Virus - Prisoners of the Nature

Chapter 8

Fifteen white bedsteads stood on four metal legs in this isolation ward. Only one window. Closed shut. One glass door. Dark green sheets covered the beds in this ward, but these sheets were no green grass of the forest. Instead, they gave the stench of disinfectants and all the other patients who once took their last breath on these sheets. Four patients lay on the beds. Two patients had MDR-TB. Also known as multi-drug resistant tuberculosis. It is a type of tuberculosis resistant to at least two most commonly used anti-biotics to treat TB - Isoniazid and Rifampicin. These two drugs are the most effective drugs to treat TB. But once the bacteria of tuberculosis becomes resistant against these, they became highly infective and very hard to treat.

Another patient had this mysterious virus, which was yet to be identified. Aakash stood there, examining them. Aman arrived and saw through this glass door. Aakash was wearing a mask, gloves, shoe covers, blue hospital gown, and everything else he was supposed to be wearing when one examines a patient in isolation wards. Aman took a moment of breath as Aakash spotted him.

"Why are you here?" Aakash came to the glass door and said.

"I just... nothing..." Aman replied.

"Come on,... man. Don't be shamed. Just Spit it out." Aakash encouraged him.

"I wanted to warm you that you should wear the mask. It's infectious. And we still don't know what it is." He replied.

"Yeah. I know. That's why the patients are in the isolation ward." Aakash told him as he went to bed numbers 13 and 14 to complete his physical examinations.

Aakash held the hand of Raman's wife. Then he pressed three of his fingers - index, middle, ring - against the bone at her wrist, just under the thumb on palmar side of forearm to measure her pulse. He started counting. 1, 2, 3... His hands and fingers started vibrating because her hands moved bizarrely. Like a break dancer who doesn't know how to break. Seizures had taken control of her brain.

The billions of neurons make the human brain and they rely on electrical impulses to communicate with each other. A seizure is a sudden, uncontrolled electrical disturbance in the brain. It can cause changes in behaviours, moods, feelings, consciousness, and also convulsions - a sudden, violent, irregular movement of the body or its part, caused by involuntary contractions of muscles.

Convulsions, if continued, can cause severe damage to a person. It can suffocate a person by preventing the movements of respiratory muscles, or it can stop a person's heart by inducing cardiac arrythmias that leads to cardiac arrest.

As his reckless personality disappeared behind the fear of death, he shouted to the nurses to bring a vial of diazepam, and adrenaline. Diazepam is used to stop convulsions. Nurse came, and he filled a syringe with 5 milligrams of diazepam and gave it into the patient's vein. Convulsions stopped, but her heart stopped with it.

He lifted the shirt to expose the chest of Raman's wife and attached two pads of a defibrillator to her chest. He charged the defibrillator with 200 joules. Joule is a unit of energy. He gave the first shock. No response. He did chest compressions for two minutes, gave another shock of 300 joules. Still no response. Nurse gave one milligram of adrenaline, as he continued chest compressions for another two minutes. He gave third and final shock of 360 joules. Still no response.

"Time of death, 5:45." He said.

Dev's eyes were open observing this dance of death. He wanted to scream. Scream as loud as he can. But this virus ate his body and consumed his energy from the inside. Thousands of joules of energy. Making him too weak to even move the little finger. The certainty of death doomed his hope as he closed his eyes and tried to remember his own family and prayed to his God for his help. For cure of this disease.

Neil sat below on the fourth floor in his office, waiting for Aakash to arrive, and check whether or not his examination skills have improved. He waited while scrolling down news on his iPhone in an app known as The Times of India, when he came upon a news article with the following headline: "An unknown virus emerged in China. 25 cases admitted into the hospital. 5 dead. All from a single region in Wuhan."