Guinea Pig (21 page)

Chapter Twenty Four.

Twenty four hours later things were quiet in the surgical suite, but far from happy.

It had been grim in the hospital since the attack. More than grim. People spent their time alternating between disbelief that it had happened and fear that Adams would come back. But they were also trying to deal with their injuries. And in Reginald's case nausea. The simple gut churning reaction to having witnessed something so despicable.

The image of Adams bent over his patient with a drill was burnt into his mind and he feared it would never leave him. That a man could do something like that to another was appalling. But Adams had. He hadn't flinched. He hadn't shown a single shred of empathy as he relentlessly drilled holes in his victim. The man was beyond cold. And, Reginald thought, there was no way he could be a doctor. He probably wasn't even a scientist. He was something else.

Meanwhile the soldiers that had helped him, and escaped with him afterwards, had also beaten them – in Reginald's case very badly – and they were all bruised and bloodied. Reginald didn't care about the injuries to his face. They would heal and in any case it was the least he deserved for his crimes.

Ever since then they had kicked the other soldiers out. The bishop had arrived, given a few orders when he'd discovered what had happened, and the soldiers had backed off. No more of their kind would be coming in, and they seemed happy enough with that. Elijah guessed that the soldiers had simply been asked to contain them. And with the hospital in ruins, only one way in or out through the car park, they could do that just as easily from outside. There was no need to patrol the hallways and guard the doors. A few were stationed in the atrium, but even they didn't really have to be there.

More medical staff were on their way as well. Staff they could trust. There would be no more outsiders dealing with William Simons. No more scientists either. The man was not a lab animal. He only wished he'd understood that before he'd injected him. Before he'd begun this nightmare.

“
How's he doing?”

Pastor Franks asked the question. Just as he'd asked it a hundred times before. And Reginald could only give him the same answer as he had every time he had asked before.

“His heart's still beating.”

Or actually both of them were. How that was happening he didn't know. Between what he'd done to him and what Doctor Adams had then done he should be dead. But he wouldn't die. Something kept him going despite everything. At least he didn't seem to be in as much pain any more. He wasn't awake but his moans weren't as terrible as they had been. And after only twenty four hours that seemed like a miracle.

“We should give him more food.”

Nurse Etta spoke up from the next room where she was watching the computers, and he guessed that another hour had passed. They were feeding him hourly through a feeding tube, and it seemed to be helping. His weight was still creeping down, but at least it wasn't plummeting. And having determined that the oral antibiotics hadn't seemed to harm him he was including those with the food. As much as he could take. Infection was Mr. Simons' biggest risk.

Reginald hooked up the bag and turned the wheel to let another hundred mls or so of the highly concentrated protein and carbohydrate solution flow into his stomach, hoping as he had every other time that it would help. That his patient wouldn't throw it up. And just as before he didn't. He was tough. Though Reginald suspected that it was actually the flesh that was tough. It refused to die, even though he was sure William Simons might have wanted to.

“You could let the nurses do that.”

The Pastor was right of course, he could. And normally he would. But not now. Not with this patient.

“Etta's busy and Jones is asleep.”

He was glad to have the two new nurses, and even more glad that they were nuns. He could trust them. Just as he could trust the technician the church had provided, though for a while he'd wondered if he'd have to send James away for emergency treatment. He only wished they had another doctor to help him. One was on the way, but he was coming in from out of state. Los Angeles and half of California was in complete chaos. The hospitals for a thousand miles were overflowing with emergency room and critical care patients. Finding a free doctor there was hard enough. Finding one who was also a trusted member of the church was nearly impossible. But after Doctor Adams he wasn't willing to have any other doctor go near his patient. Certainly not one provided by the government.

He was certain that they had provided Doctor Adams or whoever he was with a specific goal in mind from the start. To get some samples. Maybe they hadn't instructed him to be so brutal in his methods, but they'd always intended for samples to be taken for research in a government facility somewhere. They'd always intended to break their agreement. It was the only way he could think that the doctor and half a dozen soldiers could have left in a military helicopter after they'd finished and flown away without anyone suspecting a thing. The official story about them having been spies with false identities seemed like a lie. A poor one.

But if the bishop was right they'd have the proof in due course. The moment they tried to incorporate the angelic DNA into a human being somewhere else, they'd have another disaster on their hands and the truth would be known.

And he knew they would try. The material they had got was incomplete. Half human half angelic and completely chaotic. They didn't have any of the virus he'd created left. Reginald already knew tissue culture wouldn't work. The angelic material didn't do well outside of a body. So sooner or later they would figure out that the only chance they had to salvage any of the experiment was to find a compatible donor and try to grow the host cells in him. And then they would start this whole nightmare all over again. He wondered if the new host would be told what would happen to him. Or just used. As he had used William Simons.

They sat there in silence for a while, watching William Simons as he stubbornly kept living despite everything that had been done to him. And then unexpectedly Elijah asked him the question he could never answer.

“Why?”

It was a terrible question. Terrible because he didn’t know how to answer it – and worse because he  had to try.

“I don't know.”

But that was a lie. He did know why he'd done it. It just wasn't the sort of knowledge that he could put into words. Not words that made a lot of sense. Not even to him.

“I had to know.”

He'd said that before, and in a way it was the truth. He had had to know. But no matter how many times he'd told people that, and no matter how fascinating the idea had been, it wasn't the need for knowledge that had driven him. Not for scientific knowledge anyway. He was curious. It was probably his dominant personality trait. But it wasn't intellectual curiosity that had driven him to commit his crime. That was there, but the motivation ran far deeper.

“Know what?” Pastor Franks had guessed as much. And maybe he deserved to know. Maybe he could hear his confession.

“I don't fully know.” But he did. He just didn't want to know. And he certainly didn't want to make it real by saying it out loud. But they had a right to know.

“It began with Mary. With her death.”

It was a difficult thing for him to talk about. Even to remember. But maybe this was the time for it, and someone should know.

“When she died I was lost. A part of me had died with her. You see before I met her I was nothing. A bright, young trainee doctor with an ego the size of a small planet and curiosity to match. But she changed me. She made me a better man. I still don't know how. All I do know is that she made me want to be better. She made me care about people as I never had before.”

“Before I met her I was probably destined to become like Doctor Adams. A scientist with nothing but a thirst for knowledge. But afterwards I became a doctor.”

“And then she died. I couldn't understand that. I couldn't process it. And though she had returned me to my childhood faith, I couldn't understand. She was such a good woman. Lovely and kind and with a heart as big as a house. The world needed her. I needed her. And yet she was taken. And taken so cruelly. Cancer can be a terrible disease.”

“For a long time after that I lived half a life. I went about my work and life and did what I had to do. But I did it only because I had to. There was no joy in the world.”

“I lost my faith too. I couldn't understand how God could have done that to her. To me. I went to church, I said the words and bowed my head. But it was a learned behaviour, not belief.”

“And then one day I was reading through her journals and I came across her entry about her visit to the Mileseva Monastery when she was sixteen, and my world changed. Something about it resonated within me. The more so when I read what she'd written about the stories of the brush. You see Mary was fascinated by it. She was an artist and the idea of a brush that could inspire was a wonder to her.”

“Reading her journal brought me closer to her again. It let me feel her passion and wonder. Know her heart and soul. So I read it and read it again. I lived her visit. I dreamed her dreams. And then I moved on to the rest of her world.”

“She had photos of all the frescoes in the monastery throughout her studio. She'd started painting some of them herself, trying to recreate the inspiration those ancient artists must have known. She had collected all the various stories of the brush as well. Written them down and gathered them together in a bundle in her desk. Analysed them, hunting for any clue she could find as to how the brush inspired. And among them was the tale of the brush having been made from the hair of the archangel Raphael.”

“The moment I saw that I was hooked though I didn't understand why at first. All I knew was that my wife was dead, and that all her life she'd wanted nothing more than to see an angel. To have an angel guide her in her art. In that moment the two parts of my life came together. My work as a doctor developing genetic medicines. And my marriage to a woman who had both found a clue to a genetic trace of an angel and who had lived her life wanting to see one. And I knew then that I could do it. That I could create her dream for her.”

“After that the steps to my damnation as they say were all very logical. I built a private lab where I could perfect the techniques I needed to extract old DNA. I specialised in the specific medicine of gene insertion therapy. I encouraged the church to bring the relic to America by beginning a public awareness campaign.”

“It took years, but time didn't matter to me. Nothing mattered except my wife's dream. I was doing it for Mary. There were setbacks, viruses that couldn't take sufficient genetic material, problems with the accuracy of the insertions, unexpected inactivation of genes, but each time I found a way through. And each time I overcame another obstacle I kept thinking it was fate. That I was doing what I was meant to do.”

“Then, when I was ready I stole the brush. I faked a robbery and stole what I thought would lead to the most important discovery of my life. But it wasn't a scientific discovery I was hunting. Science was only the tool I used. It was about bringing back a tiny piece of my wife. Her dream. Never anything more than that.”

“And then I found my victim.”

They were surely the worst words any doctor could ever have to speak. But they were true and they had to be spoken.

“Of course I never thought he would be a victim. I thought he would be a glorious triumph. A man transformed into an angel. A gift to my wife. Her dream given to the world. I was somehow completely blind to the risks.”

“And even when I found him I thought that I'd found more proof that it was meant to be. That he was meant to become an angel. Born in Saint Mary's Hospital to a mother named Mary on the very same day that my wife visited the Mileseva Monastery and began her lifelong obsession with angels and a particular paint brush. Bearing the tattoo Fiat Lux, Let There Be Light. A good man confirmed in the faith. And most striking of all, bearing the middle name Raphael. So many coincidences. I was certain that when he volunteered for the trial that it had to be fate.”

“But then the problems began. I'd intended to put him in the trial with the others and simply swap the dose. No one would know I figured. But I was delayed. I couldn't get the angelic DNA to replicate as it should, and I needed it to. I can replicate human DNA, mouse DNA almost any DNA on the planet. But not that. The standard techniques simply don't work on it and there were no others that did either. Not even tissue culture. Most tissues are destroyed by it, but I found a few – a very few – that could at least survive with the insertions. The only way it will truly replicate though is in a living cell inside a host. So as the trial continued and the six subjects were treated I worked frantically every night to find an answer. But the answer wasn't what I expected. The angelic material will not replicate outside of a human body. And not many human bodies at that.”