CHAPTER 3: THE VIRUS
“I have never seen anything like this ever before.”
Clover, who was horribly sick and was rushed into the hospital in the nick of time before the effects of the breathing mask from Beverly Hills High sick room ran out (they didn’t have much oxygen left by the time the paramedics arrived), was now in the ICU with her breathing mask on and loads of tubes and needles stuck through her arms. There were loads of other medical gadgets surrounding her and she didn’t seem much of a good state, although her colour has come back.
“What is your interpretation of this thing she’s carrying?” Sam asked, her eyes filled with worry.
“I can’t make out a head or toe of it. It was happening too fast that we couldn’t figure out what she was infected with,” the doctor replied, his face contorted into an expression that tells the girls that his expertise has been challenged and his pride has been wrecked. “But we will have to keep her here and run some tests to see whether we can figure out what she has.”
“Yeah,” Alex muttered a little too loud in earshot. “If we have forever to wait.”
The doctor gave her an Are-you-questioning-my-expertise look but answered in a forced reassuring voice, “Don’t worry. I’m a doctor, and I will find out what has happened to your friend.”
“Can we go in and visit her, I mean, she’s our best friend and all,” Sam tried to make things less cloudy for the both of them, especially at a critical time like this.
“I don’t see why not,” the doctor replied. “But only for a few minutes. We’ll have to take her in for testing later.”
Alex looked distastefully at the doctor as he left and pulled out her tongue behind his back. As soon as he was out of earshot, she grumbled at Sam, “That doctor seriously needs a wife! I don’t think he’ll ever find anything that is causing Clover so much pain, since he couldn’t find out in the first place. We gotta do something or she’ll die!”
“Well, we are allowed to visit her,” Sam replied, taking out her Com-powder. “So let’s do a little medical research of our own.”
Sam and Alex, with silent footsteps, slowly walked into Clover’s ward, trying to keep their presence to nil as they didn’t want to wake her up and cause her to become sick again. They stared at Clover’s sleeping face—so peaceful and innocent, as if she had never been sick at all and that what had happened just now at Beverly Hills High was just an illusion. They prayed hard that their girlfriend—their best friend in the whole wide world—would get better and have no more attacks just like this. They looked at each other and nodded; the time was right to investigate her illness. Just as Sam was about to hold out her Com-powder towards the sleeping Clover, it suddenly rang. Sam quickly opened the Com-powder so that the ring wouldn’t alert Clover.
“Hello, girls,” it was the ever familiar Jerry, munching a cookie with one hand and a glass of milk in another. “I have received news that there has been an accident at school. Anything wrong, girls?”
“Jerry! Your call almost woke Clover up!” Alex hissed, looking back at Clover from time to time to see if Clover had stirred. So far, so good.
“Sorry, Alex,” Jerry apologized. “Have I got you girls at a bad timing?”
“No, Jerry, it’s OK,” Sam replied wryly. Jerry could tell that something was wrong by the look on his girls’ faces.
“Sam? Alex? What is wrong with Clover?”
Sam and Alex told everything that had happened at the lab, explaining every gory detail they could remember. They were almost in the verge of tears when they’ve finished—they were really worried that Clover was going to die. Her suffering didn’t seem very light at all. They were so scared of losing her.
“Oh my,” Jerry replied, dropping his half-eaten cookie into his milk in shock (I find that scene very amusing in one of the Totally Spies series). He tried to collect himself over this bizarre news he got. It took him about 10 minutes to finally get his voice back, “So, has the doctor found anything wrong with her yet?”
“So far they couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her,” Sam replied, wiping the tear off the corner of her eye. “They say they will run some tests on her and find out what’s wrong or what virus she is carrying but…I’m afraid that it might be too late for Clover.”
“My sentiments exactly,” Jerry replied. “Use the Com-powder to take a sample of her saliva and her breath. I might try to find this out myself.”
Sam and Alex got to work. Alex took out a cotton bud from her purse and took off Clover’s breathing mask slowly. She opened her mouth slightly and rubbed the cotton bud against her tongue to get her saliva. She laid the sodden cotton bud on the scanner of her Com-powder while Sam used her Com-powder and brought it close to Clover’s mouth. She turned on the sensor and captured some of the breath Clover has exhaled before replacing the breathing mask carefully back on. Jerry got the samples from the other line and rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
“Hmm…this is more work than I thought,” Jerry replied. “I’ll check on this first. When Clover’s fit to walk, call me and I will send a jet to pick you all up. We’ll do a more detailed examination on Clover at WOOHPS HQ then.”
“Right, Jerry. We’ll keep in touch,” Sam replied before closing her Com-powder. Alex did the same.
“Oh, I hope Clover would pull through,” Alex whined. “I can’t bear her to be out of the team because of her condition. It’ll ruin her, and it’ll ruin us, the team!”
“She’ll pull through,” Sam replied, giving Alex a reassuring hug. “She’s a fighter. I’m sure she’ll be back on her feet in no time at all.”
Secretly, she hoped she was right.
Clover was in a huge spacious lab-like room. She was discharged from ICU after seeing that there was nothing else wrong with her, although the doctor promised Clover that he will contact her as soon as he finds out what was she infected with (A headstrong guy, I must say!). After a couple of days at home resting, Clover decided to volunteer to go for the testing as soon as the girls were given a complementary practical Science test so that they wouldn’t flunk their mid-term exam. She was too anxious about what kind of sickness she got herself into to be sitting around brooding without anything to do at home, especially when she was treated like an ICU patient even at home. Sam called for Jerry and immediately the WOOHPS org. sent in a helicopter to pick the girls up at the park.
Right now, in the lab-like room, Clover was being poked and prodded by the medical members of the WOOHPS. Jerry, Sam and Alex were looking from the other side of the room through the two-way mirror (is that what they call it: a glass that can show you the inside but the person you’re looking at doesn’t know that you’re looking at them?), watching as the medical team took blood samples, blood pressure, DNA sample; checked her heartbeat, her responses, her eyes, her ears, into her mouth and almost everywhere. As the restless little spy she was, Clover was beginning to think that this might take forever.
Finally, after which seemed like forever, Clover was allowed to leave. She trotted out of the lab and went towards her girlfriends, her face tired of all the tests and experiments. Sam and Alex could see that not a huge amount of homework or exams could match this kind of tiring experience. Jerry went towards the whacked up Clover and rubbed her back.
“Sorry if this has tired you. We need all the necessary information from your body so that we can determine what have you got and whether if it is lethal or curable.”
“It’s alright, Jer,” Clover moaned, then slumped and fell like a falling tree onto Sam and Alex’s lap. “I’m just as curious as you are about what have I got. What’ll I do for a nice and warm fluffy bed right now so that I can just fall onto and not bother a thing!”
“Don’t worry, Clover, it’ll be all over in no time,” Jerry replied. “I’m sure it’s something poisonous you have smelt that caused that massive seizure. We’ll find a cure for it and you’ll be up and about within a couple of days.”
Deep down inside, Jerry and Clover, along with Sam and Alex weren’t too sure whether it’s as simple as that.
The girls were soon back again in the WOOHPS HQ at about a week or so. As usual, they were doing their shopping at their favourite mall to buy their dresses for the upcoming Spring Season Dance, and needless to say they were in the ladies’ room when WOOHPS suddenly ‘whooped’ them in. They were sure that when they reached the HQ, they would be greeted with one of Jerry’s corny jokes again before getting right down to business, but this time, no corny jokes. He seemed very, very serious indeed. The girls were quite taken aback that they have forgotten all about how annoyed they were in the middle of their shopping.
“Girls, I have a very serious announcement to make,” Jerry broke the ice after a long 5 minutes of silence.
“Uh, yeah, we can see that,” Clover broke out of her daze.
“What seems to be the problem, Jerry?” Alex asked, worried. “You never looked this serious before. Is everything alright, Jerry?”
“No, to tell the truth, everything is not alright. It’s regarding about Clover.”
“What?! Me?!” ours truly the emotional member of the group squealed in horror. “What’s wrong with me? Is that I’ve flunk the mid-terms? Is that my hair or my face or my figure has gone bad? Is it that I’m off the team? Is it…?”
“Calm down, Clover, calm down!” Jerry began to look horrified now. “Don’t get acted up now, Clover! Your calm state of emotion is the most important thing to keep you alive now!”
“My what?” Clover asked, a little bit calmed but still surprised. The girls looked back at Jerry curiously.
“Please, Clover, you have to remain calm. What I’m about to tell you is going to shock you but please, remain calm.” Jerry said slowly, as if trying to coax a baby to eat its food. “Take a seat, Clover.”
Clover’s mind was filled with questions but she obliged. She sat between Sam and Alex and listened to what their head had to say.
“We have already run the tests of your DNA and stuff we’ve collected from you, Clover, and we have received results from it. It turned out that you have a very rare—probably very, very rare—one of a kind virus that has never existed in this whole wide world before. We call it the Ice Queen virus.”
Clover popped a vein. That name reminded her of that time when that demented villain tried to freeze the whole world and keep her as his chessmate and his Eve—his Ice Queen.
“The Ice Queen attacks the vital part which stimulates emotion. Once it has attached itself into it, it will stay there and whenever the patient gets overreacted or excited or any kind of hyper-emotion, it’ll trigger the virus right away to eject its acidic entities into the emotion stimulator and causes it to boil and churn. Once the acids attack the stimulator, it’ll spread quickly into your bloodstream and into your heart, which is why you’re getting sudden heartburns and breathing difficulties, because it also attacks the cardiovascular system. If matters become worse, the acid would spread all over your body and finally into your brain causing immediate brain death and instant expiration.”
So far, Sam was the only one being able to understand such a complicated theory and was the first to gasp in horror. Clover and Alex sweatdropped and turned to her, “Uh…would you mind translating that to English, please?”
“What Jerry means,” Sam replied, “that you got some sort of virus that is infecting the part of your body that makes you have emotions—you know, happy, sad, angry, whatever. And if you ever become too excited or too emotional, the virus will attack that part and would cause you to have that heartburn and lack of oxygen, and worse, it might attack your brain and could kill you before you could say ‘Mandy is a jerk’!”
Finally, Clover and Alex gasped in horror too at Sam’s simplified explanation. Jerry quickly stepped in, “Which is why I want you, Clover, to take it easy. Don’t make yourself overexcited or anything. You must control your emotion and do not get emotional over things. In fact, if you are able to show no reaction at all to a certain issue, it would be even better. Please, your life is at stake here.”
“Guess I am turning into an Ice Queen,” Clover whined, close to tears. Sam and Alex quickly hushed her and comforted her, for fear that her usual emotional bawling and wailing could cause her to fall on the floor and kaput. Jerry laid a finger on his lips, trying to shush her. Clover was quite annoyed at this.
“Cut it out, guys,” Clover replied, trying to keep herself as calm as possible. “You’re making me look like I’m a baby or somewhat. I’m OK, I’m just a little edged about all this, that’s all. I’ll be fine.”
“Remember, Clover,” Jerry said. “Control your emotions. Don’t go astray, like you used to.”
“I will, Jer, I will.”
Easier said than done.
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