“Theoretically if the crews always wore Military Issue gas masks with filters for airborne virus protection, which also cover the eyes because they could also be a portal of entry, that would protect the workers, but we don’t know if, since it’s such a large virus, it could settle on dust particles and thus be carried on outside gear and become airborne when that gear was removed. If the virus is as persistent as the measles virus, which lingers in the air for quite a while, it would mean that enhanced protective devices would have to be worn for much longer and by more of the personnel. I really can’t say for sure until we complete more studies. It’s a tricky situation.”
Angela frowned. “I was afraid you might say something like that.”
Sarah met her eyes and saw the anxiety in them. She hated to give bad news, but she felt that she needed to be as honest as she could in her assessment. “Also, as you just heard in the meeting, we’ve found out that the ocean’s increased acidity plays a role in activating the virus. The pH of the ocean is not something we can easily change. And with the Arctic ice melting so quickly now, it would be nearly impossible to ensure that no ocean water came into contact with the virus.”
Angela nodded, obviously not thrilled with what she was hearing, but she seemed to understand. She pursed her lips and several sets of concentric wrinkles formed on each side of them, as if her dissatisfaction was rippling away from her frown across the previously pristine surface of her cheeks.
“How soon do you think your team could have this information? Or at least a few more of these answers,” Angela asked.
Sarah looked at Rhonda who met her eyes briefly, then looked away. She realized with a little surprise that Rhonda did not want to confront Oscar or Angela. With her years of experience at the CDC she was in a much more credible position than Sarah to explain why there were no more answers yet and that research was a wild, unpredictable venture which often left investigators with little progress for years. Why was she leaving Sarah to do the dirty work?
Then, with sudden clarity, Sarah understood. Rhonda was afraid to lose her job. She studied her face again and saw the lines, well hidden by her carefully coiffed hair which was dyed to a perfect chestnut brown color. Her dark complexion also helped to hide her age. Thinking back to when she had read Rhonda’s extensive résumé, Sarah realized that her boss was probably in her late 50s or early 60s, though she looked younger. If she lost this job, she might not easily get another.
So it was up to her to be the bad guy. Her leg suddenly throbbed again, but she swallowed and faced Angela.
“I’m really sorry, Angela, but for now, I don’t know what else I can tell you. I don’t have any way of predicting when we will know enough to be able to ensure that the conditions for drilling and exploration are safe. My strong recommendation would be not to allow anyone to return to that site until we know more.”
Oscar raised his impressive eyebrows and brought his hands together. The meeting was over. “Well, I’m sure Sarah will let us all know as soon as her lab gets some more answers. And given the outstanding progress they’ve already made, I’m sure that won’t take too long,” he said, his voice suddenly brisk. He stood and, after thanking Sarah and Rhonda, he escorted Angela out of the office.
Sarah looked at Rhonda, who shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know either,” she said in a soft voice, not meeting Sarah’s eye.
“Well, I guess I’d better get back to the lab,” said Sarah, half hoping Rhonda would ask her to stay for a few more minutes. Instead, the phone rang and Sarah heard Rhonda’s voice regain its former strength as she answered it and nodded a quick goodbye to Sarah. The busy and confident boss had returned, leaving no trace of the frightened older woman she had briefly glimpsed.
CHAPTER 11
Sarah looked up from her laptop and watched her husband across the table as he focused on his work. They were sitting in the kitchen, eating slices of Papa John’s pizza from the box. On these nights they didn’t even use paper plates to eat, they just grabbed the slices and tore off paper towels from a roll they kept in the center of the table. John absently reached for the packet of spicy pepper seeds and sprinkled it over his slice. Then in a practiced maneuver, he rolled up the slice so it looked more like a rotund croissant, turned it on its end and took a bite of the end. As he did so he looked up and caught her eye.
“What?” he said, a smile playing on his lips.
“I don’t get how you can eat it that way, Dr. Chadwick,” she said, also smiling. They often teased one another this way, calling each other by their honorific titles and separate last names. It was an endearing game which had begun when people—her mother in particular—had been horrified to learn that she was not willing to give up her last name when she got married. “But ‘Chadwick’ is a much nicer last name than ‘Spallanzani,’ dear,” her mother had insisted.
She had harped on and on about how nice John’s last name sounded until Sarah had finally tired of it. “Are you saying that if your maiden name had been ‘Chadwick’ you would not have taken Dad’s name?” Sarah had asked. It was a low blow, but it had worked and the discussion had been dropped.
John chuckled at her teasing about the way he ate his pizza and then looked down at his screen and frowned at it.
“Something wrong?” asked Sarah, taking a bite of her own slice which she held with two hands, keeping it parallel to the table. The slice was hot enough that it burned the tips of her fingers, but she loved to eat her food scaldingly hot. She took a bite and relished pulling the long strands of gooey cheese away.
“I’ve got a series of results from the last two weeks of testing with these mice, and they just don’t make any sense.”
Sarah picked at some more strands of cheese and wrapped them around the tip of her slice, then dipped the slice in the warm garlic butter. “Why, what’s up?” she asked.
She and John regularly discussed their research problems even though they were in different lines of study. It was one of the many things she loved about being married to him—that they had regular opportunities to share in each other’s research details. Many of her colleagues had married people who were in disparate lines of work—they were engineers or musicians or architects, and so they did not have the luxury of discussing the intricacies of their investigations with their partners. Not that any of them seemed to mind. But Sarah relished both hearing about John’s work, so foreign and different from her own, as well as sharing hers.
John shook his head. “It’s really strange. The data is not what it ought to be. I mean, these mice are just not behaving the way they should.”
Sarah watched as he opened his mouth wide to take another bite of the pizza roll, holding it gingerly so that the sauce wouldn’t all squeeze out of the other end.
“Remember how…” he said with his mouth still full. Then he reached for a paper towel and held it over his mouth with his left hand, while he held up his right hand, palm outward like a traffic cop stopping a kid at an intersection. He quickly chewed and swallowed.
“Sorry,” he said sheepishly. “Remember how I told you we were doing these anger- and fear-analysis studies for this new project with Stanford? Well, these initial tests are not really that new and we pretty much know, or can guess, how the mice will react when they are presented with a new, potentially frightening stimulus. We were just running some routine tests to establish a baseline, and then we were going to begin the actual research experiments. But first we always have to make sure that all of the different groups are reacting similarly, you know.”
It was common practice to set up baselines and standards. All scientists needed to do this to be sure that the results were valid.