Her eyes glued to the page, Compton read of how much good Seidou had done for his patients with so little. Like her, he could never predict what conditions he’d encounter in an average day’s work, and yet it seemed it was not an encounter at work that had killed him. No one knew at the time, least of all Aboubakar Seidou, the exact origin of his symptoms. His journal indicated he had stopped multiple times on his journey through Niger and Algeria, possibly in regions where he might have encountered camels. It was possible he’d come in contact with a camel at home too; he didn’t own any, but several of his patients did.

However it happened, he, or someone he’d met, must have brushed against the specter of an enigmatic killer.

The particulars were never uncovered.

As she continued reading, Compton found her own breath quickening. Just when she’d thought she couldn’t bear any more suffering, here came earnest, saintly Dr. Seidou, gripped with guilt at the thought of leaving his patients in Chad but exultant at the miraculous possibilities ahead. His poor wife; his children. What had happened to them, and how long had they waited before they had learned he would never come home?

An ominous sense of familiarity gripped her, as if she knew which words the author of the piece would employ a split second before she read them. Had she seen this article before? Read an excerpt, maybe? But no: that wasn’t right. It wasn’t a literary déjà vu accosting her; it was a personal one, the mental images conjured by the writer transforming in her mind’s eye to her own experience aboard the same ship. It wasn’t this man’s face she saw, his white teeth set against the urge to rattle, but the clenched jaw of the woman she’d tried to save. And it wasn’t only her; it was the same futile battle against death she’d waged on behalf of so many of her patients. She’d seen these symptoms too many times, understood them on a visceral level as if she’d experienced them herself. Coughing. Trying and failing to get air as your lungs filled with a sacrificial army of defenders, little cellular soldiers of your own immune system lining up to self-destruct in a valiant but doomed attempt to contain the onslaught. What would it be like to die this way, felled from within?