in and treat people. No, treatment fell to local physicians. To her.

She had just finished writing down her notes for the day, and was trying to take a moment to reflect on what had happened in the past week. Duncan had been quite ill; vomiting, diarrhea, bleeding from the eyes. His fever had topped in the low 100's, but the team had managed to keep him hydrated and transfused with new blood long enough to get him stabilized. He was still critical, to be sure, but he was probably going to make it at this point. It was important for her to get her recollections of what they'd done on paper: it would be helpful should another patient turn up, God forbid.  As she reflected, she realized just how glad she was to have Nina and Amber's help. It took incredible courage for them to volunteer, to the point that some people would classify it not as courage, but as stupidity. In any event, she thought to herself that there is no way Duncan could have survived this long, much less been stabilized, without their help. Texas Presbyterian ought to give them a medal and a month's extra salary. They had more than made up for the "send Duncan home with antibiotics" gaff. Who had made that screw-up, again? Doesn't matter. Time to go home.

"Doctor! He's crashing!"

... or not.

It was time to spring into action, to fulfill her Hippocratic Oath. The amount of professionalism she displayed was astonishing. Lesser people would have noted that Duncan had made an incredibly dangerous, selfish gambit. He had lied when he left Liberia, claiming that he had not come into contact with anybody who had Ebola. He knew that his landlord's daughter had Ebola when he brought her to the hospital. She had bled all over him as he placed her on the scooter-turned-ambulance. He had no doubt that he had been exposed. He had endangered millions of people. He flew through Brussels and Washington DC on his way to Dallas.  On each of the three legs of his journey, he was cooped up with hundreds of others. Had his symptoms started while he was in transit, they could easily have progressed to the point where his sebum - the oily substance that covers all peoples' skin - would contain billions of individual Ebola virus particles, and the simple act of touching him would have been enough to transmit the disease. He could have left some blood on the seat, just enough that it would go unnoticed, except perhaps as standard "what the eff is this sticky gunk on this seat" stuff for the next traveler to find. Or he could have coughed on fellow travelers.

A quick aside: it is commonly stated that Ebola is not an airborne virus. Technically, this is true, but that doesn't mean it cannot be transmitted through the air. Sputum can transmit the virus when it travels directly from an infected person onto another person. In fact, this is the exact manner in which the first known human-to-human transmission, other than via needles, occurred: patient zero in the first outbreak, in Zaire, threw up right in the face of his doctor, who miraculously survived. So yes, being on an airplane with somebody who is expressing symptoms of Ebola is something that could result in a very bad travel experience.

And after he did start to show symptoms, he endangered his cousin and niece by sharing a tiny apartment with them.  Back in West Africa, if one person in a home got sick, the odds were that all of them would get sick. There were hundreds of empty, uninhabitable homes, all contaminated by Ebola. Even transporting him to the hospital endangered lives. He was vomiting the whole way. He pretty much ruined the ambulance - the whole thing had to be pressure washed with chlorine, inside and out, and it still wasn't clear that the thing should be allowed back into service. The news had caught pictures of guys washing the apartment complex without any protective gear. Who knew if they would catch this thing? And at least one news chopper had video of stray dogs licking up the vomit before being chased off. Duncan had even hung out with her niece and, what? a dozen? kids. Elementary school kids, for Christ's sake.

Indeed, it required a deep dedication to the medical profession, to the desire to save lives, for Doctor Liddell and the nursing staff at Texas Presbyterian to treat Duncan.

October 8, 2014

"Well, shit." Dr Liddell and her team had fought heroically, but Duncan let his mortal coil slip away this morning. At least now, all there was to do was sterilize the isolated area of the hospital and hope none of the hundreds of people who Duncan came into contact with had contracted the disease. And that, if they had, they were smart enough to not allow any contact with anybody when they became symptomatic. The nice thing about Ebola, if you can call anything about Ebola nice, is that it is generally a quick killer. So fast, in fact, that the number of people you come into contact with, between when you first become contagious, and when you die, is generally low enough that it burns itself out fairly quickly. So most of the time, Ebola outbreaks last weeks or months, and kill less than a hundred people. Of course, this outbreak had killed thousands, and infected tens of thousands, on three continents. If you can actively reduce the number of contacts when someone does catch it, you can help it burn itself out even faster, even if you don't successfully treat the patients who get it.

So far, it looked like Duncan had not passed it along to anybody, despite the dogs and the unprotected sidewalk cleaners. There was a deputy who had created a scare by submitting himself for a test, but thankfully, his test had come back negative. They were running it again to be certain, before reporting to the media, but at least that vector didn't look problematic.

"Looks like we're in the clear."

October 11, 2014

... or not.

Nina came in this evening, presenting with a high fever and sore throat. Her parents showed up shortly later. Waiting on her test results now. How could this have happened? She was wearing full scrubs, latex gloves at all times. She kept her head inside a plastic hood, wore rubber booties. She had Amber's help getting into and out of this get-up. It should have protected her.

It probably did. It must have.

Nina tried to calm herself down, "it's just the flu. You don't have ebola. It's going to be fine."

October 12, 2014

... or not.

"Positive? How? Surely it's a mistake. Run the test again!" Nina heard her parents, but at the same time had already withdrawn into shock. She was crying - she recognized the feeling of tears streaming down her face, but at the same time she could feel a resolution building inside her: "this thing will not beat me." She looked around and saw that everybody around her was crying, too.

"Okay. I understand. What do I do now? How do I survive this thing?"

October 13, 2014 11:45 am

"Hey there, puppy! Don't worry - I'm not going to hurt you. Here - I've got a hot dog. Do you want some? That's it. Good boy. Come on. Look at you - so cute! How could anybody abandon you?" Shelly was an avid dog rescue worker. She was always on the lookout for stray dogs, and spent every weekend at the PetSmart in Rockwall trying to get her foster puppies adopted out to their forever families. She could tell this little guy was a little malnourished; probably had worms. It was a lucky thing for this puppy that Shelly had brought her daughter, Kelly, for a walk on the trail by White Rock Creek after her orthodontist's appointment. Her friends in Dallas Area Pet Rescue were going to love this dog!

The dog, a brown mutt — probably some chow, definitely some lab — knew a good deal when he saw it. Humans talking in a friendly voice, offering food? Definitely should follow them, see where that leads. He hadn't had a name for some time, but he'd found a few other dogs to play with on the streets. Every now and then they'd find a carcass or some trash that tasted good. But hunger was his largest motivator, day-to-day. Oh! These humans have a car! Better jump in while they have it open!

"Wow! This guy's really friendly, Kelly!"

"I know, Mom! Can I go with you to get him all cleaned up?"

"No - let's get you to school for the afternoon. I'll get him washed up, and you can play with him after school."

"I have to go to school today? I thought the dentist was like a get-out-of-jail free card!"

"No such luck, kiddo."

October 13, 2014 2:25 pm

"Thanks for seeing us today, Dr Namarajan. Lucky here was filthy just a few hours ago. I wanna get him scheduled for a neutering as soon as possible. He's so easy going - I know he'll get adopted right out."

"Sure thing. Let's go ahead and get a stool sample and take a look at him. You're right - he is super calm, and so friendly. I think we can get him neutered on Thursday, if you can bring him in at 8:30?"

"Sounds good to me! You'll put this all on the DAPR tab, right?"

"Sure thing, Miss Shelly!"

October 16, 2014 8:50 am

"Hi Miss Shelly! I'm afraid we can't neuter Lucky this morning. He's living up to his name, eh? See he's got a bit of a fever, and we don't like cutting animals open while they have a fever. It's probably just a mild bacterial thing. Here's some antibiotics to sneak to him in some peanut butter once per day for the next week. Would you be good coming back next Thursday? Same bat-time, same bat-channel?"

"Sure thing! Poor guy. You hear that, Lucky? You got a stay of execution! Let's go home."

Shelly Divola lived a few miles from this Veterinarian, so it wasn't a big hassle for her to bring Lucky back to her house in Blackland, Texas. It was a suburb... well, not a suburb, really. It was a barely-incorporated township - mostly farms and small businesses. Her subdivision was one of the only in the area, and it still felt like living deep in the country, even though she wasn't far from Dallas. Her commute to the gym she managed near downtown was only about 40 minutes, so long as I-30 wasn't too congested over Lake Hubbard.

Her house rested on a small hill, inside a long, narrow lot. The design was standard McMansion: brick with an arched entryway and a 2-car garage to the left and a bay window from the kitchen on the right. Her husband, Johnny Divola, kept the lawn manicured - he would rush home on Fridays just to spend some quality time with his John Deere lawn tractor and a bottle of his home-brewed IPA. They had a corner lot, Blackland Road, just a little north of Highway 276. The only real eyesores were the car parts shop across the road, the decrepit old barn next door, and the power lines that glanced across the back end of their yard. He spent every day working on making his lawn and garden beautiful, wishing that at least one of those would come down.

But today was Thursday, and Johnny was off of work. He'd been on call for his company the previous week, and it had really taken a lot out of him. One of the damned mainframe job apparently had a bug where it would fail to run automatically. The network operators couldn't re-run the job manually, because apparently Unified Data Systems couldn't hire anybody to take the graveyard shift who was capable of doing anything aside from calling whoever the primary was. So every night, at 2:30, his phone would ring, he'd claw his way over to his computer, log in to the VPN, connect to the mainframe, and type "LOADGO CALCTPM". If UDS would just hire somebody above the skill level of a poorly-trained monkey, he would get to sleep through the night. On Tuesday, he'd told his manager, Richard, "Look, I'm taking Thursday and Friday off after this shit, and it better be fixed before I'm on call again, or I'm gonna quit, dammit." It was a bluff, and Richard and he both knew it. Johnny lived in Nowheresville, TX, and the most of the closest tech jobs were in Austin, TX. Alternatively, Hewlett Packard had a big campus in Houston, TX. But he really didn't want to move, even with the car parts place next door.

So after he slept in, Johnny grabbed a bowl of Cheerios, and watched as his wife stood in the center of the back yard, in statuesque grace, as a half dozen dogs circled around her, jumping up to try to grab the food she was carrying to the feeding station. It was pretty cool; something he was proud to have made for her. It was a galvanized garbage can, with triangles sliced along its circumference near the bottom. When she poured a 50lb bag of food in the top of the can, it would come out of those triangles, and into the mettle pan that formed the bottom of the contraption. It automatically spread the food out so that six or seven dogs could eat from it at once, without having to fight each other. Shelly loved that he helped out with her hobby and that he didn't mind that her entire income went to buying dog food, treats, and toys.

And he really didn't. For all its problems, UDS paid pretty well, and they usually understood when he took off after being on call. Though there was that time that SQL Server was being particularly bitchy. Oh well. Water under the bridge. He wanted to check out Shelly's latest find, Lucky.

He grabbed a tennis ball on his way out the back door and started heading over to the feeding can. He noticed the new dog, sitting quietly near the pack. The rest were eating voraciously, competitively, even. It wasn't necessary, but dogs will be dogs.

Except Lucky. He was just sitting there, staring at the other dogs' display of appetite. Johnny walked right up to him, knelt in front of him, and started petting his head. "Hey, buddy. I heard you've got a little bit of a cold or something? Look, Shelly's practically a doctor, all the dogs she's nursed to health. You'll be fine." Lucky licked his hand. He stood back up and hugged Shelly. "Hey sweetie - when you're finished with the dogs, you wanna put on Netflix? They've got the latest American Horror Story now, and I hear it's a really good binge."

"Sure thing, Johnny. I'll be right there."

October 16, 2014 6:30 pm

"Lucky! LUCKY! Huh - I wonder where he could've gotten off to?" Shelly wondered allowed. She had some leftover bacon she wanted to give to the dogs, but she didn't want Lucky to miss his opportunity. She also had a glob of peanut butter on a spoon, with a little pill hidden inside. But Lucky hadn't come running with the other dogs when she called him.  She sat the bacon and the spoon on the counter, and closed the door as she came outside to investigate. He wasn't in the back yard. There was a hole under the fence, clearly the result of Lucky digging his way out. She heard some barking, coming from the old barn, and then some yelping. In the dark, she could barely make out Lucky's silhouette before he deftly slipped beneath the fence. She heard the screeching of the bats as they flew out of the windows. It was their feeding time, now. Lucky must've been exploring, and gotten scared as they woke up and started dropping from the rafters. Poor guy had a little cut on his thigh - he must've found some sharp metal somewhere. She'd have to wash that up, put some ointment on it, and get him his peanut butter.  She'd also have to put a new block over his hole before he got out again. Oh, the joys of dog fostering.

Chapter Two >>