Times Have Changed
“Faith,give me your antibody numbers. I want to compare to last week’s trials.” Courtney Carlson, Faith’s supervisor and friend, removed her protective goggles to better focus on the displayed graphs on her computer screen. “Subject one shows promising signs of antibody development, but subject two’s immune response is inconclusive.”
“Checking now,” Faith said, focusing her microscope on the blood sample she’d prepared on a glass slide. “How’d your Tinder date go?” Faith asked, adjusting the slide on the light.
“Also inconclusive,” Courtney said. “He looks nothing like in his profile picture.”
“Oh, I know,” Faith said. “Remember Mr. Wall Street? He used a picture of himself from seven years ago. Not that he admitted it. His hair loss did, though. I don’t care if you’ve lost your hair. Just don’t lie about it to get me to go on a date with you.”
“Totally,” Courtney said. “Why can’t guys just be honest? I didn’t wait this long to find the right one just to settle for some man masquerading as his undergrad self.”
“I’m over the idea of ‘the right one,’” Faith said. “He’s not out there. Only ‘good enough’ and ‘will hold my purse in his wheelchair at the nursing home.’”
“Whatever,” Courtney said, and Faith knew she was rolling her eyes even though she didn’t look up from her microscope. “You’re not the cynic you claim to be,” Courtney said.
“Cynicism suits me,” Faith said. “I tried it on at Macy’s last week.”
Courtney chucked a pen at Faith from across the room. “Everything suits you. Please cancel your gym membership; you’re making the rest of us look bad. Now, the antibody counts, please. I’m not getting any younger over here.”
Faith held her breath focusing on the white blood cells she saw on the blood sample from the subject they were testing a Chorivirus vaccine on. They’d had some promising results so far, and hoped this current trial could be the key to inoculating the world against the deadly virus that had first begun making rounds throughout the globe last year.
The Chorivirus first jumped from a pocket gopher to a human in a graduate student’s research lab on a university campus in Milwaukee. The graduate student had collected the gophers from the wild for their final research project, and one of the gophers had brought Lymphocytic Choriomeningitis with it into the lab. The virus had infected humans before; it caused mild fever, vomiting, and general weakness until fully recovered. The student hadn’t even realized the gopher was sick until the animal was installed in its habitat in the university laboratory. The student, Patient Zero, realized he had caught an unusual virus after a week in his bed at his shared dormitory with a fever surpassing 101 degrees Fahrenheit and other symptoms similar to the flu that failed to respond to any over the counter or prescription medications. When his roommate fell ill with the same symptoms and died in the hospital four days later, it became clear that their bodies were fighting – and losing – with a virus no human had ever encountered before; the Lymphocytic Choriomeningitis had mutated when it jumped into its human hosts. The mutation, later dubbed the Chorivirus, spread like wildfire in the students’ dorms, the university, and the Milwaukee hospital network. It only got worse from there.
Faith had first heard of the Chorivirus in an emergency staff meeting at the lab of her company’s headquarters, Flux Pharmaceuticals, in New York City. The staff had been handed surgical masks as they were funneled into the conference room, with instructions to wear masks from that point forward anytime they were at work or in public. Masks had not yet become the norm in the world; the virus was not understood to spread by respiratory droplets, yet. They knew better, now.
News of the virus’s spread had traveled from the university Dean’s office, where it originated, to congress. Federal pandemic response teams descending upon Milwaukee just as the national news networks began to catch wind of the virus’s potential threat to both the United States, and the globe. When Courtney first said the term “Chorivirus” in the meeting, thousands of people had already been reported ill with the mystery disease in countries around the world. The number of new cases skyrocketed with each passing day. The Flux Pharmaceuticals board of directors knew the best defense the world had against the novel virus was a vaccine, and they were going to pull staff from other projects to assemble a super-team who would fast-track the development of the Chorivirus vaccine. Courtney would direct the entire project, and Faith, the company’s rising star, would head research and development. Everyone in the room had turned to stare at Faith as her face lit up bright red at the sudden influx of attention. She wished she’d taken more time to do her hair and makeup that morning, rather than pinning it back in her rush to the subway.
Even in the midst of her embarrassment at being singled out from the entire Flux staff to lead the research team, she couldn’t help but smile with pride. Faith had gone into medicine and pharmaceuticals to save lives. While she’d deviated from her original plan to work in a rural hospital, she was proud of the work she’d done and the progress she’d made both personally and professionally in her career. She was ready for this challenge.
That was three months ago, and the virus had been raging around the world unchecked ever since, but Courtney, Faith, and their team had already put two different vaccines into human trials. There was competition from other companies to develop the first effective and safe vaccine, including from Faith’s former employer, Inquisitis Pharma, which Faith had left because of their lack of ethics in testing protocols, and cutting corners over safety issues to increase profit margins – among other things. She’d been much happier since leaving Inquisitis four years ago. They’d called her just after the pandemic gripped the world, offering her a lead job with increased pay if she’d take over their Chorivirus vaccine development, but Faith wasn’t going back there, no matter how much they paid her. She hadn’t gone into this field for the money. Besides, she was doing just fine where she was. She had her own apartment in Brooklyn, New York. She had expensive furniture. A doorman. She paid someone else to do her laundry and her dishes. She wasn’t doing bad at all for a small-town girl from the mountains of Colorado.
In all the work it took to get to this point – two masters degrees, a doctorate, internships, hours of overtime in labs – she hadn’t had time to do the one thing she still wanted, though: find a decent man, get married, and have kids. She thought she’d found the one back in Colorado, but he’d disappeared on her the morning of their high school graduation, and she’d had trouble trusting anyone ever since. He’d told her he loved her, and they’d talked about marriage, then – poof – gone, with nothing more than a note claiming he’d joined the army and he was sorry. Men were always “sorry” when they did asinine things, and Faith was over it. She was over him. Or so she thought.
Faith made it a point not to ask about him as soon as she was able to stop crying and leave her bedroom again. The town was small enough to quickly learn not to talk about him around her, to never even say his name. It was probably for the best that he’d made her unable to trust anyone well enough to build a real relationship; she was at work so often she hadn’t been able to keep a plant alive on her windowsill, let alone keep a pet or a child alive, hydrated, and fed. Because animals were her test subjects for vaccines and treatments, Faith had spent more time with them than human beings in recent years. Her affection toward her furry friends grew exponentially, and she made sure they were treated with compassion and kindness. Yet another reason why she had left Inquisitis.
Faith slid the glass plate from the microscope, and filed it back into a carton, jotting down numbers. Guinea pigs squeaked in a cage behind her. She slipped baby carrots through the bars of the cage. The guinea pigs had a break from their usual job description. Normal vaccine development required years of animal testing before moving on to humans. With the Chorivirus raging havoc, there wasn’t enough time for extensive animal trials. As soon as the preliminary safety protocols were cleared, the first vials of test vaccine went straight in a human arm. Lives were on the line with each minute passing as the pandemic devastated every country on the planet. The only people safe from the virus were on the International Space Station, and their trip had been prolonged to prevent exposure back on Earth.
Faith checked the chart of the most recent vaccine trials against the numbers she’d just recorded.
“Any day now, Faith. I’m hungry,” Courtney said.
Faith and Courtney felt optimistic about this new round of tests. The blood work had yielded a higher antibody count with each attempt. If things continued on this track, they could have a marketable vaccine that could save millions of lives in as little as three months. The speed was unprecedented. Still, they hadn’t succeeded yet.
“Courtney,” Faith said. “You still there?” She rifled pages, rechecking her numbers.
“Growing old and gray in this swivel chair.”
“I’ll get you hair dye,” Faith said. “You might need it when you hear this.”
“The suspense, woman!” Courtney said. “Give me some numbers so I can go home to my cats.”
Faith walked her notebook over to Courtney and slid it over her keyboard. She tapped the numbers.
“Oh my god,” Courtney said. She gripped the notebook and held it closer to her face. She looked up at Faith. “Oh my god!”
