eyes, as Ebola robbed him of his blood-clotting ability. The sickening sour stench of vomit and blood hung in the air inside the building.
Struggling to hold back tears until I was safely outside and freed from my face shield, I was suddenly distracted by a commotion a few partitions down from Akachi’s. Dr. Steele was telling a male nurse that Akachi wasn’t dead. She reprimanded the flustered nurse for recording a Date and Time of Death for him.
The nurse replied, politely but firmly, “Akachi was clearly dead. He flatlined. We didn’t resuscitate him.”
Dr. Steele replied, “We didn’t need to resuscitate him. He came around on his own.”
Confused, I touched Akachi’s back gently with my turquoise-gloved hand. There was no movement of breath there. He had definitely stopped breathing. And he had been disconnected from his intravenous drips. Blood leaked onto his bed from the holes where the needles had punctured his skin.
Akachi was indeed clearly dead.
The nurse persisted, “But you called Time of Death. I only recorded the Date and Time of Death that were called.”
Dr. Steele replied, “You have a lot to learn, Nurse.” She said the word Nurse as though spitting fecal matter from her mouth. Then she added, “You’re suspended from work for one week. Report back to me then, not a moment earlier.”
The nurse blurted out, “But…” Dr. Steele ignored him and turned away. Looking down at the floor, she headed toward Akachi’s area. I stealthily moved into a partition right next to his. There, a pregnant woman lay sound asleep on her back, her package of human baby rising and falling beneath her hospital gown as she breathed in the sour air.
I heard the footsteps of another worker following Dr. Steele into Akachi’s room. Looking through the thick plastic curtain, I discovered that it was a male CDC worker. Shortly after that, two more CDC workers entered.
I moved myself closer to the plastic sheet dividing the expectant woman’s room from Akachi’s. I listened as hard as I could. Some words were muffled due to my having to listen through protective headgear and the health workers talking through their face shields, but some of their conversation came through loud and clear. The word vaccine certainly did.
Dr. Steele asked the first worker, “So, you have the vaccine?”
The answer: “Yes.”
Dr. Steele: “How many doses?”
CDC worker: “Fifty doses right now. More are on their way.”
Dr. Steele: “OK. Give the first dose to this boy. How many doses will he need to complete your experimental trial?”
CDC worker: “Three. That should do it.”
Dr. Steele: “OK. Give him the first dose here. Then let’s move him on over to the research facility.”
My shift ended. Due back that night, I knew what I had to do. I planned to dig out Akachi’s medical files and scan them. I also planned to figure out which research facility he was being moved to.
Akachi was clearly dead.
I tried to make sense of what I had overheard. In a desperate attempt to save patients and beat Ebola before it became a worldwide pandemic, researchers had been developing serums, including serum developed from the blood of Ebola patients. Serum from a patient had recently saved the life of a missionary health aide, and that story had gone viral all over world news. But what I had overheard still didn’t make any sense. Serum is developed from patients who had survived Ebola, the theory being that their blood is rich in antibodies that had successfully fought the disease. The blood of a person killed by Ebola, however, would be more laden with disease than antibodies.
And Akachi was clearly dead.
I left Building 5. I disinfected myself in our sister building, Disinfecting Station 5.
I planned to rest and meditate before my evening shift. I went back to my residence building, lay down on my bed and fell fast asleep. I dreamt about Akachi in the exact same position I had found him a short time earlier: the tiny body robbed of its sweet soul, silenced forever from begging for the comfort of his Mama’s arms, his insides liquefied and leaking onto his bed. In my dream, he rose from the dead, morphing slowly into a giant yellow duck. Lumbering like Godzilla, he wandered into the slum where he lived, crushing houses and children playing in puddles as he went. Finally, he reached the church where he found his mother floating in the air. She levitated slightly above the priest’s fingertips as he reached desperately for her in the processional march among the fire-hazard candles. Suddenly, Akachi shrank down into his child form, a disastrous version of his former self: sheets of skin peeling from his bleeding body.
I woke up, screaming bloody murder and covered in sweat. Thank God, no one was around. No one barged into our residence building to save me.
I looked over at the alarm clock and gasped. I had only ten minutes to get to work on time. Shit! Shit! Shit!
I knew it wouldn’t be safe for me to start work with a muddled, groggy head. Rushing through getting into protective gear also wasn’t a great option. I decided to take a safe amount of time and to suffer the consequences with Dr. Steele.
Finally, at 9:30 PM, I was dressed in my duck suit and heading on over to Building 5. As I reached a large tree in front of our Safety Station, the front door to Building 5 opened. Four medical personnel in yellow protective suits clutching the handles of a stretcher with their turquoise gloves exited through the door. I wondered who they were moving. The body under a white sheet didn’t appear to be dead, as the head wasn’t covered. Had someone actually recovered from Ebola? Dead bodies were usually carried out the back door.
The door remained open. Dr. Steele came out of the building. She waved to someone up the road in the opposite direction from the camp’s front entrance.
I ducked behind the wide trunk of the tree next to me. As I watched, a team of three doctors from the CDC and two doctors from the World Health Organization approached the stretcher. I recognized all of them from ongoing training sessions all medical staff were required to attend. They asked Dr. Steele a number of questions, including: “Has the patient received the first dose of vaccine?” To which Dr. Steele replied, “Yes. That’s been done.”
My blood pounded so loudly in my ears, I had difficulty hearing. It was as though the protective headgear had suddenly stuffed the noise of my pumping blood closer against my eardrums, muffling the outside world. My heart knocked against my chest.
The first dose. Exactly what Akachi had been given.
The group stood silently in front of Building 5, as though waiting for something. One of the CDC workers spoke into a cell phone. Moments later, three sets of headlights appeared off in the distance, farther up the road but in the same direction from where the CDC and WHO doctors had arrived.
From out of the darkness, the vehicles emerged into the lighted area around Building 5. One turned out to be a camp ambulance. The other: an armored military vehicle. The third: a camp van. Medical personnel exited the ambulance. Soldiers carrying automatic weapons exited the armored vehicle. Both groups surrounded the staff carrying the stretcher. The driver of the van just waited.
For a brief moment between the time the stretcher was loaded into the ambulance and the ambulance doors were closed, I saw the patient sit up on the stretcher, rub his eyes and begin to cry. He looked up at an ambulance worker masked in protective gear and pleaded, “Mama! Where is my Mama?”
Dr. Steele turned to the team of CDC and WHO workers and commented, “Well, at least he’ll be seeing his Mama soon!”
A couple of workers laughed. One of them offered a thumbs-up sign.
Akachi. And his mother? Where were they taking him?
I couldn’t follow. I didn’t have a car. I couldn’t hop onto a bicycle or run or even walk at a fast pace in my yellow suit.
I became even more determined to study Akachi’s medical files.
After the medical group left, including Dr. Steele, I counted to 180 seconds. Three-minute interval. Then I
entered Building 5 as though simply late for work. I apologized profusely to the intern on duty, babbling about how I had accidentally fallen asleep without setting my alarm, how exhausted I had been, etc., etc. Then I asked for instructions on my duties that night.
I was told to change a few intravenous drips. That’s it.
After my shift ended and I had gotten disinfected, I sneaked into the records room attached to Building 5. It had its own entrance, as it was easier for staff to look through records without those damn protective gloves on. At the end of each day, all records were scanned inside the treatment room of Building 5 and uploaded into computers in the separate records room.
I sat down in front of one of the computers. I ran a search for all records on Akachi Anikulapo-Kuti. I found lots of information. His family background, the slum where he came from, his condition, his treatment, his progress. I also found a sheet signed by Dr. Steele giving instructions for Akachi to be moved to a facility called The Vaccine Laboratory.
I thought about that for a moment. I had never heard of The Vaccine Laboratory. Surely, if it was on the grounds of our camp, I would have heard of it? And yet the ambulance and all its accompanying vehicles had headed not in the direction of the camp’s massively fortified gates, but deeper into the camp’s grounds.
I typed in a search for: The Vaccine Laboratory. Nothing popped up. I tried: The Vaccine Laboratory