Guinea Pig (19 page)

Chapter Twenty Two.

The creaking from somewhere above made Reginald look up hurriedly, and he wasn't alone as the other medical staff all did the same. It wasn't the first time he'd done it, and it wouldn't be the last. The engineers had said the structure above them was still sound, but it didn't sound that way. It didn't look that way either, especially from outside.

The hospital wasn't in good shape, and sometimes Reginald wondered if it was going to come down on top of them. Quite a lot actually. The ice storm had done some serious damage to the floors above them, and the other wings had been completely destroyed by a lava bomb. Even the hallway that led past the surgical suite to the scanners only went so far before it ended in a pile of rubble. But at least it had come with a working surgical suite, even if conditions were cramped.

The monitoring room was quite small, especially with all the computers that had been set up in it. But then it had never been designed for that purpose. Originally it had just been the observation room from which other doctors and perhaps even relatives could sit and watch the operations in progress. But they'd needed a full sized operating suite in a hospital for their patient, and one with an attached room next to it from which the doctors could both study the results of the latest scans that had been done and still keep an eye on their patient, and this was the best they could do.

In a city where most of the main hospitals had already been all but levelled, it had been a tough thing to find. Then when the military people also insisted that it had to have room for vehicles and helicopters in the car park in case they had to make an emergency escape; that the room had to be able to be secured, and that it be sited on bedrock since they didn't want to have to deal with another sink hole – their options had been cut back again.

This ground floor surgery in the Adamson Reconstructive Surgical Clinic and Hospice had been the best of their few options. And it had come with an MRI and CT scanner just down the hall which was a bonus. Beggars couldn't be choosers as they said.

Of course there was more space they could have used had this not also been a research project. The lab which had been set up in another adjoining room had plenty of room. But then it had originally been the recovery room set up to hold half a dozen patients at once. Unfortunately it had no direct view of the surgery as there were two sets of double doors between them. Neither did the pre-op room which was now filled with computers and technicians, who kept mostly to themselves.

Reginald understood that this surgical suite had once been the medical equivalent of a factory assembly line. Patients were wheeled in to the pre-op room, sedated, then wheeled into the theatre and operated on and then wheeled out to recovery as fast as possible. Time was money in plastic surgery.

But they'd made do as best they could. Mr. Simons was if not comfortable, at least no more uncomfortable there than he would have been anywhere else. Reginald and the nurses had done their best to limit his suffering. Though the military had replaced the surgical bed with a mortuary table that he could be chained to, they'd at least found some cushions and a mattress for him. They had to, the growths on his back made it impossible for him to lie flat on a hard surface. They'd even found a couple of blankets to keep him warm and protect his modesty. Even though he no longer seemed to have those parts of his anatomy that a man should have, Reginald felt that he surely would still feel vulnerable lying there exposed as the medical staff tended to him. Actually he would probably feel more vulnerable given the obvious deformities he was being forced to reveal. William hadn't mentioned that his manhood had vanished; he was probably too embarrassed. And though it had irked Doctor Adams he hadn't objected when Reginald had given the approval for the blankets. In the end, despite all the changes that had been wrought in him, William Simons was still a human being. He had the right to be treated with a little dignity.

For his part William Simons was mostly quiet. He was still awake and alert in between his naps, and the nurses checked on him every hour to make sure he hadn't slipped into a coma as they feared he soon would. He was even lucid, despite the fact that they could see some gross anatomical changes in his brain on the scans. He could talk, though he chose not to most of the time. Reginald thought he was conserving his strength.

Strangely he wasn't angry. Sad and bitter as he had every right to be, but he didn't complain about the unfairness of his situation or abuse people. He didn't even get upset with him, though Reginald surely deserved his anger. Reginald had apologised to him of course, many times, and each time William Simons had said almost nothing. Reginald wasn't even completely certain he saw him. He seemed to be mumbling a lot, talking to people who weren't there. The only one who did respond to his apologies was Doctor Adams who seemed to consider them completely inappropriate. But then Reginald considered Doctor Adams completely inappropriate.

The man was too cold, too clinical. And far too concerned with the information they were getting. He was also an administrator, not a research scientist. Reginald was becoming more and more convinced of that. His knowledge of genetic medicine was limited and some of it surprisingly out of date. But then he performed none of the analyses himself. He just oversaw them, and then made cutting remarks about those he thought weren't doing their jobs properly.

As long as he didn't interfere with the nurses as they tended to Mr. Simons and didn't disparage the patient too greatly, Reginald didn't care though. And of course as long as they didn't try to take any biological samples out of the suite. But that would not be easy. To get out into the hallway someone would have to go through the pre-op room as it was the only one that still had a working set of doors. The doors in the recovery room had been barred and welded shut, and of course there was no direct access through the theatre itself. The others weren't going to let anyone leave with samples. There were also monitors and guards stationed in the hallways and of course an entire army just outside. No one entered or left without being searched.

Meanwhile the theatre itself was less a surgery and more a private ward. But that was as it should be. Though they were doing some tests on Mr. Simons, they were minimally invasive and there was no surgery planned. Instead it was purely about keeping the patient as comfortable as possible as they tried to treat him.

When he wasn’t napping most of Mr. Simon's time in between scans, and the various monitoring procedures, was spent speaking with Pastor Franks. Discussing little of consequence but seeing to his affairs. Dictating a few letters for his family and asking that the pastor make sure they were visited and given whatever comfort they could be. Dictating a couple of other letters as well for his course supervisor and a few friends. Preparing his will.

William knew he was dying, and yet somehow he had put that knowledge aside along with the fear and the grief that would surely have riddled anyone else, to think of others. That was an impressive thing and Reginald admired him for it, even as it made his own crime seem all the worse.

When this was over and he had seen to his responsibilities and had made sure that not a trace of the angelic DNA escaped the room, he would stand trial. Though no one seemed to be demanding it, he would insist, because it was the right thing to do. And when he faced his accusers he would tell them of William Simons, the man who he had destroyed.

For the moment though he had his duties to see to, most of which consisted of sitting in the observation room studying the latest scans and looking for the changes from the previous ones. He would have preferred to be able to do it alone, but he could not be so lucky, and Doctor Adams was sitting at the next work station studying the same scans. They were the first MRI scans they'd been able to get after the machine had finally been fixed.

“
Two hearts!”

Doctor Adams stared at the computer screen in front of him as he cried out with excitement and Reginald shuddered a little. Not because of what he said but rather because of how he said it. The man was a scientist filled with the joy of discovery. Reginald understood that feeling only too well. He had experienced it himself not that long before. And he now knew from bitter personal experience where it could lead. His victim was now chained with his new plastic chains to a mortuary table in the next room. Soon he feared that the table would be used for the purpose it had been designed for and he would have a good man's death on his conscience. Still he held his tongue. He had a job to do and worrying about what the lead scientist thought wasn't part of it.

He didn't like the doctor though. He was arrogant and cold, never a good combination, and worst of all Reginald suspected he had an agenda. He wanted to study Mr. Simons, by any means possible. Even by vivisection if necessary. He was constantly pushing to do more invasive procedures and to have samples sent away. He wanted to analyse the DNA. But Reginald would not permit it. His patient would suffer no more than he absolutely had to and no tissue samples would be leaving the hospital. Ever. That was the arrangement. The deal that had been struck. And Reginald was determined to see that it was kept. This could not happen again. Whether all the storms and disasters that the church believed were due to his gene therapy trial or not, he could never allow another human being to go through the same torment that William Simons was. It was unacceptable.

“Can you imagine? Two hearts! Think of the circulatory system. One to pump blood to the body, and one purely for the lungs. It must be incredibly efficient. And the lungs – all those extra lobes and the sheer size of them. He could practically breathe in space!”

Privately Reginald was wondering how he was still breathing at all. The changes working through Mr. Simon's body were tearing him apart. Rebuilding him little by little, but doing far more damage to him in the process from what he could see.

It was obvious that the genes he'd given him were converting his body into some sort of avian life form. Even without the evidence of the wings slowly growing out of his body the other signs were unmistakeable. His bones were hollow. Structurally reinforced like building girders, but light weight. Bird bones. Everything about him was designed to be light, presumably so he could fly. And no matter how much he ate he kept losing weight. In a single day he'd lost another five pounds, and that was after he'd eaten an entire larder full of raw vegetables. Now, despite standing at six foot two or three, he weighed in at only a hundred and twenty three pounds. That was less than a model of similar height would weigh, and yet he had a barrel chest, massive wing stumps growing out of his back, another large bony growth on his ribs and muscles everywhere.

It was amazing the detail they could see of him through the MRI and CT scans. And the way he was changing almost before their eyes. Changing internally even more than externally. He'd only been here for a few days and already he was different to how he had been. The wing stumps on his back had grown an eighth of an inch longer and the bones and muscles in them had increased in size. His digestive system was continuing to change, the intestines becoming longer and thinner, presumably to accommodate his new diet. Meanwhile one of his kidneys had vanished completely and his liver was half the size it should be.

Then there was the glowing. That was beyond strange. The biopsy of his skin had revealed that he had some sort of fluorescent pigment in his skin that reacted to heat. Specifically body heat. No one had ever seen anything like it before.

At the cellular level things were stranger. His blood was wrong. There were far too many red and white blood cells. The first was obviously to help him exchange oxygen better. The second had no discernible purpose as far as he could tell, unless he was fighting an infection. And it was always possible that his body was busy rejecting itself. Whatever the reason, his blood was thicker than it should be. Too thick. He actually needed two hearts to pump it around his body.

Every cell contained too many mitochondria and ribosomes. That he thought had to be about energy. About giving the angel the energy he needed to fly. But it could also just be a mistake. Almost everything within him could be a mistake. He'd known that the instant he'd seen his chromosomes under the microscope.

The DNA was wrong. Badly wrong. He still had twenty three pairs of chromosomes like any man. But they were the wrong lengths. The pairs were mismatched. It was because the insertions had worked but not every chromosome in every cell had accepted them all. So where one chromosome in a pair had accepted more of the insertions than the other they didn't match.

There was a term for that. For a creature built from the genetics of two different creatures. A mosaic. But Mr. Simons was a mosaic on a level never before seen. He wasn't a mixture of cells of two different creatures. Instead every cell was a mixture of two different genomes. In fact every chromosome pair was such a mix. That was something he'd never considered when he'd set about his plan. But he should have. With over a hundred different insertions and the genetic material not replicating properly in vitro, it should have been obvious that it would happen.