Lara Lacombe - Dr. Do-Or-Die

“Harold,” she said, her voice calm despite her frayed nerves. “Please just tell me what’s going on.”

He frowned slightly. “Am I that obvious?”

She nodded and swallowed hard. “Do I need to update my resume?”

Harold blinked at her, clearly taken aback by the question. “No,” he said slowly. Then understanding dawned. “Oh, it’s nothing like that.”

All the air rushed out of her in a gust, and Avery sank back against her chair. “Thank God,” she said, closing her eyes. “You had me going there for a moment.”

“Sorry about that,” he said, sounding rueful. “You know you’re my best investigator. There’s no way I’m letting you go, even if I have to pay your salary myself.”

His words went a long way toward quelling her anxiety. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “That means a lot.”

He waved away her gratitude and leaned forward. “There is something I need to talk to you about, though.” He glanced back at the closed door, as if to reassure himself they weren’t going to be overheard. “There’s something going on in Antarctica.”

“Are the penguins in trouble?”

Harold didn’t even bother to smile at her lame joke. “The US has a research base there, Fort Gilmour. It’s staffed year-round, believe it or not. Something strange has popped up.”

“What kind of something?”

He shook his head. “Unclear at this time. But there have been several cases of an upper respiratory infection with some unusual symptoms.”

Avery felt the familiar tingle of curiosity that came every time she heard about an outbreak. “Such as?”

“It starts as an uncomplicated respiratory infection—cough, congestion, the usual. Some people recover, but those who don’t go on to develop strange hemorrhagic symptoms.”

Avery’s eyebrows shot up. “Strange?” she echoed. What exactly did that mean?

He nodded. “Rather than the diffuse, systemic symptoms we see with something like Ebola, these patients only bleed out into their lungs. They essentially wind up drowning in their own blood.”

A wave of sympathy washed over her as Harold’s words sank in. What a horrible way to die. She could picture it all too easily and shuddered. Harold saw her reaction and nodded. “I know. I feel bad for them, too,” he said.

“How many cases?”

“Ten so far, of which four people have progressed to the hemorrhagic phase and died.”

“Damn,” she said softly. “This bug isn’t messing around.” A 40 percent mortality rate was serious business, high enough to make any self-respecting doctor lose sleep.

“It’s bad,” Harold confirmed. “And to make matters worse, the hospital on the research base is having to handle everything alone. Normally, they can send critical patients to South America or Australia for treatment. But given the nature of this disease, those options are closed. No one wants these patients, especially since we don’t know anything about this bug.”

“That’s terrible!” Outrage stiffened her spine and Avery sat upright. “How can they deny advanced medical care to people who desperately need it?”

Harold shrugged. “They’re happy to air-drop supplies, but no one wants to be responsible for exporting this disease. The major fear is that bringing the patients off-base would allow the agent to enter into the commercial air travel system, and then we’d have a real problem.”

He was right, Avery realized with a growing sense of horror. Even though she hated the idea of sick patients being cut off from the potentially lifesaving technologies of a major hospital, the last thing anyone wanted was a global pandemic of a hemorrhagic respiratory illness. Better to keep the sick all in one place, away from the general population.

And a research base in Antarctica was about as isolated as you could get.

“Where do we come in?” Was Harold telling her this to keep her in the loop, or was there something else going on?

“I need you to go down there and figure out what’s happening. Right now we know next to nothing. We don’t know what the disease agent is, how it’s transmitted, the incubation period, infectious dose—it’s a black box. We need answers.”

Avery nodded slowly. It was a plum assignment, the type of work she loved. But there was just one problem... “Do we even have jurisdiction? This sounds like more of a thing for the World Health Organization rather than us.”

“The WHO is monitoring the situation,” Harold responded. “But since this is happening on a US base, we get the first crack at it.”

Excitement thrummed in her belly, and Avery started making mental lists of everything she’d need to pack. “When do I leave?”

“Tomorrow,” Harold said. “And I need you to keep this assignment between you and me. Outside of a few key people, no one knows about this.”

“Why the cloak-and-dagger routine?” Avery was used to a certain amount of discretion with respect to her assignments, but this seemed a bit extreme.

Harold sighed, and as his shoulders slumped he suddenly looked ten years older. A warning tingle slid down Avery’s spine, and she held her breath, waiting for his reply.

“We’re thinking this might be some kind of new influenza strain,” he said, sounding almost sad. “And if that’s the case...” He trailed off, and Avery nodded, understanding perfectly.

The majority of Americans thought that flu was merely a seasonal inconvenience, something to be endured rather than feared. Most of them had never even heard of the global pandemic of 1918, when between thirty and fifty million people had died from a particularly nasty strain. Since then, doctors and scientists had lived in fear of another massive outbreak, worse than the last. There had been a few false alarms over the years, but so far, humanity had managed to dodge a bullet. Still, researchers kept a close eye on influenza, and most would agree that it was just a matter of time before another virulent strain emerged to threaten the status quo. If it was happening now, panic and fear would sweep the globe faster than any virus, and the very fabric of humanity would be at risk.

Suddenly, Harold’s caution made perfect sense.

“We are modifying response plans as we speak, working in conjunction with the WHO,” Harold said softly. “We all hope this isn’t flu, but we have to be prepared.”

“Is the government going to cut off the base?” It was a drastic measure, but if there was a chance of this bug getting out into the general population, one option would be for the government to seal off the research base until the disease burned out. If no one went in or out, there would be no chance for the agent to escape.

Harold shook his head. “Not yet. But if this does turn out to be some new, supervirulent flu...”

“I know,” she said softly. “We’d be stuck there.” Worry gnawed at the edges of her mind, dampening her earlier enthusiasm. Did she really want to take on this mess, knowing there was a possibility she’d be stranded for an indefinite amount of time?

Her boss stared at her, sympathy welling in his eyes. “You don’t have to go,” he said. “Given the nature of this one, I can’t force you to go to Antarctica when there’s a chance you might get stuck there.”

“It’s okay,” she said, dismissing the hypothetical outcome. If she focused on the potentially negative aspects of her job, she’d never be able to work again. There was always a chance she might get caught in a quarantine, or worse, get sick herself. Those were just some of the risks inherent in her line of work. She couldn’t give in to the fear and worry now, not when there was so much on the line.

“Besides,” she continued, “it’s not like they’d forget about us. They’d do supply drops to keep us fed.”