“No, not the rice. You’re always so…I don’t know. You don’t worry about stuff. That’s my job, isn’t it?”
Paul shrugged. “This one concerns me a bit.”
Uncharacteristically wordless, Heidi looked down at her iced tea.
“I’m probably overreacting.” It seemed like the right thing to say, and maybe it was. Nonetheless, Paul couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe he hadn’t done enough. He was trying to find the happy balance between doing enough and feeling embarrassed for doing anything.
Looking back up at him, Heidi asked, “Do you think we’ll see an epidemic here, like they’re having in West Africa?”
“No.” Paul’s brow furrowed while he thought about that snap answer. “A lot of people are sick. A lot. A lot of people have died. More than in that SARS thing a few years ago.”
“It’s been going on for three or four months, right?” Heidi asked. “That’s a while. So you’d think more people would catch it, right?”
Paul nodded. Her point was valid. “I just don’t get how it spread to so many people in that short amount of time. It’s supposedly transferred through bodily fluids, but it seems like too many people are infected for it all to be explained by just that.”
“I don’t understand. What are you getting at?” Heidi glanced down at her phone. Her newsfeed was calling.
“I’m only speculating, but I wonder if there isn’t an airborne strain that’s spreading over there.”
Heidi shook her head while she thought about it. “Taking the reverse argument, if it was airborne and it’s been around since March or April, wouldn’t a lot more people be infected?”
It was Paul’s turn to sit back and ponder. “Yeah. I think you’re right. Just the same, we’ve got some food in the basement.”
“You know what worries me?”
“If your phone battery is going to last through the day?” He smiled.
Heidi kicked him under the table. “No. With Austin in Uganda, what happens if the epidemic spreads? Will the university bring him home early?”
Looking at her across the table, Paul saw the worry growing on her face.
“I know he’s not my son, but I feel like he is.”
Paul grinned. “You’re getting maternal?”
Heidi kicked again, but missed. “Don’t be a butt. You know how I feel about him.”
“Yeah, sorry.” Going back to the previous question, Paul said, “I don’t know if the university will bring him home early or not. It honestly never crossed my mind.”
“Do you want me to call tomorrow and find out?”
Paul knew what that really meant was that Heidi was going to call tomorrow and was just letting him know. Still, things worked better if he played the game. “Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.”
“Did he give you any contact information?”
Paul shrugged. “No.”
“Didn’t you ask?”
“Of course.”
“Do you know the name of the program he went there with?” Heidi asked.
Paul shrugged again. “No.”
“I thought you asked him for that.” There was exasperation in her voice.
“I did ask. I don’t remember him emailing me the information.”
“Did he send you his contact information in Africa?”
“No.” It came out a lot more sheepishly than Paul intended. “I asked him to send it. He just didn’t.”
“He didn’t send you anything? Did you ask again?”
“Don’t nag.”
Heidi huffed. “You have to nag him sometimes. You know how he is. This is about his safety in a third-world country halfway around the world. Doesn’t it bother you? Aren’t you worried?”
“Yeah.” One word was all he could get in.
Heidi shook her head. “I swear, Paul. You’re lucky you have me around, or you wouldn’t know anything about what’s happening with Austin. I’ll call Texas A&M tomorrow and find out which summer abroad program he went over there with, and I’ll find out who his faculty sponsor is, and I’ll find out if they have an emergency contingency plan.”
“Thanks.” Paul tried not to roll his eyes but some things just happen.
Heidi kicked him under the table again.
Chapter 18
Several dozen five-gallon plastic buckets had been found in one of the farm warehouses, distributed around the ward, and placed between the beds and sleeping mats. The patients weren’t allowed to use the outhouses behind the building—new quarantine rules. Not that many of them could have made the walk out behind the hospital anyway. Most couldn’t walk to the interior restroom, which ran off the insufficient supply of water in the hospital’s cistern. So the door to the interior restroom was ordered locked, leaving the patients with one choice for relieving themselves—the buckets.
Carrying two buckets sloshing with reeking human waste, Austin shouldered his way through a door at the back of the dark ward. The buckets came from beside the beds at the back of the room, from among the first of the patients who had been admitted with high fever, headaches, diarrhea, and vomiting. Most of those also had the rash. Hell, most of the patients inside had the rash. It seemed to be spreading across the ward as if it were a disease all its own. Then there were the patients who were bleeding from the eyes, nose, or ears. To Austin, that was the irrevocable sign of hemorrhagic fever—the bleeding.
He crossed the grass behind the hospital and stopped in front of the stinking pit near the tree line. Dumping the buckets, he couldn’t help but notice black tarry lumps in the red and brown liquid. Nearly retching, he quickly stepped away.
“Their organs are breaking down.”
Startled, Austin turned to look.
Nurse Mary-Margaret, with eyes red from lack of sleep and crying, had followed him out. She’d obviously seen what came out of the buckets and turned away to look up at the grayish mists floating through the tops of giant trees up Mt. Elgon’s slopes. At twelve thousand feet the dense forest gave way to bare rock as the mountain reached to touch the sky.
“Breaking down?” Austin asked.
“I started seeing it earlier today.”
“What does it mean?”
“The Ebola virus causes blood to clot,” she replied.
Austin sat the buckets down. “I’m confused. I thought it made you bleed?”
“Early on, the blood clots in the veins. Those clots clump together and clog arteries. When that happens, dead spots form because flesh that can’t get oxygen from the blood dies. This clotting uses up all of the body’s natural coagulants.”
Austin couldn’t help but look down at the residue in his buckets.
“The body starts to slough off the dead flesh. That’s what ends up in the buckets, dead flesh from the esophagus or stomach when it is vomited out. When the lining of the intestines is sloughed off it is—” she hesitated.
Austin glanced at his buckets and looked back at the pit—horrified. “It is Ebola, then.”
Nurse Mary-Margaret nodded, and her face, with her mask pulled down below her chin, was nothing but sadness. “It still makes no sense.”
Austin didn’t know if he wanted to ask. “Why?”
Mary-Margaret replied, “You mean, how did so many get sick so fast?”
It was a rhetorical question. Of course, Austin didn’t know that answer. “Maybe when the doctor from the WHO gets here, he can help.”
“He’s here already. He got here about fifteen minutes ago.”
Austin perked up. “I didn’t see him.”
Nurse Mary-Margaret shook her head. “You’ve been working so hard in here all day. By the way, how are you feeling?”
“Like shit.”