The Hot Zone (10 page)

Nancy handed tools to him, and she reached her fingers inside the monkey to tie off blood vessels and mop up excess blood with small sponges. The animal’s body cavity was a lake of blood. It was Ebola blood, and it had run everywhere inside the animal: there had been a lot of internal hemorrhaging. The liver was swollen, and she noticed some blood in the intestines.

She had to tell herself to slow her hands down. Perhaps her hands were moving too quickly. She talked herself through the procedure, keeping herself alert and centered. Keep it clean, keep it clean, she thought. Okay, pick up the hemostat. Clamp that artery ’cause it’s leaking blood. Break off and rinse gloves. She could feel the Ebola blood through her gloves: it felt wet and slippery, even though her hands were clean and dry and dusted with baby powder.

She withdrew her hands from the carcass and rinsed them in a pan of disinfectant called EnviroChem, which sat in a sink. The liquid was pale green, the color of Japanese green tea. It destroys viruses. As she rinsed her gloves in it, the liquid turned brown with monkey blood. All she could hear was the noise of the air blowing inside her suit. It filled her suit with a roar like a subway train coming through a tunnel.

A virus is a small capsule made of membranes and proteins. The capsule contains one or more strands of
DNA
or
RNA
, which are long molecules that contain the software program for making a copy of the virus. Some biologists classify viruses as “life forms,” because they are not strictly known to be alive. Viruses are ambiguously alive, neither alive nor dead. They carry on their existence in the borderlands between life and nonlife. Viruses that are outside cells merely sit there; nothing happens. They are dead. They can even
form crystals. Virus particles that lie around in blood or mucus may seem dead, but the particles are waiting for something to come along. They have a sticky surface. If a cell comes along and touches the virus and the stickiness of the virus matches the stickiness of the cell, then the virus clings to the cell. The cell feels the virus sticking to it and enfolds the virus and drags it inside. Once the virus enters the cell, it becomes a Trojan horse. It switches on and begins to replicate.

A virus is a parasite. It can’t live on its own. It can only make copies of itself inside a cell using the cell’s materials and machinery to get the job done. All living things carry viruses in their cells. Even fungi and bacteria are inhabited by viruses and are occasionally destroyed by them. That is, diseases have their own diseases. A virus makes copies of itself inside a cell until eventually the cell gets pigged with virus and pops, and the viruses spill out of the broken cell. Or viruses can bud through a cell wall, like drips coming out of a faucet—drip, drip, drip, drip, copy, copy, copy, copy—that’s the way the
AIDS
virus works. The faucet runs and runs until the cell is exhausted, consumed, and destroyed. If enough cells are destroyed, the host dies. A virus does not “want” to kill its host. That is not in the best interest of the virus, because then the virus may also die, unless it can jump fast enough out of the dying host into a new host.

The genetic code inside Ebola is a single strand of
RNA
. This type of molecule is thought to
be the oldest and most “primitive” coding mechanism for life. The earth’s primordial ocean, which came into existence not long after the earth was formed, about four and a half billion years ago, may well have contained microscopic life forms based on
RNA
. This suggests that Ebola is an ancient kind of life, perhaps nearly as old as the earth itself. Another hint that Ebola is extremely ancient is the way in which it can seem neither quite alive nor quite unalive.

Viruses may seem alive when they multiply, but in another sense they are obviously dead, are only machines, subtle ones to be sure, but strictly mechanical, no more alive than a jackhammer. Viruses are molecular sharks, a motive without a mind. Compact, hard, logical, totally selfish, the virus is dedicated to making copies of itself—which it can do on occasion with radiant speed. The prime directive is to replicate.

Viruses are too small to be seen. Here is a way to imagine the size of a virus. Consider the island of Manhattan shrunk to this size:

This Manhattan could easily hold nine million viruses. If you could magnify this Manhattan and if it were full of viruses, you would see little figures clustered like the lunch crowd on Fifth Avenue. A hundred million crystallized polio viruses could cover the period at the end of this sentence. There could be two hundred and fifty Woodstock Festivals of viruses sitting on that period—the combined
populations of Great Britain and France—and you would never know it.

Keep it clean, Nancy thought. No blood. No blood. I
don’t like
blood. Every time I see a drop of blood, I see a billion viruses. Break off and rinse. Break off and rinse. Slow yourself. Look at Tony’s suit. Check him.

You watched your partner’s suit for any sign of a hole or a break. It was kind of like being a mother and watching your kid—a constant background check to see if everything is okay.

Meanwhile, Johnson was checking her. He observed her for any kind of mistake, any jerkiness with the tools. He wondered if he would see her drop something.

“RONGEUR,” he said.

“WHAT?” she asked.

He pointed at her air hose to suggest that she crimp it so that she could hear him better. She grabbed the hose and folded it. The air stopped flowing, her suit deflated around her, and the noise died away. He put his helmet close to hers and spoke the word
rongeur
again, and she released her hose. She handed him a pair of pliers called the rongeur. The word is French and means “gnawer.” It is used for opening skulls.

Getting into a skull is always a bitch in Level 4. A primate skull is hard and tough, and the bone plates are knitted together. Ordinarily you would whip through a skull with an electric bone saw, but
you can’t use a bone saw in Level 4. It would throw a mist of bone particles and blood droplets into the air, and you do not want to create any kind of infective mist in a hot area, even if you are wearing a space suit; it is just too dangerous.

They popped the skull with the pliers. It made a loud cracking sound. They removed the brain, eyes, and spinal cord and dropped them into a jar of preservative.

Johnson was handing her a tube containing a sample when he stopped and looked at her gloved hands. He pointed to her right glove.

She glanced down. Her glove. It was drenched in blood, but now she saw the hole. It was a rip across the palm of the outer glove on her right hand.

Nancy tore off the glove. Now her main suit glove was covered with blood. It spidered down the outer sleeve of her space suit. Great, just great—Ebola blood all over my suit. She rinsed her glove and arm in the disinfectant, and they came up clean and shiny wet. Then she noticed that her hand, inside the two remaining gloves, felt cold and clammy. There was something wet inside her space-suit glove. She wondered if that glove was a leaker, too. She wondered if she had sustained a breach in her right main glove. She inspected that glove carefully. Then she saw it. It was a crack in the wrist. She had a breach in her space suit. Her hand felt
wet
. She wondered if there might be Ebola blood inside her space suit, somewhere close to that cut on the palm of her hand. She
pointed to her glove and said, “HOLE.” Johnson bent over and inspected her glove. He saw the crack in the wrist. She saw his face erupt in surprise, and then he looked into her eyes. She saw that he was afraid.

That terrified her. She jerked her thumb toward the exit. “I’M OUTTA HERE, MAN. CAN YOU FINISH?”

He replied, “I WANT YOU TO LEAVE IMMEDIATELY. I’LL SECURE THE AREA AND FOLLOW YOU OUT.”

Using only her left hand, her good hand, she unplugged her suit from the air hose. She practically ran down the corridor to the air lock, her right arm hanging rigidly at her side. She did not want to move that hand because every time she moved it she felt something squishing around in there, inside the glove. Fear threatened to overwhelm her. How was she going to remove her boots without using her bad hand? She kicked them off. They went flying down the corridor. She threw open the air-lock door and stepped inside and slammed the door behind her.

She pulled a chain that hung from the ceiling of the air lock. That started the decon shower. The decon shower takes seven minutes, and you are not permitted to leave during that period, because the shower needs time to work on viruses. First came a blast of water jets, which washed traces of blood from her space suit. The water jets stopped. Then came a spray of EnviroChem, coming out of nozzles all up and down the sides of the
air lock, which deconned her space suit. Of course, if something lived inside her glove, the chemical shower would not reach it.

There were no lights in the air lock; it was dim, almost dark. The place was literally a gray zone. She wished it had a clock. Then you would know how long you would have to wait. Five minutes to go? four minutes? Chemical mist drizzled down her faceplate. It was like driving a car in the rain when the windshield wipers are broken; you can’t see a thing. Shit, shit, shit, she thought.

At the Institute, there is a Level 4 biocontainment hospital called the Slammer, where a patient can be treated by doctors and nurses wearing space suits. If you are exposed to a hot agent and you go into the Slammer and fail to come out alive, then your body is taken to a nearby Level 4 biocontainment morgue, known as the Submarine. The soldiers around the Institute call the morgue the Submarine because its main door is made of heavy steel and looks like a pressure door in a submarine.

Son of a bitch! she thought. They’ll put me into the Slammer. And Tony will be filling out accident reports while I’m breaking with Ebola. And a week later, I’ll be in the Submarine. Shit! Jerry’s in Texas. And I didn’t go to the bank today. There’s no money in the house. The kids are home with Mrs. Trapane,
and she needs to be paid
. I didn’t go to the market today. There’s no food in the house. How are the kids going to eat if I’m in
the Slammer? Who’s going to stay with them tonight? Shit, shit, shit!

The shower stopped. She opened the door and flung herself into the staging area. She came out of the space suit fast. She shucked it. She leaped out of it. The space suit slapped to the concrete floor, wet, dripping with water.

As her right arm came out of the suit, she saw that the sleeve of her scrub suit was dark wet and her inner glove was red.

That space-suit glove had been a leaker. Ebola blood had run over her innermost glove. It had smeared down on the latex, right against her skin, right against the Band-Aid. Her last glove was thin and translucent, and she could see the Band-Aid through it, directly under the Ebola blood. Her heart pounded, and she almost threw up—her stomach contracted and turned over, and she felt a gag reflex in her throat. The puke factor. It is a sudden urge to throw up when you find yourself unprotected in the presence of a Biosafety Level 4 organism. Her mind raced: What now? I’ve got an undeconned glove—Ebola blood in here. Oh,
Jesus
. What’s the procedure here? What do I have to do now?

Tony Johnson’s blue figure moved in the air lock, and she heard the nozzles begin to hiss. He had begun the decon cycle. It would be seven minutes before he could answer any questions.

The main question was whether any blood had penetrated the last glove to the cut. Five or ten Ebola-virus particles suspended in a droplet of
blood could easily slip through a pinhole in a surgical glove, and that might be enough to start an explosive infection. This stuff could amplify itself. A pinhole in a glove might not be visible to the eye. She went over to the sink and put her hand under the faucet to rinse off the blood and held it there for a while. The water carried the blood down the drain, where the waste water would be cooked in heated tanks.

Then she pulled off the last glove, holding it delicately by the cuff. Her right hand came out caked with baby powder, her fingernails short, no nail polish, no rings, knuckles scarred by a bite from a goat that had nipped her when she was a child, and a Band-Aid on the palm.

She saw blood mixed with the baby powder.

Please, please, make it
my
blood.

Yes—it was her own blood. She had bled around the edges of the Band-Aid. She did not see any monkey blood on her hand.

She put the last glove under the faucet. The water was running, and it filled up the glove. The glove swelled up like a water balloon. She dreaded the sudden appearance of a thread of water squirting from the glove, the telltale of a leak, a sign that her life was over. The glove fattened and held. No leaks.

Suddenly her legs collapsed. She fell against the cinder-block wall and slid down it, feeling as if she had been punched in the stomach. She came to rest on the hatbox, the biohazard box that someone had been using as a chair. Her legs
kicked out, and she went limp and leaned back against the wall. That was how Tony Johnson found her when he emerged from the air lock.

The accident report concluded that Major N. Jaax had not been exposed to Ebola virus. Her last glove had remained intact, and since everyone believed that the agent was transmitted through direct contact with blood and bodily fluids, there did not seem to be any way for it to have entered her bloodstream, even though it had breached her space suit. She drove home that night having escaped the Slammer by the skin of her last glove. She had almost caught Ebola from a dead monkey, who had caught it from a young woman named Mayinga, who had caught it from a nun who had crashed and bled out in the jungles of Zaire in years gone by.

She called Jerry that night in Texas. “Guess what? I had this little problem today. I had a near-Ebola experience.” She told him what had happened.

He was appalled. “God-damn it, Nancy! I told you not to get involved with that Ebola virus! That
fucking
Ebola!” And he went into a ten-minute diatribe about the dangers of doing hot work in a space suit, especially with Ebola.