The Burning Water

5 - Fishing Boat

By Wednesday evening Ho-Sook was baffled. The girls seemed not to have been affected by the virus. But all the boys were in the hospital wing, all displaying similar symptoms – headaches, cough, sneezing and fever. After the children had been served their dinner, and the staff prepared to leave for the day, Ho-Sook decided to remain on the island overnight to look after them.

Nurse Bak was stunned, and argued against it. "But the watchman is dead," Ho-Sook said. She knew that the head nurse cared more for protocol than for the patients, so she appealed to that logic. "Who will make sure the children do not go run around the island? What if more try to escape? Dr. Go would be very angry."

Nurse Bak capitulated, though she made it clear that this would have to be a one-time situation. "We cannot set a precedent," she said.

At eight o'clock Ho-Sook checked the patients in the hospital wing, distressed to see that none of them had improved. How had this illness come up on them so quickly, she wondered, as she walked back to her office.

From her desk, she reviewed the medical records on the first boy to die, Liboko. In her cramped handwriting, Nurse Bak had noted she gave the boy an injection of one of Dr. Go's experimental viruses on Friday morning. But the boy had squirmed when the needle punctured his skin, and some of the virus had leaked out.

Was that a clue? Had the virus interacted with the boy's skin?

An additional note indicated that Nurse Bak had given the boy a second shot, this time after immobilizing him.

A double dose. Was that why the virus had been so strong?

She yawned and decided to see if she could catch a few hours of sleep in the dormitory. She crept in quietly so as not to disturb any of the sleeping girls, and lay down on one of the empty cots.

She awoke at first light. All the girls still slept around her, and none of them demonstrated the symptoms that the boys had. That was good, she thought. It was yet another piece of a puzzle she could not see the full outline of yet.

The staff was late to arrive on the ferry that morning, and Ho-Sook experienced a moment of panic that she might have been left to manage the facility all by herself. But eventually the other nurses arrived, with the orderly, Gun. "That incompetent ferry driver is sick," Nurse Bak complained when she walked in. "We had to wait almost a half hour for his wife to come and bring us over."

"Where is Dr. Go?" Ho-Sook asked.

"He did not arrive," Nurse Bak said.

With trepidation, Ho-Sook called Dr. Go's home number. His wife answered, sounding wild and frazzled. "He is dead," she said. "Last night he ran a very high fever, and I called for an ambulance but they said there were too many sick people."

Ho-Sook hung up, stunned. Dr. Go dead? What would happen to the facility, to the nurses, the children? To her?

Young-Min came into her office. "I spoke with a friend of mine who works at the hospital in Uiju," she said. "They have been overwhelmed with the sick and dying, and they all have the same symptoms as the children who died here. My friend is very frightened."

"One of those dead is Dr. Go," Ho-Sook said.

Young-Min gasped.

"How are the girls in the orphanage wing?" Ho-Sook asked. "Are they still healthy?"

Young-Min nodded. "What is happening, Doctor?"

"I don't know, but it's very strange. This virus seems to be attacking many more males than females – all the boys here, the security guard, Dr. Go. Even the ferry driver."