Summary
In a further excerpt from the Heath Cliff Disaster Hearings, Dr. June Lee, a research scientist, says the organisms in the mud are nearly identical to Biolene, leading them to conclude it must have been a mutation. However, the scientist concedes that only five percent of all the microbes in our biosphere have been identified. She says they don’t know how it traveled to the woods from SunRay Farm: a bug, a bird, the wind maybe. She says the thanks for curing the disease should go to Dr. Crumbly, a veterinarian who discovered the cure. Dr. Lee says, “If it weren’t for Dr. Crumbly, I suppose in the future the earth would have been ruled by turtles.”
The narrator relates how the entire world found out about the mud. Within hours of the rescue, the rescuers show signs of the rash. The powder turns out to be what is left of one’s skin after the ergonyms eat the good parts, including the nerve cells that normally alert people to pain. For many of those infected, they seek treatment too late. Around the same time as the children are found, a man who’d been living in the woods is discovered dead—a man with a very long beard.
In the hospital, the children’s hair is shaved and they are made to rinse out their mouths often. The epidemic spreads through Heath Cliff. Tamaya is told that Chad wouldn’t have survived if he’d been delivered any later to the hospital. Tamaya doesn’t complain: she thinks of her school’s virtues of courage, patience, and grace. She prepares for the worst while people assure her that scientists are working on a cure. From Monica, she learns that the entire world is freaking out, and that people refer to it as fuzzy mud and frankengerms. Schools become makeshift treatment centers for people’s rashes. The town is put under quarantine.
On Tuesday, November 23, the dog Miss Marple lies in a crate in Dr. Crumbly’s office. She has the rash and all her fur is gone; she is blind and deaf. He readies an injection. Over the past two weeks, he has had to put down twenty animals infected with the rash. The only animal who hasn’t been infected is his land turtle, Maurice. Crumbly found the turtle stuck in a fuzzy mud puddle in the backyard. Upon inspection under a microscope, Crumbly found that an enzyme on the turtle’s skin doesn’t appear on any other animal’s skin samples. He injects Miss Marple’s leg with a concentration of the turtle enzymes.
In December, Tamaya is the first human test case for the turtle-enzyme treatment. She is glad to learn Miss Marple had a full recovery. Tamaya jokes that maybe she’ll grow a shell, like a turtle. Nurses monitor Tamaya and give her two injections a day. Things become somewhat less blurry. One day Tamaya dreams that a man named Fitzy is speaking to her, asking her if there is anything he can buy for her. He says he is really rich and never wanted to start a pandemic. She can’t think of anything until she remembers she needs a new school sweater. The next time she wakes up, she can see her nurse, Ronda. Ronda tells her to phone her mother right away.
The first snow falls two days later. Though blurred, everything looks beautiful to Tamaya. A handsome doctor gives Tamaya glasses that make her vision clearer. She laughs and cries with Monica on the phone about her recovery. One day there is a news briefing on her TV. She turns up the volume. The director of the CDC is at her school, lifting a shovel of frozen fuzzy mud up. He says the frankengerms are all dead because of the freezing temperatures. While some mutations could be out there still, it seems the pandemic is over.
The quarantine is lifted. Dr. Crumbly’s cure is mass-produced, successfully treating more than sixty thousand people and animals afflicted with Dhilwaddi Blister Rash. Medical books are updated with before and after photos of Tamaya’s skin. Two weeks after being discharged, Tamaya returns to the hospital with Marshall to give Ronda her mother’s strawberry jam. Ronda gives her a new school sweater; it has a card that says, “For a girl of extraordinary virtue and valor. Your friend, Fitzy.” Tamaya says she thought she dreamed him up.
Marshall and Tamaya visit Chad in the ward usually reserved for burn victims. His skin is very badly scarred. He also wears glasses now. He says he can’t move his mouth too much while the skin graft from his bottom healed. He says they can just call him Buttface. They have brought him a lasagne. Chad hugs Marshall and thanks him. Marshall says it was Tamaya’s idea. Tamaya laughs at the awkwardness of boys hugging. Chad looks at Tamaya and says, “You’re next, Tamaya.”
The next excerpt includes Tamaya’s testimony to the Senate. She is told that they are glad she broke the rules and followed Marshall into the woods, because she may have saved the world. They say everyone would have got the rash a week or two later, regardless of whether she spread it. By then, it would have been too late to contain. It might have spread on planes to places where it never freezes. They call her brave. She says Marshall is the brave one. A senator asks how it feels to have a disease named after her. She says, “It’s a great honor… I guess?”
An epilogue follows. The narrator explains that with a rapidly increasing world population, the Senate Committee on Energy and the Environment voted unanimously to support the continued production of Biolene—even after the Heath Cliff Disaster. They conclude that the risk of catastrophe was smaller than the benefit of having a clean, affordable energy source. Fitzman assured them greater precautions would be taken with ergonym containment. A week after returning from Washington, Tamaya feels the glow of excitement still. Monica keeps reminding her she is famous. She returns to the woods to climb one of Chad’s trees with him and Marshall. She looks out over the frozen woodlands and hopes it will be just as beautiful after the snow melts. The novel concludes with Tamaya’s How to Blow Up a Ballon assignment, which she submitted late from the hospital.
Analysis
Sachar returns to the theme of infectious disease with further testimony delivered before the Senate. As a reputable scientist, Dr. Lee declines to say for certain whether Biolene caused the rash outbreak. However, the organisms they’ve studied are nearly identical. In an instance of situational irony, it isn’t Dr. Lee who finds the cure for the rash but a humble veterinarian. Her testimony concludes with a humorous but cryptic statement that hints at the vaccine’s turtle-enzyme origin.
Sachar builds on the theme of infectious disease with a narrative summary of the events that follow Tamaya, Marshall, and Chad being rescued from the woods. Though Tamaya and Chad are the first to get the rash, soon countless people in the town have been infected and the area is contained under quarantine while scientists scramble to figure out what is happening. The rash is dangerous because it destroys the nerve cells that would normally alert people to pain. As a result of not knowing the danger they are in, several people die before seeking treatment.
Sachar also provides the answer to a question that has been lingering in the reader’s head: who is the one to die in the woods. As it happens, the victim is a man with a very long beard—the hermit the schoolchildren shared rumors about in the first chapter. Luckily, Tamaya, Marshall, and Chad get to the hospital in time to be treated for their rashes. They are also lucky to receive the vaccine invited by Dr. Crumbly, the local veterinarian. Having noticed his turtle’s resistance to the rash, Crumbly develops an enzyme vaccine and tests it on the same dog who first reached Tamaya in the woods.
The positive developments continue as the vaccine works on Tamaya, the first human test subject. Meanwhile, freezing winter temperatures kill off the ergies in the fuzzy mud that has spread across the town. Fitzman makes another appearance in the narrative when he visits Tamaya’s hospital room to express his remorse for everything that has happened. When he offers to buy her anything she wants, all Tamaya can think of is a replacement for the sweater she damaged in the woods. With a new sweater, Tamaya regains the pride embodied in the garment.
Once they recover from their rashes, Tamaya, Marshall and Chad reunite in Chad’s hospital room. Although Tamaya still has a lingering fear of him, Chad treats them with affection, hugging Marshall. In an instance of situational irony, Chad repurposes the threat he uttered earlier in the novel—“you’re next”—to show his appreciation for how Tamaya summoned the courage to rescue him despite the way he treated her.
The novel ends with a return to the theme of infectious disease. Testifying before Congress herself, Tamaya learns that her decision to enter the forest incidentally saved the world from the rash’s spread. Without the early detection that resulted from her and Chad’s infections, the mutant ergies would have traveled to regions without cold winters. But in an instance of situational irony, the Senate approves the continued development of Biolene. While it may seem foolish to risk another disaster, the narrator explains that the theoretical benefits of a clean source of fuel outweigh the theoretical risks. With any luck, the situation in Heath Cliff will mean the producers of Biolene proceed with greater caution and humility.
