Dragonfly Girl

by Marti Leimbach

  I put his notepaper into my jeans pocket, feeling thrilled, almost jittery about what Dmitry and I are working on. But it’s suppertime for the rats, and I promised April I wouldn’t be late with their food. So I head over to animal tech.

  Quiet and sleepy during the day, the rats are alert, active, and desperate to come out and play this time of evening. They leap from shelves in their cages and crawl along the bars, hoping that I’ll come over to give them some attention or feed them treats. I scoop their mix from a big plastic tub, luring them to one end as I clean out the litter trays from the other. Some are so friendly they prefer crawling up my arm to eating, and I can see why April is so fond of them.

  I check the ones with surgical scars, looking for signs of infection. I hand out bits of cake, letting them eat from my palm. I’ve grown very fond of the rats since April has been away. I check Cornelius and his brothers, the ones April is planning to take home when she returns from vacation.

  I find the brothers all right, but not Cornelius. He’s usually the one clamoring at the cage door. It’s unlike him to stay sleeping when there is freedom to be had, and very strange for him to sleep through dinner. I see his tail poking out from under a cardboard box that April has set up as a hiding space. Lifting the box, I find him hunched up, his fur standing on end, his sides heaving with each breath. I’m about to scoop him up to have a closer look when he suddenly shakes, then loses his balance and topples to his side. He lurches forward, all his muscles stiffening, then lies still.

  I gasp, grab up Cornelius, and cradle him in my arms. Then I run out of the room to the glass balcony, charging down the staircase to the floor below. I don’t know what I’m doing exactly, but I grab a stethoscope off someone’s desk, wrap the headset around my neck, and insert the eartips. I can’t hear breathing, or the rapid tap of a rat heartbeat. I can’t hear anything at all, really. I adjust the bell and try again, then pinch a forepaw, the classic way that researchers determine death in lab rodents. No response.

  In all likelihood, it’s a heart attack. There’s no rodent-size defibrillator around here, but Dmitry has oxygen in his lab. I run to his lab, throw myself into a chair, push oxygen in the rat’s direction, and begin chest compressions.

  After six minutes, I give up.

  I want to call out for help, but there’s nobody around. The giant building with its lights and beeps, its breathing lungs and pumping hearts feels empty except for me and Cornelius. Anyway, there’s nothing anyone can do.

  Suddenly, I remember the piece of notepaper in my pocket: Dmitry’s chart that maps out, in theory, a way to bring back dead neurons. It won’t work if I follow the procedure as Dmitry has written it, but I have some ideas of my own. My modifications might help the brain create glial walls around hopeless cells and stimulate the hypothalamus to create an excess of new neurons. A few additional modifications and maybe—I know it sounds insane—but maybe I can help Cornelius.

  I grab ice from the kitchen and bury Cornelius in it to bring his temperature down and slow the rate of neural death. Meanwhile, I assemble everything else I need inside Dmitry’s lab. If my experiment fails, at least I’ll be able to tell April that I tried my hardest.

  And if it doesn’t fail?

  People have done crazy things in this place—persuaded human skin to grow on pieces of apples denuded of their cells, grown kidneys to the size needed for humans, tested tiny vascular implants that wrap around blood vessels and clean the blood. In such a place, it doesn’t seem so odd to be working late at night on a dead rat.

  I place Cornelius on a bed of paper towels. I have to get a cannula into the vein of his tail. A cannula is like a tiny intravenous tube. With it in place I can give him injections. I’ve never done anything like this before, but I’ve seen it on videos. I bite back my nerves and begin. It’s a terrible feeling to pierce his skin like this, but I do it. Then I study Dmitry’s notes, adding in my own ideas, the ones I’ve dreamed up over the past many weeks. Solutions come to me freshly as I work. It’s as though I’m connected to something greater than myself, the answers arriving as I move toward them. I just have to keep going.

  Cornelius’s reentry into the world begins very subtly. The tone of his skin changes. His toes unfurl, one by one. He takes irregular, shallow breaths. I’m not even sure he’s breathing at first. He gains color in his nose, his ears, his feet. He’s still a very sick rat as I take him from the table and hold him against my belly, warming his body against me. Then the trembling starts. He’s shaking, which terrifies me, and his feet twitch. He gasps and gasps as I maneuver the oxygen nearer. It seems to help, but he’s barely hanging on. For a moment I regret bringing him back. The suffering is obvious.

  Unless I do something quickly, his heart will stop again. But if the blood is restored too quickly to his brain, he could suffer a brain injury. I remember a Danish study about MEK 1/2 inhibitors—that’s an idea! Then I add some ordinary nitroglycerin to Cornelius’s IV.

  He’s still alive fifteen minutes later, then half an hour later. No longer struggling as much. He’s even attempted walking. An hour later, I’m still sitting with him and he’s breathing almost normally. I wrap him in my lab coat, then bundle him into a plastic tray and cover the tray with wire mesh. It’s been four hours and is time to wake Dmitry for his medicine.

  I’m at the door to the dormitory when the weight of what just transpired finally hits. I stop suddenly, putting my hand against the wall to steady myself.

  I just brought something that was dead back to life.

  16

  I WAKE UP feeling rat whiskers against my cheek. I open my eyes and see Cornelius chewing one of the many electrical cords that weave across Dmitry’s work station. I sit up quickly, startling him so that he runs, and then I have to fish him out from behind a ring stand. The clever rat has even managed to chew off his IV.

  He’s in fine shape for an animal that was dead hours ago. He still has signs of a heart condition, his sides working hard as he breathes. But he’s alive, bending his head up to sniff me as I hold him against my chest.

  I can’t wait to tell Dmitry. Between the two of us we’ve come up with a kind of protocol for bringing back recently dead organisms. Cornelius is proof. The strangest part is that it doesn’t feel strange. Just another of science’s discoveries that will one day be taken for granted.

  I don’t know exactly what to do with Cornelius. Do I put him back with the other rats? Do I keep him separate and show him to Munn when he arrives this morning? What will Munn think, anyway?

  I take Cornelius off to the coffee bar and let him lick sugar water from my palm as I prepare some tea for Dmitry. I find some cookies and offer one to Cornelius. It gives me a special thrill to see him take it in his paws and chew off a piece.

  “You’re going to be a famous rat,” I tell him.

  I hear footsteps, then a loud moan of disgust. I don’t need to look around to know that it’s Will.

  “Oh Gaaawd!” he says, stomping toward me. “Do we now have two mad women who carry rats around like handbags?”

  “Good morning, Will,” I say. “Did you have a nice weekend?”

  “Not particularly. Do you realize how many violations of good laboratory practice you are committing? First, we shouldn’t even have a coffee bar right here in the middle of the building like this. Second, that disgusting little creature you treat like a teddy bear ought to have been pronged ages ago—” Despite his protests about the coffee bar being in breach of laboratory practice, he begins setting up his own double espresso. “Why are you here, anyway? It’s the morning. Aren’t you usually in class in the mornings?”

  “I—” I’m bursting to reveal everything that happened last night, but Will doesn’t deserve to be the first to hear of the experiment’s success. By all rights, that should be Dmitry.

  “Get rid of that,” Will says, pointing at Cornelius.

  “He’s very important. Leave him alone.”

  He reaches for Cornelius, clasping
him by the tail.

  “Don’t touch him!” I say. But it’s too late. Will has Cornelius upside down by the base of his tail. Cornelius lets out a screech.

  “Stop it! He’ll have another heart attack!”

  Will finds this amusing. He starts to laugh while I wrestle Cornelius out of his hands. Then I rush to the staircase.

  “Where are you going now?” Will says. “We’ve got work to do.”

  We’re supposed to be gathering the final data on the experiment he’s in charge of, determining the efficiency of the bassinets. But that is going to have to wait.

  “Munn’s office!” I say, racing up the stairs.

  “Are you going to go crying to him now? Telling him how awful I am to you?”

  I ignore him and keep climbing.

  “If you are going to complain to Munn, it will only reflect badly on you,” he calls up to me. I hear him curse, then his footsteps charging up after me.

  He says, “You’ll look as though you are whining, which you are. Has nobody told you that Munn loathes whiners?”

  I won’t be whining. I’ll be telling him what happened to Cornelius, who Will nearly scared to death a minute ago.

  Will says, “You’ll say I’m unkind to you, and I’ll say you’re unprofessional—which you are. I’ve kept careful lab notes on all the things you’ve tainted, ruined, or miscalculated in the laboratory, including the time you set your head on fire.”

  “I don’t care!” I say, though I do.

  “You realize you are going to address the top man while hugging a lab rat?”

  “Yes!”

  “So you intend to make yourself look even more ridiculous? Well, balls out, I have to admire it. But it’s your word against mine. Who do you think he will believe?”

  I pause and glance down at him. “I’m recording this conversation on my phone, so I imagine it will be me,” I say, holding up my phone.

  I think I hear a little gasp. Then, “Kira, really, I was only kidding! I think you’re a wonderful mentee, a real gem. Come have a coffee with me. Bring the creature if you must.”

  I’m not really recording him—the thought only occurred to me as I said it. I shoot forward up the last stairs to the upper lab, and finally to Munn’s office. By the time I reach the door, I’m breathless.

  I haven’t had a conversation with Dr. Munn since joining Mellin. He’s rarely down in the labs, and he’d have no reason to talk to me anyway. I’ve certainly never been in his office. But I barge through the door without knocking, closing it quickly behind me to shut out Will.

  “Sorry,” I say, by way of greeting.

  Munn is sitting at his desk, the window behind him filled with a view of flowers and fan palms. If he’s startled to see me, arriving at speed and panting in front of him, he doesn’t show it. He looks up from his papers, pushes his reading glasses down on his nose, and says, “Good morning. Can I help you with something?”

  “This rat,” I say, swallowing hard.

  He nods as though rats are often brought to his attention. “The rat climbing onto your shoulder, you mean?”

  “Yes, he was . . . uh.” I don’t know how to say this. “He was . . . um . . . dead. He died. Last night. And I spent some time reviving him.”

  Munn sits back in his chair and looks from my face to Cornelius, then back again. “Well, that’s good.”

  Munn doesn’t seem at all convinced, so I say, “I’m not making this up.”

  He studies me for a moment, then says, “I have to admit the rat looks very much alive, and as far as I am aware, that isn’t normally the case in previously dead animals.”

  I hear a single “Ha!” from behind the door. That would be Will, of course, with his ear to the keyhole like a schoolboy. At any moment Munn will invite him in. “Did you know that Dmitry has been working on a way of regenerating dead neurons?” I say.

  Munn raises an eyebrow.

  “It’s an effort to revive those that would be declared brain-dead.”

  “Not much would surprise me about Dmitry’s abilities, but I’ve not heard that he’s downstairs undoing death.”

  I hear another burst of laughter from the other side of the door.

  “Well, he is,” I say boldly. “Or trying to.”

  “So, this has happened before?” says Munn. “Why wouldn’t Dmitry have told me himself?”

  “Because it hasn’t happened before. And to be perfectly honest, Dmitry wasn’t there when Cornelius came back to life. He missed the whole darn thing. He’s sick.”

  Munn clears his throat. He gives the impression that while he is somewhat amused by the conversation, his attention is now wavering. At any moment I think I’m going to be asked to leave.

  “Dr. Munn, please,” I say urgently. “I made some changes to a protocol Dmitry developed, and when I tried it, the rat came back to life. I don’t know how else to describe it. What are you supposed to do, anyway, when something important happens in an experiment?”

  “Well, you could write it up, for a start,” Munn says, and gives a little cough. “As a report.”

  The realization hits me like a stone. Of course, a report! That’s what I should have done. A paper like the one I wrote for the Science for Our Future award.

  “Just out of curiosity,” says Munn, “how did you kill the rat to begin with?”

  “Kill him?” I’m shocked he’d think I’d do such a thing. “Why would I kill him?”

  Munn cocks his head in surprise. “For the purpose of experimentation,” he says slowly. He looks at me carefully, appearing in turns charmed and mildly exasperated. “All right, forget the report. I will hear about it now. Do have a seat.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Please,” he says, gesturing toward a chair.

  I lower myself into one of the armchairs, clutching Cornelius in my lap so that he doesn’t wander off over the chair’s soft leather.

  “Put the rat on the desk,” Munn instructs. I do as I am told. Then I watch as Munn takes a mesh wastepaper basket from next to his foot, dumps its contents onto the carpet, and turns it upside down onto Cornelius so that it acts as a type of cage. “Now, please explain exactly what happened.”

  I tell him how I’ve been doing research for Dmitry. And how when Cornelius died in front of me, I ran downstairs to Dmitry’s area and somehow, by a miracle, used the set of instructions that Dmitry had written as a base and brought the rat back to life.

  “Where are these instructions?” he says.

  “They’re downstairs. In Dmitry’s area. But I added to them. And subtracted, too. Basically, I changed them.”

  “And it was definitely dead? The rat, I mean.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What would you say, five minutes?” he says. “Six? Seven?”

  “Oh, longer than that.”

  Munn smiles knowingly. “Did you know that the longest record for a person going without oxygen and surviving with no apparent brain injury is twenty-two minutes? Remarkable, isn’t it? I think we may have had a similar occurrence happen to your little fellow here.” He nods at Cornelius.

  “Sir, the rat was dead. He had no heartbeat.”

  “Decades ago, that would have meant dead, but—”

  “He was dead for almost thirty minutes.” I suddenly realize I’ve interrupted him. “Sorry,” I say.

  “Thirty minutes?” Munn considers this. His face is dark, his brow furrowed. All at once he says, “Very well, if you say so. Follow me!”

  Suddenly, he springs to his feet, reaching the door to his office in giant steps. He grabs his lab coat off a hook, swings the door open, and says, “Good morning, Will,” as Will moves aside to allow him to pass.

  Will and I follow Munn down the corridor and into the animal tech room, where he opens a cage and pulls out two rats, young does I recognize immediately. I’ve never before seen Munn in the animal tech room, let alone with rats in his hands. He handles them expertly, if coldly, and strides back out of the room, through
the dining room, then down the spiral stairway until he reaches the bottom floor, with Will and me struggling to keep up with him.

  “Do you still have your gear set up from the experiment?” he asks.

  “Yes, sir. In Dmitry’s area.”

  Munn moves quickly toward Dmitry’s lab. At the door he stops and turns toward me, holding up the rats, one in each hand. To my horror, I see that they are now both dead.

  “Asphyxiation,” he says, by way of explanation. “This is completely unorthodox and not considered humane killing, but I am making an exception here because you have promised me you are genuine in your claims.”

  “I am,” I say, my voice shaking.

  “I certainly hope so. Check your watch. We’ll want to time this.”

  He opens the door for me, then turns to Will. “I’m sure you have something to do?” he says, and with that he turns his back on Will, who remains outside the glass walls, silently peering in.

  At Dmitry’s desk, I immediately start switching on electricity, charging up the scanner, rushing to get the correct-size needles and syringes. Munn hands me one of the rats, then fishes a cotton swab out of his pocket and checks for a corneal reflex on the other. The rat doesn’t respond. He then listens for a heartbeat and looks closely for any sign of respiration before declaring the rat dead.

  “The standard for determining death is one minute with no sign of respiration,” he says. “Check vital signs. Did you do that last night with the other rat?”

  “I didn’t check for a corneal response,” I admit.

  “Well, do it now.”

  I set to work, my heart beating wildly, praying I’m able to remember the same procedure as before. I work quietly for five minutes, ten minutes. If I make a mistake now, I’ll never be believed. The hardest part is an injection into the lumbar region, but here I go, trying to be as precise as possible and keep my hands from shaking. I watch the ultrasound screen, moving the needle with its guidance until at last it is positioned correctly. Only then do I release the contents of the tiny syringe.