Beautiful minds
What happens when a medical trial goes wrong?
She never really knew what "ignorance is bliss" meant until the day her patient's blood stained the sterile white room crimson. Sure, she had speculated the reasons for the well known phrase, but she had never really known. Now, now she knew. Now, she wished for the ignorance that evaded her.
She had never seen such a blistering bright color, or so she felt. Although somewhere in the back of her mind she thought of roses. Red blooming roses. Roses wet with morning dew. Yes that was it, the room was covered in roses, not her perfectly healthy patient's blood. It couldn't be his blood.
The test results laid there, heavy in her limp hands. The clip board felt steely cold as she pressed her thumbs into the coarse wood. She felt the edge of the paper with her pale nails.
He'd been responding so well to his monthly treatments. So so well. His cognitive ability had improved by 40% in the last six months. She had been so excited. So so excited. Her excitement had been the thing to keep her mind creating the illusion that everything was going to be ok. What had happened to James's smiling bright face? Had it really just turned into sinewy red extremities pouring from the ruins of his skull? The contents of his head had not just splattered against the walls. They couldnt have. Her mind tried to reconcile these things that held so much weight on her sanity.
James had been diagnosed with cerebral palsy. His family thought he'd never be able to walk. Never be able to speak his mind, if he had anything going through his mind that is. Sometimes his family even questioned if there was a brain in his head at all. They had questioned if the boy in front of them even had a life to live at times. But not her, she never questioned whether his brain functioned, just how it functioned and how well. Under her treatment, James began to walk. He began to speak his mind. And wow did he have a beautiful mind.
When the ad in the New york Times went up for experimental medical trials for the severely mentally handicapped, James's parents had been one of the first to sign him up.
He had been the perfect candidate. Relatively healthy. Young, but not overly so. And such a lovely personality.
"You can see it in their eyes, you know," she would tell the other doctors when she went over the candidates. Of course they didn't know, all they saw was the vain seduction of money twinkling like stars in the eyes of their soon to be victims.
Poison therapy was a welcome alternative to the daunting choice of a life without sustainance. She had had many voluntary patients. Her practice was one of many that had been tempted by the high commission offered for doctor's participation in a drug trial. The temptation had overwhelmed their caution and they signed up without hesitation.
And so it came to be that the first 100 samples of Diafalophin were shipped to the brick building with the sterile white rooms. 100 silent killers in one building. 100 possible lives destroyed.
Sitting there in that room with James's corpse, brought back all of her memories of him. He used to bring her flowers, white lilies, on days of tests. They looked lovely and reminded her of his shining white teeth, which were now covered in blood. In fact that day he had brought her a dozen white lilies. Her heart beat bounded like a baby bunny's. A dozen lilies, a dozen patients, a dozen goals, a dozen lives.
She stood in shock and left the room. she stopped at the secretary's desk and pointed to the room. She tried to speak but nothing escaped. She squeaked and tears streamed down her face. The secretary looked up from her weathered book and narrowed her eyes. She followed the long stretch of the doctor's arm with her calculating eyes. She sighed as she dogeared her book and put it aside. She stood up by pushing her heavy, unstable mountain of a body off of her chair. She then took her time slowly lumbering to the room. When she peeked her long pointed nose around the corner, a high pitched screech escaped her plump lips. Like a banshee she wailed. The wail kept coming... Reverberating in the doctors head. It made her dizzy, rendered her useless. Her legs collapsed from under her. She shook from head to toe in complete agony. Eventually her world went numb and dark.
Her eyes turned back and her head crashed against the ground.