Case:Black - 22. Chapter 22

Southaven General Hospital

Clinical Directors Office

1920 CST

The hospital had been jumping all day. The very first thing on Clinical Director Ellison’s agenda was to request an infectious disease specialist from University Medical Center in Jackson. Doctor Alex Jackson arrived by helicopter some hours later and they began to prepare for the unthinkable. Cases that could be discharged were sent home as soon as it could be arranged. Others were transferred.

There was an impromptu refresher on isolation techniques and four whole floors of the hospital were cleared for the anticipated emergency.

The imposition of martial law actually made things somewhat easier. There were none of the usual car crashes and construction accidents that kept the Emergency Department busy.

The problem that vexed Ellison and Jackson’s attempts to prepare was that they had no idea exactly what to prepare for. The staff looked at all of the bioterrorism material available on the Center for Disease Controls web site and tried to split the difference.

It wasn’t until well after six that the faxes and emailed documents started coming in. Their first sign of trouble was the information was not coming from CDC. It came from USAMRIID at Fort Detrick. The information that they received was devastating.

Doctor Alex Jackson had studied a lot of viruses. In fact, he had seen the VEE virus under an electron microscope at Tulane and treated cases of encephalitis caused by West Nile and various other alphaviruses. From the information that he had seen, the name they had given this bug was absolutely accurate. Pandora was out of its box and it was loose in their neighborhood.

According to the information they had received, there was no course of treatment, no recommended meds and no positive clinical outcomes.

Doctor Rex Jackson set himself to the task of creating a clinical protocol for the unknown. Over a plate of sandwiches and a pot of coffee Jackson, the hospital’s chief pharmacist and six senior clinicians sat down to map out a strategy for treating Pandora.