About the Baby. Tracy Wolff
coming from inside her at all.
“Whoever it is has called three or four times,” Lucas told her, his voice a few shades deeper than normal. “It must be important.”
She checked the call log. Her heart sank as she saw that her worst fear was true—her boss’s private number. Already? she wanted to scream. Couldn’t she have just one day, one night, to herself before they came for her? Before she had to hurry down and try to contain an epidemic when they refused to give her the tools—and the time—that she needed?
She gestured to call him back, but the hand holding the phone was shaking so badly that she couldn’t even punch the call button. Seeing her dilemma, Lucas wrapped his own hand under hers, held her steady. “It’s okay, Kara,” he murmured to her, his thumb stroking across the back of her hand. His touch soothed her like nothing else could.
Her boss picked up on the first ring, grim and to the point. He didn’t even say hello, simply, “They have an outbreak of Ebola in Eritrea.”
“Ebola?” she asked, a little stunned. Beside her, Lucas stiffened, made a sound of protest, but she turned her head, focused on the tree right in front of her. She couldn’t afford to let him distract her right now. Until she made a decision one way or the other, this was her job—whether she liked it or not.
“How long since the outbreak started?”
“Three weeks.”
“Three weeks? And it hasn’t burned itself out? Did it start in a major city?” Ebola was a disease that sounded, and looked, incredibly frightening, but it wasn’t something that usually created long-term epidemics. It was an awful way to die, but it was fast and it wasn’t airborne—it could only spread through contact with bodily fluids. Which usually made it pretty easy to contain. Plus, with a high mortality rate, it usually died out—once its hosts died out—pretty quickly.
“They don’t know where it started—figuring that out is your job. But right now it’s in every major southern city—Om Hajer, T’io, Assab, Os Mara. It might be in the northern cities, as well, but we just don’t know that yet.”
“A couple of those cities are awfully close to the Sudanese and Ethiopian borders.”
“That’s what we’re afraid of.”
“Has it spread?”
“Based on the information we’ve been given, we don’t think so. I’ve reached out to health organizations working in both countries and am waiting to hear back. But my gut tells me if it hasn’t already jumped the borders, it’s going to soon.”
“But how is that possible? You can’t get Ebola from sitting next to someone on the bus, and those who have it get sick so quickly that they don’t have much chance to travel.”
“I am well aware of that, Kara.”
“I know, Paul. I’m sorry. I’m just trying to wrap my head around this. Are they sure it’s Ebola? And why weren’t we contacted before this? If it’s been going on three weeks, that’s a lot of deaths. Did they call in the World Health Organization instead?”
“WHO got the call at the same time we did.”
“Why did they wait?”
“The Eritrean government isn’t known for its willingness to allow outsiders in. They don’t want anyone to witness what goes on inside the borders.”
She knew that. But this was a disease that could kill a lot of people if it was already in the major cities. How could that not have mattered to them? Then again, it was just more of the same political bullshit she’d been struggling with for months now.
Frustrated, angry, she blew out a steady stream of air. No matter how long she was in this business, she would never understand how a government could stand by and watch its people die, simply to protect itself. The whole thing was anathema to her.
Her mind racing, she repeated her first question. “Are they sure it’s Ebola?”
“Frankly, I don’t think they know what the hell it is. They say it’s Ebola and it has all the markers of the disease, but the growing infection rate doesn’t make sense. And their labs aren’t our labs. I won’t be happy until we have a team in the field.”
“Is this thing airborne?”
“They say no. Again—”
“I know, I know. You want a team there. When?”
“Three weeks ago.”
She laughed, though the sound had no humor in it. “Right.”
“I’m putting together a meeting for two o’clock tomorrow afternoon—I guess that would be this afternoon, since it’s past midnight. I’ve scheduled a flight out at eight o’clock. You’ll head up the team.”
It wasn’t a question, but she said “yes,” anyway. There was no doubt she’d be on that airplane. From the second she’d seen his name on her caller ID, she’d known it would lead straight to this. Some mutation of Ebola? Hemorrhagic viruses were her specialty. Morbid as it sounded, she’d been waiting her whole career for something like this to happen.
“What time can you be here?”
“I’m out right now. I need to get home, repack.” God, had she even gotten the last of her laundry done? “Catch a few hours’ sleep if I’m going to be alert in the meeting. And I’m going to need to refill my field kit.”
“I know. I’ll have everything ready and waiting for you.”
“Please. I’m a mess, totally jet lagged and nowhere close to organized. If you organize it then I go over it, there’s less chance I’ll miss something.”
“So what time?” he asked again.
She turned around, grabbed Lucas’s wrist to look at his watch. It was one-thirty. “If everything goes okay, I can be there by ten.”
“Good. I want you up to speed before the rest of the team gets here.”
Panic had her heart racing and her breath quickening but she refused to give in to it. She didn’t have a choice—she had to keep it together. Lucas must have heard something in her breathing, though, because this time he reached for her free hand, threading his fingers through hers and squeezing tightly.
It wasn’t much, wasn’t a huge gesture of comfort, but it was enough to cut through the fear and get her focusing on what needed to be done.
“You know you can’t send my team back out. We just got home from a two-month deployment. Davis’s wife is having a baby in three weeks and Anna’s mom is in the middle of chemotherapy—”
“We’ve called in Team Four to go with you.”
Shock ricocheted through her. “That’s Mike’s team.”
“Is that a problem?” Her boss’s voice tightened up.
“It might be for Mike—and the rest of his team. They aren’t going to want to report to me.” Especially since she and Mike had a very bad, very public breakup three months before.
“Mike knows you’re the best choice for this job, Steward.”
“Yes, but—” Her protests died in her throat. She was the best choice for this outbreak—or at least she would be if she could get her head on straight. And yes, Mike and his team probably knew it. That didn’t mean there wasn’t going to be some hostility on their part. She and Mike ran things differently and team loyalty and cohesion was a big factor in cases like these.
Still, it was past time to put on her big-girl panties and deal. Mike’s team would just have to do the same.
“I want Julian,” she said, naming the CDC’s top field doctor in infectious bleeding diseases.
“He’s flying in from