The Rationing

by Charles Wheelan

  “How many?”

  The NIH Director looked at her phone and took a shallow breath. “Somewhere in the range of twelve hundred.”

  “Jesus Christ,” the President exclaimed. The collective body language around the table suggested similar shock.

  “It’s worse than we thought?” the President asked.

  “I wouldn’t say that—not the virus,” the NIH Director responded. “Our behavioral models . . . we may have overestimated how likely it is that people who fall sick would seek treatment.”

  “Because you’ve covered it up!” the Speaker yelled. “People don’t know it’s a problem because you’re hiding it from them.”

  The President said calmly, “The First Lady made a statement about seeking treatment—”

  “Hah!” the Speaker retorted. “I’m sure that’s what the public will remember from that dishonest circus show. You’ve killed twelve hundred people—”

  “That’s enough,” the Chief of Staff said.

  The Speaker was not to be deterred: “You’ve killed twelve hundred people, and that’s before the Dormigen stocks run out. When that happens, twelve hundred is going to feel like a rounding error. We’re talking tens of thousands of deaths—an American Hiroshima. Tell the American people what is happening, accept the offer from China, and make this problem go away. Anything else is totally irresponsible.”

  All eyes around the table turned to the President, who remained silent. Maybe I saw doubt in his eyes; some of the anger appeared to have dissipated. And then, from the other end of the table, “Ninety thousand.” It was the Strategist, reading from his phone. “Hiroshima deaths. Between ninety and one hundred and forty thousand. A lot of it was radiation sickness—”

  “We’re not going to have an American Hiroshima,” the President said firmly. There was another long silence, during which many of us did the math. For all the Speaker’s hyperbole, her Hiroshima comparison was not wildly off base.

  “Telling people could make it worse,” the Strategist said, as if he were thinking out loud. “Yes, it probably would.”

  “Says you?” the Speaker challenged.

  “Anyone with the sniffles would rush to get a prescription,” the Strategist explained.

  “We’d blow through our Dormigen stocks even faster,” the Chief of Staff said, “and a lot of it would be wasted.”

  “I’m sure the nation will be grateful to you for keeping them uninformed,” the Speaker said bitterly.

  “Where are we on the virus?” the President snapped. Before the NIH Director could answer, he continued, “The brightest minds in the country can’t do better than this? We’re going to sit here tomorrow morning and try to decide whether Americans are going to die, or if we’re going to go hat in hand to Beijing and cede half the world to an authoritarian regime. That’s a shitty decision that I really don’t want to have to make. Give me something better.”

  The goodwill in the room had dissipated quickly. The President stared at the NIH Director, though it was not clear if he was expecting a response. She offered one in any event. “We have a complete genetic sequence of Capellaviridae,” she said. “We have a medical team working around the clock to test treatments other than Dormigen. As soon as we finish here, Max is headed to New Hampshire to speak to one of the world’s foremost virologists.” The heads around the table turned toward me. I had said virtually nothing in these meetings, other than answering the occasional technical question, or passing along requests to the research teams.

  “Why weren’t you talking to this guy last week?” the President asked.

  It was clear I had to say something, but my tongue felt awkward and I had the sensation of looking down on myself in the Cabinet Room, struggling to formulate an answer. I am no great athlete, but I played enough Little League to know what it feels like to choke, the physical sensation of the body tightening up in the moment when it needs to perform some task that should be simple, but for the pressure: throwing from shortstop to first base with two outs or tapping in a two-foot putt to win a match. I understood the physiology; I had read articles on it in graduate school. Now I had that choking feeling, struggling to form a basic sentence. By thinking about the act of speaking, as opposed to just answering, the act became all the more difficult. It was as if someone had pushed me onto a stage in front of ten thousand spectators and said, “Tell them a joke. And make it funny.”

  The silence probably felt longer than it was. The NIH Director cocked her head slightly, as if to indicate, “Say something.”

  “Viruses are like criminals,” I began. “We piece together clues that explain how they operate, why they do what they do. As the clues accumulate, we close in.” I realized, even in the moment, that I was speaking just like Professor Huke. That was exactly what he would say; maybe it was something he had said.

  “Yes, well, this is a serial killer on the loose, so I would appreciate it if you could convey the urgency of the situation,” the President said.

  “I’m confident Professor Huke will be able to help us,” I replied. Of course, I had no such confidence.

  37.

  IT WAS DARK WHEN I WALKED OUT OF THE WHITE HOUSE. Some of the humidity had gone out of the day. Most of the staff had returned home and there was an unusual calm. I was aware of the click of my shoes on the asphalt as I walked toward the waiting car. I had packed a bag early that morning, but I had been rushed. Now I tried to remember if it had the things I would need, which was not much, really. As I approached the car, the driver opened the rear door and took the small duffel from my hand. “I’ve got to catch a plane—” I began.

  “Yes, sir. I have the directions,” he replied.

  I was bone-tired. The car was already cool; the driver must have had the air-conditioning running, which was not environmentally friendly but felt really good. I slumped back against the seat and fell asleep before we left the driveway. I was awakened when we reached the security perimeter at Joint Base Andrews. The driver spoke briefly to the soldier manning the gate, who peered through the window at me in the backseat and then waved us through. I do not think I had ever been on a military base, and I know I had never been on a private plane. We drove around a perimeter road to another gate, where the driver used a passkey to let us onto the tarmac.

  “Right there, sir,” the driver said, pointing to a soldier standing stiffly near a small Air Force jet. As I got out of the car, the driver moved quickly to take my small bag from the trunk and hand it to the waiting soldier.

  The soldier, now holding my duffel, said, “This way,” and motioned toward the jet. The door was open and the stairs were down. “You can go ahead and climb aboard,” he directed. The plane had six or eight seats. I sat down on one of them near the front. Almost immediately the Captain emerged from the cockpit and introduced himself. “We’re headed to Lebanon, New Hampshire, tonight. Is that right?” he asked. I nodded yes. I remember seeing some humor in the question. What if I got on the wrong plane? Would I wake up after a long, comfortable flight and see Beirut out the window? The Captain continued, “We have a beautiful night for flying. It should be about two hours. Make yourself comfortable. My copilot is doing some paperwork, but he’ll be back to introduce himself shortly.” The soldier who had met me on the tarmac climbed aboard. With a remarkable economy of effort, he pulled the stairs up and shut the plane door. It could not have been more than a minute before we were rolling along, headed for a tiny airport in New Hampshire.

  “Welcome aboard,” the soldier said as he buckled himself into a seat on the other side of the cabin.

  I was self-conscious of being the only passenger with three crew members. “Sorry to make work for the three of you,” I said.

  He waved his hand dismissively. “We have to do the training hours anyway. Might as well take someone where they need to go.”

  The plane accelerated along the runway and we were airborne almost instantly. I looked out the window and marveled at the beauty of D.C. by night. I tried t
o locate the White House, thinking that the President was probably still there meeting with different advisers, maybe the China group, or maybe the Saudi experts, or maybe staffers discussing some challenge I knew nothing about. Then I fell asleep.

  I woke up when we touched down for landing. As we taxied, I recognized the Lebanon airport—one tiny single-story building, smaller than most houses. A woman in a fluorescent yellow and orange vest motioned for our plane to park near the terminal building, which was dark but for one light over the door. The soldier handed me my duffel as I walked down the stairs onto the dark, empty tarmac. The Captain cut the engines, and then it became quiet, too. The woman in the fluorescent vest walked over to me. “The terminal is locked up,” she said. “You’ll have to walk around. Do you have a ride?”

  I did not. I was not accustomed to flying into an airport that had been locked up for the night. “I’ll call someone for you,” she offered. Twenty minutes later I was in my room at the Hanover Inn, opposite the Dartmouth College green and a short walk from Professor Huke’s house. I had not packed anything to sleep in, or my toiletries, but there were some clean clothes for the next day. The front desk sent me up a toothbrush and a razor. I lay down and tried to figure out what I was going to ask Huke in the morning. The truth was that Huke knew less about lurking viruses than I did—my fake optimism in the Cabinet Room notwithstanding. He was the scientific equivalent of a general practitioner; I was the specialist. But maybe his broad view could help. Maybe I was so deep in the tunnel that I needed someone on the surface with a view of the whole landscape who could tell me that I was burrowing in the wrong place. I was groping at straws, I knew. Yet those sanguine thoughts would prove eerily prescient.

  38.

  SPRING WAS IN THE AIR ON THE DARTMOUTH CAMPUS, IF not necessarily visible. The trees were bare, and the grass was still brown, but the weather was unseasonably warm. This was “mud season” in New England, when the snowmelt and new rain made a mess of things before the trees and flowers finally caught up with the rest of the country. The day was sunny and the few students walking across the green opposite the hotel were dressed more for July than for April; I suppose that is part of the optimism of spring, having just emerged from a New England winter. Much to my surprise, there was a New York Times box just outside the hotel in the same place it had been when I was a student, perhaps for the old alums who liked the sensation of reading a real newspaper. I paused to peruse the headlines, noting with amusement that some members of Congress were calling for hearings to examine whether the President had passed classified information to his Colombian mistress.

  I had been to Huke’s house once before, when he invited our senior seminar to his home for dinner. It was not far from campus, about five or six blocks up a hill leading out of town. The day was perfect for walking. I let my mind wander as I went, trying to formulate questions to steer the conversation. I turned down a narrow street with small, well-kept houses relatively close together. There was no sidewalk but also no traffic, so I walked in the middle of the road. As I approached Huke’s house, he emerged from the side yard pushing a small wheelbarrow. He waved hello and hustled over to greet me. “Isn’t it too early to plant?” I asked as he approached.

  “Oh, yes,” he said jauntily. “Nothing goes in the ground until Mother’s Day, but it’s never too early to start cleaning up. We don’t get many days like this in April.”

  Huke’s house was a small ranch with a sunroom in the back. I had spent so much time in “McMansions”—soaring foyers and enormous great rooms—that Huke’s house seemed quaint by comparison. Yet it was so comfortable and tidy that I found myself wondering why anyone would want anything bigger, especially if one could just stroll to work in the morning. I was reminded of Sloan’s comment long ago about the “academic lifestyle.” I paused near a set of bookshelves, perusing the eclectic titles. “You can have anything you want,” Huke offered. “I have boxes more in the basement. I had to clean out my office when I retired.”

  We sat at a small table in front of a window looking out at the woods behind the house. Professor Huke’s wife brought us tea and croissants. “They’re from King Arthur Flour,” she offered. It was a little café across the river in Vermont, where I used to go to work when I was a student.

  “So, you have a virus puzzle, have you?” Huke asked. He nodded as I explained what we had learned about this lurking virus: the numbers, the regions affected, the dust mite vector, the bizarre pattern of cases that turned virulent. “Very exciting!” he said, slapping his knee. I had not told him about the Dormigen shortage, or the twelve hundred people who had died so far, or the marathon meetings at the White House, or the looming decision about the South China Sea Agreement—so of course he would think Capellaviridae was exciting. I found his scientific exuberance refreshing despite the circumstances.

  “And you’re certain that you’re not dealing with a mutation?” he asked.

  “We’ve sequenced the virus when it’s benign, and we’ve sequenced the virus when it turns virulent—identical DNA.”

  “The vector, the dust mite, that’s a subspecies?” he asked. I nodded yes and Huke continued, “You do have a puzzle on your hands.” There was a pause as Huke sipped his tea, and then stared out at the woods behind the house. Eventually he said, “If this were a midterm, what would I ask?”

  I felt a pang of annoyance at the pedantic nature of the question. I was tempted to point out how far this was from an academic exercise. “It’s been a long time since I’ve taken an exam,” I demurred.

  “My classes were always about viruses, not people,” he said. “Sure, humans were often the hosts, but viruses were the stars. So, what I would ask you on a midterm is: ‘What’s in it for the virus?’ Right? Viruses exist to propagate themselves, as do other species—like this dust mite, so I might look there, too. What’s in it for them? How is this a successful evolutionary strategy?”

  “That seems to be the mystery with all lurking viruses,” I answered. “Why would you kill your host when you’ve got a perfectly good thing going? The lurking viruses seem to turn evolution on its head.” Huke made eye contact, acknowledging my point. I continued, having found what felt was a perfect metaphor: “It’s like you’re living free in someone’s house. They do your laundry. They cook your meals. And then one day you get up and kill the owner of the house. It makes no sense.”

  “I agree. That’s not how nature works,” Huke said firmly. “We’re missing something.” He was growing excited and he slapped his leg again. “I envy you!”

  I laughed. “It’s been a lot of work, to be honest.”

  “Capellaviridae kills its host some of the time, but not usually,” Huke mused. “That’s a clue.”

  “Yes.”

  “One of the species involved has to benefit from this strange arrangement,” Huke prodded. “Maybe it’s Capellaviridae, maybe it’s this dust mite. Something here has to help one of them reproduce more successfully in the long run. Start with first principles, right?”

  “What if that’s not what’s happening?” I asked.

  “Then you have no hope,” he said with a laugh. “It’s like solving a murder with no motive. You have no idea where to begin looking. But that’s not usually the case, is it? Always start with the jealous boyfriend!”

  We chatted amiably for a while longer before I excused myself. “I’m off to physical therapy,” Huke said. “My shoulder. Last year it was my knee. That’s what happens when you get old.” He walked with me to the front door and then out into the front yard. The sun was higher and the day had continued to warm up. “Not bad for April,” Huke said. I offered thanks and promised to pass along whatever I learned. His excitement was still palpable.

  I turned and walked self-consciously across the damp front lawn toward the road, my dress shoes sinking into the grass. Just as I reached the asphalt road, Huke said loudly, “Wait a minute. One more question.” I turned and took a few steps back toward him. “The dust mite, it
bites, yes?”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “Most dust mites don’t bite.”

  “Correct.”

  “So what happens if you get bit by this particular dust mite, other than the virus?” he asked.

  “We’ve been focusing on the virus,” I said.

  “Does it itch?” Huke asked.

  “The dust-mite bite?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted.

  “For goodness’ sakes, find out!” Huke advised. “Because if this dust mite is a real pest, humans will try to get rid of it. And when that happens, nature always fights back!”

  I thought about Huke’s parting comment as I walked back to the Hanover Inn. A taxi was waiting for me; the bellman had already put my duffel in the trunk. As soon as I got in the backseat, I called Tie Guy on his cell phone. “I have a different angle,” I said without exchanging pleasantries. “This dust mite: How do you get rid of it?”

  “It’s too late for that,” he said. “People are already infected—”

  “No, no, no,” I said. “I just want to know what people have been doing to try to get rid of the dust mite.”

  “Okay, I’ll take a look,” he replied, obviously puzzled.

  “Because nature always fights back,” I added.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said.

  39.

  I MET SLOAN AT A STARBUCKS IN BETHESDA. SINCE GRADUATION, we had seen each other infrequently and usually as part of a large group: weddings, reunions, and so on. We had swapped the occasional e-mail, but for all intents and purposes we had fallen out of touch. We never spoke about the night during senior week when we crossed the platonic boundary. Sloan had suggested the Starbucks because it was near her hotel. In hindsight, everything about the meeting was wrong. After I landed at Joint Base Andrews, I had to take a taxi across Washington at rush hour; she walked a block. And why a coffee shop, when we had years to catch up on? I should have at least suggested dinner. I was starving, not having eaten anything since the croissants with Huke. In any case, I had overeagerly accepted Sloan’s invitation, and now here I was accepting all of her terms.