1

Year 2020

The nurse carefully pushed the hypodermic needle into the IV line and paused. She peered through her visor to the man standing on the other side of the plexiglass and waited for his response. The man nodded, giving his authorization one more time. Not that it was required. Captain Hayback had already signed a mountain of authorization and indemnity forms in triplicate days ago. Still, the nurse felt it important enough to check one last time before plunging the liquid into someone’s veins and past the point of no return.

Hayback had no such qualms. The medication was the latest thing off the unofficial production line, a collaboration between the expertise and skill of private enterprise and the bottomless funding of defense budgets. The scientific name was Reguravixumbrusibine. In his world of military briefing rooms, armed forces boardroom tables, and detail-rich reports, they called it Rejuvenate. It was the number one priority for the mighty military machine he was part of.

After pushing the plunger and expelling the viscous liquid, the nurse pulled the syringe from the intravenous line and reassuringly rubbed the patient’s shoulder. The patient nodded, looked over to the plexiglass and managed a weak smile, the only possible smile she could deliver given her condition. She slowly raised her hand as if to say ‘thank you’ and ‘it will be alright’. He hoped so.

He returned the wave as he took in her bald head and sunken features. Seeing her like that tore him up from the inside. All the power in the free world seemed worthless against her particular form of aggressive cancer.

The patient grimaced as she sunk back into the bed, the ordeal taking its toll as the meds started to kick in. He held a hand up to the glass and willed the synthetic antibodies to do their job. To cure his wife. To save their family.

He watched as the nurse made her rounds of the other patients in the room. Twelve beds in total, each with a patient in different stages of human decay, all receiving a different variation of Rejuvenate.

From a Petri dish to human trial testing in a matter of years. It was unheard of. But when Defense wanted something badly enough, due process was sidestepped. He leaned on his relationships. Flexed the mighty bounds of his authority. Signed the numerous documents, policies and reports. Gave the orders. Hayback accepted the lack of propriety because the military was impatient, because they had troops dying on the front line.

He nominated his wife for the trial because the alternative was not a possibility. She was slowly dying before his eyes and he had already lost so much. He couldn’t bear to lose her as well.

The nurse continued her rounds, running basic medical diagnostics and recording the information on the patient’s chart before moving onto the next. When she had finished her assigned tasks, she stood at the end of his wife’s bed and watched. She cupped her hands to her chest as if in silent prayer, then made her way to the airlock.

Although Hayback couldn’t hear any sounds through the glass, he watched as his wife’s ECG displayed peaks and troughs before disappearing in a haze, then replaced by a replicate pattern. He wondered what he would do when all of it was over. The rollercoaster ride from a perfect family, to diagnosis, to untested miracle cure, was an emotional toll he was never built for.

Moments later, the external airlock door hissed open, and the nurse appeared from around the corner. Freshly sprayed and washed, she wrung her hands together as if they were still wet.

“Why don’t you go home?” she said. “We can call you if there are any sudden changes to her condition.”

“Ellie’s with my parents,” Hayback said, rubbing his own hands together. “There’s nothing for me at home.”

“Well, I can set up a cot for you in the bunks. That way you can stay here.”

“It’s okay, really. If she’s going to tough this one out, then so am I.”

She gave a weak smile. “At least let me get you a cup of coffee?”

He stared at her, and eventually nodded curtly, reluctantly accepting the offer. Accepting charity wasn’t his strong suit, never was. His wife tried to change him, but he refused to change.

As the nurse walked away, he reached up and stroked his beard. He couldn’t remember the last time he shaved, or showered, or ate. He was either too panicked the end would come as soon as he took his eyes off her or too excited when they prescribed a new treatment. Make it this one, let it be the one, make it the last one.

Minutes turned into hours, and they turned into days. The people, the conversations, his surroundings: they all became a blur. From time to time, he would feel pats on his shoulder. Some would stay while others would solemnly saunter down the halls without stopping for a word or a glimpse, purposely avoiding eye contact. Every one of them knew the toll it was taking.

A few of his visitors were civilians, but the majority wore either battle fatigues or dress uniforms. Despite the decoration on the chest of some of those people, he just couldn’t look them in the eye, let alone muster any sort of salute. He felt broken, which is an odd feeling when your wife is the one battling the invisible disease.

The checks by the nurses became startling more regular and he couldn’t tell whether it was a good thing or a bad thing. Then the doctors arrived and talked to the nurses. More and more hazmat-garbed people gathered at his wife’s bedside to take every possible sample and rush it away into an adjoining lab.

The medical leadership ignored Hayback’s requests for status updates as they fed him one standard response after another. A bullshit throwaway. His heart sunk each time, and he could feel his large shoulders hunch with every interaction. They mentioned terms like ‘liposomes’ and ‘polypeptide nanoparticles’, however, he knew enough to know they were talking about the delivery methods of the treatment, not the actual drug being administered, and certainly fuck all to do with what was happening to his wife. He was medically trained for the battlefield but certainly not a scientist, not a biologist, not a geneticist. It seemed his rank, his connection to the project, government funding, carried no weight within the hospital’s walls.

When he looked upon his wife, he could see that she was fighting it. Whatever muscles she had in her body were tensed, the grimace on her face permanent, even while she slept. She had always been a fighter. That was one thing that gave him faith that she could pull through. She would be a survivor.

It was late on a Thursday when the medical team induced a coma to ease her pain, while they continued their discussions and considered their options. He didn’t remember signing anything, and whatever conversation he might have had with a white-coated doctor seemed like a haze.

He gazed upon his resting wife when, unexpectedly, one of the patients crashed, their ECG displaying a sharp flat line. A mass of bodies rushed to the bedside as a patient on the other side of the room also went into cardiac arrest. The sudden crises had the hospital staff stretched across the room as they competed for valuable resources. Equipment moved around the room as much as the medical professionals. Each attempt to restore a life was countered with another patient’s needs.

He watched the circus implode through the glass. He couldn’t hear what was going on, but if he could the cacophony of alarms would be brain splitting. His eyes darted back to his wife and he watched as her ECG peak flattened out, her head falling limply to her shoulder.

An influx of hazard-suited reserves flooded the room, several attending to her bedside. They commenced the preliminaries, checking her eyes and trying to rouse a response. One of them wheeled a crash cart over as it charged. Everyone stepped back as the nurse placed the paddles on her chest.

The first shock sent her lifeless body flying upwards, and it bounced down on the bed unceremoniously.

Several orderlies attempted to center her as they prepared for another round. Hayback put a hand on the glass. Willed for her heart to restart. Knowing it wasn’t over, that she had more to give.

The second attempt rattled her brittle body so violently blood flew out her mouth and covered the physician’s visors, specks of black and red covering their pristinely white uniforms.

Hayback looked on in horror as the carnage unfolded in front of him. The rushing of blood-covered medical staff; the shadow of his wife covered in her own blood. He was powerless to do anything for her.

He closed his eyes, turned and sank to the floor.

Put his head between his knees and howled.