The Medical Team completed its second round of tests before midnight.
They found no pathogenic activity capable of sustained replication from person to person in the patients.
People who shared their quarters, their caregivers, and anyone who had come into contact with their vomit had not developed the same symptoms either.
The damp grain and damaged medicine packets in the Green Seven sacks matched the abnormalities in the patients exactly.
The blanket road closure no longer had any medical basis.
Gen brought the test results to the wooden barrier.
The Western Border official still refused to open it.
"The order to lift it needs a superior's seal."
"The closure order explicitly states that it was triggered by a medical risk."
"The procedure doesn't say the Medical Team can revoke it."
"Then stop enforcing the parts that no longer have any basis first, and complete the administrative records afterward."
The official feared being held responsible if he raised the barrier without authorization.
He would rather make more than two hundred people wait another night than have his name appear in the field for lifting the closure early.
Gen did not ask the guards to dismantle the entire checkpoint.
The patients would continue receiving treatment.
Anyone who had eaten from the Green Seven batch would remain under observation.
Everyone else would resume passage in groups, carrying copies of the test results before passing through the next settlement.
The head of the Western Border Medical Team signed the recommendation to lift the closure.
Two outside witnesses also recorded the time.
The guard captain finally raised the wooden barrier.
Two extra hours had passed between the completion of the tests and the reopening of the passage.
Those two hours were not some minor discrepancy on paper.
An elderly person whose dressings needed regular changing