02: Setbacks

“Hey,” Rylie waved and rushed towards Raymond as he pushed his tray through the line. “Ham? Shouldn’t you be watching your sodium intake?”

“It’s fine, Rylie, one ham sandwich once a month is not gonna kill me.”

“Ok, but don’t say I didn’t warn you,” she teased and grabbed a tray from the stack at the end of the counter. “So, I submitted the applications and I have bad news,” she sighed and slipped into the line behind him.

“Don’t tell me, you weren’t able to request additional test subjects?”

“Sorry, Ray. I tried, I really tried. But I couldn’t justify the need for an increase in Patient X subjects without raising some red flags. Hell, I was questioned on why I even needed the four they gave me when I started testing last June. Are you mad?”

“No, of course not. I know you did everything you could for me, Rylie, and I appreciate that. I guess it’s on to Plan B then.”

“What’s Plan B?”

“I’ll let you know once I figure it out,” Raymond sighed. He paid for his meal and moved across the room to a table near the window. Staring out at the bustle of Fairhaven’s busy downtown streets, his thoughts wandered to his son. A successful corporate law attorney, the youngest to make partner with his firm, he was one good win away from having his name on the wall.

Christopher was a straight-A student with a bright future. Happy with his life and the way it was going and it all came crashing down the day they got the phone call telling him he was a carrier of the Alpha Virus. Raymond remembers listening to his wife crying all night. She’d slept in their son’s room for a week just watching him. It was as if she was trying to commit his face to memory. Having just celebrated his 12^th birthday, Raymond began noticing small problematic changes in his son.

It began as shortness of breath and wheezing which grew into a chronic cough. Christopher’s doctor had told him he may be developing asthma however the diagnosis was unmanageable by most forms of treatment and bore resemblance to the persistent respiratory infections Raymond’s father often had. Then there were the allergies that lasted all year and recurring chest colds which often left him bedridden for weeks on end. It was at this point Raymond made the decision to have his son tested for their genetic mutation.

While he’d run a bevy of exams on his son at birth and again three years later, nothing ever seemed out of place. But the development of the Alpha Virus can occur at any age, and this is what Raymond feared. On September 19, 1992 Christopher and his parents got the news they were dreading; Christopher had advanced lymphoma maturing into the Alpha Virus. Raymond’s worse nightmares had come true. 

With a heavy sigh Raymond pushed away from the table. He’d lost his appetite with the renewed concern for how he would continue testing treatments for his son’s condition. Returning to his lab, he went about checking on the progress of his test subjects, hoping it would spark an idea.

Guineas one and two appeared to be prospering. They’d stopped lounging during the day, as had become their habit, and were now playing on the wheels he’d placed in their terrariums. Their energy levels appeared to be high, which was a good thing, and their appetites had returned to normal. He went down his checklist marking off any other symptoms that applied and noting every significant finding accordingly. Pleased by this latest development, a slow smile formed on his face. But when he reached the last two terrariums, Raymond stopped in his tracks.

The clipboard nearly toppled from his hands as he stood staring at the last two subjects in his trial experiment. One of them appeared to have killed himself by hitting his head numerous times against the side of the tank while the other was nearly bald from stress and shaking in a corner behind his water bowl. What started off with a 100% success rate had now been reduced by half. Collecting the dead guinea from its cage, Raymond opened him up. He had to understand what had caused such a dramatic turn.

Under the scalpel, Raymond discovered this animal had late stage scarring of its liver. It had undiagnosed decompensated cirrhosis which appeared to have affected every part of its internal system as waste byproducts built up in its blood stream. Making note of this condition, Raymond placed Guinea 3 in a hermetically sealed container and stored it in the freezer. Moving to the next animal, Guinea 4, he injected a solution of pentobarbital sodium, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride, effectively euthanizing the animal for autopsy.

During which, it was discovered that Guinea 4 suffered from untreated encephalitis brought on by the virus Raymond had generated. While the outcome of the autopsies were encouraging, having proven the subjects died from complications of other diseases, it was also a huge setback. The original experiment had begun last summer and continued over the course of eight months. It was a procedure Raymond would need to recreate in order to apply for human testing and his son was running out of time.

Raymond sat staring at the beaker in front of him for what felt like an eternity before he finally found the courage to move. Stepping away from his workstation, he started over to the cold storage to retrieve one of the test tubes containing his son’s blood. If he was not going to be allowed to move up the food chain of testing, the next best solution would be to recreate his son’s genetic strand. He hypothesized that if he were to give one of his test subjects a complete blood transfusion, he would be able to test the reaction of the drug.

It was one answer, however, there was one other option left. Raymond sighed and removed his lab coat. His other alternative left him with very little room for error. Since he and his son would be genetically similar, his last ditch effort involved inducing the Alpha Virus conditions within his own body and hoping upon hope his cure would successfully eliminate the disease as it had in Guineas 1 and 2. It was a gamble, but one worth taking. With a deep breath, Raymond turned the needle to his own arm, pricking his vein before he could change his mind.

He documented his procedure, notating the exact time of the injection and the prognosis of which he hoped. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Twenty minutes. An hour. He waited for any sign or symptom of the virus to rear its ugly head. With the quantity he’d injected, he had expected it would take less than forty minutes before…

The thought didn’t complete as he was hit by a sudden coughing fit. Propping himself against the wall, Raymond felt his heart rate increase followed by a warm flush of his skin, hot flashes and sweats. It was becoming harder and harder to breathe and he wheezed with every breath. Rhonchi and rales, he thought to himself, making mental notes of his symptoms as he fought to make it over to his workstation. The issue was complicated further when he blinked and realized his vision was blurring. He reached out for his desk but instead found himself falling forward.

Raymond crashed to the floor, pulling over a tray of tools that toppled with noisy clinks beside him. Dizziness. Nausea. Blindness. His eyes slowly started to close as a battle raged inside his body. His immune system was in overload with the introduction of this foreign enemy, doing its best to combat the disease. Maybe this wasn’t such a bright idea after all. The last thing he saw before finally succumbing to darkness was the dial on his timer spinning, ticking away what could very well be the last seconds of his life.

  

Hours had passed before Raymond finally awoke on the floor of his lab. His mouth was dry, his body felt weak and his head pounded like he had a marching band running through it. Pulling himself from the floor, he checked the timer on his workstation and scribbled out a note on the nearby pad. Retrieving a couple of vials, he drew his blood, labeled them as ‘Day One,’ and stored them with his son’s samples.

Subject X testing had begun.

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