"The hell with them," I thought. "Let them think what they want." At least it was not malicious gossip. We had a friendly crew in the Lab and the ribbing I was taking was all good natured.
I went back to my office with a large bundle of case summaries loading me down. With the tremendous interest aroused in virology and the nature of protein molecules, because of the polio research of the Fifties, the drive to investigate the virus theory of cancer and the flu epidemic of 1957, a great deal of money had been spent to make the Civic Hospital a first class research centre. Under Dr. Hallam's guidance and the sponsorship of the University of British Columbia, the Research Laboratory had become one of the best in North America. The Department of Health of B.C. cooperated enthusiastically in the field work and I was able to get from our files the most detailed case histories prepared by their trained investigators. I spread out the charts, picked one at random, and began to study it.
Three hours later I was beginning to get the picture, at least up to date. Most of the cases gave a routine history. A few hours before the fever began they had noticed a mild head cold. This was followed by aching in the limbs and back, headache, fever, lack of appetite, and feeling generally ill and depressed. Some had swelling along the sides of their neck or under the chin, but that was not a prominent feature of their complaint. Several of the males also reported slight swelling of the testicles, less than is usually the case in mumps, and it did not seem to incapacitate them at all. The occasional female reported abdominal pains which could have been due to inflamed ovaries, but it is difficult to make such a diagnosis with certainty. In inquiring about the movements of the patients before they became ill, the interrogators had turned up a few odd stories.
One woman reported that she had been standing in a crowded bus a few days before she got the flu when a man standing beside her had dropped a glass ball.
As she told it, "It looked like one of them souvenir things—you know, the kind that has a snowstorm inside it when you turn it upside down, or maybe it was a Christmas tree ornament. It broke just like you dropped a light bulb or somethin'. I thought I saw a kind of a cloud, like smoke, but it was only for a second. The man was nice about it, he apologised to me right away for scaring me. He was one of them D.P.'s I'm sure because he couldn't talk good English. That stuff that came out of it made my nose kinda itchy ... made me sneeze. But I have hay fever and sinus, you know, had it for years. Maybe there was nothing to it."
The tape record of a male patient's report was also peculiar. I played it back, in part, on my own Dictape.
"I was sitting in the Automatic lunch, the big one on Granville. Well, it was full to the doors, just after twelve, and this guy comes in and gets a seat that another man had just left. He wasn't very tall but sort of husky and he reminded me of a guy I know who comes from Slovakia or one of them countries down in Europe. This guy, the friend of mine I mean, he works for Baden Brothers in the Foundry.... Yeah, yeah, I'm getting to the point in a minute. Well, as I was telling you, this fella who looks like my friend has a pile of parcels and he's trying to manage a cup of coffee at the same time so I give him a hand.... I'm just about finished with my pie. We get the parcels down O.K. but he upsets one of the bags with his foot on the floor. I start to pick it up and he tries to beat me to it. These guys from Europe fall all over themselves to be polite. Anyway he grabs an insect bomb that fell out and somehow, I can't for the life of me figure it, he gets the thing stuck and the spray starts to go out all over the place. We couldn't shut it off but it didn't last long. He told me it was a new kind—good for one time only, so it was made cheap. I dunno if that stuff had anything to do with this flu but I know it made my nose itch for a while. Maybe that did it.... I knew a guy one time that...."
I shut off the tape and turned to another report.
"I was in the Paramount," she said, "watching that new Tri-Di movie they call High Time ... it's a sort of a Western and musical all mixed up. It's a real good movie but that three dimensional stuff scares you when they show a fight. I don't think that's too good for little kids, do you? It was the part where the hero, what's his name, oh yeah, Bert Blaine, is getting romantic with Nellie Golding just before he rides away to catch the killer. It's kinda sad too and all of a sudden my eyes started to water. Well, I'm sentimental, you know, but I don't cry that easy and anyhow I hadn't felt like crying just yet if you know what I mean. It was more like an itch. I looked around in the dark to see what might be wrong and then I noticed a hissing noise like a radiator leaking. I leaned over to ask the man in the next seat if he heard it too but right about then it stopped and he got up and left. I don't know how he could have anything to do with it but I know my eyes and nose were itchy for a long time. I'll just tell you that I must have got the flu from that. My mother says that's nonsense but I don't care."