'Have you seen the Hollywood movie Outbreak?' Renowned surgeon Sydney Chung Sheung-chee threw the question at me and paused. He was breathing heavily behind a white face mask, peering through his steamed-up glasses with tearful eyes.
It was the first time I had seen him weep. The tough man in front of me, the Dean of Medicine at Chinese University, was overcome with emotion and the stress of recent weeks.
His voice trembled as he told how the atypical pneumonia outbreak, which has infected 286 people in Hong Kong - including 115 medical staff - and spread across the world, had devastated him and his colleagues.
'It is a holocaust. It is a war with an unknown enemy. My hands have shaken for two nights. It is the worst medical disaster I have ever seen,' he said.
The conversation took place last Saturday afternoon. The Prince of Wales Hospital in Sha Tin, where the outbreak started early this month, was so quiet it felt eerie. There was a sense of unease.
Most administrative staff have been evacuated. Everyone wears a white face mask, prompting those that are left to label the outbreak 'white terror'.
Taking medical advice, I put on a mask as a precaution before entering the hospital. My colleague, a South China Morning Post photographer, did not have one. 'Where is your mask?' Professor Chung asked bluntly, like a headmaster admonishing a disobedient student.