Someday, this will be over– only remembered like some half-felt and fading nightmare. We should have never been messing around with this deadly stuff in the first place. We were working with bats, collecting and testing samples from wild bats and eventually identifying them as the source of the pathogen. I can’t count how many dark caves I was in, but it was a lot as my co-workers had given me the title of “Bat Woman”. I was searching for a SARS-like virus in bats that had the potential to jump directly to humans and resisted treatments used against SARS. My brother was bit on the neck by one of those nasty blood sucking bats and I wanted to save his life and I was way more than knee deep into this and I wasn’t going to settle for anything less than a cure.
My brother was very sick within a day after being bit, but he was cooperative and he let us draw all the blood that we needed from him for testing purposes. Our lab was set up for containment and we had all the necessary Personal Protective Equipment that we needed to block anything from escaping, or at least we thought that we did. With all of the lab workers hidden under gowns, gloves and masks, it looked like we were getting ready to pull off a heist. Someone dropped a vial of infected blood on the floor and we were under the assumption, that if we cleaned up the spill and disinfected the area, that we would all be safe. We were wrong as the infected blood seeped into the air ventilation system like a tidal wave and everything was infected and we were all going to die. My brother could no longer talk but he was able to scribble down some words on a scrap of paper which read, “This is a punishment from nature, for us acting without using our noggin”.
Written for Sheryl’s Daily Word Prompt – Heist, for the Daily Spur prompt – Assumption, for Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie First Line Friday hosted by Dylan, for FOWC with Fandango – Block, for May Writing Prompts – Knee deep, for Ragtag Community – Settle, for Di’s Three Things Challenge prompt words – Scribble Draw Scrap, for Rachel Poli I Read I Write I Create – Time To Write – Title and for Word of the Day Challenge Prompt – Noggin.
Wow, such a powerful piece! This is quite horrific, but unfortunately there is likely some truth to it.
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I enjoy tacking multiple prompts and I can do this better if I come up with a story first and then find a way to fit the prompts in and since everyone wants to know what went on in that Wuhan lab, this worked out real well for me today.
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Jim, there is a spelling mistake. Instead of vial you have written vile. You can remove this comment. I will comment on the story later.
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Thank you Punam. I fixed the mistake that you pointed out and there is no need for me to delete your comment, as it will serve as a reminder to check my work better in the future. There was a vile substance in the vial and I have been tripped up by homonyms before.
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You are welcome, Jim. I have myself made mistakes with homonyms too often!
I really enjoyed your story. For all one knows, this might be the truth.
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You have a title wave instead of a tidal one too Jim!
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Thanks for pointing that out Peter, but I can’t fix that mistake, as TITLE is one of the prompts.
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I missed that!
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I changed the story slightly to fix my mistake and not it has Title as well as tidal.
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Don’t let the orange one see this. He’ll be quoting it as the truth!
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My sister loves everything that he says.
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As do millions of others!
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Your guess is as good as anyone’s. I would think labs have video surveillance in them. I’d give anything to see those tapes.
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I bet that there is a good chance that the Chinese government erased them by now.
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And anyone with any information about it along with them.
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I am always in awe of how you join so many prompts into a delightful blog post. Thank you.
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I should be thanking you Lauren for stopping by and leaving such a lovely comment.
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