3am.
A mother sits staring at her daughter through the thick glass, silently weeping. She watches the nurse, her uniform reinforced with breathing mask and gloves, change the bag of fluid on the drip pole and take terse, arcane notes on the pad at the end of the bed. And for all the help the nurse is providing, she can’t help her bitterness rising. All she wants to do is be close her baby: to hold her tight as she first did at this same hospital 22 years ago or even just the chance stroke her pale, smooth forehead where chestnut bangs once sat . . . Instead, she sits on the blue sofa in the family room, watching as her daughter, now almost alien to her with her bald head and profusion of tubes and machinery around her small body, starts to slip steadily from her reach. She breaks down, sobbing heavily as the nurse leaves the ward and the now familiar sound of the decontamination shower hisses in the background . . .
Rewind twelve hours.
The doctor switches off the projector, the magnified slide of micro-organisms flickering and contracting into a horizontal black line before fading away. The room is silent as the potential gravity of the situation sits heavy in the air.
“The bottom line is that we don’t know what this bacterium is. We can’t explain where it came from – although we’re narrowing that one down rapidly – and we can’t explain why the patient has reacted in the way she has. This is unlike anything we’ve seen before. In chemotherapy, in cases of thallium poisoning, we could expect this kind of extreme, total-body hair loss but we have found no traces of elevated radioactivity in the patient and we have found no other precedents to date so far.
“As Prof. de Vries has already pointed out, the strain of bacteria identified in this patient is one that appears to be previously undocumented. We don’t know where it has come from, or how or where it has entered her system. We are fairly certain she hasn’t contracted it subcutaneously, despite the presence of a few minor cuts and insect bites, however given her activities on the day she fell ill, we still have some further investigation that needs to be done and we’re examining the possibility of food or environmental contamination as the most likely cause.”
The doctor paused and took a long sip of coffee, facing the hospital executives and Department of Health representatives in the room “But I just want to stress at this point that I’m not saying we’re facing a potential pandemic. However, considering the rapid downturn in an otherwise healthy young woman and the presence of what appears to be a completely new, rather virulent bacterium, we really need to be careful how we approach this . . . "
Rewind twelve hours.
A young woman stumbles down the hallway in the dark, tripping over the vacuum cleaner that had been left out unused for two days. The impact with the floor knocks the breath out of her and another clump of hair dislodges from her scalp. She lies on the carpet, panting and sweating for a moment, before her body clenches up and she vomits once more on the carpet; tears spring up in the corners of her eyes as the pain throughout her body starts to intensify. Gasping for breath, she feels her way along the wall to her housemate’s room and knocks on the door.
“Huh? What?” her housemate calls, her voice full of sleep and irritation.
“Please, Caroline, can you drive me to the hospital? I’m really not feeling so great right now and I really need your help . . .”
Rewind twelve hours.
It’s three in the afternoon on a lazy late-spring afternoon. A young couple lay on towels now covered in sand, twisting in an embrace in the warmth of the sun and trying unsuccessfully to avoid the mosquitoes and sand flies. Earlier they went swimming, playing and teasing each other in the dark green-blue of the crowded, suburban beach. Their time in the water was cut short when she caught her foot on a razor-sharp shell and had to call the lifeguard to administer minor first aide to stem the bleeding from what they jokingly referred to as the “mother of all papercuts”. Later when the beach gets too busy, they will buy some cheap soft-serve ice cream and eat a late lunch of take-away pizza and beer before returning to his house where they will shower together, make love, and then watch a movie. The girl will complain of a headache and feeling a little worn out, which they will put down to mild sunstroke and after an affectionate goodbye she will drive home, feeling both incredibly happy and slightly unwell at the same time.
Arriving home that evening, her housemate will offer her some fish and chips and a beer but she will decline and head straight for her room. “I think I’m just going to go to bed, I’m feeling a bit out of sorts at the moment . . .”