Toronto, Canada
Day 68
Everybody in my office, we’re late, run don’t walk.”
One of the lab assistants practically sprints into my office, spilling coffee everywhere. Jesus Christ. The screen comes alive as one of the AV people finally gets the TV plugged into the laptop, and we’re greeted by a patchwork of faces of various pixilations. I immediately start scanning the screen for faces I recognize. It’s hard to see anyone. There’s so many on the screen, everyone except Amanda Maclean—the host of this online get-together—is tiny.
“Hello everyone,” she says. She has a beautiful voice. I love a Scottish accent. “Thank you for attending this, well, I suppose we’ll call it a meeting. I’m not sure what to say other than that I’m here and I’ll tell you everything I know, anything I can to help.”
Amanda doesn’t look good. She has bags under her eyes so deep they’re like divots and her eyes have the hollow determination of a religious devotee in a hair shirt. She’s losing it. She must have lost her sons and her husband. I’d bet my bottom dollar that’s why she’s surfaced after her period of silence.
“Are you working on a vaccine?” one of the voices asks.
“No, I work full-time as an A and E doctor in Glasgow. I’m not a virologist, I just happened to treat Patient Zero.”
Amanda has the dazed look that people get, ironically, after they make great medical discoveries. Often you see their expression at a press conference and they look like someone just caught them on a jog or something and told them they’d helped save the human race. “What, me? How? No way?” For Amanda, it’s the opposite. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“Do we have any information about the source of the virus?” I ask. “Any animals it might have originated from, foreign travel the patient undertook, anything at all?”
“I’m trying to arrange a meeting with his wife. His widow. She’s nervous of talking to anyone. She thinks he did something wrong. It’s a delicate situation. I do know, having spoken to a few people who got in touch from his hometown when I did an online appeal for information, that he hadn’t traveled outside the UK for over two years. As for the animal hypothesis, I’m told he occasionally did small jobs that were on the wrong side of the law. I’m pursuing that as a possible route.”
All of us look so eager, it’s pathetic. We don’t know anything, she doesn’t know anything, this is all pointless. We’re wasting precious time. I have a team of immunologists, geneticists, virologists gathered here and for what? For Amanda to tell us that she doesn’t know anything yet. Great.
People are asking questions about the Isle of Bute’s climate, how she knew it was a virus, how she spotted it so quickly. It’s a massive circle jerk. I decide to make use of this time and get through some e-mails. God knows how long later, everyone on-screen starts saying their good-byes and that’s that.
“Back to work, team,” I say. What a fucking waste of time.