An hour later he woke in a room occupied by two other patients, both suffering from drug-resistant malaria.
The doctor, the same man who’d examined John on his previous visit, was alarmed by the severity of John’s condition and noted some curious additional symptoms: a strange rash over his chest and small surface hemorrhages in his eyes. Although the doctor’s diagnosis was still malaria, he was troubled. It was not a typical case. As an added precaution, he decided to include a course of chloramphenicol in case the boy had typhoid fever.
September 16, 1976
Dr. Lugasa, District Health Commissioner for the Bumba region, glanced out the open window of his office at the expanse of the Zaire River as it shimmered in the morning sunlight. He wished it was still called the Congo with all the mystery and excitement that name invoked. Then, forcing his mind back to work, he looked again at the letter he’d just received from the Yambuku Mission Hospital concerning the deaths of an American male, one John Nordyke, and of a visiting farmer from a plantation near the Ebola River. The mission doctor claimed that their deaths had been caused by an unknown infection that spread rapidly; two patients housed with the American, four members of the planter’s household who’d been caring for the farmer, and ten of the clinic’s outpatients had come down with severe cases of the same illness.
Dr. Lugasa knew that he had two choices. First, he could do nothing, which was undoubtedly the wisest choice. God knew what kind of rampant endemic diseases there were out there in the bush. His second option was to fill out the bewildering array of official forms reporting the incident to Kinshasa where someone like himself, but higher on the bureaucratic ladder, would probably decide it was prudent to do nothing. Of course Dr. Lugasa knew that if he elected to fill out the forms, he would then be obligated to journey up to Yambuku, an idea that was particularly odious to him at that particularly damp, hot time of year.
With a twinge of guilt, Dr. Lugasa let the onionskin letter slip into the wastebasket.
September 23, 1976
A week later Dr. Lugasa was nervously shifting his weight from one foot to the other as he watched the aged DC-3 aircraft land at the Bumba airport. First out was Dr. Bouchard, Dr. Lugasa’s superior from Kinshasa. The day before, Dr. Lugasa had telephoned Dr. Bouchard to inform him that he’d just received word that a serious outbreak of an unknown disease was in progress in the area around the Yambuku Mission Hospital. It was affecting not only the local inhabitants, but the hospital staff as well. He had not mentioned the letter he’d received some seven days before.
The two doctors greeted each other on the tarmac and then climbed into Dr. Lugasa’s Toyota Corolla. Dr. Bouchard asked if there was any more news from Yambuku. Dr. Lugasa cleared his throat, still upset about what he’d learned that morning from the wireless. Apparently eleven of the medical staff of seventeen were already dead, along with one hundred and fourteen villagers. The hospital was closed since there was no one well enough to run it.
Dr. Bouchard decided that the entire Bumba region had to be quarantined. He quickly made the necessary calls to Kinshasa and then told the reluctant Dr. Lugasa to arrange transportation for the next morning so they could visit Yambuku and assess the situation firsthand.
September 24, 1976
The following day when the two doctors pulled into the deserted courtyard of the Yambuku Mission Hospital they were greeted by an eerie stillness. A rat scampered along the balustrade of an empty porch, and a putrid odor assaulted their senses. Holding cotton handkerchiefs over their noses, they reluctantly got out of the Land Rover and gingerly looked into the nearest building. It contained two corpses, both beginning to decay in the heat. It wasn’t until they’d peered into the third building that they found someone still alive, a nurse delirious with fever. The doctors went into the deserted operating room and put on gloves, gowns and masks in a belated attempt to protect themselves. Still fearful for their own health, they tended to the sick nurse and then searched for more of the staff. Among nearly thirty dead, they found four other patients barely clinging to life.