Pandemic

While Anna fluctuated between apologies and rationalizations, Haldane said very little that afternoon. But as days passed, he couldn't stop talking about it with her. He wasn't looking for the contrition Anna offered, or even the energetic sexual solace she seemed to need from him. He wanted guarantees. And while Anna was adamant she had cut off all contact with Julie, she would not give Noah what he sought: assurance that she was, or would soon be, over Julie. Instead, she maintained that she was in love with both of them.

The crackle of static brought him back to the moment. He took a deep breath. "Have you seen her since I left?" he asked. Julie was always "she" or "her" to Haldane.

"No." Anna wavered. "Not face-to-face."

"But you talk to her regularly?" he snapped before his brain could catch up to his mouth.

"She e-mails me."

Haldane resisted the urge to break the receiver in his hand. "And you write her back?"

"They're poems, Noah. Beautiful." She was silent for a long while. "Yes, I write back."

He swallowed. "Anna, I don't want you to write to her."

"I know," she said almost imperceptibly over the static.

Haldane heard his daughter crying in the background. "You better take care of Chloe."

"Okay," she said. "Noah, promise me you will be careful over there. Please."

"Bye, Anna."

He lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling, ruminating about this last fruitless conversation and all the others that preceded it. Again he felt lost, unsure of how to hold up the crumbling walls of his domestic life. He thought of his daughter suffering through another ear infection without her dad around to comfort her. He thought of his wife. Her large brown eyes. The fragile smile. The bulky T-shirt that only hinted at the smooth, responsive body hidden underneath. And in spite of the torrent of mixed emotions, he realized how aroused he was. He longed to see her face, smell her hair, and clutch her flawless back as her legs wrapped around his waist.

Haldane shook away the conflicting thoughts, jumped off the bed, and grabbed his laptop. He moved the phone out of the way and flipped it open. With a tap of the built-in mouse, data regarding Acute Respiratory Collapse Syndrome filled the screen. Jotting notes as he reviewed the documents, graphs, and charts, he succeeded in distracting himself by studying a world even more chaotic than his own.

* * *

The next morning, the WHO team separated. Streicher and Yuen, the nonclinical specialists, went off to review the regional laboratory while McLeod and Haldane headed off to see the front lines in the battle against ARCS.

Walking out of the hotel to the waiting unmarked government sedan, Haldane noticed the first of several Jiayuguan residents sporting surgical masks over their faces. It was an eerily familiar sight from the SARS days.

"People very panicky," their translator and guide explained away the phenomenon from the front seat of the car.

"People very sensible," McLeod aped from the backseat.

They drove past the city limits and continued southward.

"Haldane, I have to tell you," McLeod said, "I don't like this bug."

Haldane laughed. "Are you partial to any microorganism?"

"Not particularly, but I really don't like this one."

The smile left Haldane's lips. "How come?"

"The short incubation period. The rapid respiratory failure in otherwise healthy people. The hemorrhagic pneumonia… Reminds me of only one other I've seen before."

Haldane shook his head. "Duncan, this is not Ebola."

McLeod nodded. "I know. And it's a bloody shame."

"Oh?"

"Nice and clean killer, Ebola." McLeod nodded in admiration. "But its ruthless lethality is its shortcoming. Kills everything in its path. If this were Ebola, we'd have a few hundred dead farmers and some very cheap farm-land on the market, but the disease would bum itself out for lack of new victims."

Haldane nodded, picking up on McLeod's logic. "Whereas ARCS only kills the significant minority of its victims, allowing the virus to propagate and spread beyond the site of the index cases"

"And spread rapidly."

"That is yet to be determined, Duncan," Haldane said, but he was unconvinced by his own argument.

The car slowed before turning off the main road and onto the driveway of Jiayuguan's regional hospital. They passed through two checkpoints, manned by masked soldiers, and drove into the gravel parking lot in front of the hospital. A cold spitting drizzle fell as Haldane and McLeod hopped out of the car, bundled their jackets, and strode for the front entrance.

Once they cleared the internal security measures, McLeod and Haldane were led into the change room. Haldane had slipped into too many biohazard, or HAZMAT, suits to feel the slightest alarm. As he stepped out through the two sets of sealed doors and into the clinical area, he actually felt relief to be among the appropriate high-level, scientific protective measures and away from the irrational fear he had seen on the streets in the eyes behind the surgical masks.