“Why did you introduce me as the expert?” asked Marissa, remembering his embarrassing exaggerations. Obviously he knew as much as or more than she did about quarantine procedures.
“For effect,” admitted Dr. Weaver. “The hospital personnel needed something to believe in.”
Marissa grunted, upset at being misrepresented, but impressed with Dr. Weaver’s efficiency. Before entering the floor, they gowned. Then, before entering one of the rooms, they double gowned, adding hoods, goggles, masks, gloves and booties.
The patient Dr. Weaver brought Manssa to see was one of the clinic’s general surgeons. He was an Indian, originally from Bombay. All Marissa’s fears of exposure came back in a rush as she looked down at the patient. The man appeared moribund, even though he’d been sick for only twenty-four hours. The clinical picture mirrored the terminal phase of the cases in L.A. and St. Louis. There was high fever along with low blood pressure, and the typical skin rash with signs of hemorrhage from mucous membranes. Marissa knew the man would not last another twenty-four hours.
To save time, she drew her viral samples immediately, and Dr. Weaver arranged to have them properly packed and shipped overnight to Tad Schockley.
A glance at the man’s chart showed the history to be fairly sketchy, but with eighty-four admissions in less than six hours she could hardly have hoped for a textbook writeup. She saw no mention of foreign travel, monkeys, or contact with the L.A. or St. Louis outbreaks.
Leaving the floor, Marissa first requested access to a telephone, then said she wanted to have as many physician volunteers as she could get to help her interview the patients. If many patients were as sick as the Indian doctor, they would have to work quickly if they were going to get any information at all.
Marissa was given the phone in Mr. Davis’s office. It was already after eleven in Atlanta, and Marissa reached Dubchek immediately. The trouble was, he was irritated.
“Why didn’t you call me as soon as the aid request came in? I didn’t know you had gone until I got into my office.”
Marissa held her tongue. The truth was that she’d told the CDC operators that she should be called directly if a call came in suggestive of an Ebola outbreak. She assumed Dubchek could have done the same if he’d wanted to be called immediately, but she certainly wasn’t going to antagonize him further by pointing out the fact.
“Does it look like Ebola?”
“It does,” said Marissa, anticipating Dubchek’s reaction to her next bomb. “The chief difference is in number of those infected. This outbreak involves one hundred cases at this point.”
“I hope that you have instituted the proper isolation,” was Dubchek’s only reply.
Marissa felt cheated. She’d expected Dubchek to be overwhelmed. “Aren’t you surprised by the number of cases?” she asked.
“Ebola is a relatively unknown entity,” said Dubchek. “At this
point, nothing would surprise me. I’m more concerned about containment; what about the isolation?”
“The isolation is fine,” said Marissa.
“Good,” said Dubchek. “The Vickers Lab is ready and we will be leaving within the hour. Make sure you have viral samples for Tad as soon as possible.”
Marissa found herself giving assurances to a dead phone. The bastard had hung up. She hadn’t even had a chance to warn him that the entire hospital was under quarantine-that if he entered, he’d not be allowed to leave. “It’ll serve him right,” she said aloud as she got up from the desk.
When she left the office, she discovered that Dr. Weaver had assembled eleven doctors to help take histories: five women and six men. All of them voiced the same motivation: as long as they had to be cooped up in the hospital, they might as well work.
Marissa sat down and explained what she needed: good histories on as many of the initial eighty-four cases as possible. She explained that in both the L.A. and the St. Louis incidents there had been an index case to which all other patients could be traced. Obviously, there in Phoenix it was different. With so many simultaneous cases there was the suggestion of a food- or waterborne disease.