Ebola Fate, Chapter Three

Ebola Fate

<< Chapter Two

Chapter 3

February 14, 2034 12:30 PM, Monrovia, Liberia

John Merryman paced back and forth in the kitchen. "Shit, guys, this is bad."

"Thanks for the obvious observation, John," replied Teta, "I was touching him."

"We all shook his hand," Russel said, "we're all going to have to be quarantined."

"That's exactly right, sir," the medical investigator, Beyan Gbala, said from beneath his mask. The team turned to him. "I will, too, now that I'm in here. So will the paramedics who took him to hospital. We've got to contain this, and quickly. Do any of you know who he had contact with?"

John said, "Not really, no. He arrived earlier today and took a Lyft to get here."

"Okay - we'll have to get in touch with Lyft to find out who the driver was and who else has been in that car since he was. Have any of you left since he got here? Or any deliveries come? In short - has anybody else been here?"

"No - it's just been us. We were showing him our work."

"I see. Did you have any food catered?"

"No - we were planning on taking him to the new restaurant around the corner."

"That's good. The contact tree ought to be small.  We should have enough for everybody."

"Enough?"

"Vaccine."

"I thought none of the potential vaccines panned out during the last outbreak?"

"That's true, but it's not like we stopped working on it. The CDC in America has been funding lots of research to come up with a vaccine so that when Ebola showed up again, we could contain it more quickly. We've got one that just came out of trials. It's perfectly safe for humans, and has proven 100% effective in chimpanzees."

"Mr Gbala, you really seem to know what to do."

He did know precisely what to do: trace contacts, get everybody vaccinated. He was a young student during the last outbreak, and had devoted his life to learning how to fight Ebola when it returned. He was the foremost expert in Liberia. There was a short window for vaccination after exposure - maybe 24 hours, at least, there was when dealing with chimpanzees. They hadn't exactly tested humans as thoroughly as they could if it weren't for ethical standards. They couldn't very well touch a human with something infected and then give him the vaccine. Hell, they couldn't touch a human with an infected item after they'd given him the vaccine. The truth was, even though it had proven 100% effective in chimpanzees, they had no idea if it would work in humans, regardless of the 24 hour window.

Still, it was the best shot to contain this thing, so that's what he set out to do.

"Okay - I need you all to stay here. Don't order out for food, don't so much as step outside. Your building is on a closed sewage system?"While Liberia was joining the first world, it still had some third-world throw backs, like open sewage in certain areas.

"Yes, the building's only 5 years old, and it was built to code."

"Good. That means if you need to go to the bathroom, you can use the toilets here. The treatment plant ought to kill any virus particles you might... excrete."

"I'll be in touch."

February 14, 2034 12:45 PM, Monrovia, Liberia

"God Damn IT!" Beyan shouted as he bounced from page to page on Lyft's site, looking for contact information. They had a "contact support" form where you could type in stuff, but he really needed to speak to a human. He put his phone number in the form, along with a curt message, "One of your drivers has been exposed to Ebola. I am the chief medical investigator in Liberia. CALL ME IMMEDIATELY." Of course, he didn't get an immediate response, so he kept hopping around their site looking for a number that he could call. Aha! There's one: press inquiries.  This was not quite a press inquiry, but hopefully they would forgive him.

"Thank you for calling Lyft's press department. You have reached us outside of our normal operating hours. Please call back between 9:00 and 5:00, Monday through Friday."

"MOTHER FUCKER!" He couldn't even leave a message.

Okay... What time was it in San Francisco right now? 4:45 am. That meant they wouldn't be answering the phones for 4 damn hours. How many rides could this guy give if he was just starting his shift when he picked up Mr Stevens? What a cluster fuck.

"I wonder how many Lyft drivers there are?"

He closed the browser on his phone, and opened the Lyft app. He was pleased to see that there were only about two dozen cars visible on the map. He figured the fastest way to talk to a Lyft representative would be to hire a Lyft. So he ordered a ride from Merryman Labs to the airport.

February 14, 2034 12:52 PM, Monrovia, Liberia

"Mr Gbala?"

"Yes. I'm terribly sorry to do this to you, but I don't actually need a ride."

"No problem - I get paid either way. But if you don't need a ride, why'd you call me out here? You're not going to shoot me or something, eh?"

"Ha! Quite the opposite, sir. No, please don't get out - I'm wearing this mask for a different reason, to protect you."

"To protect me? From... what, exactly?"

"Did you give a ride to a Lane Stevens today?"

"Uh - let me check. Where would I have dropped him off?"

"Here."

"Oh, then definitely not."

"Do you have any way to contact the other Lyft drivers in the city?"

"Yeah, actually - we've got a chat system. Why?"

"I need you to ask whoever gave him a ride to Merryman Labs to come back immediately."

"I can do that, but why?"

"Lane Stevens is in critical condition at hospital."

"Hospital? With what?"

"It's confidential. I cannot divulge what he has for privacy reasons."

"Okay. I've asked if anybody remembers that trip. Should I stick around?"

"Would you mind waiting until we get confirmation that somebody's coming? I couldn't get in touch with Lyft headquarters."

"Ha! Tell me about it."

They sat in awkward silence, Beyan Gbala on the curb, tapping his foot impatiently, and the Lyft driver reading the chat room commentary.

February 14, 2034 12:58 PM, Monrovia, Liberia

"Hey, Mr Gbala! Looks like it was Dorley. He says he'll be here in 10 minutes, once he drops off his current fare."

"Has he picked them up?"

"I don't know."

"Tell him that if he's picked them up, he cannot drop them off, and must bring them here. If he hasn't, he cannot pick them up."

"That's a really weird..."

"TELL HIM NOW! IT'S LIFE OR DEATH!"

"Okay, okay."

"Better yet, do you have his number?"

"Yeah - I'm calling him now."

"Thank you."

February 14, 2034 1:22 PM Monrovia, Liberia

"Dorley?"

"What the fuck was so important that I couldn't even drop my passengers off? They're going to miss their flight, you know."

"Thank God."

"What's this all about, then?"

"There's no easy way to say this. You've been exposed to Ebola. The man you brought here earlier - he collapsed shortly after he arrived, bleeding from the eyes and mouth. Severe headache and abdominal cramps. Did you stop at any markets? Maybe he picked up some bush meat?"

"No - it was from the airport straight to here."

Jesus. Where did he pick up Ebola? Another passenger on the flight? Maybe somebody else had contaminated Dorley's car?  He would have to test the plane, the airport, the car. "Do you mind if I talk to your fare?"

He explained to the couple that they not only could not leave, but would have to be quarantined with Dorley and the people inside the office until they'd been vaccinated. The Merryman Labs folks had been kind enough to offer their space as a makeshift quarantine facility.

"Dorley, we're somewhat fortunate. We've got to trace all contacts that Mr Stevens had, and that your car has had, and we have to do so immediately. We need to get all of those people here, now, so they can all be vaccinated.

"I can look through the history in the Lyft app, and call all of them."

"That'd be fantastic. I've got some other aspects of this to attend to."

"Should I order them lyfts to get them here?"

"Hmm - would you mind picking them up?"

February 14, 2034 1:28 PM Monrovia, Liberia

"The plane hasn't left?" Finally, some good luck. "Good! Ground that fucker. I'm texting a colleague - he's going to come test the plane, the baggage area, and random spots around the airport." Ebola test strips were invented toward the tail end of the 2014 outbreak, and over the past twenty years, had become widely available in West Africa. So much so, that the company that was making them put itself out of business five years ago. Every hospital and medical agency in West Africa had thousands of strips.  There were still stacks for sale at corner drug stores. The strips were supposed to have a ten year shelf life, so the timing of this case was at least fortuitous with respect to the strips' expiration date, even if it wasn't soon enough to keep their manufacturer afloat.

Dorley had left 4 minutes ago to pick up the first two passengers. The emergency team was on the way with 50 doses of the vaccine. The police were on their way, too, just in case somebody tried to break quarantine. Testing was going to start at the airport within a few minutes. Beyan Gbala had done everything he could do right now.

He called his wife, Islah. "Honey, it's the nightmare I've been preparing for. I'm okay, I think. I haven't had any direct contact with any of the patients." As he looked at her face on his phone's screen, he could see her tearing up, trembling with fear. "Islah, try to not worry. We're rounding up all of Mr Steven's contacts, including anybody who rode in the Lyft. All of us will get vaccinated, and I'm quite sure we'll all be fine."

Chapter Four >> 

Ebola Fate, Chapter Two

Ebola Fate

<< Chapter One

Chapter 2

February 14, 2034 10:30 AM, Monrovia, Liberia

It had been twenty years since the onset of the last Ebola outbreak. So much had changed in Liberia since then. A few years after the outbreak, there had been yet another civil war. But this one was different from the previous ones; rather than deposing one corrupt regime in order to install another, Liberia had a new set of founding fathers who believed that the name Liberia was supposed to indicate a belief in Liberty. They formed a constitutional republic, and created a government that was as minimal as they felt was possible. It protected property, enforced contracts, and maintained roads and parks. Taxation was limited to tariffs on imports.

The results were hard to argue with. In just fifteen short years, almost all of the battle damage from the previous three civil wars had been repaired. The roads were paved. Farms were bustling outside of the cities. Children had grown into young adults, without the emotional trauma associated with growing up in a war zone.

Three years ago, a group of these young men and women had heard about a technology that some engineers in Huntsville, Alabama were trying to sell back in the early 2000's: thorium-flouride salt reactors. It never really caught on, but they figured that was largely because of fears around nuclear power and the engineers' inability to sell it. Here in Monrovia, they had a few advantages that the guys in Alabama didn't. Their government largely ignored them, as long as they weren't committing violent crime or theft. This meant that they could build pretty much whatever they wanted to, if they could just get the material. Material was incredibly cheap. Old shot-up technicals — pickup trucks with guns mounted in the bed — were a dime a dozen in the scrap heaps around town, and provided access to steel, aluminum, and plastic with very little effort.

John Merryman had naturally led them - he was without a doubt the most passionate about thorium. He had started to collect dirt and build a small-scale refinery as soon as he learned about it. Russel Klhea joined Merryman's team a few weeks later.  John had told him, "this is several orders of magnitude more powerful than any fossil fuel. Solar, wind — they're nifty, but they're weak. I think we can make a reactor that will fit on a palette, power a city block with ease, and only require new fuel once a century."

Russel had asked, "if that's the case, how do we make money? We can't very well sell fuel a century from now!"

"There's a lot of city blocks in the world."

Russel was sold. And it was a good thing for Merryman. John may have been passionate about thorium, but he didn't know how to build a damn thing. Russel did. He'd picked up welding from his uncle and learned how to cast metals by watching old YouTube videos. He pointed out all of the mistakes that John had made in building his refinery, and set about researching reactor designs. He was fifteen years old, an Ebola baby. His parents had both died in the outbreak. His uncle barely evaded capture during the war. He had no formal education whatsoever. His uncle kept him connected to the Internet, and made sure that he watched educational stuff on YouTube, used Khan Academy to learn math, and joined him in the shop as much as possible.

And it payed off in spades, because Russel figured out that the engineers in Huntsville were over-thinking it. His contraption, the ThS reactor, was a boiler that you could hook up to a simple steam turbine to get electricity. It had no moving parts - just a water inlet and two steam outlets. One outlet would go to the steam turbine. The other went to a copper pipe, where it would condense into clean water. He figured he might as well solve the freshwater crisis as long as he was solving the energy crisis.

And it worked phenomenally well. It produced a steady fifty kilowatts, required one square meter of level, solid floor, and was perfectly safe, even when it didn't have any water. Its interior would get up to about three hundred degrees Celsius and stay there in the absence of water. Sure, you wouldn't want to put your hand inside, but the insulation meant the exterior was never over about forty degrees.

Today promised to be exciting. They had used up quite a bit of microcredit building their prototype. They had done odd jobs, and worked nights and weekends to pull this off. But pull it off, they had. They figured a "properly" manufactured unit would have a manufacturing cost right around $2000, including the fuel pellets that would last a century. They intended to sell it for $4000. All they needed was some financing to patent and start manufacturing it. This was where Lane Stevens came in.

Lane was a lawyer from Dallas, Texas. He specialized in tech startups, helping them get patents and financing. He loved his work: there was no more efficient way for him to help humanity's progress, than by helping innovators make progress. He generally worked for scrip — partial ownership in the companies he was helping — and had made a small fortune in the process.

He once thought that graduating during the Great Recession was a curse. He'd had to live with his parents because he couldn't find steady paying work. None of the firms near his home were hiring anything other than unpaid interns. He tried his hand at being a barista at Starbucks, but he hated it. So he worked as an intern for Betz and Betz, until one of his friends came to him with an invention, asking for a referral. He offered one better: he would write up the patent applications and help set up the corporation in exchange for a 2% stake in the company. Two years later, that company sold out to Apple for two billion dollars. While he was in line to deposit his 40 million dollar check, he called John Betz, and told him he wasn't going to continue his internship.

Lane flew into Monrovia with extreme excitement. He'd video chatted with John Merryman a few times, and if what he and Russel were telling him was true, this was the invention that would change everything for humanity. The typical home was using right around a kilowatt at any point in time, on average. This device could power 50 homes, pretty much indefinitely, for about $4000. That was less than one month's utilities, if they pooled their resources.

He was planning on staying here for no less than a month, and wanted to work just about continuously. Too bad he started to get a headache right as they touched down. "God, I hope this isn't an allergic reaction to some weird plant they have over here. That would suck balls."

He gathered his luggage, and exited the terminal, looking to his left for the pink moustache on a fender, the telltale sign of the Lyft he had ordered. Uber didn't have a strong presence here yet, which was a mystery to Lane. A country like Liberia, with its amazing success over the past decade and a half? How could Uber not have followed Lyft's lead in bringing ride-sharing here? It was crazy to him how poor management became as companies matured. Talk about missed opportunities!

Lane climbed into the passenger seat of the 2031 Honda Civic, as the driver loaded his luggage into the trunk. The driver climbed in, and noticed the address. "Sir, this is in the warehouse district. You don't want me to bring you to a hotel?"

"No, sir! I want to get straight to work. Hey, do you have an aspirin or something?"

"No, I'm afraid not," the Lyft driver, Dorley, said as he put the car into gear and began the short trek to Merryman Labs. "What brings you to Liberia?"

"I'm here to help change the world."

"Oh? For the better, I hope!"

"Indeed, for the better. Imagine making one final electricity payment, and having your house powered for the next 100 years."

"I'd be happy just to have a house. I'm living in an apartment with three roommates."

"Heh. Well, we're going to reduce the cost of home ownership, and even apartment rental, so much that you may find yourself able to afford one."

Lane pulled his phone out and checked his messages. He opened the link to his uncle Johnny's new video showing the barn next door to his place in Blackland coming down. They had walked through it a few days ago, so Lane was looking forward to seeing the demolition. It was filthy, the rafters were rotting, the siding was pretty much gone. It really needed to come down. Hell, it needed to come down decades ago, if Johnny was to be believed, but Lane remembered seeing it as a kid, when he'd visit his cousin Kelly, and it didn't look that bad to him back then.

His next message was approximately 1000 heart emoji. Debbie wanted to make sure that Lane knew she loved him, even if he was away on business for Valentine's day.

Next message: a photo of his 9 year old son, holding a case of Valentine cards for his classmates. Man, that kid was cute!

"Here you are, sir! Merryman Labs!"

February 14, 2034, 11:20 AM, Merryman Labs, Monrovia, Liberia

"Lane, it's so great to finally meet you in person. I'm John Merryman, this is Russel Klhea, our chief of technology. This is Teta Tondo, structural engineer. She studied at the University of Texas - I understand that's your alma mater?"

"Indeed it is. Hook em horns!"

"This is Boakai Pupo, nuclear physicist. He's been instrumental in making sure our designs really are fail-safe. He figured out how large the fuel pellet could be without risking it melting down if you allowed it to dry out."

"This is Mulbah Freeman. He's been in charge of financing, and managed to keep us thrifty so that we would borrow the absolute minimum to make this thing real. He's found any number of ways to cut costs, but we've had to override him on occasion."

Lane was shaking hands with each introduction. After meeting Mulbah, he stepped back from the group, and said, "Look guys - if I'm convinced, then by the end of this demonstration, you're all going to be debt free and, by Liberian standards anyway, massively wealthy. You've certainly earned it! Let's see what you've got."

John stepped away from the group. "Mr Stevens, do you mind if I use this as an opportunity to practice my sales pitch? I know you already know a lot of what we're talking about here, and I don't want to bore you."

"Absolutely, John. Just because I'm like 99% sure I'm going to invest don't mean I'm going to be the one selling this. You're the front man here, and you need practice at being a rock star."

 "OK, then rock star training mode engaged! Lane, as you know, we've been working for three years on bringing safe, small-scale nuclear power to market. And this is what we've come up with!" He grabbed the sheet that was hanging over a meter-and-a-half tall box, and pulled it away.

"As you can see, the base is a simple steel palette, compatible with just about any palette-jack or forklift anywhere. It's housed in a frame of 100 millimeter square tubing. This box on the bottom is our boiler. It's made of 3 millimeter thick, cold-rolled carbon steel, welded into a simple box. In the production version, all of this will be powder-coated, of course. This connector is where you hook up your garden hose to give it some water. There's a sight glass here so you can tell if you need to add more water, and two pressure valves to make sure the thing won't explode due to a steam build-up. This pipe is where the steam exits the boiler, and proceeds to this conical device - the steam turbine. Teta had to get out of her comfort zone to figure out the best profile for the turbine fans. Our first turbine produced about 10 watts. Teta spent a lot of time using Blender and a CFD simulator, to come up with a turbine shape that got much closer to the theoretic limits. Now this thing produces 50 kilowatts! And that, of course, happens by way of this electric generator hooked up to the turbine. The parts cost, for the parts that are actually being used in this model, are right around $1000. We figure it's another $1000 in labor to make and assemble, for a total manufacturing cost of $2000. We ought to be able to sell them for $4000, no problem."

"This is fantastic.  What's the fuel pellet look like?"



"Before I show you, let me cool it down by adding some water to the boiler. We keep it dry in there when we aren't actively testing the generator, so that we can make sure it truly is fail safe and won't melt down." John connected a hose to the inlet, and turned on the water. The boiler immediately started hissing as the new water flashed to steam, sucking heat out of the floor and walls. This stopped shortly thereafter and the sight glass slowly filled to about five inches of depth. John then opened the boiler's service panel, reached in, and pulled out an unusually machined ball. It was cool and wet. "This ball is the outer sheath for the refined thorium core. The sheath is made of lead, and consists of two halves that thread together. Both halves are 3D printed. The idea is to allow water to flow freely into the core, where it can be heated by the thorium, while at the same time providing no clear line-of-sight to the thorium itself. This means that no radiation escapes, and even though I'm holding it, I am not being irradiated by it any more than I am by the concrete floor of this lab. However, it is producing heat, and I'm going to put it back in before the heat burns me."

He did so, and screwed the boiler's service panel closed.

"Now, it will take about 5 minutes for the thorium to heat the water in the boiler to the point where it starts to steam. When it does, we'll hear the turbine start to spin. That will in turn spin the generator, and voila! 50 kilowatts of power.  And it will generate that 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for at least 100 years."

"John, this is amazing. While we wait, I thought I'd show you the rough draft for the patent application. So, do I have the diagram on page 3 right? Based on your description of the sheath, I wonder if these dimensions are reasonable."

Russel chimed in, "It's close, but it misses a critical detail. If you look right here, you'll see that this line overlaps this arc - that's not really physically possible. It ought to terminate at the arc."

"Oh, you're right. I'll put a red-line in for my draftsman back in Texas.  Hey - do any of you happen to have an aspirin? I've been fighting a headache since I landed."

Teta hopped up from her chair. "Sure thing, Mr Stevens. Let me just run to the kitchen. I've got just the thing to cure what ails you."

February 14, 2034 11:38 AM, Merryman Labs, Monrovia, Liberia

... Or not.

Lane's headache had already gotten to the point where it was astonishing that he was still working.  The adrenaline rush of seeing the device in person, and meeting the team that was destined to change the world, had been enough to push the ache to the back of his mind. But now it came crashing to the forefront. His temple pulsed, and his eyes felt like they were on fire. He pressed his hand to his forehead, grunting as the pain overwhelmed everything else. His vision narrowed until he could barely see a single letter on the page in front of him - everything surrounding it had become a dark kaleidoscope of browns and blacks, and the occasional neon purple light. He'd had migraines before, and this was worse. Significantly worse.

"Guys, I think this is a stroke or something. Call an amb-"

His stomach cramped up, blocking his ability to speak, and seizing his abdominal muscles. His chest slammed into his knees as the cramp grew stronger. "What the hell is going on?" he thought to himself as his head slammed into the table. He screamed out in agony, and fell out of his chair.

John was shocked. In fact, everybody at the table was shocked. Teta, hearing Lane's scream, came running from the kitchen. She knelt down in front of him, and turned him onto his back.

He opened his eyes again. His full field of vision was restored, but now everything was blurry; his eyes were full of tears. "I think I need an ambulance."

Russel, forcing himself into action, pulled his telephone out of his pocket, and pressed the emergency call button on the lock screen, and placed the phone against his face.

Lane's vision was turning a pink hue. "Why am I seeing pink?"

Teta looked at him with a growing sense of horror. She saw his eyes turning red, but not in a bloodshot way. It was more like his tears were becoming suffused with blood, and his eyelids were swelling. She averted her eyes from his, and looked at his mouth. His gums were bleeding. She pulled her hands away from him, stood up and started to back away. "No. Oh, good God, please. No."

Russel finished telling the operator their location, and looked at Teta, "What is it?" He stood up and started to walk towards her.

"GET BACK!" She yelled. Everybody froze, rather than actually getting back. "I mean it - BACK AWAY! Go in the other room!"

As Russel walked backwards, he asked, "Why!? What's going on!"

"I haven't seen this since I was a little girl. I prayed every day I would never see it again."

With that, all of the other young people on the team instantly knew that they were in terrible danger. It was a threat that had not been seen in Liberia - or anywhere in the world, really - for twenty years. Even so, most of them were old enough to remember the last time it wreaked havoc in Liberia. They instantly recalled the first time they saw their parents terrified. Russel, the youngest, wasn't old enough to remember the last outbreak, but he knew how sad his uncle would get if he could be coaxed into talking about it.

Ebola.

Chapter Three >> 

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 >>