by grief, they looked dazed.
The sight that awaited us inside was terrible. Bodies lay on straw mats on the floor, arranged in such a fashion so as to create a racetrack-shaped walkway. Kerosene lamps sat on the little tables, sending up thin lines of black smoke. Some of the patients had their hands and feet tied because they writhed about as madness took them. Others lay still and awaited the mercy of death, their chests barely moving under stained blankets.
I crouched alongside one woman, whom I judged to be in her thirties, and got out my penlight. I inspected her eyes and found the whites had turned a cloudy pink. Another woman, a bit older, had signs of bleeding around the nose and gums, plus a rash on the roof of the mouth. The third patient was a very young boy; maybe five or six. He had a small toy truck clutched in one hand: a Matchbox. I couldn’t help but wonder where he got it from. Guychel told me his parents were already dead. His throat was so swollen, he was barely able to breathe. Pus ran from his tonsils in amber streams.
There were seventy-two patients in total. It took the five of us nearly eight hours to draw all the blood samples we needed.
Tuesday, April 14
In another mud-brick hut, slightly smaller than the hospital, we have our laboratory. I think they gave us this building because it’s the only one with a sturdy table. We had to separate the sera from the blood cells with a hand-generated centrifuge—a startling difference from the modern machinery back home—label each sample (also by hand), then pack them in dry ice. That also took hours. Oudry is coming in the morning to take them back for shipment to the States.
Two of the patients died in the evening. One was the little boy with the Matchbox truck. They buried him with it, next to his parents. There were no markers in the graves; the locals just knew where they were. They seem to know where everyone is buried.
Friday, April 17
We have now managed to separate the infected villagers from the healthy ones. That’s always step one in an outbreak—isolate the sick from healthy to keep the illness from spreading any further. Then, with Guychel’s help, I began interviewing people in the latter group to get a sense of where it originated. As far as I could determine, it was brought to this community by a young man named Prince. Prince had been in Badjoki—another Ebola hot spot just northeast of here—visiting a cousin. This is disappointing information, as we already knew about Badjoki. So Yambuku is likely not the location of the virus’s origin, but rather just another satellite zone.
There were six more deaths today, and four new patients.
Monday, April 20
There were seventeen more deaths over the weekend, and eleven new cases in spite of vigorous efforts to keep the healthy villagers from the infected ones. Most were parents. How do you tell a mother or father they cannot see their dying child? How do you summon the objectivity to physically force them from doing so? The five of us are not a security team. We cannot stand guard outside the hospital day and night.
Wednesday, April 22
They began burning the bodies this evening. Not only the recently deceased but also those who were already buried. We determined that they all continued to pose health risks, and Guychel supported us, so they went along with it. We helped out as best we could, although we are completely exhausted. Some of the bodies were only buried two or three feet down. I cannot describe the hideous condition of the corpses. The little boy with the toy truck already looked as though he’d been dead for a month. The toy truck tumbled from his folded hands and bounced on the soft earth. My God … piles of blackened, lifeless bodies, children being tossed into it by their weeping parents. The stench of rotted, boiling flesh as the smoke rose into the night sky. If I live to be a thousand years old, I will never get the scent of that pyre out of my memory.
The sight that awaited us inside was terrible. Bodies lay on straw mats on the floor, arranged in such a fashion so as to create a racetrack-shaped walkway. Kerosene lamps sat on the little tables, sending up thin lines of black smoke. Some of the patients had their hands and feet tied because they writhed about as madness took them. Others lay still and awaited the mercy of death, their chests barely moving under stained blankets.
I crouched alongside one woman, whom I judged to be in her thirties, and got out my penlight. I inspected her eyes and found the whites had turned a cloudy pink. Another woman, a bit older, had signs of bleeding around the nose and gums, plus a rash on the roof of the mouth. The third patient was a very young boy; maybe five or six. He had a small toy truck clutched in one hand: a Matchbox. I couldn’t help but wonder where he got it from. Guychel told me his parents were already dead. His throat was so swollen, he was barely able to breathe. Pus ran from his tonsils in amber streams.
There were seventy-two patients in total. It took the five of us nearly eight hours to draw all the blood samples we needed.
Tuesday, April 14
In another mud-brick hut, slightly smaller than the hospital, we have our laboratory. I think they gave us this building because it’s the only one with a sturdy table. We had to separate the sera from the blood cells with a hand-generated centrifuge—a startling difference from the modern machinery back home—label each sample (also by hand), then pack them in dry ice. That also took hours. Oudry is coming in the morning to take them back for shipment to the States.
Two of the patients died in the evening. One was the little boy with the Matchbox truck. They buried him with it, next to his parents. There were no markers in the graves; the locals just knew where they were. They seem to know where everyone is buried.
Friday, April 17
We have now managed to separate the infected villagers from the healthy ones. That’s always step one in an outbreak—isolate the sick from healthy to keep the illness from spreading any further. Then, with Guychel’s help, I began interviewing people in the latter group to get a sense of where it originated. As far as I could determine, it was brought to this community by a young man named Prince. Prince had been in Badjoki—another Ebola hot spot just northeast of here—visiting a cousin. This is disappointing information, as we already knew about Badjoki. So Yambuku is likely not the location of the virus’s origin, but rather just another satellite zone.
There were six more deaths today, and four new patients.
Monday, April 20
There were seventeen more deaths over the weekend, and eleven new cases in spite of vigorous efforts to keep the healthy villagers from the infected ones. Most were parents. How do you tell a mother or father they cannot see their dying child? How do you summon the objectivity to physically force them from doing so? The five of us are not a security team. We cannot stand guard outside the hospital day and night.
Wednesday, April 22
They began burning the bodies this evening. Not only the recently deceased but also those who were already buried. We determined that they all continued to pose health risks, and Guychel supported us, so they went along with it. We helped out as best we could, although we are completely exhausted. Some of the bodies were only buried two or three feet down. I cannot describe the hideous condition of the corpses. The little boy with the toy truck already looked as though he’d been dead for a month. The toy truck tumbled from his folded hands and bounced on the soft earth. My God … piles of blackened, lifeless bodies, children being tossed into it by their weeping parents. The stench of rotted, boiling flesh as the smoke rose into the night sky. If I live to be a thousand years old, I will never get the scent of that pyre out of my memory.
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