The Laptev Virus

Sarah shook her head. “Four weeks. Four of our six weeks’ worth of experiments are lost! And now we need to start over! I just… I can’t even believe this!” She had been exasperated with research scenarios before, but she could not remember a time when she had felt so utterly disappointed and frustrated. They had been getting interesting results for the last several weeks, and she had been busily studying them and helping the others to design new experiments. It had never occurred to her that the mice could be contaminated. Wasn’t that why the research facility kept their own mice in the first place, to control issues like that?

“Sarah, calm down, it’s not like…”

“Calm down? What the hell are you saying, Emile? Four weeks! For four weeks we’ve veered from our AIDS research to work on Rhonda’s latest pet project. And… there are people who have died from this virus. And the company needs to re-open the area for drilling as soon as possible. They are waiting on our lab’s results! I’m supposed to meet with Angela in just a few days, for heaven’s sake! What am I going to tell her? ‘Sorry, we messed up. Got the wrong mice, no worries. The Arctic workers are still dying of the viral infection, but hey, we’ll start over with fresh mice. Just give us another six months.’ Are you kidding me?”

Emile lowered his gaze.

“Um, I think I may have something,” said Kevin.

All eyes turned toward him. Sarah had not even noticed him earlier as he had been sitting quietly behind her. He had probably walked in when they were looking at the graphs. Everyone was astonished as he rarely ever said a word in any of their meetings.

Kevin swallowed audibly and made a show of putting his cell phone into his pocket before he continued. “The control mice,” he said. “You asked me to look into them and so I did. It turns out that they came from two different rooms, C12 and C8.”

“The mice always come from several different rooms,” said Emile dismissively. “What of it?”

Kevin swallowed again. “I’m sorry, it’s probably nothing, but there are different handlers in those two rooms, and I thought maybe they could have done something different to the mice…”

Sarah had a strange sense of déjà vu as she remembered her conversation with John a few nights earlier.

Emile rolled his eyes. “Kevin, it’s not unusual to have different handlers. Did you speak to either of the handlers, by chance?”

“Um, no, but I thought about it. I thought maybe if they used different food or something…”

Emile gave an exasperated sigh. “Kevin, all the handlers do is feed the mice, change their water and give them clean bedding material. Nothing else. And all of the different rooms use the same supply of bedding and water and food.”

“I know,” said Kevin, blushing slightly and clearly embarrassed. “I just thought…” he said, his voice trailing off.

Even in her distress, Sarah realized that perhaps this was why Kevin never spoke. As soon as he said anything, all of the others jumped down his throat. “What, Kevin?” asked Sarah, trying to gain control of her voice, but Kevin did not answer.

“And, you didn’t find anything else?” Emile asked, plowing over Sarah’s unanswered question.

“Um, no,” came Kevin’s voice, barely over a whisper.

“Wait a moment,” said Sarah, more in control of her temper. “Kevin might have a point.” Then turning toward Kevin she asked, “Would you mind following up with the handlers? I want to know if there’s anything, anything at all, no matter how insignificant it may seem, that one or the other might have done to, or with, the mice.”

Kevin nodded and pulled his cell phone back out of his pocket.

“All right, so we need to figure out what those little dark purple spots are, in case they are important. Does anyone have anything else?” asked Sarah, looking around at the group.

Drew and Emile, their faces sober, did not make eye contact with her. Sarah took another deep breath. She felt as if her foot was going to snap off her leg with the pain. “So,” she said, willing herself to stay focused, “what this basically means is…” Sarah let out a deep, shuddering breath. “What this basically means, is that we’ve lost four weeks of investigation. If our controls can’t be trusted, none of our data can be trusted. Agreed?”

Sarah looked around at the glum group. No one stirred and no one met her eyes. She cursed and placed her hand over her forehead, holding her palm flat against it as if she thought her head might explode. Her head and her foot ached. She rose slowly, and with a deep frown creasing her forehead, she limped out of the lab.

In her office she sat down and placed her leg on the stool that she had commissioned for that purpose. As she sat still, she felt her pulse increasing as the enormity of what she had just been told washed over her again. It was as if she understood it, felt despair, then momentarily forgot about it and had to re-understand it. When that happened, dread would envelope her all over again.