by Paul Anlee
Paul leaned forward to interrupt, but Nick couldn’t stop. He’d been holding back for too long.
“She jumpstarted the human dendy trials by using herself as the first test subject,” he blurted. “She forced me, and then David, into her confidence because she needed someone to collect reliable data on what was happening to her. You have to believe us, we had nothing to do with her decision. We didn’t know anything about it until after she’d injected herself. That’s the truth.”
Paul sat silently, unable to believe but equally unable to deny that their story was consistent with the bold woman and dedicated scientist he’d married.
Dr. Holden had been listened intently to Nick’s story. “I won’t even pretend to understand what you are talking about,” she admitted. “But I have a seriously injured patient in urgent need of treatment. So, what exactly are these things in her brain? I mean, what are we dealing with here—animal, vegetable, or mineral? And is there any reason I can’t do an MRI or treat her in the normal way?”
David deferred to his partner. “Nick, you know more about clinical neuroscience than I do.”
Nick glared back at the company CEO before addressing the doctor. “She's been getting MRIs almost every week so there shouldn’t be any problem with those. I'll run over to the lab right now to get you our most recent scans for baseline comparison. In fact, our machine’s a lot more sensitive than yours so we could use it to get a more detailed current scan.”
He worked through the logistics, “No, I guess that's not going to work. She can’t be moved to the lab, and the fMRI’s too big to bring here.” Dr. Holden shifted impatiently. Nick blinked and looked at the floor. “Sorry, just trying to help.”
“Look, time is critical. Do these…dendies, you call them?” She glanced at Nick, who nodded. “Do these dendies have any drug interactions, any effect on blood clotting or bruising? How will they react to surgery?”
“We don’t know,” David intervened, as Nick struggled to formulate a cogent answer. “The simple answer is, we don’t really know.” Nick wouldn't like him admitting that, from neither the academic nor the liability perspective, but it felt good to get it out in the open. He cocked his chin defiantly toward his partner, daring him to disagree or deny. Nick averted his eyes.
David continued, “Doctor, this particular version of dendy is a hybrid nanoscale device—basically, a self-replicating, semi-conductor particle with a protein-RNA shell. Billions of these tiny components come together to build a consolidated neural network within the host, in this case, Sharon Leigh. Although we have a lot of data about how dendies behave in fish and mice, we don’t know much about they will behave in people, other than the small amount of data we’ve collected to date on Sharon. All of those data come from her; she’s the only human subject we have."
"And we’ve never exposed the dendies to this level of trauma before," Nick added. "Our guess would be that you could probably treat Sharon as if she were a perfectly normal person, one who didn’t have a dendy network growing in her brain."
David jumped back in. “And the truth is, that would only be a guess. We’re happy to help you in any way we can, to tell you anything that might help. I don’t know if that’ll be good enough, but that’s all we can do.”
Dr. Holden looked from David to Nick to Paul. “Very well. It seems we have little choice but to proceed with the utmost caution, given her precarious state and all of the unknowns. Do we have your permission to proceed, Mr. Leigh?”
Paul cleared his throat, but could only articulate a strained, "Yes, go ahead. Please."
“Good, then I’d better get back in there. I have two lives to save.” Heading back to the OR, she paused mid-turn. “Gentlemen, I’m not reporting what the three of you’ve been up to…not right now. To be honest, I still don’t really understand what this is, who I’d report it to, or what I’d tell them. But if it turns out to have any effect on treating Dr. Leigh or her baby, I’ll be calling every authority I can think of to make sure your involvement is known.”
“I understand,” mumbled Nick. “If we can think of anything that might help, we’ll tell the nurses.”
“You do that,” Dr. Holden shot one last disgusted glance their way and disappeared through the double doors. Scientists!
6
It was nearly 10:00pm before Dr. Holden trudged back to the three men in the waiting room. She was in no mood for their misdeeds and drama. The men stood up slowly, with Paul in the middle.
“Mr. Leigh, I’m sorry."
Paul collapsed into his chair. “No, this can’t be happening.”
“Your wife has lost all signs of brain activity, and is unable to breathe without a ventilator. The head trauma caused extensive bleeding and swelling throughout the brain. We were unable to save her.”
She took a deep breath before proceeding. “Sharon’s heart and other organs are functioning, but the only thing keeping her alive is the ventilator. We’re maintaining treatment for the baby’s sake but, by law, we’ll have to make a decision as to whether we continue.”
“What do you mean, by law?”
“Hospital policy doesn’t permit us to deny medical care to a pregnant woman, but state law says we need to ask your permission to maintain biological function for the benefit of the developing fetus.”
The blunt legalisms hit Paul like a physical blow. So that's what it all boils down to? A showdown between the doctors and legislators? This was his wife they were talking about!
He couldn't wrap his brain around it. He didn't even want to try. The decision they were asking of him was beyond impossible.
Sharon had always been strongly against extraordinary medical intervention. They both were. The memory was strikingly clear, as if it had been last week. They’d been lounging in bed one lazy Saturday morning, wrapped in tousled, sun-drenched sheets, and they’d sworn that if the situation were ever to arise, they'd allow the other to pass in peace.
And now, inconceivably, here they were. Sharon’s spirit was gone, that had been their firm belief. But they'd never discussed this complication. How could he keep his promise? If he let her go, as they'd both wanted and believed was right, the baby was likely to die as well. Sharon did not believe in church; she didn't believe in any organized religion.
His own faith was of little help when it came to a clear answer in ambiguous situations. A lifetime of sermons and devotion to his church had not prepared him for a conundrum like this. If he were to let Sharon go now, as she’d instructed him, would that amount to abortion? How could abortion by failing to act to save their baby—their baby boy, he reminded himself—be any less a sin than if he cut out the fetus himself? His church considered both taking life through abortion and prolonging life through artificial means to be equally abhorrent. What decision was he to make? There was no right answer.
It didn't help that this mere hope of a baby she was carrying had been emotionally diminished by the doctor’s own words to being no more than a developing fetus, totally dependent on his wife’s soulless body for the slightest chance of survival. The whole process sounded so…clinical, so…parasitic.
If by some miracle the fetus managed to survive, there would be no guarantee that it wouldn't suffer critical, lifelong complications. Who knows what effect these DNNDs might have already had on Sharon, and on the baby's development? The experiment had no place in God’s plan. Maybe the accident was fate, or maybe it was God's will—maybe the fetus was not meant to survive the accident.
And if he gave permission for the ventilator, what about Sharon? The staff did their best to assure him she would be in no pain, but how could they know for sure? What if they were wrong? He couldn't bear the thought of making her suffer any longer. What about her soul? Just because she didn’t believe in organized religion, didn’t mean she didn’t have a soul. Was it even now wandering around lost in some dark limbo, alone and scared? How could she rest in peace if her heart was still beating? How could he justify torturing her etern
al soul, however briefly, by forcing her body to carry on?
“Doctor, how much longer would the fetus…the baby need?”
“We could deliver by C-section now but at only twenty-three weeks, the baby would have no more than about a thirty percent chance of survival, at most, especially given the trauma. If we can keep your wife alive another four to eight weeks on the ventilator, it would give the baby more time to recover and continue developing. It isn’t likely to make it to term, but every week substantially increases its viability.”
“By how much?”
“Well, I’m not an expert but I consulted with my colleague, Doctor Andrews, who tells me that after twenty-seven weeks, a baby’s odds go up to about ninety percent. That could be way off. We have no idea how these dendies affect development.” She glanced at David and Nick.
“Sharon would want to give our baby the best chance possible,” Paul said. He could hardly believe he was discussing these things, that he would consider going against his wife’s known wishes, and that he would be living without her by his side. It was impossible to imagine carrying on without her. The arrival of a baby, their baby, without a mother was not something he could grasp emotionally right now. He was numb; he wanted to fade into nothingness.
He realized Dr. Holden had been speaking, dragging him back to reality, “…the risks involved in that.”
“Sorry? What risks are you talking about?” Paul felt himself teetering on the verge of hysteria, “I mean, she’s dead, right?”
“I was referring to the baby.”
“Of course,” he looked at his feet, ashamed.
“That’s okay,” the doctor consoled him, “I wouldn’t even discuss this with you so soon after…well, so soon, if it weren’t absolutely necessary.”
“No, please, continue.” Paul inhaled deeply, “I’ll be alright.”
“Okay. A short time after brain death, the other organs in the body start to shut down. We can keep your wife breathing with the ventilator but if the organs start to fail, we’ll have to do a C-section. We’ll be monitoring the baby closely and if we see significant signs of distress, we’ll get him out right away.”
“And the risks?”
“Well, your wife was very healthy and the baby seems to be developing normally, but….” Dr. Holden stopped and pursed her lips so tightly that they all but disappeared.
“But what?”
“Well, as I said, we really don’t know how these dendies might affect the baby or the mother. It’s possible that they could spread or affect the organs or the baby, or both, in ways we might not be able to detect in time.”
David jumped in before anyone could speculate further, “There’s never been any indication of anything like that happening.”
Dr. Holden regarded him coolly, “There’s never been anything like this before, though, has there?”
David held silent, contrite for the moment.
Dr. Holden’s face softened as she turned back to Paul. “So, I just wanted to say that there are unknowns here, plenty of them. We know that the baby would have extremely limited chances if we delivered today. We think they’ll improve considerably in a month or two but, given this mess of complications, we can’t really know for sure. So, it’s all a bit of an unknown. We can’t really say for sure whether it’s best to continue the pregnancy or not.”
Paul slumped under the weight of the situation. He didn’t feel he could deal with this decision right now, even though it had to be made. His wife was gone. Their baby might still have a chance. Was there more risk to delivery now, or later? What if the dendies were to somehow compromise the baby’s health?
“Nick, help me out here. I don’t know what to do.” He struggled to maintain his composure; the baby needed him. The baby. We’d only started discussing names last week. I wanted Frederick, after her father. She’d had other ideas.
As Sharon had dashed out of the house one day last week, keys in hand and already half out the door, she’d called back, “Hey, how about Darian? I always liked that name.” She’d given him no time to reply, just blew him a kiss and started jogging down the street.
Nick could see Paul’s struggle, and his heart went out to him. “Paul,” he started, not sure what he was going to say. “I know two things about Sharon. She was a scientist, and she was brave. And I believe that she would have taken on the role of motherhood just as courageously as she took on everything in life.”
Paul blinked back his tears.
“I think she would have said that we know the risks of delivering the baby today are high; its chances of survival are not good. The only thing we know about tomorrow is that it scares us. We have no idea if there are real risks to the baby because of the dendies but Sharon believed in what she was doing.”
He shot Dr. Holden a look and held it for a couple of seconds before returning to Paul with renewed confidence. “Sharon would have said not to be afraid, to give the baby its best chance. Continue the pregnancy.”
Paul sobbed loudly into his hands. He needed his full concentration just to breathe. “Thank you, Nick,” he managed.
“Dr. Holden, we should do what Sharon would have wanted. Let’s give our baby boy…Let's give Darian his best chance to survive. Continue the pregnancy; do whatever you need to do.”
Sharon, I’m so sorry. I hope this is what you’d want—he said silently to himself. He couldn’t hold back any longer. He turned to Nick and hugged his friend in their combined grief.
David looked at the doors to the OR and blinked back his tears.
“There will be some paperwork,” the doctor said to Paul. “Once we have her stabilized, we’ll move her to a private room. You’ll be able to visit her there.”
She turned to the two scientists. "I'm going to need a detailed report from you by noon tomorrow. I want to better understand what we’re dealing with here."
The two men nodded, neither one daring to utter anything aloud.
7
It was early August when the medical team finally agreed on a date to deliver Darian Leigh into the world. He was still a full ten weeks early, but at least he'd have a fighting chance.
In spite of the sophisticated equipment, Sharon’s body was having a difficult time. The doctors had to take more and more drastic measures every week just to keep her alive.
What should have been a happy day for all, a day for celebration, was unavoidably bittersweet. Darian's birth would mark the end of life for a vibrant woman who’d been nurturing him for seven months.
Through the tortuous weeks while medical intervention kept Sharon’s organs functioning, Darian obliged the hospital staff by growing steadily. Unknown to all, a few thousand dendies found their way inside the boy’s developing brain, where they continued to multiply, and to grow new fibrous connections. No longer receiving the megadose of customized supplements Sharon had been taking, the neural lattice the dendies were forming grew excruciatingly slowly. Nonetheless, it grew.
The dendies made efficient use of whatever building blocks and fortification they could from Sharon’s system and from the pre-natal supplements and steroids the nurses injected.
They multiplied silently and unseen. They were too small to be picked up by the standard ultrasounds. A clear CT scan might have shown a bit of speckle, hardly enough to notice. When their numbers became sufficient, they formed stable associations with several thousand neurons. And they continued growing.
During the first four days following Sharon’s accident, Paul spent every hour by her side as she lay unresponsive in her private room. He made a nuisance of himself, stubbornly insisting the doctors perform fresh neurological exams, EEGs, and cerebral blood flow tests every day.
In fitful dreams, he imagined the mysterious dendies engineering some sort of miraculous recovery. Each time he woke up, the doctors showed him that they hadn’t. He finally had to accept that she was gone.
Reluctantly heeding Dr. Holden’s advice, Paul reduced his visits to a few hours a day, an
d then to once every few days. He needed to take care of himself, make funeral arrangements, and prepare for the baby’s arrival. The staff promised to keep him apprised of Darian’s status and contact him if there were any changes to either Sharon or the baby.
Paul spent the next few weeks listlessly wandering around the house, unable to take care of the things that needed to be done.
Sharon’s final assisted breath, and Darian’s first, were drawing slowly and painfully closer, and there was nothing he could do to change it.
So it actually came as a welcome relief when his domineering older sister from Seattle showed up unannounced and took charge of getting his life back on track.
Skizzits—the nickname he'd tagged her with when he was four—didn’t wait for instructions, and she didn’t fuss any more over his indecision than she did his preferences. She dragged him through a blur of shops. She selected a crib, a change table, a high chair, a car seat, and a cushioned rocking chair. In a whirlwind of activity not unlike the magical Mary Poppins, Skizzits picked out blankets and sleepers, diapers and bottles. She painted the nursery walls and arranged the furniture. She interviewed hopefuls, and hired a nanny. “With your job, there’s no way you’ll be able to take care of a new baby,” she explained. And she took care of the funeral arrangements for her sister-in-law.
When he wasn’t busy resenting it, Paul was thankful for his sister's help. Deep down, he knew what he really begrudged was the situation that made it necessary. He just couldn't put his heart into welcoming a new baby when his wife lay dead, or legally dead, in the hospital. He wanted to love his son, to be excited about his imminent arrival, but he couldn’t stop thinking about how they’d be alone, and how Sharon’s final peace was being delayed by the equipment and the dependent fetus within her.
The truth was, his own peace and healing couldn't begin until she passed, but he wasn't ready to admit that yet.
Paul allowed Skizzits to prepare for the child, since he couldn't dredge up any enthusiasm of his own. He went through the motions mostly to avoid confrontation.
