NOT ENTER WITHOUT WEARING VENTILATED SUIT. Today she was dressed in a red jacket and pearl earrings, not in blue vinyl.
She recalled her mind racing forward, from an immediate “Oh my God, I’ve done it” reaction to a sober consideration of just what she had done. She had not injected herself with live Ebola virus—or at least, not much. The syringe didn’t carry Ebola virus; it carried antibodies, which would be harmless to anyone. But the needle had gone into ten Ebola-infected mice before going into her. If its point had picked up any particles of Ebola and brought them along, then she might have received a tiny dose. And she knew that a tiny dose could be enough. Quickly she unhooked her yellow hose and exited the BSL-4 suite, by way of the first of the pressurized doors, into an airlock space equipped with a chemical shower. There she showered out, dosing her blue-suit exterior with a virus-killing solution.
Then she pushed through the second door, to a locker-room area known as the Gray Side. She shed the boots, peeled off the blue suit and the gloves as fast as she could, leaving her clad only in medical scrubs. She used a wall phone to call two close friends, one of whom was Diane Negley, the BSL-4 suite supervisor. It was now suppertime or later, and Negley didn’t answer at home, so Warfield left a chilling, desperate message on Negley’s machine, the gist of which was: I’ve had an accident, stuck myself, please come back to work. The other friend, a co-worker named Lisa Hensley, who hadn’t yet left the building, answered her call and said: “Start scrubbing. I’m on my way down.” Warfield began scrubbing her hands with Betadine, rinsing with water and saline solution, scrubbing again. In her fervor she splashed water all over the floor. Hensley arrived quickly, joined her in the Gray Side, and started making calls to alert other people, including those in the Medical Division who handled accidents, while Warfield continued the Betadine scrub. After five or ten minutes, feeling she had done what she could on the wound site, Warfield stripped out of her medical scrubs, took a soap-and-water shower, and dressed. Hensley did likewise. But when they tried to exit the Gray Side, that pressure-sealed door wouldn’t open. Its electronic lock didn’t respond to their badges. Warfield, full of adrenaline, scared, with no luxury of being patient, busted open the door on manual override and alarms started ringing in other parts of the building.
Word had spread fast through the institute and, by now, a small crowd had gathered in the corridor. Warfield passed amid their stares and their questions, headed for the Medical Division. There she was ushered into a small room, questioned about her accident by the doctor on duty, a civilian woman, and given a “physical exam,” through the whole course of which the doctor never touched her. “It was like she was afraid that I already had Ebola,” Warfield recalled. The incubation period for Ebola virus is measured in days, not hours or minutes. It takes at least two days and usually more than a week for the virus to establish itself, replicate abundantly, and make a person symptomatic or infectious. But the civilian doctor didn’t seem to know that, or to care. “She acted like I was a leper already.” That doctor went off to confer with others, after which the head of the Medical Division took Warfield into his office, sat her down, and gently told her the recommended next step. They wanted to put her in the Slammer.
The Slammer at USAMRIID is a medical containment suite, designed for care of a person infected with any dangerous pathogen and—equally—for protecting against the spread of that infection to others. It consists of two hospital-style rooms set behind more pressure-sealed doors and another chemical shower. Earlier on the day of our conversation, having gotten me clearance for a tour of USAMRIID, Warfield had shown me through the Slammer, explaining its features with a trace of mordant pride. On the outside, a wide main door is labeled: CONTAINMENT ROOM. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. That’s door number 537 within USAMRIID’s labyrinthine corridors. It’s the door through which a new patient enters the suite and, if things go well, through which the same patient eventually walks out. If things don’t go well, the patient exits under other circumstances, not walking and not via door 537. All other human traffic—the flow of medical caregivers