He nodded. Both Regeneris and Trigeneris work by becoming the overly clingy significant others of the poison and radiation in the body. I could spew technical information at you until you threw yourself off a nearby bridge, but I’ll spare you. Instead, I’ll simplify it down to this: The drugs make the poisons not poisonous anymore, and they do the same with the radiation, but they’re messy eaters and they leave a bunch of cellular take-out cartons behind. Too many take-out cartons, and your whole place smells like last week’s General Tso’s chicken.
Or, in this case, your entire body ends up with waste cells that your kidneys and liver would ordinarily sweep up for you. Treatment with these drugs makes the waste faster than those organs can get rid of it. While the drugs are designed to deal with some of those byproducts themselves, doctors still have to take extra measures to get rid of them. Otherwise, your patient’s organs demand to unionize, stage a walkout, and you end up with organ failure and death.
I held up a finger. “I have an idea for this. Jackson will already have a significant buildup of blood waste from the Regeneris, and his system was already compromised. Have you used one of those portable blood filtration machines? Do you even have one?”
A rockstar of a medical devices company had developed the blood filtration tech some decades back. It was designed to deal with the cytokine storms that became a problem in the era’s global pandemic. Since then, the technology had improved significantly, and had spread to disadvantaged countries all over the globe for dealing with blood issues in remote places. It made no sense they wouldn’t have one here.
“We do have one, and I’ve made modest use of it.” He rocked one hand back and forth in aso-somotion. “Not as much as I wanted to, but I didn’t want to filter the Regeneris out of his system. It’s barely keeping up as it is.”
“We won’t have that problem with Trigeneris. Our main problem will be keeping up withit, and the waste it creates. So I propose this.” I’d had two weeks to mull this over and perfect it in my mind.
Formulating these kinds of plans made me nervous, because I am well aware that I amnota doctor. I didn’t finish my residency and training. I’m a jack of the right trades to make educated guesses, and I have the perfect amount of knowledge to get myself and others into trouble.
“We do a preliminary filter to remove waste down to a safe level,” I continued. “Then we break the Trigeneris course into three smaller doses and one larger dose. Push Trigeneris until the waste products spike too far, then we use your favorite neutralizer to break it all down. Whatever you’d use to nullify unknown toxins and waste. Then we filter the blood and start again. By the time we’re through the three smaller doses, we should have removed the highest concentrations of toxins and dealt with their leavings. Then we can hit him with the final dose of Trigeneris to mop up the last of it, and to repair the lining of his lungs.”
“Do you have any kind of timetable or standard procedure for how much drug at what intervals?”
“I’m kind of making this up as I go,” I admitted. “We’re going to have to wing it. Balance out the effectiveness of each dose with the risk.”
Doctor Flannigan wrinkled his nose. “That is jury rigged as hell. It’s messy and risky and I hate it, for the record.”
“Yes. It is. But is it the right call?”
He shoved his hand through his salt-and-paprika hair. “It is. I just wanted to complain up-front, because I won’t have time to complain once we start this pharmaceutical shitshow.”
“Fair enough.” I forced myself to draw in a breath slowly, and let it out again to steady myself. “Can I go inside now? I’d like to see him before we get started.”
“Sure. Go on without me. I’ll go get the hemofilter from storage. It’s probably there.”
It wouldn’t be there. We both knew it. Probably, it already sat on a shelf in the medical bay, waiting for the time a patient needed it. Doctor Flannigan had just kindly given me a reason to spend a few precious moments alone with my husband before we took his fate into our hands.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll be ready when you get back.”
“Doubtless.” He disappeared down the hall.
Schrödinger used his infamous cat-in-a-box thought experiment to describe a quantum state of matter, yet I’d always found it useful to describe emotional states. Right then, I stood in a base on Mars, at a crossroads that led to two fates. One road took me to a living, even healthy husband who would live to divorce me, find a man with whom to be happy, and enjoy a life beyond this deployment. The other road led me to his grave.
While I stood there, in that hallway on Mars, I hadn’t yet made him well. He would die in a moment I couldn’t yet view, since the future remains opaque. Neither had I killed him with an experimental drug no one entirely understood how to use, and I could not yet see the blood on my hands. He lived in a suspended instant, alive and swaddled in potential, and the only pictures I had of him in my mind were ones where he was strong. Unharmed.
The instant I walked through that door, my image of him would change. And I would take the first step on that crossroads, unable to stop until I reached his exit from my life in good health, or his death millions of miles from home. A part of me pleaded not to go through that door. Don’t open the box, self, to decide if the Jackson is dead or alive!
Not to open that door, that Schrödinger’s box, would be to leave Jackson in both states at once. And I wanted him fully, vibrantly alive. No half measures.
I opened the door and went inside.
* * *
Jackson looked terrible.
A sob hitched in my throat at my first sight of him. Sallow. Skin waxen. Muscles slack but for twitches brought on by nerve misfires. Hooked up to oxygen and enough wires to power the city of Denver. He did not look like my strong, brave husband, the broad-shouldered man who had held me tight as he kissed me.
He looked human. Mortal. No more invincible warrior. A hero brought low by dirt and energy, one other heroes like him couldn’t save. His salvation came from a not-really-handsome prince in a laboratory coat wielding a pipette.
Or from a husband in borrowed fatigues, I suppose, but I will never call myself a hero. Not in this instance. The real heroes were the men and women in the lab who had put in the work to bring Trigeneris as far as they had. Scientists are some of humanity’s greatest superstars.
I set the cooler of Trigeneris down and crossed over to stand at Jackson’s bedside. His vitals had declined while I flew out here. Not far, thanks to the pharmaceutical wonders that swam in his blood, but theyhaddeclined and I hated it. All too soon, they would decline further, faster, and Jackson’s body would kick off the cascade of failures that led to the ultimate end.
Gently, I scooped one of his hands into both of mine. It was clammy and unresponsive. Not a surprise, but the last time I had felt his hand in mine, it had been warm and he had squeezed me back and there came the tears down my face. I stroked his hand, willing myself to sound calm. To swallow down all this hopelessness and fear, and put confidence into my voice.