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."
"But Gun is still healthy," Young-Min said.
"I know. That is even more curious. Can you call your friend back and see if the same is true in Uiju? That this virus is only affecting males?"
Young-Min left, and Ho-Sook turned to her computer and began to make notes. The first child to die from this virus was the boy called Liboko. He had gotten his injection on Friday morning, and by Sunday he had begun exhibiting symptoms of headache, fever, diarrhea and vomiting. He was dead by Tuesday morning.
She assumed that the injection was what had caused his death. Whatever was in that needle created some kind of master bug resistant to any treatment, and able to be passed through the air to other patients.
Liboko was a strong, healthy twelve-year-old, and it had taken about forty-eight hours before his first symptoms appeared. Within about twelve hours, more boys had been taken ill. That implied that the virus could be transmitted well before symptoms started. That was very worrying.
And yet the girls who were in the same dorm did not seem to have been affected. Was that something in the way the virus was transmitted? Did the boys do something together—shower, perhaps, or use the bathroom – that limited the transmission to them?
But then how would Dr. Go, the guard and the ferryman have been infected? And why was Gun seemingly immune?
She went back to Liboko's records. Within a day and a half of the onset of his symptoms, he was dead.
That meant that any boy or man exhibiting similar symptoms would most likely die within forty-eight hours after symptoms appeared. That seemed to indicate that the six boys in the ward would be dead by the end of the day, or the next.
Young-Min returned to Ho-Sook's office, her face ashen. "I could not reach my friend, and no one answers the phone at the hospital. But I was able to reach my friend's sister, who told me that the hospital is overwhelmed with male patients with similar symptoms."
She sat on the metal chair across from Ho-Sook. "What is happening, doctor?"
"I don't know, but someone must tell the authorities about Dr. Go's research, and bring them the supply of the virus we have." She took a deep breath. "I should do that. Maybe I can help others survive."
"You cannot go to Uiju," Young-Min said. "There are too many sick and dying people there."
"I wasn't planning to," Ho-Sook said. "I will go west, into China. I will find a hospital or a doctor and explain what has happened here, tell them to prepare."
"How can you get there? There is no ferry to the Chinese side of the river."
"I will have to walk through the water. Those two boys must have done it yesterday."
"We don't even know that they survived. Maybe they were washed away in the river." She hesitated for a moment, then said, "I will go with you. The guard sometimes fished in the morning before we arrived, and I know where he kept his small boat. My father is a fisherman, and I have been out many times with him. I know the river and its currents."
"We cannot tell anyone where we are going," Ho-Sook said. "You know Nurse Bak. She will call the police immediately and have us arrested."
"I will go to the laboratory and get the virus supplies," Young-Min said.
"Be very careful, little sister. I will copy all the records of Dr. Go's experiments to take with us. We should leave while Nurse Bak is supervising lunch. If we are lucky she will not realize we are gone until we have crossed the river."
It took quite some time to copy all the records onto a small flash drive that Ho-Sook had brought with her from Pyongyang, which contained all the research she had done while she was in medical school. By the time she finished, Young-Min had returned with a half-dozen vials of cloudy liquid, which she had packed carefully into the container she used to bring her lunch to work.
They put on their coats, scarves and gloves and slipped out the front door unnoticed by any of the remaining nurses or the orderly. Young-Min led the way through scattered patches of snow to a small rowboat tied to a tree. Ho-Sook was nervous, because she could not swim, and she worried what would happen if she fell into the water. But Young-Min held the rope steady, and Ho-Sook stepped gingerly into the rowboat, settling on the back plank.
Young-Min untied the rope and hopped nimbly into the boat, which rocked alarmingly. She sat on the center plank and reached for the oars. But her arms were too short to reach them.
It was so frustrating that Ho-Sook wanted to cry, but she knew she couldn't waste any time. They had to get away from the island before anyone spotted them. "I will row and you can tell me where to go," Ho-Sook said.
She stood up and the boat rocked in the icy current. It began drifting away from the shore as she and Young-Min moved awkwardly around. Ho-Sook's heart was pounding and she struggled to stay calm.
They were already in the middle of the river, moving south with the current, by the time Ho-Sook was settled on the center plank. It took her a while to gain control of the boat, but every meter they moved away from the island was a good one.
Ho-Sook concentrated on following Young-Min's directions, using the oars to steer, avoiding ice chunks and floating debris. The current did most of the work, pulling them forward to the Friendship Bridge. Ho-Sook pulled strongly on one oar, trying to direct the rowboat toward the Chinese shore.
"Over there," Young-Min pointed. "There is a place we can pull the boat up, under the bridge."
As they neared the shore, a Chinese patrol boat appeared, heading straight for them, its lights flashing. The wake rocked the tiny rowboat, threatening to overturn them, and icy water splashed them.
"Will they shoot at us?" Ho-Sook asked anxiously.
"The river is supposed to be neutral territory," Young-Min said, but Ho-Sook detected the nerves in her friend's voice.
A man in an official uniform stood on the boat's bow with a loudspeaker and ordered them to stop, first in Chinese, then in Korean.
"As if we can go anywhere," Ho-Sook grumbled. She pulled the oars in and they waited until the boat had pulled up beside them. Young-Min threw the rope to a sailor on the deck, who tied the fishing boat up to the patrol boat's side.
"What is your business?" the man with the loudspeaker demanded.
Ho-Sook explained that she was a doctor, Young-Min a nurse, and they had important medical information to give to the Chinese authorities.
"I've heard every kind of story," the man in the uniform said. "If you do not have the proper authorization I cannot allow you to land in China."
"No!" Ho-Sook cried. "You don't understand. People are dying. Little boys. Grown men. At least, please let me speak with a doctor. Then if we must go back to North Korea we will."
He considered for a moment, then nodded to the sailor on the deck to help the women onto the patrol boat.
Ho-Sook was relieved. But she still had to convince the Chinese medical authorities that a dangerous virus was loose in North Korea. Could she manage that?