Steptoe acknowledges the potential risk of Ebola virus in the vitreous jelly, farther back in the eye, which has never been tested in an Ebola survivor. (A cataract surgery should only disrupt the front of the eye, but in post-uveitis eyes, there’s an increased chance that fluids in the front and back of the eye have intermingled.) He has since returned to his post in Liverpool, so survivor sampling at MH34 is on hold until he returns next August. A much larger sample size would be needed to demonstrate that quiet-eyed survivors aren’t typically carrying the virus in the front of the eye, but Steptoe’s method was the fast-track way to get a couple of survivors with cataracts into surgery.

Over at the Kissy Eye Hospital, Mattia and his team are waiting on the results of the Emory team’s large-scale clinical trial, which, in typical systematic research fashion (the physicians still practice domestically and visit Sierra Leone a few times per year), seems to be crawling through the planning stages at a glacial pace.

“If they have cataracts, we just advise them to come back later,” says Mattia. “We don’t know when. But for now, we just can’t do that.”

* * *

When the virus first ransacked his family, 13-year-old Mo was the epitome of a middle child. His younger brother Musa had recently started showing him up on the soccer field, and his older sister Maruati refused to share anything. Mo was the closest with his mother. She fell ill four days after attending a burial ceremony for a relative; no one knew what was causing her condition–vomiting, diarrhea, hemorrhaging, and finally, an eerie delirium. When his siblings were sent out to buy rice, visit relatives, go to school, Mo stayed by his mother’s bedside, begging her to recover. She didn’t.

After her death, her blood tested positive for the Ebola virus. Strangers in space suits buried her, and Mo wasn’t allowed to say goodbye. By this time, the Hagan Street slum dwellers had heard of Ebola. Mo and his siblings were outcast from the community. Neighbors had heard the tales of horror and were terrified that the children were carrying the virus. The neighbors were merciless—but they were also right.

The three children had just been taken into Salimatu’s one-room shack when they began exhibiting symptoms. Mo was taken to MSF’s ETU at Prince of Wales secondary school in Freetown. (Mo later learned that both of his siblings had gone to other ETUs and survived. Salimatu never contracted the virus.) He has no recollection of his time there, aside from snapshots of his favorite nurses standing over him, urging him to eat. Those nurses say he was conscious for much of it; Mo’s amnesia was the first of many signs of post-traumatic stress.

Even when Mo’s eye issues escalated quickly–redness, itchiness, almost total loss of vision—he wasn’t sure where to seek treatment. He knew he couldn’t pay for it. After three months, he was connected to an MSF worker, who immediately traveled with him to Kissy Eye Clinic, where Mattia works. When he came home, he told his auntie what the doctor had said and he wept. So did she.