Jesse Duke was described by all who met him as a good and honest man. True, he wasn't perfect. The first few months after his moonshine operation got shut down was a difficult one in which he was prone to anger. Still, he had a strong set of morals. One of the morals he always stood by was that he would never take another life, no matter what the other person had done. It was something that he was taught in his youth and instilled in the three children he raised. There were plenty of times when horrible people would come to Hazzard, but Jesse Duke was still never tempted to go against his beliefs. Except for one instance, in which an old enemy pushed Jesse to nearly abandon his values altogether.

It all started as a quiet morning at the Duke farm. The chickens were strolling about the front porch, the trees were rustling in the breeze, and Jesse Duke was sitting at the breakfast table drinking his morning coffee.

It was too quiet of a morning. Normally, mornings at the Duke farm involved Bo and Luke joshing each other while tinkering with one of the cars or Daisy rushing out the door so she wouldn't be late for a shift at the Boar's Nest. Jesse wondered if the boys had gone outside before he had woken up, but upon checking the front yard he found that that wasn't the case. He also checked the barns, but nobody was there. Once he became aware of how unusual it all was, the quietness quickly became unnerving.

Finally, Jesse decided to check his nephews' and niece's bedrooms. As he approached the door leading to Bo and Luke's room, he could hear a coughing fit coming from the other side. Jesse opened the door and found the source of the noise was the shivering form in Luke's bed.

"Luke? You alright?" Jesse asked. Upon approaching the bed, he started massaging his nephew's arm in an attempt to warm him up.

"Yeah, M'fine." Luke responded automatically. "It's probably just a cold. I must've got it from not drying my hair well enough after swimming Saturday." He mumbled before turning into his pillow and coughing again.

"Is Luke okay?" Bo asked from the other side of the room. Jesse watched Bo as he sat up in bed, swayed with uncertainty for a moment, then lay back down again.

"Luke's just got a bit of a cough." Jesse said before making his way over to Bo's side of the room. "Let me have a look at you though, you don't look too good yerself." Bo's eyes were glazed over and his face was flushed red. Jesse placed his hand on Bo's face and, sure enough, he was running a fever. "I'm gonna call Doc Petticord to look at you two. Are there any other symptoms that I should tell him about besides a fever and cough?"

"Tell him the room feels like it's spinning." Bo admitted weakly.

Jesse pulled Bo's bed sheet up to his chin. "I will. You two just sit tight."

Jesse hurried over to the phone, dialed the doctor's number halfway, then suddenly stopped. It had just occurred to him that he still hadn't seen Daisy. She should have been up by now and the coughing coming from the boys' room would have caught her attention. He put the phone back on the hook and headed towards Daisy's room, saying a quick prayer for his niece as he did so.

Daisy was still in bed. As the light from the windows fell on her, Jesse could make out a layer of sweat on her reddened face. He could also hear her breathing, which was hoarse and wheezy. "Oh Daisy," He breathed "not you too."

Jesse knelt beside Daisy's bed and took her hand into his. "You alright Darling?"

Daisy shook her head. "Not really." She replied in a small voice.

"Tell me where it hurts." Jesse coaxed.

"My lungs. Every time I breathe, it feels like there's not enough air going in." She wheezed.

Jesse nodded. "I'm gonna go call the doctor and he's gonna get you feelin' better again. Okay?"

Daisy nodded. "Okay."

"Good girl." He kissed her forehead. "Just try to relax, I'll be back as soon as I can."

Jesse went back to the phone, where he promptly got the operator to direct his call to the county doctor.

"Doc Petticord speaking." A voice from the other end stated.

"Doc, this here's Jesse Duke. I need you to come to the farm. Bo, Luke and Daisy, they've all taken ill." The strain of worry was palpable in his voice. "Luke's got a cough and a chill, Bo's dizzy, both him and Daisy have a fever. I can't understand how they got so sick either, they were all perfectly fine the past few days."

Doc Petticord listened in silence as Jesse detailed the ailments of his three charges. "Listen Jesse, I'm on another call right now on the other side of town, it would take me an hour to get to your house. You can't wait that long. Call an ambulance, get them all to the emergency room as soon as you can."

Jesse felt his knees go weak as the world around him seemed to crumble. "That's just a precaution, right. They're not that sick, are they?"

"Hopefully they're not. But I've had several cases similar to this one in the past few days. If this is what I think it is, then time is of the essence." Jesse hung up immediately, then dialed 911.

In the time it was taking for the ambulance to arrive at the farm, all three of the Duke cousins got progressively worse. Luke's teeth were chattering so hard that Jesse couldn't get the thermometer into his mouth. He used a thermometer that went under the arm instead. It revealed that Luke did have a fever, and a high one at that. Bo was caught in a state of half consciousness and half sleep. He mumbled incoherently to himself and was unresponsive to anything his uncle did or said. But it was Daisy's condition that worried the Duke patriarch the most. When he went into her room, she was being plagued by coughing fits that left her gasping for breath.

"Uncle Jesse, I c-can't breathe." Daisy rasped before being pulled into another coughing fit.

"Sure you can. Just take nice, deep breaths." Jesse soothed, rubbing circles on Daisy's back with the palm of his hand. She managed to take some deep but shaky breaths before resting her head on Jesse's shoulder, something she always did when she was sick or upset.

"Uncle Jesse, what's wrong with me?" Daisy asked, her fingers laced in between his overall straps.

"I don't know baby." He replied honestly. "I just don't know."