Short Story Excerpt, The Virus

The Virus

I am E?.  The first person I infected was Britni Rangold, a mother on a family vacation in Egypt.  I attacked her central nervous system and produced fever, nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, cough, hematomas, and bleeding from her mucous membranes.  Before she died, Britni Rangold passed me onto 100 other individuals.  Those 100 individuals each passed me on to 100 more.  My time had come.

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In the 1300’s, The Black Death wiped out 100 million people, and killed between 30-60 percent of the population in Europe.  It took 150 years for Europe’s population to recover.

            In 1918, The Spanish Flu, H1N1, killed 75 million people, almost six percent of the global population.

 

            Noted molecular biologist and Nobel Laureate Joshua Lederberg, once said, “The single biggest threat to man’s continued dominance on the planet is a virus.”  He was right.

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             No one knows where it started.  Africa is the likeliest suspect I suppose.  That’s where Ebola outbreaks first occurred in the 20^th century.  The deadliest outbreak, Zaire, 1976, had a case fatality rate of 90%.  This virus has a case fatality rate of 99%. 

It isn’t Ebola though.  It’s something else.  When the virus first occurred, we took blood and tissue samples from the first cases we found, and tested them for all five known strains.  None were a match.  It presented exactly like Ebola, influenza like symptoms, nausea, abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, cough, hematomas, bleeding from mucous membranes.  Whatever it is, it is the deadliest virus we’ve ever encountered as a species.

The basic reproduction number, or Rnought, is the number of cases one case generates as an average over an infected period.  Measles had the highest Rnought in recorded history, where one person with Measles passed the disease on to as many as eighteen other people.  The Rnought for E? is 100.  It has gone airborne.  We don’t have long.

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I am Dr. Heather Kline.  After Yale, I went to Harvard Medical School.  I did my residency at Johns Hopkins, before being offered a position as an Emergency room attending physician at Lenox Hill Hospital.    After four years at Lenox Hill, I was offered a new position created by the city of New York in response to 9/11.  I am now the Chief Medical Emergency Responder.

Anytime a mysterious case shows up at any of the New York City hospitals, I am sent in to investigate.  I can be at any hospital in the city in less than twenty minutes.  I have seven different cars at my disposal, a full time bodyguard, a police escort when I need it, and use of an NYPD helicopter. 

It was April 10^th, 2019.  I was at home with Roscoe, my three year old Beagle.  My cell phone went off.  It was the Chief of Medicine at Mount Sinai hospital, a man I had never met, Dr. Steve Simkins.  He was yelling inaudibly.

“Dr. Simkins, calm down, what is the situation?”

“The situation is critical Dr. Kline.  In my forty years of practicing medicine, I’ve never seen anything like this.  We are doomed.”

“I need to know exactly what you do.  Give me as much information as you can, and be as specific as possible.  I will be recording this conversation.  It may be useful later.”  As Dr. Simkins began to speak, I hit the panic button that I wore around my neck that immediately alerted my bodyguard, George Hartman, that we needed to move.  George was in my apartment in less than thirty seconds.  I jotted a quick note to call for the helicopter and to ready my team.

“Patient zero presented with a 104° fever.  Patient was unresponsive to painful stimuli.  Patient had no pupil response.  Patient had no gag reflex upon evaluation.  Patient had no patellar reflex upon evaluation.  Patient’s husband reported 36 hours of vomiting and diarrhea.  During evaluation, patient began hemorrhaging blood from ears and eyes.  Shortly thereafter, blood began to appear at the nose, the fingernails, and the toenails.  Ambulatory services were called to their house this morning because patient had had what appeared to be a fainting spell.  At the present time, the patient, the patient’s husband, their two children, the two EMTs, and the nurse that evaluated her, all appear to have contracted the virus.  They are all infected Dr. Kline.”

“Dr. Simkins, I am on my way now, my team will meet me there.  I need you to quarantine all of the infected in a communicable disease ward.  We’re lucky, only your hospital and Lenox Hill have a quarantine room capable of handling a level 4.  Contact the CDC and request immediate support.  Tell them I am on my way, they will want to speak to both of us when they arrive.  Their best response time to NYC has been six hours, so until then it’ll just be you and me Dr.  This is Kline; over and out.”

I followed George to street level, where four police cruisers had blocked off traffic in both directions for a square landing area 30 X 30.  George and I looked toward the sky as the helicopter approached for landing.  It touched down and George, myself, and three SWAT team officers boarded.  We took off and headed in towards Mt. Sinai.

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When I hit New York City, I knew that my day had come.  The day of E?.  After being loose in the city for three days, I had infected 99.9% of the population.  After day five, I had killed over 65% of the population.  I was winning.  There was nothing they could do to stop me.  Nothing.