He looked outside again and saw that the rain was finally letting up. The clouds would probably blow away within the hour and the city would become a tropical swampland, the air thick with humidity and mosquitoes.
CHAPTER 22
“You’re up early,” said John sleepily. “5:56. Have you been up long?”
Sarah looked up from her laptop and smiled at her husband. She loved the way he looked in the morning with his ruffled hair, so boyish. “I’ve been thinking about your mice that were acting braver than they should—are you still having that problem?”
John walked over and started the coffee machine. “Actually, yes,” he said, drawing the word out as he fought with a yawn. He shook his head, as if to clear it. “We have narrowed it down to one small group that is not acting normal. We’ve got them isolated and we’re not including them in the study for now until we figure out why they are so different from the rest.”
“Do you think it might be related to what Molly told us about bringing her mouse back for a visit? Since we found out that our mice have Toxoplasmosis, I’ve been wondering if perhaps your mice might be contaminated like mine?”
John pressed his lips together. “Hmm, well, I guess it’s a possibility. It crossed my mind briefly when you first told me about it, but I asked Trevor and he said that none of my mice came from C12.”
Sarah twirled her ponytail thoughtfully and nodded. Her gaze seemed miles away. “If you want, you can send some of the little guys down to my lab and we’ll draw some blood samples and run a few tests.”
John held the coffee pot aloft as he stopped and reflected on Sarah’s words. “Well, I guess it wouldn’t hurt. What made you think of this?”
“It’s something I was reading about Toxoplasmosis,” she said, pointing to her glowing laptop screen. “In our meeting yesterday Miquela asked if humans can get Toxoplasmosis, so I started reading about it some more. And studies do show that Toxoplasmosis infections can affect behavior in rodents.”
John grabbed a box of cereal from the pantry and reached for a bowl. “You know, now that you mention it, I actually have heard of those studies, but I didn’t make the connection. Okay, I’ll have Trevor take you some mice this morning.”
“Are they infected with Toxo?” asked John as he picked up his wife’s call that afternoon.
“Yes. Every last one of the mice in your group that’s acting funny—not afraid of the stimuli that should frighten them—they all have it. ”
John sighed heavily. “Sheeze. I was afraid you’d say that. I did some more reading on the subject this morning, and it all fits. How about the others—the ones that are acting normal?” he asked.
“All clean. Only the ones that are acting strange have the infection.”
John was silent for a moment and Sarah could picture him biting his lower lip as he thought. “Well, at least that makes it easy. We’ll get rid of those mice and make sure we start over with a clean batch. How do you think they caught the infection? Could it have been from when Molly worked for our side of the vivarium a few weeks ago?”
“No, I don’t think it was Molly herself who carried the Toxo to your mice, but it could be that Opus, Molly’s mouse, is like the Typhoid Mary of the late 1800s, early 1900s—do you remember studying about her?”
“Um, the name rings a bell, but I can’t say I recall the details. Just that she got people sick or something like that?”
“You’re pretty good!” said Sarah, chuckling as she spoke. “Typhoid Mary was a cook who did not wash her hands after going to the bathroom.”
“Disgusting.”
“Yeah, well from the number of signs in restrooms in restaurants nowadays it’s something we are still struggling to teach people who prepare our food.”
“Ugh, I hadn’t thought of it that way. So Typhoid Mary got people sick?”
“Yeah, many of the people who ate her food got sick, but she, herself, didn’t show any signs of infection. So she inadvertently provided the scientific community with the first example ever documented of a carrier with no symptoms—an asymptomatic carrier, as we now call them. But remember, at this time we still hadn’t established the clear connection between bacteria and infections. And there were no antibiotics yet. Disease control was still partly based on superstition.”
“Bad airs, evils spirits…”
“You got it! My recollection is that Mary went from house to house, in different cities, always working for families as their cook, of all things! And soon after she came to their kitchens, members of the family would get sick with typhoid. Several people even died from the disease. It took the authorities a few years to finally figure out that she was the link between all of the cases, because of course, she kept moving and didn’t exactly leave forwarding addresses.”
“Not surprising.”
“Yeah, and to make matters worse, I think she even refused to cooperate with the doctors when they finally showed her the evidence because she didn’t really believe them.”
“You’re kidding!” said John.
“No, her behavior was atrocious. Eventually, of course, she succumbed to the infection too, but I think they had to put her in jail to restrain her.”
“Wow. Kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it? I mean, what people will say about us a hundred years from now when they look back at the things we’re doing?”
Sarah looked down at her desk. It was a sobering topic for her. “Hopefully there will still be people a hundred years from now,” she said, her voice tight. “If we keep wrecking our planet the way we are…” She did not complete her sentence. Thinking about the climate crisis and pollution always filled her with dread.
“Hey,” said her husband more gently. He could always read her feelings, even over the phone. “Hey, it’s going to be fine. We humans are resilient. We’ll figure it out.”
Sarah took a deep breath. Now was not the time to allow herself to become frightened about the future of humanity.
“Plus,” said John, obviously intent on changing the subject, “we just solved this mystery, didn’t we? We now know that Opus was our Typhoid Mary. And actually, it makes sense. When I got here this morning I did a thorough search of the vivarium records and I found that the group of mice that is not behaving spent some time in room C12 a few weeks ago. So, we’re all good, right?”
Sarah smiled and felt a bit better. Even strong people sometimes succumbed to their fears, she knew. But her sanguine husband was right. There was still room for optimism in this world. “We’re all good. Thanks, honey.”
CHAPTER 23
“Wow,” said Shane, “can you imagine what an effective weapon it would be?”
The entire research team, along with Rhonda and Angela, were seated in the conference room and had just begun discussing the findings from the last few days. The discovery that the mice were infected with another organism prior to commencing the study had been a tremendous disappointment, but when they later found out that this infection actually protected the mice from Laptev hemorrhagic fever virus, everyone had been surprised. Further studies had been designed and several had been completed. The results were now being reviewed.
“Weapon?” asked Tally, narrowing her eyes.
“For fighting the virus, hello! If everyone who has a Toxoplasmosis infection is protected, then that solves that problem in record time,” Shane said and snapped his fingers. “All we have to do is develop a vaccine with the live infection, and presto! And, oh, here’s a great idea: what if it turned out that Toxo protected us from other major pathogens as well? Wouldn’t that be amazing? This could usher in a whole new era for disease control! All of our concerns about finding new antibiotics or worrying about the toxic effects of drugs that we now use might one day be null and void. It would be a whole new world, a complete revolution in medicine.”