Chapter 10
ELIZABETH
E lizabeth looked at Ava as she rubbed her shoulder and forced herself to believe that Ava was alright, though she could see the concern in Ava’s eyes.
Elizabeth had been watching her closely since they went to Sandra’s storage facility; she had been practically covered in the dust that carried the pathogen, and Elizabeth had only just begun to relax about the exposure.
It looked like she may have relaxed a bit too soon.
“What if we are looking at this wrong,” Lindsey said abruptly. “We keep trying to treat it like rabies because of the similarities, but what if we go a completely different route? ” She looked at Ava and Elizabeth as though she sought permission to continue.
“I’m listening,” Elizabeth said, though she kept an eye on Ava in the process.
“What if we change our tactic?” Lindsey said. “If we can work with a combination of antivirals that prevent replication, maybe we can trick the virus into thinking it’s safe since it’s not being attacked directly.”
“I see what you’re saying,” Elizabeth said thoughtfully. “I’ll get with my contacts and see if there’s anything new on the Hep or HIV treatments.”
Lindsey nodded and appeared to be working very hard at maintaining a professional demeanor. She looked like she could bounce around the entire lab with joy at the way her idea was received, but she held herself back and went to her microscope.
“I’ll go check in on the patients,” Ava said and turned toward the elevator with Elizabeth, but before they made it across the room, Ava lurched as a cramp seized at her calf. She straightened herself slowly and looked up at Elizabeth. The expression on her face made Elizabeth’s heart freeze.
“We need to get you in a room,” Elizabeth said, grabbing Ava’s arm and helping her to stand.
“It’s probably nothing,” Ava said, but her voice was more hopeful than confident.
“We can’t take that chance, Ava,” Elizabeth said softly.
Ava shook her head, but another cramp seized her leg. Panic seeped its way into Elizabeth’s chest. She had worked thousands of cases, tried and tested thousands of drugs, probably saved thousands of lives, but suddenly nothing was more important than finding a cure for this blasted virus.
“We need to get some antivirals in you, if nothing else they will keep it at bay, you’ve seen how fast this moves when it’s not treated,” Elizabeth said, fighting to keep her voice steady. She couldn’t panic now; she had to focus.
She helped Ava onto the elevator, and they moved to the second floor.
Everything seemed to move quickly after that, she handed Ava off to Kellie, who moved her into an isolated room.
They started an IV and worked some muscle relaxers and antivirals though her, and Ava seemed alright.
She had to be. Elizabeth stood at the door to Ava’s room, looking at her with apprehension, everything else seemed to have fallen away.
“Go, Elizabeth,” Ava said from her bed. She looked strong, even in a hospital gown and surrounded by tubes and machines.
Elizabeth blinked a couple of times.
“Go, Elizabeth,” Ava repeated, waving her hand. “Go figure out how to fix me.”
Elizabeth nodded and walked out the door. It was hard, but she couldn’t do anything from that room, she needed to figure this out. She needed to save Ava. She needed to save everyone.
Elizabeth went back to the conference room; word of Ava’s condition had spread faster than the news of their officially declaring their relationship. The younger doctors all looked at her as though they wanted to say something comforting, but Elizabeth would not have received that well.
She handed each of them a list of doctors and organizations to call, and they started down the list. With each negative response, Elizabeth became more and more agitated.
There had to be something, something that they ’d missed.
What was more agitating, though, was the amount of questions they were being asked, the amount of time explaining the disease and what they’d learned about it as though it was some shiny new toy to play with.
Elizabeth understood the sentiment, she’d felt it herself on many occasions, but this was different.
This was personal, and she had to fight to keep her temper in check with each irrelevant question she was forced to answer.
After several hours, they had a small list of medications on their way to the hospital that they had not tried yet, and all Elizabeth could do was wait and see if any of them worked.
With strict instructions to let her know the second these drugs arrived at the hospital, Elizabeth went down to Ava’s room. She found Kellie standing over Ava’s bed recording her vital signs. Ava was unconscious, and Elizabeth’s chest squeezed.
“How long was she walking around with this?” Kellie asked without looking up.
“I don’t know,” Elizabeth whispered then shook her head before continuing in her professional voice. “She hasn’t had any visibl e symptoms until just before I brought her down, but she didn’t fight me on it, so I don’t know.”
“Did you get tested?” Kellie asked, finally looking up from Ava’s chart.
“Yes,” Elizabeth answered. “I’m getting regular blood tests, also.” Elizabeth showed Kellie where she had had blood drawn from her arm.
“Good,” Kellie said and slipped Ava’s chart back into the slot at the foot of her bed.
She stopped and put a hand on Elizabeth’s shoulder.
Elizabeth turned to face her, but her eyes remained unfocused.
“It’s bad, Doctor Grant,” Kellie said, her voice soft.
“I don’t know if she just didn’t realize it or if she was actively denying it, but the virus has spread throughout her system.
We’ve induced a coma to control the pain. ”
Elizabeth blinked. She knew what Kellie was saying, but for some reason her mind simply refused to believe it.
Ava couldn’t be in that bad of shape this quickly.
It was impossible. Tears started to form in the corners of her eyes as Kellie dropped her hand and left the room.
Elizabeth stepped over to the side of Ava’s bed looking down on the woman she knew she was falling in love with.
In this stillness, she looked like an angel.
She traced a finger down the curve of Ava’s cheek, allowing a tear to slip from her eye.
I should have been paying more attention , she chastised herself.
The hospital room was quiet except for the rhythmic pulsing of the machines.
Panic gripped Elizabeth and she searched frantically for something, anything, that she could do to help Ava.
She grabbed her chart and flipped through it.
It was the same as the others, the cramps, the seizures, the proliferation of the virus had slowed now that there was medication working through Ava’s system, but it was still there, still trying to kill her, and there was nothing Elizabeth could do to stop it.
Elizabeth had spent her life, her entire career, focused on fighting against these microscopic invaders, and so far had always won, she’d always found a treatment if not a cure.
Why was this one so difficult? Elizabeth started thinking about it again.
Her observation of it had been biased from the start by rabies.
Even when she discovered where the pathogen originated, she had thought about it in relation to rabies.
Maybe that’s where she was making a mistake.
She grabbed a notebook from the counter and started making notes.
The virus didn’t seem to spread person to person, if that was the case, then she would have been infected, too.
Everyone who came in contact with the dust picked it up, but once they picked it up, it spread like fire through their systems, causing neurological symptoms. Which meant that it attacked the nervous system.
So the host almost had to die in order for the disease to find a new host, it had to go dormant, and it seemed that the dormancy could last an indefinite amount of time. Or could it?
Taking her notebook, she rushed out of the room and up to the lab. Lindsey’s eyes flew wide when she came bursting into the room.
“Have we tested to see how long the virus will stay in dormancy in the host?” Elizabeth said. She knew her words were rushed, but she no longer cared how she appeared, she had to help Ava.
“No?” Lindsey said. “But we still have hundreds of samples. I can go back and look a t them and see if I can recreate a timeline.”
“Do it,” Elizabeth said.
“There’s no way of knowing how long the virus was sitting behind the walls of the storage room though, it seems like it can stay dormant for however long it takes,” Lindsey said as she started sorting through blood samples.
“You’re right, but that’s only after the host has died and the remains decayed. I have a theory that as long as the virus is within in the host, it may eventually die off as long as it maintains its dormancy.”
“Why do you think that?” Lindsey asked as she lined up the samples across the table.
“Because it doesn’t seem transferable between hosts, only after the host has died, and this is sort of grasping at straws, but I’m hoping that as long as the virus is trying to come out of dormancy it will burn through its energy, and if it can’t open up to the host, then it will die,” Elizabeth explained, though she wasn’t even sure what she would do with the information if she had it.
Lindsey nodded but didn’t seem completely convinced. Still, she started looking at eac h of the samples. Elizabeth looked over her shoulder, tapping her foot.
“Oh, here!” Lindsey suddenly said. “This one’s dead, and arguably it shouldn’t be.”
“How long was it dormant?” Elizabeth asked. Lindsey checked the label and then typed something in the computer. “Conservative estimate, three hours,” Lindsey said, then followed with, “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” Elizabeth asked.