Liberia. Nothing. I tried: The Vaccine Laboratory Africa. I tried: The Vaccine Laboratory CDC WHO. I started typing: The Vaccine La…
At that moment, I experienced a piercingly sharp pain in my neck. It radiated upward, slamming my head with crushing migraine. As my vision blurred, I tried to analyze the pain. The prick felt as thin as a needle, but as traumatic as having a silver stake hammered into my neck.
Terrified that I had been bitten by a bat, adrenalin flooded my system. I felt crazed. Bats are one of the known vectors transmitting Ebola to humans, believed by scientists to possibly have been the original vector.
In the split-second in which these thoughts raced through my mind, my hand automatically tried to fly up to my neck.
That’s all I remember. I passed out.
Next thing I knew, I found myself waking up in bed. I still had a massive headache. Rolling over to view my alarm clock, I discovered that an hour had passed from the time I had experienced the sharp pain in the records room.
I felt as though I were swimming underwater. I decided to swing my legs over the side of the bed and stand up, but my body failed to obey my mind. I lay on my back. I stared at the ceiling. I pictured a fat, fuzzy bat landing on my shoulder and sinking razor-sharp teeth into the back of my neck.
Relentlessly, my head pounded. Every muscle in my body ached. Weakness had taken over and owned me. These were all Ebola symptoms. The incubation period for Ebola was anywhere from two to twenty-one days. I was on Day 2.
I knew I had to get to the Staff Clinic.
Vacillating wildly between complete denial that I was symptomatic after being bitten the night before by an Ebola vector and crazed panic that I had begun a quick descent into the hell of Hemorrhagic Fever, I made myself stand up and get dressed.
I threw on dirty shorts, a torn shirt and sneakers. I didn’t care how I looked. I called in sick to work. I forced the words out of my mouth: “I’m sure it’s nothing. I have a headache, but I get those sometimes...Yeah, migraines…They get pretty bad sometimes. I’m going to go to the clinic, get checked out, see if I can get pain meds.”
I headed on over to the Staff Clinic, a gray cement structure located on a paved road set apart from the rest of the other buildings.
I was surprised to find two military policemen with assault weapons guarding the front door. Gruffly and without even a hint of a smile, they demanded my identification.
Thank God, I had thought to bring it with me. I showed them my badge and my Staff ID card.
The shorter of the two men opened the door and told me to go inside.
The waiting room was large but empty. I signed in. Taking a seat against a wall, I leaned back and closed my eyes.
I jumped as a nurse called my name: “Emma Johnson!”
The nurse was friendly. Smiling, she ushered me into an examination room. She said, “The doctors will be with you shortly.” She pointed to the examination table. “Just put on the paper gown over there, open to the back.”
I took off my clothes, dropped them on a chair and struggled into the white paper gown. Trying to feel less vulnerable, I folded and unfolded my arms, crossed and uncrossed my legs. With each movement, the paper gown crunched and crackled and pricked me under the arms with its sharp edges.
A CDC doctor and a WHO doctor entered my exam room, accompanied by a soldier with an assault weapon. I felt a jolt of panic, as swift and terrifying as lightning. My instinct was to jump down from the table and run.
My head became muddled. I fought to breathe. I tried desperately not to pass out.
Why the hell were members of the CDC, the World Health Organization and the U. S. military entering my examination room?
Oh, my God…They must suspect Ebola…
The CDC doctor introduced herself. She was young, early thirties. Intense green eyes, dark curly hair frizzing in the humidity. She introduced herself: Dr. Vivian Parker. Then she introduced the WHO doctor, a tall, lanky guy, blond crew cut, an Adam’s apple that bobbed as he spoke with a French accent: Dr. Luke Laflamme.
The military guy remained unintroduced, nameless. A life-sized action figure, hypervigilant, steely gray eyes focused on my every move.
Dr. Parker spoke to me as a normal doctor would. She pulled over a stool on which to sit down. Crossed her legs. Appeared relaxed. Asked me about my symptoms. Nodded a bunch of times. Said, “Uh-huh…Mmmm-hmmm…” intermittently as I provided information.
She seemed oblivious to the army guy with the massive firepower standing right behind her, the mayhem he could unleash.
I relaxed a bit, although I still felt vulnerable in the flimsy paper gown.
I shared the story of what had happened to me the previous night. Nurses were allowed in the records room, so I said that I had been reading up on new patients there. I never admitted to prying into Akachi’s records. I then reported all my symptoms, which at that point included sweating and chills.
At Dr. Parker’s request, Dr. Laflamme took my temperature. He informed us that I had a temperature of 101.5 degrees Fahrenheit. Fever! One of the symptoms that got people quarantined!
I asked if I had been bitten by a bat. Both doctors took a look at the spot on the back of my neck where I had felt the sharp prick.
Dr. Parker said, “I don’t see anything. Of course, a bat bite isn’t always visible; but I’m thinking most likely you weren’t bitten by a bat. No one else has reported seeing a bat in the records room. I’m thinking you probably have a good ol’ normal virus…not Ebola. But, as you know, anyone with a fever on our camp grounds is placed in quarantine until we know for sure that they don’t have Ebola.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dr. Laflamme ready a hypodermic needle. He told me, “I’m going to give this to you for your headache pain. We’re also going to get an IV going for you in the room next door. We want to make sure you’re not dehydrated when we move you over to the camp hospital.”
As he pushed the sharp needle through the skin of my arm, I thought how odd that he, Dr. Parker and the soldier weren’t wearing protective gear. They suspected that I might have Ebola and yet they weren’t wearing protective suits or even protective masks, even as Dr. Laflamme punctured my skin with a sharp object.
I watched Dr. Laflamme’s Adam’s apple bob up and down, counted how many times. Reached twelve. Then I slipped into unconsciousness, in the same way one slips under the control of anesthesia before surgery.
Days passed by. Like a drowning swimmer, I fought to stay above water. At times, I was lucid. Needles were plunged into my arm; bottles of intravenous drip solutions were replaced and hung on the pole next to my bed.
At one point, Dr. Tovar stood at my bedside. His presence terrified me. He told me that I had tested positive for Ebola. I tried to grasp onto his words: “We have serums that have shown promise. We’re going to administer one to you. Several people have recovered from Ebola after getting this treatment. You’re very lucky to be approved for this.”
Late one night, the door to my room opened. As I oscillated between consciousness and slipping under waves that plunged my mind to the bottom of an unfathomable ocean of blankness, I saw Dr. Tovar. I noticed other men with guns. A team of doctors in white coats surrounded my bed. Someone grabbed my wrist, as though checking my pulse. Dr. Tovar’s voice commanded: “OK, administer Mutation Z. She’s a perfect candidate.”
Three Weeks Later
It’s now three weeks after I became a test subject for Mutation Z. It was administered to me by hypodermic needle. I had initially assumed it was a variation of a serum designed to fight Ebola, most likely a scientifically developed mutation of a serum that had already cured someone.
The first time I opened my eyes after being administered Mutation Z, I found myself in a hospital bed in what appeared to be a prison cell. I felt a bit better for an hour or so, as though good health would return to me.
As a full moon passed in fr
ont of a glass wall directly across from the prison cells, the natural light illuminated two people in a cell down from my own. It was Akachi…and his mother! They were both here! They both looked well. And I was delighted to see them reunited with each other.
Then, without warning, Akachi and his mother began to transform from lovely mother and child into beings whose skin fell off in sheets. Underneath, they were bloody, bony, moving corpses. I watched as a prison guard armed with an assault weapon threw chunks of raw meat and meaty bones as large as a human’s into their cage.
Akachi and his mother ambled over to the raw muscle and bones. They devoured every bit of meat, groaning and ripping and smacking as they ate.
About to throw up, I raised my hand to cover my mouth. Sheets of skin fell off my own hands and arms and face. I couldn’t stop the progression. My cell floor became littered with droppings of my own skin.
An armed guard approached the bars of my cell. As he tossed raw meat and bones toward me, I watched him like a predator eyes its prey. I wanted him. I experienced the most intense desire to devour him, to rip open his head and plunge my hand deep inside, taking out his brains like a delicacy and swallowing them.
I could not stop thinking about brains as I ripped meat from the human-sized bone the guard had thrown at me.
As the next few nights removed increasingly larger slices from the moon, my skin repaired itself. I noticed the same was