Sali's drumming finger tips on the plastic report cover created a reassuring rhythm. She gently swayed her body to the beat. Anything to distract herself from the presentation she was about to make.
"Ms. Inbar," the conference room door swung open and a silk suited gentleman motioned for her to follow.
The lights were dimmed so a slide projector could be used. Sali was relieved to have the guide to her seat. Between her nerves and the half light, she was sure she would have stumbled and fallen flat on her face.
"Ms. Inbar, thank you for joining us," the voice across the heavy oak table was just a silhouette in the darkness but Sali knew the man well.
"Thank you for asking me, Dr. Gould," the director of medicine had spoken with her by telephone everyday for the last month in preparation for this meeting.
"Let me introduce my associates. To my left, Dr. Warner from Infection Control, Dr. Rhoos, with Blood Borne Pathogens, Ellen Green, Green Tourner Labs, Ret. General Hess, and Mr. Joseph, he is consulting with the hospital," each shadow cloaked figure nodded their hello. "I'll turn the meeting over to Sali Inbar who will give us her lab results of the samples in question. Ms. Inbar..."
Sali was at an extreme disadvantage. She had never met any of these people before and had no idea what they looked like. More importantly, Sali had no idea how they were looking at her. They had her report for several days and she was sure they must be skeptical. Hell, she wrote it and she was skeptical.
"Well," her voice cracked into the silence around her. Oak chairs creaked their burden as the listeners leaned forward. "The results, while bizarre, were consistent on test and retest. It did not matter which lab or technician completed the protocol. Our results never varied more than one standard deviation."
Sali paused a moment at the sound of pages ruffling. The question she anticipated was not asked. She moved on with the report.
"The blood tested was human. A contaminant, which has yet to be identified, was present and reproducing in the test situation. The properties of the contaminant could not be identified as any known agent. What I can tell you is that it functioned like an acid and reproduced rapidly. The blood sample was eventually dwarfed in ratio to the contaminant."
"How?" a voice croaked across the darkness.
"We simple don't know," Sali was glad they could not see her face.
"But... you have a theory, don't you?" Dr. Gould almost purred.
"Well, um, it's more of a thought than a theory," she realized then he had see her private notes. Dr. Gould must have accessed her computer files.
"I want you to tell them the theory," he shouted as he slammed his fist onto the table top.
"Dr. Gould," Sali was startled by his outburst, "it's so, I mean, it was brainstorming. Nothing more. It's, well, crazy!"
"Indulge me," his voice was restraining anger.
"It, I mean, I thought, under the microscope, the samples had a feature that looked like...well, two symmetrical pin point lights. Not unlike, for example, the way human eyes reflect light in a photograph. You know the 'red eye' phenomenon."
"You think there were eyes in the blood sample looking back at you," Sali thought the humorless voice was that of Mr. Joseph.
"The contaminant could be a parasite so small that my microscope could not pick it up but the light reflected in the eyes. It could be secreting an acid like enzyme and reproducing which would explain the dramatic ratio shift of contaminant to blood over time and increase in pin points of light or, to classify them appropriately, unexplained bright objects, UBO's," Sali sighed feeling her career deflate with the air escaping her lungs.
"Thank you, Ms. Inbar."
The silk suited man came over to show her back out of the conference room. It was over. She presented her impossible test results and Dr. Gould already knew her crazy theory. It took less than fifteen minutes to destroy a career she had spent eight years building. Her world was slipping out of her grasp. She panicked.
"Wait," she would not let it end like this, "let me examine the source of the sample."
"Why?"
"It may give me some insight to the results. My theory was created in a vacuum. In context, I may find a more reasonable explanation."
"Thank you for your offer. Now, please follow Michael to the exit," there was no argument as the strong silk suited gentlemen pushed her out the door.
The following day, Sali was not surprised to receive a voice mail from Dr. Gould's secretary requesting a meeting. It was a surprise to learn the meeting would take place in Conference Room 9639; the "tank." It sat next to the most expensive hospital bed in the country, if not the world, and was reserved exclusively for meetings about whatever unfortunate individual was the occupant of the bed. The bed, of course, lay north to south in the middle of Room 9640; a Vacuum sealed room.
Room 9640 was an engineering and medical marvel constructed to contain the most dangerous, contagious infections and the body that harbored them. More than a mere hospital room, it could be a surgical suite or psyche lock down or multiple bed dorm. Whatever the sequela of the infection, the needs could be met in this single room. It was constructed with its own bottled oxygen supply for intake and was vented back into bottled cylinders that were taken and buried deep in the Nevada dessert. An airlock system of doors prevented even the smallest particle of oxygen from escaping into the rest of the hospital. A sucking sound was created when the door to the main chamber finally opened which resulted in its infamous nickname, "Zip Locker." The patient was vacuumed sealed in a room they could not leave because of the health risk to the general population. All service would take place in the windowless, colorless, sterile room until the day they died. The natural fatality rate for the room was 98%. The other 2% managed to kill themselves.
Sali was thrilled. Grabbing her clip board, she raced to the elevators. This was her chance. Dr. Gould would let her see the source of the mystery sample. She would meet her Patient 0.
"Sali, thank you for joining me," Dr. Gould, a distinguished man in his early sixties, was already sitting in one of the tank's overstuffed chairs.
"A pleasure," she could not contain her smile in spite of the silk suit's pushing into the room, "I guess I'm late," she tossed a half glance over her shoulder at the fleeing Michael.
Dr. Gould motioned for her to sit and ignored or did not notice her last remark. He took several folders off the small coffee table in the middle of the circle of over stuffed chairs. Finding the right one, he passed it to Sali.
"This is a standard waiver of liability. Just in case the unthinkable happens and you come into contact with a foreign body. After that, there is a confidentiality agreement and finally we have a military form."
"Military..."
"Oh, you know the Pentagon. Any unknown substance could be chemical warfare or aliens," he forced a perfect smile, "They just want to have a legal means of dealing with staff involved in this most amazing case."
"Okay, I guess," Sali was really not sure but did not want to cause a problem so she quickly signed each page.
"Tremendous. Let's get you up to speed on the case and set you up with some PPE."
The PPE or personal protective equipment meant Sali would be able to enter the Zip Locker and not just conduct her assessment from the observation level that looped around the room. Sali would be able to feel for veins and check muscle wasting. Her head spun with the access she was being granted.
Swaddled in the giant yellow protective suit, Sali felt more like an astronaut than a chemist. The narrow corridor leading from the outer chamber to the main operation suite of Room 9640 did nothing to make her feel less like she was embarking on a trip to the moon.
"Patient 0 initially came to the ER with a wounded toe that would not heal," Dr. Gould spoke into a microphone in his head piece that transmitted directly to Sali's ear piece. "Blood tests immediately indicated the anomaly in the sample and the patient was brought here. That was two, two and a half months ago."
"Have any of the ER people been tested."
"Yes, we did a full quarantine. None of the samples there have come back with anything similar, yet."
Sali shuddered a little. How many people were still quarantined? She decided that she needed to keep her focus on Patient 0. His potential contact infections were not her concern.
A sucking noise snapped Sali to attention. It was just like the rumors. When the door to the main suite opened a rush of air slipped into the chamber creating the effect. In contrast to the darkness of the corridor, the white walled room seemed to glow under the fluorescent lighting. Sali had to squint against the light.
A bed lay in the middle of the room surrounded by beeping and pulsating tones of modern medical equipment. The young man restrained to the bed struggled to lift his head at their entrance.
"...and the rest of the general physical, with those two exceptions, is negative," it finally struck Sali that Dr. Gould had been talking the whole time.
"His chart...?" Sali ventured.
"The record is eighty pounds and counting. It is much easier to request a specific piece of information and let the computer match related subjects. Just go to my secretary and she will help you complete the forms."
Sali looked directly in the face of Patient 0 for the first time. He was clean shaven with neatly trimmed blonde hair and blue eyes. The gentle curve of his features made him seem boyish but the length and breadth of his body indicated a mature male. A thin sheet covered from his hip to knees leaving almost nothing to Sali's imagination. Subtle movement under the thin veil caused Sali to shift her attention to Patient 0's face.
"Thanks for noticing," he cracked a half smile.
Sali had to really struggle to hear the man through the PPE covering her head and Dr. Gould's endless descriptions of dead end testing.
"Dr. Gould," she interrupted, "how do we talk to the patient through these hoods?"
"We don't. Why would we need to?" The doctor seemed confused by her question. "Sali, I suggest you start thinking about the science of this. You have less than ten minutes left to do your examination."
Sali felt the weight of the personal oxygen supply strapped to her back. Twenty minutes of air would give them enough time to get in, examine Patient 0, and get back out. The team felt the direct contact with the subject even with PPE in place needed to be kept to fifteen minutes or less.
She nodded sheepishly to Dr. Gould and went to work. Beginning at the feet, the original source of Patient 0's discomfort, Sali moved up one side and down the other looking for and logging skin abrasions. All data entered the computer by a keyboard next to the subject. Sali was almost done when she got to his head. There was just a few minutes left before she had to leave. The clear blue eyes disarmed her once more.
"My name is Crisp, Jesse Crisp."
Sali could feel sweat on her forehead. He seemed so sweet. Strapped to a bed like a lab rat and still he could smile at her as she poked and prodded without so much as his consent. His fingers gently brushed against her yellow protective suite when she leaned over to look in his eyes for broken vessels.
"Time to go," Dr. Gould announced as the computer sounded a time warning.
Sali straightened and followed the doctor to the door of the Zip Locker. At the door, Sali half turned back toward the bed in time to see the man mouth a good-bye. It was not until the chamber door closed behind her, shutting out the light, that Sali understood what Mr. Crisp had strained to say. "I forgive you." * * * Sali rushed into the tank with an arm load of papers. Some catching the breeze she created slipped up to defy gravity only to be dragged back to earth. They settled at her feet in a halo. She freed one hand from her bundle to smooth her several strands of loose curls behind her brown ear. "Sali," Dr. Gould stopped sipping his coffee, startled by the disheveled appearance of the young woman. "what are you doing? It looks like you haven't slept.' "And it smells like you haven't bathed," the voice belonged to Mr. Joseph.
Mr. Joseph, a thick and squat bald man, sat next to elegant Dr. Gould and was sipping coffee from a take out container. Sali shot him an angry glance at his rude remark and then thought better of it. Both men deserved an explanation to the suddenness of her meeting request, her appearance, and her state of mind.
"Gentlemen, please forgive how I look and smell for the moment. I have not left my lab since completing my examination..."
"Sali, that was three days ago!" Dr. Gould tried to appear shocked. "You have not eaten or slept, I'll wager."
"Well, no," Sali thought she detected a grin beneath the doctor's look of concern.
"Dear, I blame myself. Pushing you to look to the science of this case, I never believed you would be so reckless with yourself," Dr. Gould's voice tingled with approval. "Let me get you some of my own coffee. It is much better than the hospital cafe's brew."
"Could we worry about that later? What have you got for us, Inbar?" Mr. Joseph injected angrily as the doctor went to pour Sali's coffee from his personal urn.
"I'll just start. Stop me if you need clarification. O.K., I saw during the exam that all compromises to skin integrity; needle sticks, the original wound," her voice cracked a bit, "chaffing around the restraints, were failing to heal. Instead, they are becoming quite a problem. The short story is the acid is escaping onto the surface of the skin and devouring it."
"Yes," Dr. Gould's voice was flat and bored.
"Ah, in contrast," Sali had suspected that Gould already knew about the exterior damage and what it meant to Crisp, "...in contrast, the blood is almost identical to the first sample taken."
"So what?" The impatient Mr. Joseph seemed ready to explode.
"It means," Dr. Gould chose to summarize the finding, "the parasite and the host have struck a bargain. The parasite will not overtake Patient 0."
"Even more," Sali tried to calm the shake in her voice with a sip of Dr. Gould's delightful almond coffee, "the parasite is curing all infections as they develop and, from what I can see, every other disease."
Dr. Gould smiled as Mr. Joseph shouted the most obscene profanity Sali had ever heard. She continued with the test and retest results and handed report copies to each man trying not to make eye contact. Sali went on to explain that the parasite in the host was in perfect balance. Take a blood sample out of the host and the parasite grows unchecked. Both blood cells and parasite die. Inject a sample with any known agent of disease and the parasite dies after curing the sample of the disease and the blood cells live.
"Every disease was eradicated?" Dr. Gould raised his eyebrows.
"Yes but when we cure Patient 0 we will not be able to develop vaccines. So, this universal cure is just an interesting artifact," Sali did not look up when the men straighten in their chairs.
"Sali, our work here is not about Patient 0. We may have found the key to end all human suffering and that must be the direction of our efforts. I don't need to remind you that the military and government intelligence is in control of this situation," Dr. Gould's tone was even tempered but Sali heard the threat.
"Just to make sure we are on the same page," Sali understood Mr. Joseph's role completely now, "each breach of the outer layer of Mr. Crisp's skin results in a wound that will not heal. He will literally be eaten away from the outside in with the acid by product."
"Oh, it will take years for that process to result in the total destruction of Patient 0. By that time, we should have learned how to create a new source or as we should refer to it as Patient 1."
The men thanked Sali for her efforts. She was told to take a day off to get herself pulled together. There was so much more to do. When she returned she would head the next phase of the project; CONTAMINATION. Mr. Joseph sat in stony silence as she left the room. He had heard her misstep and was on notice to her feelings.
Over the course of the next year, Sali was zealously devoted to the science of Patient 0. She worked twelve hour shifts, six days a week. The grinding schedule was overlooked by Dr. Gould due to the high yield Sali provided. She had developed serums for cancer, leukemia, and AIDS.
Dr. Gould did not notify the FDA for approval of the new treatments. He did not even write a journal article about the amazing discoveries or Patient 0. The project was still a confidential government operation. Instead, he created the Health and Holistic Care Center. The purpose was to provide cover treatments under an experimental model where the patients would pay privately to receive all forms of care. Dr. Gould and his team of physicians and faith healers would prescribe everything from radiation to hot tea to treat the desperately ill. At some point along the thirty day care plan, Dr. Gould would inject the cure into the unsuspecting, randomly selected patient. He was careful not to inform the other team members and to keep success to just two standard deviations above the national average. A course of treatment cost $60,000 and the program treated thirty patients every month. Business was booming.
Patient 0's blood was taken by the pint every two weeks. One pint could generate sixteen serums. Regardless to storage technique, the shelf life of the serum was less than twenty days. The process could not survive without a living host from which the blood supply could be drawn
Sali went to see her Patient 0 often over the year. She charted his physical decline and was able to accurately predict the next areas of deterioration. By measuring the daily millimeters of tissue loss from the toes to the ankle, Sali was able to estimate the number of days it would take for the acid to burn its way from ankle to knee. The same process was happening from fingers to wrist and wrist to elbows. Patient 0 screamed his agony often in the early days. Lately, he had been barely conscious and only moaned pathetically. Sali had recommended pain killers but the parasite seemed to "cure" their effects and Patient 0 got no relief from the searing pain. Unfortunately, the deterioration around his trunk would be even more grueling because of the tissue density and multi- organ sites. Sali estimated he could continue this way for another year. That was why she entered the Zip Locker without PPE on her last day of work.
The alarms sounded immediately. Security and military guards formed a parameter around Room 9640. Dr. Gould and Mr. Joseph were called. Sali wanted them in the Zip Locker with her and without their PPE or she was going to do something terrible.
"Sali, what do you think you are doing?" Dr. Gould was red faced.
"Thank you for coming. I've finished my research. This seemed like the best place to tell you how to contaminate other people; people like Mr. Crisp," Sali's fingered the smooth surface of a box she had placed on the over the bed table. "The parasite is ingested. It can only survive in one out of every six million men. Give or take a few hundred thousand."
"Sali, did you find a DNA profile of the perfect host?" Dr. Gould could forget the immediate threat she posed for the sake of science.
"Yes, I did."
"And..." Mr. Joseph's anger bubbled over. He had been expecting Sali would pull something but he never thought she would risk her precious Patient 0.
"Can you see Mr. Crisp from where you are standing? Do you imagine he would want me to share that information with you? I'll tell you that none of the quarantined personnel from the ER are appropriate hosts. So, maybe you can let them go now? They might be able to put their lives back in order. I mean, it has only been a year."
Sali looked Patient 0. She smoothed a gentle finger over the crease that furrowed his brow. Both men were stunned to silence when she leaned over to hum softly in his ear.
"He's suffered so much. I tried to poison him last month to end this horror but the parasite counter acted the effects," she wiped a tear away from her eyes.
"Sali!" Dr. Gould finally realized just how determined the woman was, "If you kill Patient 0 then the cures we're able to produce will end. You can't be serious. Is the suffering of one man more important than misery of all humanity?"
"It depends. If you're a scientist then no. If you're the one man then the answer is yes."
"You crazy..." Mr. Joseph would have gone for her throat if her hand was not lingering on the box in front of her.
"I've found a way to free Mr. Crisp. It has to be catastrophic multiple organ failure resulting in instantaneous brain death," she ignored Mr. Joseph's curses. "An explosion will serve the purpose. In four minutes, the bomb in this box will go off killing me and curing Mr. Crisp. The blast should not damage more than this suite and the tank next door. I don't really believe in overkill. You should hurry along and get beyond the fire doors. You know, for safety sake."
"What, Sali, you can't do this to us. We can cure any disease for thousands of people. You're ignoring the big picture," Dr. Gould tried reason.
"I'm glad you feel that way, Dr. Gould. You ingested the parasite a little over a month ago in a cup of that delicious almond coffee. I think, you will be the perfect host. As both a man and a scientist, you can understand how little your individual suffering means when weighed against all the misery of the world. Really, gentleman, you must hurry or you will be caught in the blast."
Mr. Joseph grabbed Dr. Gould by the shoulder and pushed him out the door. They ran down the corridor towards the fire door. Mr. Joseph was shouting commands to pull back to the assembled guards in the corridor. Uniformed figures scrambled from assault position to retreat in seconds. Mr. Joseph pulled and pushed and dragged Dr. Gould to the safety beyond the fire doors. The blast rocked the rest of the build but seemed well contained to the suite and conference room.
"That crazy woman! I can't believe she did this. The whole project ruined."
"What do you mean?" Mr. Joseph glared at Dr. Gould.
"We'll never figure out the DNA profile without Patient 0," Dr. Gould was exasperated by the man's lack of concern.
"Why would we need him when we have Patient 1," Mr. Joseph motioned for the guards to apprehend Dr. Gould. "Take him to quarantine until we can repair the Zip Locker."
