“Ventilate!”
Gihwan gripped the BVM and pushed air in twice.
Whoosh, whoosh.
The child’s chest rose twice.
“Again!”
Taeho immediately resumed compressions.
Once, twice, three times······.
“What’s the time?”
“One minute thirty seconds!”
Gihwan shouted.
Another fifteen compressions.
“Ventilate!”
Whoosh. Whoosh.
“Again!”
They repeated compressions and ventilation.
Sweat dripped from Taeho’s face. Inside the protective suit, it was as hot as a sauna, and cumbersome. Even the same movements consumed far more energy.
But he could not stop.
“Four minutes thirty seconds!”
Once cardiac arrest passed four minutes, brain damage began.
Urgency gripped his heart.
Compressions and ventilation again.
“Five minutes!”
Gihwan’s voice trembled as he kept time.
Taeho’s brow tightened.
‘No······.’
Then.
The child’s fingers trembled faintly.
Taeho gasped for breath and said,
“Gihwan! Check the pulse!”
“Yes!”
Gihwan shouted.
“It’s weak, but there’s a pulse!”
“Heart rate?”
“Sixty-five! No, seventy! It’s rising!”
Jean-Paul placed a stethoscope against the child’s chest.
“Breathing is back too! Fifteen times per minute!”
The tension left Taeho, and he sank down where he stood.
The inside of his protective helmet fogged white with condensation.
The child let out a small groan.
“Hnnng······.”
His eyelids trembled, then opened slightly.
“You’re all right.”
Taeho said. But the child probably could not hear him.
Taeho held the child’s hand.
‘Thank you for staying alive.’
The child looked at Taeho with unfocused eyes. Then he closed them again.
But his chest was rising and falling regularly.
“Give him oxygen!”
Nurse Jean-Paul placed an oxygen mask over the child’s face.
Oxygen flow rate: 5 L/min.
Color slowly began returning to the child’s lips.
“Fortunately, he’s past the crisis, but he’ll need intensive observation.”
Taeho said.
But everyone knew.
This might only be a temporary recovery.
After finishing his patient checks, Taeho left the tent and removed his protective suit. He took a decontamination shower and changed into fresh clothes.
When he came outside, Gihwan, who had emerged first, was waiting.
Taeho looked at Gihwan.
“The RNA extraction?”
“Yes. The sequencing is running now. We’ll have results in two hours.”
“Good. In the meantime, let’s set up the patient vital signs monitoring system.”
“Yes!”
The two began moving again.
In the distance, the villagers were watching them.
***
Taeho glared at the laptop screen inside the tent they had turned into a temporary command post.
The supply list organized on the Excel sheet was dismal.
Forty N95 masks. If each person used two per day, they would not last even a week. There were only six Level A protective suits, and they could neither be washed nor reused. Forty-two IV fluid bags. A single patient used three bags a day, and there were seven patients who needed them.
They would run out in two days.
There were no infusion pumps, ventilators, or defibrillators.
Twenty vials of antibiotics and thirty antipyretic tablets were all they had.
“This really is enough to make you sigh.”
Taeho contacted WHO headquarters by satellite phone.
“Director-General Maria, this is Dr. Kang.”
-Dr. Kang, I heard Team Leader Pierre returned to Kinshasa Airport. What happened?
“He couldn’t overcome his fear and ran. He left with three other team members, and the only ones remaining here are Dr. Seong Gihwan, Nurse Jean-Paul Leblanc, and me.”
-Pierre, that bastard······.
He heard Maria let out a heavy sigh.
Taeho spoke coldly.
“When Team Leader Pierre left, he took the supplies back with him on the helicopter. So I’m requesting emergency supply support.”
-I’ll send them as quickly as possible.
“The situation here makes it difficult to last even three days. When will the supplies arrive?”
-······.
“Director-General?”
-The truth is, the supplies are already waiting at Kinshasa Airport. The Congolese government is blocking customs clearance. They’re taking issue with incomplete documents. In reality, they’re demanding bribes.
Taeho swallowed a curse.
-We’re putting pressure on them through the UN right now. The French and American embassies are also moving.
“How long will it take?”
-I can’t guarantee anything yet.
Taeho closed his eyes.
Forty-eight hours.
In that time, every patient could die.
“Understood. For now, we’ll try to hold out with what we have. But Director-General, please inform the media of this situation as well, and do everything you can.”
-I understand. I’ll prepare an emergency briefing right now. And I’m truly sorry, Dr. Kang.
He ended the call.
Just then, Gihwan entered the tent.
“Director, the preliminary RNA sequencing results are in.”
“What is it?”
“The worst possible result.”
Gihwan handed him a tablet. A viral gene map was displayed on the screen.
Taeho drew in a breath.
“A triple chimera······.”
“Yes. It has Ebola’s hemorrhagic mechanism, coronavirus-level transmissibility, and Marburg’s neuroinvasiveness.”
“What about the unknown 2,847 bp sequence?”
“We’re still analyzing it, but look at this part.”
Gihwan enlarged the screen.
“The codon optimization pattern is clear. This isn’t natural mutation.”
“Just as expected.”
Gihwan opened another file.
“Yes. As you said, Director, it was similar to the last situation. So I searched, and sure enough, there was an encrypted mark in the non-coding region.”
A base sequence appeared on the screen.
“BS stands for Biosynergy?”
“Most likely. And this looks like a time-based control system. They implanted a timer inside the virus.”
Taeho leaned back in his chair.
“Then this virus was designed to activate automatically at a specific point in time.”
“That’s our estimation.”
At that moment, Jean-Paul came running in through the tent entrance.
“Dr. Kang! Patient Three is in shock!”
Taeho sprang to his feet.
“Oxygen saturation?”
“Seventy-two percent! Still dropping!”
“Gihwan, protective suits!”
The two hurriedly put on their protective suits and ran to the isolation tent.
Bed Three. A female patient in her twenties was having convulsions throughout her body. Her eyes had rolled back, and blood-tinged foam was coming from her mouth.
“Blood pressure 60 over 40! Pulse 140, irregular!”
Taeho made an immediate judgment.
Septic shock. Her blood vessels were dilating, and her blood pressure was plummeting.
“Suction! Turn the patient on her side!”
Taeho pushed the suction tube into her mouth. Bloody foam was drawn up. As her airway opened, the convulsions gradually subsided.
“Oxygen! High-concentration mask, fifteen liters. If we don’t have one, attach a filter to the bag-valve!”
Gihwan came running with the BVM.
“Administer 2 mg midazolam!”
Jean-Paul quickly pushed the drug in.
A short while later, the patient’s convulsions stopped.
After checking her condition, Taeho immediately gave the next order.
“Two IV lines. Let’s give 500 mL of fluid rapidly as a bolus. Watch her blood pressure response and add more if needed.”
Jean-Paul hesitated, holding a new IV fluid bag, and said,
“Doctor, if we open this, there are no more!”
“Why is this the last one? The records said we still had forty-two bags left.”
“It seems rats got into the storage tent. I don’t know how the previous manager handled the supplies, but fifteen bags are completely punctured, and the rest can’t be used because of possible contamination.”
Jean-Paul shrugged.
Taeho swallowed a curse.
Just then, the monitor alarm rang out sharply. The patient’s blood pressure had dropped again to 55 over 35.
If they did not use it immediately, it would be fatal for the patient.
“Use it.”
Taeho said.
Jean-Paul opened the IV line to its maximum speed. Clear fluid flowed rapidly into the patient’s veins.
Her blood pressure slowly rose, and her eyes returned to their proper position.
“She’s alive.”
Jean-Paul let out a sigh of relief.
But Taeho could not smile.
They were out of IV fluids.
By tomorrow, the other patients would be suffering from dehydration more than the infectious disease itself.
Taeho left the tent and removed his protective suit.
“Hoo.”
Rolling his stiff neck, he looked up at the sky.
Stars were pouring down. The hazy-bright Milky Way flowed across the night sky.
It was beautiful.
So beautiful that it was painful instead.
***
Amira was sitting on the living room sofa, watching CNN News.
On the screen, a calm news anchor’s voice flowed over a map of Congo.
-To date, twenty-six people have died from an unidentified hemorrhagic fever that broke out in the Ngili River region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The WHO has dispatched an emergency response team, but local conditions are reported to be extremely severe.
The screen changed.
It was footage of a helicopter flying over the jungle.
Amira held her breath.
He was somewhere down there.
-However, it has been confirmed that most of the medical personnel, including the WHO field team leader, have withdrawn to Kinshasa, leaving only Korea’s Dr. Kang Taeho and a small number of staff at the site.
Amira’s eyes widened.
Withdrawn?
The medical staff had fled?
And yet her husband was still there?
The screen changed again. A WHO infectious disease expert had appeared in the studio.
-The novel infectious disease appears to have a higher fatality rate and a faster progression than Ebola. With medical facilities and supplies critically lacking, it is virtually impossible for Dr. Kang to control this situation alone.
Amira’s heart dropped.
He was always someone who fought alone in the most dangerous place.
As his wife, she resented him for it, but that was who Kang Taeho was.
Hadn’t she loved him because he was that kind of man?
Her husband was in danger. She could not simply sit by.
She picked up her phone and called Prince Faisal.
-Hello, Amira?
Faisal’s voice came through.
“Ya akhi, is now a good time?”
-Yes, my meeting just ended. It’s truly good to hear your voice. But your voice sounds a little strange. Did something happen?
Amira took a deep breath.
“Ya akhi. You know the president of Congo well, don’t you?”
“President Tshisekedi? Of course I do.”
Prince Faisal was overseeing the UAE sovereign wealth fund’s mineral investments in Africa.
The largest of those projects was a cobalt mine in Katanga Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The investment alone amounted to 2.3 billion dollars.
Seventy percent of the world’s cobalt, a core material for electric vehicle batteries, came from Congo.
Faisal’s investment was not merely foreign currency income for the Congolese government.
It was the political lifeline of President Félix Tshisekedi.