BOOK OF BILLY: 2020
Chapter 13: Failure
In a small plastic tank, out of four unconscious rats, two stir back to life, their front legs twitching faster and faster in the air. Their sudden squeals of terror at their immobility, faint outside the plastic tank enclosure where I placed them on a bed of shredded newspaper earlier.
Hidden behind my personal protective equipment, I wrap a gloved hand around yet another terrified rat from the home enclosure and inject its hindquarter with general anesthesia before I bring the limp thing over to the table, where my surgical tools glisten, ready for another procedure.
I hear the incessant tick of the wall-mounted clock on the other side of the lab and eye it. Almost midnight. There is no one around but me. Just what I need — to be alone for what I am about to do. No one is privy to this part of my experiment, and I want to keep it that way for fear the ethics board might have a few things to say.
Even when Alisha had asked if there was anything she could help with, despite her having moved on as an Assistant Professor at the University in the Microbiology Department, I said no. She still insists on visiting the lab to catch up on my research whenever she can. For we rarely catch up these days other than the occasional few hours of couple-time, on those rare weekends, when I'm not obsessing over my experiments. I know, I know, it must suck for her right now to be with me, but I have to finish this. I have to. She won't understand. My life depends on it.
Even today, Alisha had finished her classes and paperwork by five as usual and came over with a coffee and those yummy Byron Bay cookies I've grown ridiculously fond of. Today's treat had been a double choc degustation and too damn small. I wanted more.
"What are you doing? Can I assist you, Dr Amour?" She'd bit my lip during the kiss. How she ever agreed to date me in the first place is still beyond my understanding, let alone the fact that our third anniversary is coming up in a few days. Do I have a surprise for her though!
Sometimes I can't help but think, maybe it's the close quarters or Stockholm syndrome that got her. Why else is she with me when she can have a million better men? Men who can walk on their own damn feet.
"No. The next phase is for me, myself, and I. I don't want anyone finding out what I'm up to yet." I had winked at her while wanting her gone.
"What's the next phase?" She had eyed my open notebook, with random thoughts scribbled in a code only I can read. Geniuses get paranoid that people are out to steal our ideas, okay? Leonardo da Vinci had his codes. I'm no different.
"I'm going to use the carbon nanites we developed and see if they can carry stem cells to injured areas."
Alisha hadn't looked impressed, and if she had been, she was great at hiding it. I couldn't tell what she was thinking.
"You're still trying to make a neural bridge?" She sounded disappointed. That's how she sounded to me.
"Imagine, rather than using an implant to rewire a severed, damaged spinal cord, we use stem cells to heal said spinal cords and make them new. If we can use these targeted carbon nanites as a delivery system, this could be a huge breakthrough for spinal injuries, not to mention other things. Can you imagine the scope this has when I succeed?"
Alisha had chewed her cheek, her thoughts, her own.
"I could be whole again." Wheeling myself closer, I had taken her hand in mine. "I can walk again."
"And if it doesn't work, Billy? What if nothing can help you? What will you do?" She had pulled her hand out of mine. We had done this dance before. Several times.
"I won't fail."
"You won't fail?" Alisha had scoffed. "And you say you're not arrogant, Billy Amour."
"Alisha? If there's even a chance, why not take it?"
"Cause it could kill you, Billy! You're trying to rush things. You do not rush science!"
"I've been in this chair for nine years, Alisha. I am not rushing things. I'm just tired of being broken and looked upon with pity! All because of a stupid accident. I don't want pity anymore! I want to be fixed. And I'm going to help me. I'm doing this, whether you like it." I had spun away. "Only difference is, are you with me?"
"And how are you proposing to test this theory of yours? That you can just heal a spinal injury with stem cells? How? Do you have subjects willing to take that chance?" She was fuming, ready to take me on.
My gaze had fleeted to the rat enclosure to the side, enough for her to know what I was planning. "Are you kidding me?" She had boomed.
I hadn't wanted to implicate myself any further by speaking yay or nay. So I had stayed quiet.
"I can't deal with you right now. I'm going home. You coming or not?"
I had shaken my head, and she'd stormed off with a comment that cut deep. "Sleep on the couch tonight. I don't think I want you touching me with those hands."
I steel myself now. Alisha is long gone; to our home and our bed, a bed I'm banned from tonight.
One long breath and I eye the limp rat on the dissection tray. The other four are already out of general anesthesia. Their front paws flail in the air as they lay on their backs, but their hind legs lay limp, just like mine, as intended. Using a scalpel, I have severed their spines after all.
I stretch my neck and take the scalpel. "Others have done worse things in the name of science. And if I'm right, you'll be right as rain in a few days." I feel for the spinal cord on the rat, ready to make a clean incision and a clean cut. I need the experiment sites to be clean, cleaner the cut, the cleaner they should heal. As new.
Once all five of my subjects are paralysed on their lower half, I retrieve the syringes I'd spent months preparing. The liquid inside shimmers like graphite in a liquid emulsion. Carbon nanites carrying cultured embryonic rat stem cells. If I am right, by injecting these at the severed site, the undifferentiated cells should form new spinal cord cells, bridge the injured site, heal it, and thus the rats will move their lower half again.
The big question that remained was the 'if' part of the whole thing. If the stem cells will take their cue from neighbouring spinal cord cells and differentiate into one themselves.
I have been working towards this moment for almost a year. As I inject the emulsion into the rats and place them back in a new enclosure with fresh food, water, and some pellets of painkillers, I can't even describe how I feel. Part of me feels heartbreak as I watch them, ready to come out of anesthesia and discover they can't move some of their limbs. I know how that feels. The panic, the sheer panic. But if I succeed? — they won't have to suffer most of their life as I've done.
Alisha is wrong. I am still human. I feel and I have a heart, but I also know what's at stake here for me. No one will put me out of my misery, no matter how much I squirm. These rats? — at least they have me to end it all if things don't work out. Let's just hope, for their sake and mine, I don't have to.
I check on the rats one last time before packing up my notes and laptop, stripe off the PPE, and head home to the couch. I'm hoping the weekend is long enough for the rats to heal.
I can't wait for Monday like a kid can't wait for Christmas morning. I want to know what happens already. Do I succeed? Or do I fail? Again.
Come Monday morning, I will either see signs of success in the three subjects I injected with the nanites carrying stem cells. In the other two, I am interested in something else. Something I have been developing on the low since Alisha's idea about using nanites for targeted drug delivery came to my table. Forget implants and chips that need surgery to be inserted. I'm interested in knowing if I can build an implant using injected nanotechnology, and my other passion, coding. Less invasive.
I check the app on my phone once again as I exit the building where I can track the nanites' activity in each rat. See if they have delivered their stem cell load. And during the weekend, I will program the special nanites in the other two subjects. See if I can remote-build a neural bridge implant with them. Something like this probably hasn't been tried or thought up, and I want to be the one to break new grounds.
Nine years of knowledge, and drafting up possible experiments for theoretical science. Nine years of thinking and planning just for this moment. Failure is not an option.
Failure is never an option. I will succeed. One day, I will.
I try calling Alisha as I exit the building, but it goes to voicemail. Either she is fast asleep or ignoring me. I guess the latter from how angry she'd been earlier. I'm left to my devices tonight and I still need to get home. Lucky for me, I no longer need a car or a driver. Our place is close enough for me to wheel home, and some days I love having that time to myself. To think. To dream. And tonight, I need to dream of the possibility that I may walk again. Can you imagine that? Me? Walk again.
I can't wait for Monday!