breaks in 1976. Both had occurred almost simultaneously, one in Yambuku, Zaire, and the other in Nzara, Sudan. She’d gotten the material from raw data stored in the CDC archives.
One thing that interested her particularly about the African experience was that a reservoir had never been found. Even the discovery that the virus causing Lassa Hemorrhagic Fever resided in a particular species of domestic mouse had not helped in locating Ebola’s reservoir. Mosquitoes, bedbugs, monkeys, mice, rats-all sorts of creatures were suspected and ultimately ruled out. It was a mystery in Africa just as it was in the United States.
Marissa tossed her pencil onto her desk with a sense of frustration. She had not been surprised by Dubchek’s letter, especially since he had progressively distanced her from his work in Phoenix and had sent her back to Atlanta the day the quarantine had been lifted. He seemed determined to maintain the position that the Ebola virus had been brought back from Africa by Dr. Richter, who had then passed it on to his fellow ophthalmologists at the eyelid surgery conference in San Diego. Dubchek was convinced that the long incubation period was an aberration.
Impulsively, Marissa got to her feet and went to find Tad. He’d helped her write up the proposal, and she was confident he’d allow her to cry on his shoulder now that it had been shot down.
After some protest, Marissa managed to drag him away from the virology lab to get an early lunch.
“You’ll just have to try again,” Tad said when she told him the bad news straight off.
Marissa smiled. She felt better already. Tad’s naiveté was so endearing.
They crossed the catwalk to the main building. One benefit of eating early was that the cafeteria line was nonexistent.
As if to further torment Marissa, one of the desserts that day was caramel custard. When they got to a table and began unloading their trays, Marissa asked if Tad had had a chance to check the custard ingredients that she’d sent back from Arizona.
“No Ebola,” he said laconically.
Marissa sat down, thinking how simple it would have been to find some hospital food supply company was the culprit. It would have explained why the virus repeatedly appeared in medical settings.
“What about the blood from the food service personnel?”
“No antibodies to Ebola,” Tad said. “But I should warn you:
Dubchek came across the work and he was pissed. Marissa, what’s going on between you two? Did something happen in Phoenix?”
Marissa was tempted to tell Tad the whole story, but again she decided it would only make a bad situation worse. To answer his question, she explained that she’d been the inadvertent source of a news story that differed from the official CDC position.
Tad took a bite of his sandwich. “Was that the story that said there was a hidden reservoir of Ebola in the U.S.?”
Marissa nodded. “I’m certain the Ebola was in the custard. And I’m convinced that we’re going to face further outbreaks.”
Tad shrugged. “My work seems to back up Dubchek’s position. I’ve been isolating the RNA and the capsid proteins of the virus from all three outbreaks, and astonishingly enough, they are all identical. It means that the exact same strain of virus is involved, which in turn means that what we are experiencing is one outbreak. Normally, Ebola mutates to some degree. Even the two original African outbreaks, in Yambuku and Nzara, which were eight hundred fifty kilometers apart, involved slightly different strains.”
“But what about the incubation period?” protested Marissa. “During each outbreak, the incubation period of new cases was always two to four days. There were three months between the conference in San Diego and the problem in Phoenix.”
“Okay,” said Tad, “but that is no bigger a stumbling block than figuring out how the virus could have been introduced into the custard, and in such numbers.”
“That’s why I sent you the ingredients.”
“But Marissa,” said Tad, “Ebola is inactivated even at sixty degrees centigrade. Even if it had been in the ingredients the cooking process would have made it noninfective.”
“The lady serving the dessert got sick herself. Perhaps she contaminated the custard.”