ZMapp, a cocktail of Ebola-fighting antibodies, intrigued Plyler more. He reached out to Larry Zeitlin, PhD, president of Mapp Biopharmaceuticals, one of the companies developing the treatment, to find out more about it.

Zeitlin warned him that the drug had never been tested in humans. But he did share promising research, which has since been published in the journal Nature -- the serum had saved all 18 macaque monkeys after they were experimentally infected with the deadly virus.

That gave Plyler hope that it might not be too late to try on his friends.

As luck would have it, there was one course of ZMapp treatment in Sierra Leone. Plyler isn’t sure why it was there. He’s heard that researchers were planning to test how stable the drug might be in the hot, humid climate of Africa, where it would most likely be used in clinics with only rudimentary facilities.

After he located the ZMapp, the next goal was getting it to Liberia. After another flurry of phone calls, he got the drug across the Guinean border. From there, it was transported to Foya, a border town in Liberia, where Samaritan’s Purse picked it up and flew it into the capital, Monrovia, the location of ELWA Hospital, where Brantly was medical director of the Samaritan’s Purse Ebola Consolidated Case Management Center.

The drug arrived in a Styrofoam cooler. It held one course of treatment consisting of three doses of the drug. All three doses were meant to be given to a single patient. Plyler had been given strict instructions not to split the doses.

That’s because the first dose just knocks down the virus. Without the final two doses, the infection can flare again.

“If you think of it like a boxing match, the initial dose just gives it the first big blow, but the viral load will rise again, so you have to give it again and then give it a third time,” he says.

And each dose was frozen.

“I was absolutely petrified when it arrived, because I had to make a decision if I was going to administer or not,” Plyler says.