Once he had the mice arranged on a dissecting tray, Tad stopped in front of the bolted insulated door. “I don’t think you want to come in here.” Without waiting for a response, he opened the door and went inside with the dead mice. A mist drifted out as the door swung back against his air hose.
Marissa eyed the small opening, steeling herself to follow, but before she could act, Tad reappeared, hastily shutting the door behind him. “You know, I’m also planning to compare the structural polypeptides and viral RNA of your virus against the previous Ebola strains,” he said.
“That’s enough!” laughed Marissa. “You’re making me feel dumb. I’ve got to get back to my virology textbook before making sense of all this. Why don’t we call it a night and get that drink you promised me?”
“You’re on,” said Tad eagerly.
There was one surprise on the way out. When they had returned to the room with chalky walls, they were drenched by a shower of phenolic disinfectant. Looking at Marissa’s shocked face, Tad grinned. “Now you know what a toilet bowl feels like.”
When they were changing into their street clothes, Marissa asked what was in the room where he’d taken the dead mice.
“Just a large freezer,” he said, waving off the question.
Over the next four days, Marissa readjusted to life in Atlanta, enjoying her home and her dog. On the day after her return, she’d tackled all the difficult jobs, like cleaning out the rotten vegetables from the refrigerator and catching up on her overdue bills. At work, she threw herself into the study of viral hemorrhagic fever, Ebola in particular. Making use of the CDC library, she obtained detailed material about the previous outbreaks of Ebola: Zaire ’76, Sudan ’76, Zaire ’77 and Sudan ’79. During each outbreak, the virus appeared out of nowhere and then disappeared. A great deal of effort was expended trying to determine what organism served as the reservoir for the virus. Over two hundred separate species of animals and
insects were studied as potential hosts. All were negative. The only positive finding was some antibodies in an occasional domestic guinea pig.
Marissa found the description of the first Zairean outbreak particularly interesting. Transmission of the illness had been linked to a health-care facility called the Yambuku Mission Hospital. She wondered what possible points of similarity existed between the Yambuku Mission and the Richter Clinic, or for that matter, between Yambuku and Los Angeles. There couldn’t be very many.
She was sitting at a back table in the library, reading again from Fields’ Virology. She was studying up on tissue cultures as an aid to further practical work in the main virology lab. Tad had been helpful in setting her up with some relatively harmless viruses so that she could familiarize herself with the latest virology equipment.
Marissa checked her watch. It was a little after two. At three-fifteen she had an appointment with Dr. Dubchek. The day before, she’d given his secretary a formal request for permission to use the maximum containment lab, outlining the experimental work she wanted to do on the communicability of the Ebola virus. Marissa was not particularly sanguine about Dubchek’s response. He’d all but ignored her since her return from Los Angeles.
A shadow fell across her page, and Marissa automatically glanced up. “Well! Well! She is still alive!” said a familiar voice.
“Ralph,” whispered Marissa, shocked both by his unexpected presence in the CDC library and the loudness of his voice. A number of heads turned toward them.
“There were rumors she was alive but I had to see for myself,” continued Ralph, oblivious of Mrs. Campbell’s glare.
Marissa motioned for Ralph to be silent, then took his hand and led him into the hallway where they could talk. She felt a surge of affection as she looked up at his welcoming smile.
“It’s good to see you,” said Marissa, giving him a hug. She felt a twinge of guilt for not having contacted him since returning to Atlanta. They’d talked on the phone about once a week during her stay in L.A.
As if reading her mind, Ralph said, “Why haven’t you called me? Dubchek told me you’ve been back for four days.”