They were allowed one day to get back to normal, before they had to start things again. This was time that Rachel was grateful for, Tex stayed with her, as she was a little cagey. She started to get better after she'd had some sleep. He'd overseen it, but he didn't sleep in the bed with her. He figured that since they weren't planning on going anywhere but home, he had plenty of time to sleep later. It would be enough that they were in the same place.
He thought about the kiss on the Vyerni, looking over at her peaceful sleeping form, how into it she was and how dumbfounded he had been when she kissed him. He liked it, it did things to him, kissing the good doctor. It sparked something in him that he wasn't sure about. He hadn't had these feelings since Kathleen's mother and Rachel was nothing like the mother of his beautiful daughter.
He wondered how Kathleen would feel about the doctor. She'd probably say something stupid like use a condom dad, because that's how Kathleen was. She was just as rude and crass as her dad and he wouldn't have it any other way. In the end, he thought that his daughter would like her, because Rachel made him happy and that was all Kathleen wanted was someone that made him happy. And truly happy. Not just content with the situation at hand. She'd seen far too many of those. He tried to keep it away from his daughter, but she was constantly sneaking up on him. Even when he was on the road.
Rachel stayed in bed for a good portion of the day, not necessarily sleeping all the time, sometimes it was just relaxing, reminding her body that she was safe. Occasionally she would doze off, only to start having some sort of nightmare, which he would gently awake her from and reassure her that she was safe.
The next day, when she got up, Tex was out of her stateroom, like he always was when the morning came. They met up in the wardroom, "Wakey wakey," He said as he put a plate in front of her. She ate gratefully.
"You know, you could stay," She told him.
He shrugged, "Danny would worry. And then I would get the talk," He told her putting the word talk in air quotes.
She chuckled and finished off her breakfast, "Well, it's finally here. We do a human trial," She told him with just a hint of a dreamy sigh. She stayed in that moment for what seemed like forever.
He waved a hand in front of her eyes and they came back to life. When he stood up, she did the same, and he took both of their plates in his hand and she opened the door. They went to discard the plates and then went down to the lab to get her ready. "You seem like you're feeling better today," He told her.
She nodded. "Yeah, yesterday was just what I needed. Thank you," She told him. She didn't say much more about it, because Quincy and Kelly were there with Doc Rios in the Biohazard, getting the monkey out. She looked at pride at her little monkey. Little survivor. She looked at the boxes around her, "If you're going to stay, I could actually use some help with these boxes. You can set them up over there." She told him in a professional voice. "Thank you."
He would roll Sisyphus's boulder if that's what she needed. Especially when she said it in that voice. So he took the boxes that she said and put them right where she needed them. Anything to stay around here a little longer without looking like he was just itching to talk to or be in someone's presence. He was. He loved watching her work and talking to her. She was fascinating. But the rest of the crew did not need to know about them, because it would become a big thing. And he could tell by her lack of push, that she didn't want a thing either.
"Little more room between those cots, please," She said to the people in the containment area.
He moved a few more of the boxes that she had said she needed moved into a specific out of the way space and then tried the best that he could to make this as unawkward to say as possible. But it was a weird subject and he thought that maybe she knew that. But he looked into the containment area while he talked, "So, uh, I know the peeps are going to ask, what's with the whole human guinea pig thing? I mean, basically, you infect the crew with the virus, and you see what happens?" He asked.
She stopped her shuffling of things and looked at him, "Well, not the entire crew," She told him, "Six individuals of varying blood and genetic markers," She went back to shuffling things into various boxes. "First we administer the vaccine prototype, then we inject each of them with the virus,"
It sounded horrific to him and he could make just about anything sound like a good time. Hell, he worked at Gitmo and hadn't lost himself there, but this sounded pretty radical. "I gotta tell you," He wondered if he should break it lightly and then stopped himself. She could handle it. She was a scientist and she knew how people worked. "I don't know if people are gonna be lining up for that,"
She smiled, a tense sad sort of smile, "Well," She said as she finished another box, "That's not my department,"
Quincy and Kelly were more than helpful for setting up four tables so that she, each of them, and Doc Rios could evaluate as many people at the same time. The officers had spread the word about the specific time and place and she felt so nervous that no one would show up. When she looked at her watch it was five minutes before and people started trickling in and she couldn't believe how many people had shown up. It was like the whole ship was in there, just wondering if they could take part.
Doc Rios had Maya who had never had any serious injuries, never even broken a bone. She was young and vibrant and she was hispanic which would be great for the trial. They did some bloodwork on her and Rachel approved her to be in the trial.
Quincy had Miller who joked that he was just aching to do his part. A good sense of humor, younger male and a natural redhead, those were things that made him a good addition to the mix.
Rachel had Danny, whom she adored. Their rapport on the boat when he drove her to the Russians gave her a good sense of who he was, but she also had to be realistic. He was still recovering. "Do you really think you qualify to volunteer when you barely survived Dengue Fever last week?" She asked him.
"So you're not even going to test my blood?" He asked.
"Danny," She started to plead when a voice boomed in.
"Hey!" He said, "I'm looking for the Copacabana. Anyone point me in the right direction?"
She hid her smile. She couldn't believe even after his reaction to the explanation of what she was going to do that he would even show his face in here. But he was brave. And maybe a little stupid. And maybe a bit awestruck by the good doctor. And he couldn't let all the good people just test it out for him. He'd have to try it himself.
Danny pushed himself away from the desk, gave the good doctor a nod, and Tex took his place. That's how she ended with Tex. "I thought you said you didn't know if people were going to be lining up for this," She said with a smile.
He shrugged, "Well, I didn't expect this. And I always meant I would, doc," He said, "So how can I help?"
She ran through the questions, all of which he had the right answers to. Not that he was looking to give her the right answers, just that they were. He was honest about the whole thing and he didn't make it into a joke, although he could have. And there had been several jokes about the whole thing.
She sighed, "Well, let's get your blood tested," She told him as she fastened a tourniquet around his arm and looked for a good vein to stick him in. He was comfortable with this, also a good sign. While, there hadn't been a lot of jokes, he was still in good spirits.
"So are we going to talk about that kiss?" He asked.
She jumped, a little surprised that he brought it up with this many people around. "We can, if you want, later. But I did what I needed to do to make sure we all got home safely," She told him. She looked over at Captain Chandler who was overseeing the whole thing, he too had been impressed with the number of people that clamored into the room, donating their body and time to the cause. She was proud of all of them. She looked at Tex as she pushed the needle into his vein and he flinched a second. "Or would you rather I have kissed him? There were only two choices."
She heard something akin to a growl from underneath his breath and she giggled inside that she had gotten under his skin. When she had enough blood, she took pushed a piece of gauze down to make sure that it didn't get everywhere.
When Tex heard her ask if he'd have rather kissed Tom, he swore his vision got blurry, because he couldn't even fathom the idea. Well, he could. He often thought about both of them. But he was a one person rodeo.
Even though it was clear that he had feelings for Tom that weren't always platonic, it wasn't something that he thought were returned. Besides, it was all about Rachel anyways. And he could see the devotion in Tom's eyes too. But he could see the smile on her face and it seemed like it was nothing more than a jab. He calmed down.
Crazy woman, if she knew how riled up she could get him, he would never stop being riled. Often not in an angry way. He looked at his arm as she bandaged it up, "So what's the status doc?" He asked.
"I will let you know, shortly," She said in a quiet voice.
It took awhile, but in the end they had gone through questionnaires with everyone, and narrowed down from there who would be blood tested, which they did in the room, all equipped with the knowledge of how to take a bit of blood. It then went through the centrifuge and blood analysis and they came up with their six people, comparing answers on the questionnaires and the demographic information as well as the psychological demeanor. These were things that went in to finding the most quality for the trial.
In the end, the six came out to be: Andrea Garnett, Russell Jeter - the master chief, Kara Foster, Maya Gibson, Eric Miller, and Tex Nolan.
It took a few hours to get everything else in order and she had someone else give out the news to the volunteers, that they would need to get things that were comforting to them and anything they might need for three days in an enclosed area with other people. Whatever that meant for them, they knew how much space they had.
When the six arrived back to the lab, she smiled and then went to work preparing the doses of the prototype.
She gave half of them to Doc Rios, who was helping her with the medical aspects of the trial. Quincy was helping with the paperwork for now, but he would get into the biohazard area and help when needed.
She stuck Tex and he gave her a wink. She shook her head and finished her three up.
"What you've just received is what we're calling the prototype decoy. It will bind to the virus and keep it occupied while your system creates the antibodies that it needs to defeat it," She told them, "I will remind you, you'll likely experience side effects that mimic the early stages of the virus," She cleared her throat to keep going, "So some headaches and fever and exhaustion,"
"Just like a good hangover," Tex cracked.
The captain was quick to it as well, "Ladies and Gentlemen, your entertainment for the next three days,"
"I would just like to say that, you are all -" Her throat felt dry again. She knew it wasn't though, "you're remarkable people. And It is an honor to-" That felt too dark. Felt like it was giving up to say it was an honor to know them. It was past tense. And they were still well and alive, "it's an honor. Well I'll see you in there,"
They all strode in to make themselves comfortable, First Garnett and Kara, then Tex and the other three bringing up the back. Rachel, Quincy, and Doc Rios all got ready to go in when they had to in their biohazard suits, complete with microphone, so people could hear them. They had a small repository of the things they would need if things went south in the containment lab and a much bigger repository in the rest of the lab.
Rachel pulled the virus into six syringes and gave a little prayer, to what she didn't know. She hadn't been particularly religious in a long time, but it felt appropriate to wish that this would go right. And to make that wish in the form of a prayer.
The six watched her intently as she came in, wheeling her cart full of deadly virus around. With help, they were all injected, and there was a momentary look of anticipation, disbelief, and horror on each of their faces. She understood that.
They watched for a few minutes to make sure no one had an immediate reaction to either the virus or the prototype, but when everyone seemed fine, fine enough that the Master chief got out his tablet and started playing some reggae, for Bertrise, who stood on the other side of the plastic watching, it was time to take vitals.
And she decided to start with Tex, starting with his neck, making sure that his lymph nodes weren't swollen.
"You know, I still remember the first time you examined me," He said to her with a look of amazement in his eyes.
She shook her head and laughed a minute. "Well, that might be because it was only three weeks ago, and thankfully you do not have Alzheimers," She said as she continued the exam.
He chuckled when she put her hands underneath his arms, ticklish, interesting, she filed that away. "Well, that's some good news," He said.
She went back to recording some things and noticed that he was playing with what appeared to be a silver pendant, a modest one at that, not particularly decorative in any way on a chain. "Family Heirloom?" She asked him. Because it didn't really seem like his style.
He chuckled a little bit and then joked, "just something to keep my hands busy," He said.
"Man of mystery," She said to herself as she put the pulse/ox on him and waited for the results to come up. They should all be normal. They had just been tested, but it was still good to get an initial reading.
"That's a conversation for another day," He said as he looked deeply into her eyes, "over martinis maybe,"
She could tell that this was a promise that he wanted to keep. He wanted to tell her about the thing and maybe who had given it to him. Must be important. But it was also important to keep his front going for the other people around them. It was like this when they were around other people. They kept the walls up. It was interesting how different they were when they were alone.
"Let me guess," She asked as she rolled her eyes, "Shaken, not stirred?"
He imitated Sean Connery, "Precisely, moneypenny,"
She wasn't exactly amused by it, it was such a lame joke that she collected all of her things and just gave him a look, which made him and Kara laugh a little. Well, him a lot, Kara a little. He saw Kara smiling behind him this whole time. He wondered if Danny told her about him and the doctor. Danny was one of the people that he opened up to. He had to. They shared a room and it wasn't exactly easy to keep secrets. Especially when he seemed to come and go at weird hours of the night.
"Oh she hated that, whoa," He said to Kara who seemed to be having a good time, perusing some book and watching him joke around with the doctor.
She looked up and agreed with him, "You might actually be getting under her skin."
"In a good way?" He asked. He knew the answer to that question. He had gotten under the doctor's skin in a good way, but this was the performance around other people and he wanted to see if they could both be willing to let the walls come down, now that they were all so close to going home.
"Hard to tell" Kara said.
"Yeah" He sighed. They would need a crack to really see each other outside the quiet world they created for two.
He saw Maya and Miller who had been placed side by side talk about her boyfriend. He hadn't been there that night at the vigil, so he didn't know anything about this Mickey person, but Maya seemed to like him and she was reading old emails. He liked it. It was like love letters of the past. And probably the future now that he thought about it. Wasn't exactly a lot of internet to go around nowadays. There were still satellites and it was all probably still there, but the infrastructure had gone by the wayside to actually access it.
They seemed to be in good spirits, good kids who just wanted to talk about what they knew. Home and the people they hoped were there. Who knew if it were actually for certain?
She took the vitals and started to give Garnett a physical examination when she saw a picture of a young girl hung with a piece of tape next to the cot, "Is that your daughter?" She asked.
Garnett nodded. "It was her birthday last month. She'd be 11." They knew what was unspoken. That 'would' was nebulous. It was the uncertainty of home and what it would be like when they got there. "Do you have children?" Garnett asked, an attempt to change the subject.
Rachel shook her head, "No," She said. "I never quite found the time for that somehow," She would have loved kids. Treating kids in a way that was unfamiliar to her own childhood. It had actually been a great dream to have at least one. Now, it seemed that had passed her by.
Garnett shrugged. "Better not to have a child, then to not be there when they need you," Rachel supposed this was supposed to be comforting advice, telling her that she had actual done a noble deed by not bringing a child into a world where she had to be apart during this disease.
She grimaced for a second and then set her face right again, "Well if this all goes as well as it should, you'll be back with her in a week or so," She told Garnett, who seemed to appreciate the practicality of her nature. She didn't even say anything about the grimace, which was kind of her. She certainly would have been well within her rights to.
"Oh we'll be back, no doubt about that," Master Chief said and both women smiled.
Rachel left to confer with the others about everyone's initial exams, vitals, and demeanor. These were all signs that they had to be sure of. Quincy tapped out the notes in the computer, making sure that everything was documented.
Several hours later, they were all starting to feel the effects of whatever it was they had going through their system. Doc Rios was the one to check on Kara who looked the most ill. A fever. And a high one, but nothing that couldn't be handled with monitoring.
Garnett was there to comfort her.
"When Lily was a baby, her temperature would run 102 everytime she got her shots," Garnett told Kara as she held her hand.
Tex thought about how Kathleen had been when she got her shots, stubborn as a mule and crying, but once the initial shot was over, she was fine. Maybe a little more lethargic than normal, but she would still run and play with the best of them.
Miller's throat was sore and Maya couldn't lift her arm up, which all weren't good, but it was just the vaccine working through their bodies. It had only been eight hours and they had plenty of time to feel better since the test was supposed to be about three days long. These were normal symptoms considering how shitty this virus was, nothing to get worked up over.
He told himself all of this while throwing cards with two fingers into a hat, succeeding about half the time. He had to find some fun somehow and while he read with Rachel, he did not have his own books or music or anything really to keep him occupied. Just his thoughts and these cards and his locket and there had already been plenty of questions about his locket already that he put it away for awhile.
He and Master Chief seemed to be the only ones without major symptoms at this point, which Quincy noted as he took the master chief's temperature. Then Rachel came trying to steady a tray full of water. Which he chuckled at it from his bunk for a moment before, running up to get it from her.
"Come on, Doc, that is way below your paygrade," He said as he tried to take the tray from her.
"Oh, Tex, that's really not necessary-"
He didn't let her finish. "Trust me," He said, taking the tray firmly, "I can handle it." And surprisingly enough, she let go of the tray and gave him a big smile in front of everybody, well everyone was far enough away, which was progress. Her normal demeanor of small smiles and sarcasm in front of the group was cracking if just the slightest way.
"Hi, my name is Tex and I'll be your server for this evening. To start with, this fine cocktail of H2O, served straight up for your dining pleasure," He said in a dramatic fashion, letting the flair for the dramatic still out, but he was done with letting this be hidden. He was going to show the doc that they could be seen as friendly and then maybe romantic in front of people if it wasn't too much for her.
He passed it out to everyone, who politely said thank you to him, and then he sat down on his cot, gave one to Kara and took the last one for himself, before returning the tray to Quincy who had really stepped it up since he had his family back. He understood why Quincy had tried all of the things that he had, with the Russians. But he also understood Tom's actions when it came to how he treated Quincy. He couldn't just have someone crazy and resentful running around the ship doing god knows what.
He took a sip of the water and brought all of his cards back to his hands as he looked over to Kara, "How you doing there, sugar?" He asked as he looked at her, and swiveled the cards so they were nice and orderly.
"Good," She said.
"I'm seeing a future with the doc." He said. That was true. He saw a future with her. He saw a long future with her. If they could just get out of this alive. That future he thought, it could be a reality, "Even if it is just carrying her water," He would do that too. He would do anything for her now.
Kara's eyes glazed over as she exhaled a breath. She didn't say anything more.
"Hey come on, girl," He said. "Kara. Kara. Kara." He pleaded. And he knew that he could not help her at that moment. "Doc! We got a problem,"
Rachel rushed over to them and he tried her name repeatedly, but she wasn't responding and he had to get out of the way to let Rachel help her. Rachel would know what to do. The others came right behind her.
"Kara, it's Rachel, can you tell me how you're doing?" She asked. "Kara?" She repeated.
And then Kara started shaking uncontrollably.
"Alright, she's seizing," Rachel said in the most normal tone, "Give me some room," She said. The others pushed Kara's cot a bit away from the plastic wall and Rachel went to the work of getting her back to normal. That's what Tex saw. They were all focused intently on Kara.
They pushed some valium into her system and asked for new vitals, but it didn't seem to be going anywhere and he heard Quincy say something about the three minute mark. Three minutes? How could that be? They all got the same thing.
He heard all the words she was saying, but they didn't all make sense and she was starting to get frustrated with how long certain things were taking. He didn't blame her for that. Kara didn't deserve the dilly dally mentality. Course, he didn't think they were doing that. They were doing the best they could, but it was a stressful situation for everyone in this tent.
Rachel needed ice and water, which Bertrise brought to her in a hurry from the outside of the lab to in. Rachel did what seemed like magic as she pushed the ice water down a tube and Kara stopped shaking. Doc Rios put the thermometer in her ear and Quincy read it as going down. She was safe.
She looked around, everyone's terrified faces, "It's alright. It was just the fever," She told them, but she could tell that not everyone was convinced. She thanked Bertrise, and told her she would help her decontaminate her clothes on the way out.
She made it out of the containment with Bertrise, fully decontaminated and stored her gear up. She was so mad about this. This shouldn't be happening. These weren't symptoms of the virus. She pushed through the plastic, followed by Quincy, who was doubting what they had created, only to see Chandler and Slattery standing there. They had been watching the trial the whole time, but she didn't exactly expect him this second.
"So what does that mean? Is it the virus?" Captain Chandler asked.
"It's possible we didn't build a strong enough copy of Bertrise's receptors. The decoys could be breaking down," Quincy said.
She wasn't particularly interested in that, going back to the actual data they had. Because they had checked the decoys over a dozen times and she said as much, it was time to go back to medical history. Something must have gotten lost somewhere, she thought as she paged through the files with some vigor.
She gave Quincy some orders on new panels that they would need. It would give them more information on how their bodies might react to the whole thing. Plus, another blood panel now would prove that the receptors were there too. She didn't exactly want to say that, but she knew Quincy would understand that too.
Quincy simply departed, doing as told.
"He doesn't seem convinced," Chandler remarked.
She shrugged and lowered her voice, "Well, in fairness to Quincy, he hasn't been here." She told him.
Slattery chimed in this time, "Is there anything you can do to help the others, to help reduce the symptoms?" He looked positively worried and his voice shook.
She relented. It wasn't exactly easy watching so many good people go through such terrible symptoms. "Quincy, give them 80 micrograms of interferon. That should pump their immune systems, just in case," She told the officers as she slogged through the mountain of paperwork, she had to find out why. It shouldn't be working like this.
At the twenty four hour mark, it was the worst it had been. They had come into this room healthy people, at eight hours they were starting to feel it, and at twenty four they had gotten significantly worse. Of the six, Tex was the only one who was sitting up. The others had opted to lay down and either sleep or just rest, but they were all feeling the sting of it.
"Open," She asked Tex. He complied. There were no sores in his mouth, a good sign. She liked that.
Doc Rios refilled the saline bags and she heard Maya talk about her parents to Miller, vaguely. It sounded like she came from incredible people and it was one of the reasons she came into the Navy, to be incredible just like her parents. She was, Rachel thought. It was incredible of all of them to sign up for something that might kill them. She imagined it wasn't much different than running into a burning building to save someone you loved. Course, Maya's story had a different ending. Maya's mother and father died. He hadn't saved her, not in the end.
She heard Quincy with Garnett, a small banter about the latest engineering report and how she was a workaholic. Honestly, everyone in this room knew the life of a workaholic. The notion amused Quincy, not because he dismissed the notion, but because of kinship. It was in the laugh, she recognized that. When Garnett went to reach for it though, she missed and it clattered to the ground, because she couldn't grip it because she was losing feeling in her fingertips. Quincy asked her to rub them together and then conferred with Doc Rios who was on the move again.
She saw the beginnings of something weird on Tex's neck and it was crawling down to his back, "Tex,let's lift up your shirt,"
He did it without a quip, a sign of the virus and how far it had ravaged him she guessed. When he pulled it up, she saw a massive rash on his back. She asked him if he had any idea when it started and he didn't because it didn't itch, which was good, she thought, but also weird. Normally, a rash reaction followed by itching, that was easy to deal with, but not this. This was kind of a sit and wait to see what happened kind of deal. She simply asked him to let her know if it changed and to get some rest. Hopefully with some healing sleep, his body would be back to normal.
"I think you need to consider the possibility that the decoys aren't working," Quincy said as she sat down at her networked containment computer.
But she was stalwart. "We've never seen the virus behave this way," She told him. She couldn't believe that he was being so negative about this? What had they done all this work if it wasn't to get the proper outcome?
"But we haven't been in the field with the virus in a very long time," Quincy added. "We can't know how the symptoms might have evolved,"
She took it into consideration. There were some nuggets in what he was saying. It had been over five months since they had been outside with the virus. Anyone they met now that did have the virus was either in the last stages, which pretty much looked the same as they always had, or dead. In which case, they had never seen the progression.
At thirty hours, Garnett was well and truly hallucinating, singing lullabies to Kara as if she were a baby. She talked to her in a baby voice and it was like Kara didn't even hear her. Rachel pulled Kara's blanket up to her chest to make sure that she was comfortable and went to leave, but she saw Tex didn't have a blanket either. She picked one up and put it on him, because she could tell he was shivering. It wasn't quite time to take vitals, just to observe symptoms, so she went to push herself up to leave again, but she saw his locket on the floor, now fully open, with quite a pretty young girl inside.
She supposed that was natural. She had Michael too. They hadn't exactly done anything untoward and maybe they never would. She slipped the locket into his hand and started to push his hand closed, so that he wouldn't drop it.
Instead he clutched her hand tightly and wouldn't give it up. "I think I love you," He stared intently at her as he said it, but it was the delirium and she didn't exactly know how to respond to that.
Thankfully, she didn't have to figure it out, because the Master chief came out of a deep sleep and started to hallucinate badly, like he was ready to give up the ghost.
He didn't respond to her when she called out to him, just kept talking to the ghosts that he yearned for. Walking towards them, he knocked over his IV pole and then struggled to pull it out. The captain shouted to him, trying to get his attention, to wake him from the delirium that poisoned his thoughts, but he was not successful. Rachel had to hold him back from tearing through the plastic wall of the containment lab, lest this test go in a whole different direction.
She shouted for a sedative, over Russell's wailing for his girls. He couldn't quite get to them in his hallucinatory state and she tried to push him back, but he was strong. More muscle than she had expected for a man of his age. He struggled to push through her while the Captain and Slattery pleaded for him to focus on them, because it wasn't real. But his hallucinations were the very epitome of real to him and nothing broke him out of it.
Quincy and Doc Rios joined in and finally pushed Master Chief back to his bed, but he was still pleading for his girls when they gave him the sedative. They stayed over him till he settled down.
"Holy shit, did you see that?" Miller asked. He went to turn over. There was only one person he would have asked. "Maya?" When he was fully turned, he noticed that she had blood smearing down her face and her eyes weren't move, her body still. Shit. "Maya?" His voice got louder.
"Doc?" He asked. "Hey doc!"
Everyone looked to Maya and they all knew that the damage had been done. There was nothing in this world that would bring her back and it was useless to try. While they had all been wrestling with the master chief, she died. Quietly. She looked to Miller and just gave him the look, something that had to be done, because nothing would ever be enough.
Doc Rios and Quincy came in with the body bag and gently closed her in it.
"It's not true what you said," Miller told her body, "That no one would miss you. I will," He promised to her.
Six down to five. And five that didn't look great. Rachel promised to always remember Maya Gibson. She quickly got out of there though and went back to her room. She couldn't handle much more of this. How had it gone so wrong? She washed cool water over her face and tried to think of where they had missed something. There had to be something they were missing. Because this was not it. The prototype had worked, she knew it had, but there bodies were still violently ill.
When she came back to the lab, she heard Quincy and Tom talking. "So these are side effects from the virus you're certain?" Tom asked Quincy.
"No, he can't be," She replied without worrying about Quincy's answer. "Maya died from a heart attack, which is not a symptom of the virus," She told Chandler.
"But liver failure is," Quincy retorted, "And that's what caused her blood pressure to drop," He went on. "The fevers, the delirium, the hemmoraging. There is no other explanation,"
"There is one," She told Quincy and Chandler. "We just haven't found it yet."
Chandler wanted to know what the solution to all of it was and they both knew it, from Quincy's perspective, the most supportive care now was IVIG, but they couldn't do it. It would kill Bertrise and she let the Captain know that. But Bertrise came in and told them that she had to do something, that watching them just die wasn't an option.
Quincy was pained at the girl's selflessness and all she could do was try and tell Bertrise that she was so important for the cause. They could not risk her life like that. Even if she wasn't the most important scientific discovery on this boat, they couldn't kill one person to save five people. What did that say about them? Besides taking her plasma with her antibodies only helped if it was the virus and she told them as much, it wouldn't make a slight difference if it was something else.
Quincy battered on though about if it was the virus then they could be saving their lives, managing it. And in the end, that won out with Chandler. She couldn't believe it. It was small minded to try and risk someone's life this way on a hunch.
But she was outnumbered and a good sport about it. She prepped Bertrise for donations and stayed there while the blood bags piled up. They would have to separate the hemoglobin from the plasma, but they would make short work of that. "How are you feeling, Bertrise?" She asked when they were nearly done.
"Just a little tired," The girl confessed.
Rachel took a styrofoam cup with a straw and held it in front of Bertrise, "Alright, take a sip of this," She told her. It was water, to keep her from completely passing out. If they could keep her awake through the treatment, she had a significantly better chance of making it through the whole thing.
"I've got Kara's test results," Quincy said as he handed them to her and took the full bags of blood to process.
When Bertrise was done, she put her onto a cot outside the containment lab, so that Bertrise could see inside still. She needed to rest though, give her body time to heal from what they had done to her. She was also given a sedative, just to make sure she actually slept, an oral one though.
She went to Captain Chandler, who looked at her, "Any luck?" He asked.
She shook her head. "It's too early to tell," She held the file up in her hand. "There's something that's changed the trial though. You should know." She said as she looked down at her feet and up again at him, "Kara's pregnant. Which brings a new angle to the trial, but also makes it a lot more dangerous for her. I wouldn't have picked her if I knew she was pregnant." She told him. He looked through the results, not thinking she was lying to him, just that he needed to see it for himself. "I should get back in there," She said as she left him with the file and went back into the lab.
Danny came in, dressed in the biohazard suit that they had all been given to be in the lab uncontaminated and went to Kara who was surprised to see him there. "Captain said we could have a visit,"
"That can't be good news," Kara tried to exclaim, but it came out hoarse and a bit monotone.
"Don't you dare leave me," It was all Tex heard.
She couldn't stand to see them getting worse though. She had to get out of there. Just for a minute so she could reconfigure herself into the person that she was supposed to be. She was supposed to be the cold and logical doctor. There would be some that wouldn't make it. It was the reality of the station that she had accepted in life. She was in the life giving business but that also meant she dealt with a lot of life snuffing business too.
Quincy came into the hangar where the storage had been set up, including the monkey, "Rachel?" He asked.
She wiped her tears quickly and laughed, though it came out sad, "I just needed somewhere to clear my head,"
"You were right," He conceded. "The IVIG hasn't worked. Their symptoms, they're getitng even worse," He told her.
"And Bertrise?" She asked.
"Doc Rios is pumping her full of saline and FFP. She'll be alright,"
She thought that was at least the one relief she had in this moment is that they didn't kill one person for the many. "Who did I think I was?" She asked. "That I could solve this?"
"You're the best there is," Quincy told her.
That only made her sniffle, "Yet I've failed."
"Come on," He pleaded, "we'll find another way," When it was clear that she was not going to leave her spot to get up though, Quincy left. He let her have her moments to herself about the failure that had been so fervently kicked up. He'd have probably done the same if it was so much of his work coming up short.
She looked at the monkey, "Why did it work on you?"
Captain Chandler stepped into the containment lab, and looked at everyone. Especially, Tex, whom had no one coming forward. While there had been plenty of others for everyone else to come through.
"When they tell the story of the great plague of the twenty first century, they'll talk about you. The six," He said, to Master chief directly, but to all the others who could hear indirectly. He was confident that they would make history.
It was then Rachel came in yelling Quincy's name. "Microcellular inflammation, Oxidative stress, Immune vascular dysfunction," She said as Quincy came out of the containment lab. "And Bertrise - always sick when she was a child, and yet immune to this. How could I have missed it?" She said as she dug through a box.
Slattery stood there, "Can't say I'm following you,"
"What we're seeing is an autoimmune response," She said, to put in plain language, "the rashes, the liver failure, the poor circulation. What happened to Maya was her own body attacking itself," She told everyone in the room, which now included Chandler.
"The virus is adapting," Quincy added.
"Once it attached to the decoy, it changed shape, revealing its human gene. Neils's gene."
"And that signaled to their immune systems to launch an attack on every cell in their body," Quincy extrapolated.
She nodded. "The monkey doesn't have any human genes, so it didn't have the same reaction," She told everyone.
"So how do you stop it?" Asked Chandler.
"I need to modify the decoy and hide Neil's gene. If our immune systems can't see it, it won't react," She told Chandler as she flipped through some pages of her notes.
Quincy wasn't so sold on it though. "There is no way to get their bodies to manufacture the modified decoy on their own," He told her.
She thought of that though. "Yes, there is," She said, "We use the arctic strain as a trojan horse,"
It took several hours to modify the decoys and to put the primordial in, to make sure they knew what they were doing. It was check, a few times, but nowhere near enough times for Rachel to be comfortable with. Normally, she'd check it several dozen times, but they had no time for that. She put some of her concoction in five vials which were then pumped into the patients and then it was time to wait.
It was the evening of day three when things started to turn for the better, the five were starting to get more lively and she thought it was a miracle. It worked. It really worked. Tex even stood up and tried to samba. And merengue.
"Tex, in bed, now." She told him.
"Oh, I thought she'd never ask," He said to his compatriots.
And she thought, it was high time that they call off this stupid game of privacy once and for all after this whole thing. And she would tell him that. She did not want to be in the uncertain places anymore with him. She wanted it to be both of them. And she would tell him that too.