I am wondering if any of you would consider reviewing the book. It will be released on Amazon/Kindle on October 18th. I need reviews from regular folks posted to amazon on the release day, if possible. You get a FREE pdf, word.doc or .mobi (Kindle ebook file) copy and plenty of time between now and mid-October to read it. Let me know, friends!
In Chapter 14 Kate and her temp assistant are trying to figure out Dr. Saltieri's oddball patient notation system--they utterly fail. One little thing I added in here--the bit about "if at first you don't suck a seed, fry, fry a hen" is straight out of a story my mother tells about her childhood. She's elderly but still totally rocking things-- I hope she enjoys seeing this passage when I present here with a copy of the book!
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
June 2013
“Deirdre, what do you make of these?”
“Those are all the five-by-eight cards Enzo made on each patient, Kate. Remember, I showed you how they were placed into a database?”
“Yes, I remember, you showed me that a couple weeks ago when we started plowing through this stuff in Enzo’s office. But you’re missing patients—many of the most recent ones, of all things. How can that be?”
“It’s the best I could do, Kate. When Enzo was getting sicker and sicker he knew this was all a mess. That’s why Mike glued me to Enzo virtually 24/7 to try to make sense of it. And besides, we have a sort of master file on each patient, they just don’t all include the same forms. It’s not like we don’t know who everybody is, right?”
“Well, yes, I get it. But it’s so helter-skelter. Do you think there might be some forms or files in storage somewhere?”
“I don’t think so. Enzo would have told me, right?”
“I guess. Well, thanks for helping on all this.” Kate stood up and stretched. She had been going through Enzo’s messes for three hours straight before Deirdre had walked in. “Just you and me sorting all the piles of papers into zones has really helped—internal research papers over there, outside stuff on that back table, patient files here by me—you know.”
“Yay for us, huh, Kate? So what do you think of the research?”
“Oh, I keep working on summarizing that every night at home until about two a.m. My social life came to an end when I took this job. My fun-loving roommate hates me now.”
“I doubt that. But anyway, who said you had to work sixteen hour days?”
“That would be me, Deirdre. Give me a problem and I bulldog it to death.”
“Bulldog? You sound more like a Gila monster. Bite hard and don’t let go. Or maybe a Komodo dragon. Bite hard and spread nasty bacteria from H-E-L-L.”
“I doubt you mean that as a compliment.” Kate laughed. “Am I that obvious a Type-A?”
“Duh! Mind if I sit down?”
“Sure, please do. Anyway, it seems to me that reviving some of these people might be doable. If you piece together bits and pieces of various university research, it points in that direction. And keep in mind, none of them are trying to bring back frozen folks like we are. They’re making impressive advances in cryogenic medical methods, not cryonics. We can easily restore function of frozen organs. You know, I look at various things in the field and I see a bunch of ideas which we might apply here. But as far as how to do it, step by step—I absolutely don’t know. And Enzo didn’t have it figured out. Some interesting ideas in his last days but also a lot of weird doodling. Whatever he may have said to Mike, I think he was just stringing him along or exaggerating things.”
“He was really weird toward the end—the Alzheimer’s. Hey, Kate, come over here—see this empty fish tank?”
“Yeah. So what?”
“He killed all the fish that were in there with the chemical in this bottle. I don’t think he was coherent and aware how much stuff he was putting in there, like round the clock. The fish all died, but he said it was the solution.”
“The solution? Not in the amounts you’re talking about. Wait, the solution or a solution? It is, literally, a solution—malachite green, a phosphate in solution. It’s a salt—three forms. I think it’s used to kill parasites.”
“Well, he was overdosing them. This stuff, too,” said Deirdre.
“Methylene blue, which is a misnomer—it also turns things green. You said he was putting this in there more than once a day? Weird.”
“Like once an hour. He would stare at the drops swirling in the water. Of course, the fish died, but he hardly noticed. Look at all the stains from this stuff on the tank stand. See what I mean? Oh yeah, even his fingers were stained from these chemicals.”
“Jesus, that is odd,” Kate muttered, absentmindedly running her fingers along the crusted, stained edge of the tank.
“He played with other chemicals, too. Put them in water inside clear glass bottles, then lined them up and stared at them. All different colors. They were kind of pretty, but eventually we poured out the water and tossed the bottles.”
“Hmm, very strange, Deirdre.”
“Well, yeah. So, back to the present. Everyone knows you’re a biology genius. I bet you’ve got something.”
“Nope. Pretty much nothing. Nothing that I can be proud of—that makes total sense. Just thaw these people out and zap their heart? An eighth grader could try that. It can’t be that easy.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. But keep plugging, right?”
“Mike has me on a deadline. Ninety days. Then submit a report.”
“That sounds like him. Hey, I’m going to make some tea. Enzo was a big tea drinker. Look at all these. Obviously you’re stressed. Want some?”
“Yuppers to that. Something herbal, okay? But no malachite green tea.”
“Funny. Okay, I’ll get it started. Anyway, you’re blasting away at cryonics and cryogenics scientifically. You’ll figure it out.”
“I hope so. I need more time, or we’re not going to succeed.” Kate’s frown disappeared. She began to chuckle.
“What’s so funny, Kate?”
“I just remembered something that my gramma told me from when she was a little girl.”
“What was that?”
“She was trying to learn how to tie her shoes and got more and more frustrated that she couldn’t do it. Her dad—my great-grampa R.B., who was a character, by the way, told her, ‘If at first you don’t suck a seed, fry, fry a hen’!”
“What? Why did he say that? Some kind of nonsense verse?” Deirdre asked, confused.
“‘If at first you don’t suck a seed—fry, fry a hen.’ She was mishearing the old phrase—you know, ‘If at first you don’t succeed—try, try again.’ Get it?”
“Oh God, that’s funny. How old was she at the time?”
“I don’t know. Five, maybe? But she remembered that bit of childhood silliness the rest of her life. Pretty cool, huh? Anyway, sorry to sound like a broken record, Deirdre, but what do you think of the five-by-eight cards?”
“Well, they’re pretty straightforward. Name and patient number, which of course is their cryopod number as well. Last address. Next of kin. We make sure to keep updating that for changes. Attending physician and their illness diagnosis. A few other things.”
“Right. And what about this: ‘VT’? What does that mean?” Kate shuffled through a dozen or so cards, hoping something would leap out and grab her attention. Meanwhile Deirdre laid teabags in their mugs and poured the hot water over them. “I don’t know, Kate. But VT isn’t just marked on the C wing cards. It goes back to halfway through the B wing. As far as what it means, I really don’t know. It’s like Enzo was notating only for himself. He probably never thought that someone else might be stuck looking at all these cards and his random abbreviations and such.”
“Right, makes sense,” Kate agreed. “Now look here at this little scribbled entry, ‘E.S. signed.’ The few cards I have from C wing all say that. So that’s obviously Enzo’s initials, but what did he sign? I don’t get it. If you look in various C wing patient folders, there’s nothing with his signature on it. It’s baffling me.”
“Hmm, yeah, you’re right. I never noticed that—you have an eye for detail, don’t you?”
“Those patients also don’t have any death certificates on file, Deirdre. You think their doctors or attorneys held on to those?”
“Could be. Anything was possible in The World According to Enzo.” Deirdre handed Kate the cup of lemon zinger tea, then stirred some honey into her own cup of Earl Grey. “You know, Kate, I was trying to help transcribe things, clean things up, get them from old paper records onto the computer as much as possible in the time I had. I wasn’t trying to interpret anything. You know I’m a mathematician, right? That’s why Mike put me on all this. I’m the data chick, the data go-fer. My real job is being Mike’s number cruncher when he’s running theories or producing prototypes of his inventions. So, just remember that I have no medical background. I’m happy to help, but you’d have to tell me specifically what you’re looking for.”
“So, Enzo never shared any inside info on any of this with you?”
“Nope, sorry.”
“Okay, but work with me for a second, because trying to figure this out isn’t actually medicine. You see some of these cards with little gold stars? Like these here. See ’em, Deirdre?”
“Sure. I thought that was weird and kind of funny.”
“Why funny?”
“Oh, I remember when my piano teacher used to put a gold star on pages of my method book when I’d done a good job.”
“Yeah, sounds about right. ‘Yay, I got a star, Mommy!’ Right?”
“Yeah, a little kid thing. Not very scientific. I get it, Kate. Enzo was weird—weird and super smart. He always had his own odd ways of doing things, that’s for sure.”
“And here, A.C. Nielsen has a gold star and a red star. He’s the only one I can find with the red star.”
“Well, he’s obviously a special guy, huh? His own apartment and the coveted red star of cryo awesomeness.”
“I’ve been staring at this all morning. It’s driving me crazy.”
“Yikes. Let it go. And drink your tea, girl. You haven’t touched it yet. Relax and try a different angle, maybe? Have you thought of that?”
“Yes of course, but what? I’m stuck. And this weird paperwork—I hate being mystified by dumb details. My Type-A personality again, I guess. So why can’t Enzo’s ghost flutter in here and answer all my questions? Is that too much for a girl to ask?”
“He’s dead and buried, Kate. Want to go visit the cemetery? Oh, I forgot something. Mike wants you to have this list of veterinarians we could hire to start the animal-based research you told him you want to tackle. Take the list and explore it. These are cutting-edge dudes who are available to us for some highly paid freelancing. They’re all on LinkedIn, by the way. And let me know what else I can do. You’ll figure this out. After all, if you get too frustrated you can always ‘fry, fry a hen’!”
Kate shrugged. “Very funny. Yeah, I guess so.”
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