by Ami Urban
"For whom?"
"It's my birthday tomorrow, remember, Aunt Lisa?"
Lisa's hands flew to her cheeks. "Oh, no. I forgot, I'm sorry, honey."
"It's not your birthday tomorrow." I teased Alex. "It's mine."
A smile lit up her face. "We share a birthday?"
"I guess. How old are you going to be, twenty-five?"
She giggled. "Thirteen. Are you turning fifty?"
"Oh..." I clutched a hand to my heart. "That hurt."
***
"Hey, Reynolds!"
I looked up from the brake pads of a twenty-ten Toyota to see Kelli motioning me over to the front. "Yeah?"
"That little hot cookie is back for her Subaru. You better come deal with this one."
As I wiped my hands on a dirty rag, I chuckled to myself. Kelli sounded almost exactly like Silas. Sure, there was a faint sadness about the thought, but I pushed it away.
In the front of the shop was the young blond woman from the day before. She was fiddling with something in her hands. If it weren't for the outbreak, I would have assumed it was a phone.
"The Subaru's ready to go." I grabbed the keys from the front counter as she turned to face me.
"Oh, hey. Thanks." She flashed me a bright smile. "How much do I owe you?"
"We don't take money here. Got anything to trade?"
She lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "Sure." Her hand reached out to touch my arm. "I can do anything you'd like."
I couldn't help but laugh. "We don't trade sexual favors."
"Speak for yourself, MacGyver!" Kelli called from the back.
The girl smiled again. "What do you know. How about it?"
"Sorry. I'm married. Happily."
The girl scoffed. "It's the end of the world. How much can vows mean?"
"A lot."
"Whatever." She picked up her keys and walked out of the shop. "I'll bring some clothes back."
"Nice doing business with you!" I still held a smile on my face. As the girl exited, Lisa walked by her. They stared each other down for a moment, but it was quickly over. "Hey, you."
"Hello. I felt bad that I didn't know it was your birthday so I thought I'd drop by."
I leaned on the front counter. "Oh, you made it up to me plenty this morning." could've sworn I saw her cheeks redden just a little when I winked.
"What did that young woman want?"
"Which?" I stood straight.
"The one who just left."
I smirked. "To trade sex for car repairs. Can you believe that? Kids these days..."
"Yes. I can believe it. The party is all set up."
The change in conversation made me chuckle. "Already? We haven't been here long enough to make friends."
Lisa looked around the shop briefly. "Our lovely neighbor Barbara saw me tying a balloon to the fence and just insisted she take over the party. I swear the woman insinuated that I couldn't do it on my own."
"Now, honey..." I walked toward her with my arms outstretched. "Don't take this the wrong way, but..."
"But what?" She put both hands on her hips, effectively stopping me in my tracks.
"Well, I imagine you trying to find gray and white birthday invitations that just say 'it is your birthday'."
She shrugged, her features softening. "I suppose that would be the most efficient way to propose a party. But that doesn't sound very exciting."
"Well, there you go."
"Hey! MacGyver, where'd you go? We got this POS to finish!" Kelli's voice boomed from the back.
"MacGyver?" One of Lisa's eyebrows rose.
"I fixed a bumper with duct tape and gum this morning."
"I don't understand the reference."
From the Desk of Dr. Lisa James Reynolds
January 8
A series of loud bangs on the door stirred me out of a deep sleep around three in the morning.
Jack shot up in bed. "Yes, I want fries, you motherfucker!" After a few seconds of silence, he looked at the clock and groaned. "God...I miss fast food..."
The bangs came again. "Someone's at the door." I threw the covers off and stepped onto the soft carpet. Still bleary, Jack followed me out the door to the stairs. He continued mumbling something about French fries.
The door was practically rattling on its hinges as the banging continued. And then a voice came through. "Dr. Reynolds! Please, open the door."
I sighed. "It's Dr. Holmes."
"Christ..." Even though Jack was in nothing but a shirt and boxers, he sat down at the kitchen table while I opened the door for our dear doctor friend.
Dr. Holmes seemed flustered. His white hair was a mess with wisps of it matted to the sides of his head with sweat. He'd forgotten his spectacles somewhere and his blue eyes were wild. He pushed his way past me into the kitchen.
"I've decided to let you into the room."
I could feel the furrow in my brow. "I'm sorry?"
The doctor spun in a small circle, acknowledging Jack on the way with a nod. "You need to see what's in the restricted room."
"Dr. Holmes, it's three in the morning."
"It's important. Very very important."
I looked to Jack who simply nodded and waved me to go. Then he stood up to return to bed. "Nice to see ya, doc."
***
"As usual, my wife was right."
I looked back at Dr. Holmes as we drove through the small town toward the lab. "I'm not sure what you mean."
"Do you know why she collapsed?" He made a sharp turn into the parking lot of the hospital. I held onto the armrest.
"No, I don't."
"Because of the leg." When we pulled to a stop, he looked me in the eyes. "She was very sure we'd found a breakthrough and I pissed it away."
"With all due respect, Dr. Holmes—"
"Oh, I wish you'd stop saying that. You don't respect me at all."
I was a bit taken aback, but that faded quickly. "While that may be true, I believe in second chances." We got out of the car and headed into the hospital. "But all of this would have been avoided if you'd given me the opportunity to study the specimen myself."
He waved a hand as we boarded the elevator. "Yes, yes, I know. It's all my fault and I should bugger off. I take responsibility for it. But understand, Dr. Reynolds..." He pushed closer to me as if someone else would overhear our conversation. "That leg may not be our only chance for a breakthrough."
The wheels in my mind began turning. "Something in that room is going to help us."
"It certainly may." We hopped off the lift on the fifth floor. After rounding the corner and coming to a stop outside the restricted door, Dr. Holmes gave me one last look. "Don't say I never warned you."
Skepticism rose inside me as the door to a dark room squeaked open. I couldn't see anything. And my hunch was that either Dr. Holmes was keeping something he shouldn't have been in there — like infected blood — or he actually had nothing.
But then the light flickered on. And in the steel cage at the center of the room, a very ill woman rose up and began to scream.
"Oh, my God..." I approached the cage with caution. The girl was young — she couldn't have been more than twenty. Her limbs jerked with uncontrollable spasms as she moved, jumping at the cage. She was trying to bite me. Dried foam dusted her chin.
"I just couldn't do it myself."
I spun around to look at Dr. Holmes. "What is this?"
"She is my daughter."
"My God..." I circled the cage while she watched me. She had an IV in one arm that was fastened to her with duct tape. "What are you giving her?"
Dr. Holmes approached the IV machine. "Some steroids and anti-inflammatories. It seems to have slowed the disease some."
"Some?" I cocked my head. "When was she bitten?"
"Six months ago."
My synapses fired at an alarming rate. "But that would mean..."
"Yes. My daughter is patient zero."
I was stunned into silence. None of the victims I'd treat
ed at my hospital lasted longer than fourteen days. A few of them died before the incubation period had even transformed into symptoms.
"Does she have a chart I can see?" I held out my hand while still staring at the girl before me.
"Yes." Dr. Holmes shuffled around a bit and handed it to me.
I stopped reading after her symptoms. "Lord... She's pregnant?"
Dr. Holmes sighed. "Not anymore. We hoped the stem cells would repair damage, but instead the fetus aborted itself."
Scanning the chart for a second time, I looked for the pertinent information I already had, but it wasn't listed anywhere.
"Dr. Holmes, did your daughter suffer from insomnia?"
He paused. "Yes. How did you know?"
"Did you ever take her to a doctor to get diagnosed?"
"Well, no. She was seeing a therapist for nightmares due to a traumatic incident earlier the prior year, so we assumed it was that causing the sleeplessness. Why do you ask?"
I snatched a syringe from the desk nearby. "How do you subdue her?"
***
Seeing a victim up close so far into the disease was upsetting to say the least. It broke my heart to think Dr. Holmes had to watch his daughter delve into insanity with no cure. I reached for one of the fuzzy heads of the tranquilizer darts he'd punctured her with.
"Leave those." He put a hand on mine while looking me in the eye. "We learn things the hard way here sometimes."
I nodded. Searching her body, there were few signs of the disease present while she was unconscious. Her skin was slightly gray, but even the bite wound on her thigh wasn't necrotic. It was an open wound that hand't healed, but it seemed that the doctor took good care of her. My heart skipped a beat in my chest.
I checked her eyes. Her pupils were heavily dilated. I felt as though I was an archeologist finding a rare artifact. No one had been able to study a living rabies victim so late in the stages.
"Her teeth are quite clean."
"I brush them when I can."
I looked up at him. "What's her name?"
His eyes became misted. "Victoria," he said quietly.
Taking a deep breath, I picked up a syringe and slid it into the vein inside her arm. There was a slight twitch which caused me to jump, but then her body settled.
"Tell me, Dr. Reynolds... What is the point of this?" There was a mild amount of hurt in Dr. Holmes's voice.
"I have a hunch that your daughter has Fatal Familial Insomnia. Are you familiar with that?"
"No."
I explained the disease and the theory I had while I collected the blood sample and helped the doctor put Victoria back in the steel cage.
"So I'll do some genetic tests and see if any of the prion proteins are folded. If they are, then we at least have our breakthrough and can go from there."
"How would we treat something like that?" His eyes pleaded with me.
I inhaled. "I don't know. But you've been doing something right if you've kept her alive this long."
He nodded. "We nearly lost her early on, but found that steroids combined with anti-inflammatory drugs slows the progress."
It took until eight in the morning and three phone calls to Jack to get the results of the tests. And my theory was correct. We had our breakthrough.
February 5
As days faded into weeks and we became even more comfortable in our environment, I could feel the hope emanating from Lisa. She was like a different person — finally doing what she loved and making a difference for the whole world. I was so sure that she'd find what she needed that when she came home one day stating happily that she'd combined two compounds that she was eighty percent sure would help clear up the advances stages of the disease, that I offered to take her out.
But she seemed nervous. "I really should check on my samples. There could be some movement."
I pulled her toward the door. "It's been, like, eight minutes."
"Twelve."
"Same thing. Let's go." I was finally able to get her through the door in a nice dress. And when we sat down to eat, I noticed she'd cleaned her ring. It sparkled in the pale light of the nice restaurant.
"So tell me what you found."
Her eyes lit up when I asked. "Okay. I dug my way through a lot of books and papers. Without Internet, medicine is very difficult to study. But I found that in 2013, a drug called tafamidis was shown to unfold proteins in the Thalamus. So that at least helps us treat the TSE. Remember when I told you about the TSE's?"
I thought back to the day in the library at Huntington house. "How could I forget? You were wild." I touched her hand as she smiled. Our food arrived. She continued while we ate.
"So, I thought if we could unfold the proteins, that would give us access to at least treat the rabies virus. Obviously the vaccine won't treat the disease once symptoms show, but I have a hunch that using neurogliaform cells to target the specific neurons affected and shutting them down may be able to kill the virus. Then we can resuscitate those neurons with shock therapy."
After we shared a decadent dessert, I took her out to dance at a nearby bar. And even when I twirled her around the floor, she kept talking about the project. Even at home in bed, she couldn't stop going on and on.
"Can I read you my paper on Tourette's?"
"Say what?" I sat up on my elbows. The sheets tugged slightly away from her hips.
"You said I could read you my Tourette's paper after sex."
I screwed up my face. "Wasn't that like, eight years ago?"
She was quiet, her features blank.
"Can...you even find it?"
"Jack Reynolds, are you telling me no?" While her features were serious, there was a slight teasing tone in her voice.
"What? No!"
Shaking her head, she swung her legs over the side of the bed. "I suppose I should check on my specimen."
"Whoa, whoa, wait!" I caught her waist and pulled her back in to me. "Read it to me. I'm interested."
From the Desk of Dr. Lisa James Reynolds
February 6
The next morning, I was eager to see what had become of my specimens. While the likelihood of anything significant happening overnight was small, I still held high hopes for it. A miracle, maybe. I managed to go into the lab relatively early. Only one other lab assistant was there aside form myself.
I turned on the lights as we entered at the same time. After setting down my things, I all but ran over to the cabinet to retrieve my work. I just couldn't wait to get everything out on the table under the microscope. I stuck a slide in and peered through the viewer.
And saw nothing.
I checked three more times, alternating the slides out. But there was still nothing. Had my sample been tampered with?
"Julie."
"Yes, Dr. Reynolds?" The other lab assistant approached me.
"Where are my specimens from yesterday?"
She paused, reading the label on the dish. "Those are them."
I took a deep breath, trying to assume that she knew how to read. "No, these are not mine." I lifted them to show her the labeled tape on the outer edge of the dish. In turn, she picked it out of my hand and turned it to face me.
"Three thirty-three?" I shook my head. "No. That can't be right. Someone switched the labels."
"What is it, Dr. Reynolds?"
I began to scramble, rustling through scattered papers and other arbitrary dishes of samples.
"This isn't my sample because there is no trace of the virus in—" I immediately stopped what I was doing and looked straight at the assistant. "Call Dr. Holmes now. I've found a cure."
***
While the lab assistants scrambled to combine the ingredients I'd discovered to have wiped out the virus, Dr. Holmes and I worked on his daughter's blood transfusion. It was a tedious process and we had to constantly ensure Victoria was sedated enough. By the end of the operation, half the day was already over.
While she was resting, I pulled a vial of blood and inspected it u
nder the microscope. Absolutely no trace of the virus was visible. We'd done it.
"Before we contact anyone in the government, we'll need to test the vaccine," Dr. Holmes said.
"Of course."
"We must follow all protocols in order for this to be successful. You understand?"
"Yes."
"Can you please check on my daughter? I'm going to bring Catherine in right now."
"Absolutely."
As I walked down the hallway to the quarantine room, lab assistants applauded me. It felt odd to be congratulated for something that was entirely necessary, but I didn't want to spoil their good moods.
As I opened the door to Victoria's room, I prayed to myself that she would be stable. And what I saw was more than any of us could have asked for. She was sitting up in bed with her eyes open, sipping water.
"How are you feeling?" I tried to keep my excitement in check.
"Who are you? Where am I?"
"Try to relax." I took a seat in the chair across from her bed. "My name is Dr. Reynolds. You're in a town called Braycart, Colorado. About six months ago, you were bitten by a rabid animal."
"Holy shit... Six months?"
"Yes." I nodded. "The virus spread and became an epidemic. The entire world has been affected."
"I started the zombie apocalypse? That's kind of cool and a bummer at the same time."
"Well, as you can tell, we've been able to bring you out. Are you feeling all right?" I moved to check her vitals.
"Oh, yeah. A little hungry."
"Great. Your heart sounds greats and your blood pressure seems steady."
"where's my dad?" Her voice grew soft.
"He's just gone to retrieve your mother and he'll return shortly."
"Oh."
"I can get you something to eat. What would you like?"
"Ugh, anything." She rolled her eyes to the ceiling. "I'm starving."
I managed a smile. "All right then."
"Dr. Reynolds."
I turned. "Yes?"
"What's going to happen to the world?"
After a moment of silence, I said, "We're going to save it."
***
Even though Jack knew the good news, I dreaded going home that night. I had a decision to make and it wasn't a simple one. As I walked through the door, I could hardly contain the sting of tears when the smell of a flavorful meal hit me.
