REVIEW: No One’s Coming by Kevin Hazzard
From the award-winning author of American Sirens and A Thousand Naked Strangers comes a real-life thriller about the most daring rescue in air-medical history.
JULY 2014. Two American medical volunteers who joined the fight against the deadliest Ebola outbreak in world history have gotten infected. The virus kills in just over a week and they’re trapped in a hot zone with the clock ticking. If there’s going to be a rescue it has to happen now.
The very notion of getting the patients out is a radical and dangerous idea. Bringing them home might cause an outbreak of Ebola here in the US. No one’s certain if it can or should be done or if they’ll even survive the flight. In fact, the only thing anyone can agree on is that there’s just one group of people resourceful enough (or crazy enough) to pull this off. Thousands of miles away and deep in the north Georgia mountains, a phone rings at Phoenix Air. It’s the US government calling with another impossible mission.
Kevin Hazzard chronicles the ten frantic days that followed that phone call, dropping readers into the center of a first-of-its-kind international rescue. Phoenix Air, an eccentric band of engineers, pilots, and doctors with a reputation for doing things nobody else could, would become a lifeline to the world.
Terrifying, fascinating, and inspiring, No One’s Coming is a story of selfless heroes on both sides of the Atlantic who overcome the apathy and resistance of their own governments and communities, risking their lives to save others—once again proving that ordinary people are capable of overcoming the most extraordinary of problems. As contagions spring up around the world, this story of outbreaks and the people who fight them resonates more than ever.
Review
Because implicit in any rescue is the unavoidable fact that the worst has already occurred.
When I saw that this book was written by Kevin Hazzard whose book “A Thousand Naked Strangers,” I enjoyed, I eagerly asked to read it. Much like “Strangers,” this book is a fast, compulsive read but Fair Warning – it deals mainly with the 2014 Ebola outbreak in three west African nations and medical symptoms are described in detail.
Call it bravery or confidence, maybe overconfidence, a cowboy mentality—whatever the word for it is—but for over two decades Phoenix Air had been making its name by saying yes when everybody else said no.
Gonzo as well as exquisitely detail oriented are descriptions that can be used about Phoenix Air – a private company that started its life by transporting car parts (not much money in it), pivoted to transporting explosives (lots of paperwork to qualify for that) then high explosives (unbelievably more amounts of paperwork to do that but people really need this and will pay $$$$$ for it) and eventually added a medevac air ambulance transport division to their offerings. A lot of the people who work there are the types who love the unusual and will usually say “hell, yes” when a job that is risky or challenging is on offer. I mean they’ve flown (Libyan) nuclear warheads and a beluga whale – not at the same time, though.
That’s how fast it happened. A warm afternoon, nothing but tranquility, and then the United States government—the most powerful nation on Earth—was calling him for help. Imagine God extending a finger across the cracked ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Dent swallowed hard. Here things started moving fast. Walters is almost shockingly direct and told Dent without preamble that a couple of Americans were dying of Ebola in Africa (exact number and location unknown) and that no one else on Earth (literally, they’d tried) would or even could get them home. So more or less their only hope was Phoenix Air.
On a nice summer day, co-owner Dent Thompson got a call he never really expected, although one which Phoenix Air was prepared to accept. The US State Department wondered if the company could and was willing to fly to Monrovia, Liberia, then a hot zone for Ebola, and bring back two deathly sick Americans who had been working there treating patients with the deadly disease. Turned down by everyone else, the government needed something that Phoenix Air has – a contained “capsule” treatment tent which fits into one of their Gulfstream III jets (which also has a cargo door which is majorly important) which could be used to both monitor and treat these patients and insulate everyone else from the deadly virus during the twelve hour transit back across the Atlantic to Maine (where state officials were really not happy about this) and then down near Atlanta, GA and Emory University Hospital which, right on the doorstep of the CDC, could treat the patients here.
“Yes, Mr. President.”
Dent stopped mid-swallow. Almost choked but tried to play it cool. He turned his head a little, eyebrows slowly raising.
“Yes sir, we’re about to make a decision.” Pause. “I’ll let you know, sir.”
Then he hung up. Dent felt his throat go dry.
“Was that Obama?”
The man nodded. “Yeah, he’s very interested in what’s about to happen.”
Frantic modifications needed to be done to the plane, trips to Home Depot followed to buy PPE as well as a shit-ton of plastic to drape through the plane to protect it from being contaminated, conference calls galore brought various US government agencies on board – after everyone did their due diligence to be sure they weren’t going to end up being named as That Guy/Woman who authorized Ebola to be brought into the US, and lots and lots and lots of practice donning and removing said PPE by the medical staff going on the flight were carried out all while the clock was ticking. Once Ebola symptoms appear, patients usually only have eight days left and these two medically crashing patients were already staring down their time limit.
… it was clear that after months of beating the drum the US government was beginning to awaken to the reality that Ebola could (and probably would) reach our shores. But no one could help. It didn’t seem to Graham they particularly wanted to help. Nobody was willing to stick their neck out and risk being the person who infected the American public with Ebola.
Did things go smoothly? Thanks for asking and the answer is no. As the plane began its journey to get the first patient (due to space limitations only one patient at a time could be transported), Dent realized something major had slipped through the cracks and a hurdle had been re-erected – no one at Emory seemed to have been told they were about to get two patients with this deadly disease and US airports that had initially agreed to allow the plane to land were now all back peddling. Apparently the sentence “Not only no, but hell no.” was uttered. Emory’s specialized biocontainment unit to handle uber sick patients was brought out of mothballs and pressure was brought to bear until a reserve Air Force base realized they had no choice but to say yes.
When it came to highly infectious diseases the prevailing wisdom was clear—You don’t bring the zombie apocalypse to a place that doesn’t have zombies.
Oh, and the press was all over this bringing Phoenix Air under siege. Plus not all their employees and families were happy about this job. A lot of the US public was not happy with Ebola being brought here. The resulting onslaught of attention turned the first flight return into an ambulance chase that made people remember a white Bronco in LA.
Fear and confusion are willing accomplices to violence.
When the whirlwind of the first two transports had settled a bit, Phoenix Air began to discuss the emotional and physical toll on their employees as well as potential legal ramifications. Because of course if anything goes wrong, one of the first things people do today is yell, “I’ll sue!” The decision was made, and conveyed, to the State Department that Phoenix Air would do no more Ebola flights unless the government was willing to take responsibility. The government was there the next morning with a contract.
No one is coming. It’s up to us.
The volunteer medical personnel who had been in Liberia helping a drowning nation and its desperate citizens but then had either been medically evacuated or forced to leave also faced “what’s next?” as well as moral conundrums over the care received by Westerners vs that of Liberians. Many who were and remained deeply committed to delivering care opted to return and continue to fight the good fight: into the fire, out of the fire, and then – amazingly – back into the fire.
Which in many ways is how Linda felt. She had committed herself to an ideal, and that it was harder and would demand much more of her than she could possibly have imagined was beside the point. Her commitment remained. Sitting in the offices of a job she never really began, asked if she was willing to step back into the one place no one ever really wanted to go, Linda gave the only answer that made sense—”When do we leave?”
Since then, Phoenix Air has run many more medevacs – for many different nationalities and for more than Ebola, transported dangerous contagious materials (including vials of Russian smallpox), and are still the ones who gets called when someone who is there needs help getting back here. A-
~Jayne
The last time he saw Kent, Doug wasn’t sure that he’d survive. Now, at the sound of his voice, Kent jumped up. He had lived and was here now, throwing his arms around Doug, in no small part because Doug was the type of American who believed that being a small part of a greater whole required the willingness to serve others, even at risk to yourself. Doug had done that, he’d played his part, and his reward was this—Kent’s understanding that when he was dying and needed help, someone came for him.
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Wow. Thanks for the reminder that people can and sometimes will do great things.
@Kris Bock: The book made me realize that yes, there are still good people in the world.
I’m a “wow” too. Thanks, Jayne. I’d never have known about this otherwise and it seems very readable. Plus Obama. There are astonishing and selfless people out there.
@Darlynne: Well, I’m glad that I’ve got him on your radar now. ☺ Kevin Hazzard writes eminently readable books. I loved “A Thousand Naked Strangers” and want to read “American Sirens.”
Outstanding read.