"A man in Virginia has died due to hyperpyrexia, a fever that reached 107 degrees Fahrenheit. But, how? What caused it?" Harlan asked with his Russian accent. Janet raised her hand, talking without Harlan even asking her to.
"Possibly hemorrhagic fever. I mean, the report said that he was bleeding out of every pore." she said. Harlan nodded, the others in the room writing down in their notebooks with black pens.
"You say hemorrhagic fever. So, Ebola?"
"The only strain of Ebola in the USA is Reston Ebola. And it doesn't affect humans, so very unlikely."
"Can you please turn off the lights?" Harlan asked another person in the room. He nodded his head, got up, and switched the lights off. Harlan projected his PowerPoint onto the whiteboard. A long scroll of text appeared beside a map of the farm where the poor man died. Janet imagined what that man could have felt. Suffering. She got the chills thinking about it. As she wrote down in her leather journal, she just wanted to go home. It was too stressful for her. People thought of her as a strong minded woman. In fact, she was a young, vulnerable woman. She was traumatized by the outbreak in 2014 of Ebola in Western Africa. She couldn't stand looking at the victim's faces of the deadly, ravaging disease.
"Has the man been in contact with anyone?" a man asked in the room.
"Mostly his family. They aren't reporting symptoms. I'm pretty sure he was in contact with his friend while driving to a store. Possibly transmitted it to them, if this thing is a disease." Harlan replied, staring at the whiteboard.
"It's pretty obvious it is a disease. I mean, his fever was so high. Something else than a disease couldn't have caused that. I'd suggest it's viral. Most likely not Ebola, something else that we don't know."
"You can't just assume that, Janet, we didn't even take tests from them." Harlan said with his dry, raspy throat. "Besides, we will in a few days. If we're lucky enough, we'll know what this thing is."
Randall cried. His father was gone. His other relatives wept beside him. A monster killed him, his childish mind thought. "This is your fault, mom!" Randall's sister screamed.
"If you would've just thought of cleaning the crops, dad would've still been here!" Riley screamed. Her aunt came into the room, observing the conflict.
"Shut up, Riley! You can't just blame everyone you see for the death of our father! Just zip your mouth, you rat!"
"What did you say to me?"
"Rat!"
They both started screaming at each other, throwing fists.
"Enough!" Their uncle screamed. He separated them from each other, Riley bursting into tears. Danny's arms were bruised by Riley punching them. As Randall got up, he noticed his throat felt itchy and dry. I need water, he thought. He coughed, spewing out flem and blood.