He moaned around his panting, which Dr. Washburn had told Kat meant he was in pain.
“Oh baby,” she whispered, tears coursing down her cheeks. “I know you’re in pain, but I just can’t think about what Dr. Washburn wants me to do.”
Angus gave her a big wet kiss to show her he agreed with her.
She put her arms under him, picked him up, and gently placed him on her bed, where he could sleep next to her.
While she showered, something Burton had said suddenly ran through her mind. What was it . . . ? she thought. Oh yeah, he’d said their next step was to use their serum on dogs or monkeys and then on to human experimentation.
“That’s it!” she exclaimed out loud. “We can use the formula on Angus, and hopefully it will take him back to before he got the arthritis.”
And if Burton objects, she thought, then I’ll just tell him that’s the way it’s going to be or he can damn well find another partner!
As she dried off, she began to run through the things she would have to do to get the serum ready for Angus. First of all, she’d have to see whether Dr. Washburn could get her some fetal dog brains for the slurry she would need. Other than that, all of the ingredients would be pretty much the same for rats, dogs, or humans.
When she slipped into bed, she glanced at the clock. Too late to call the veterinarian tonight. First thing in the morning would have to do.
She leaned over and gave Angus a snuggle, saying softly, “I’m gonna make you better, big guy, I promise.”
CHAPTER 15
Kat knew she was making the right decision the next morning when she had to carry Angus outside and practically hold him up while he did his business. Even then, he groaned with pain when he hunched his back for a bowel movement.
“That’s all right, Angus,” she said as she picked him up and carried him toward her front door. “You’ll be chasing rabbits and howling at the moon again before you know it.”
As soon as she had Angus settled in his bed, Kat placed a call to Dr. Washburn at her veterinary clinic.
“Hello.”
“Hello, Dr. Washburn,” Kat said.
“Oh, hi, Kat. Have you made a decision about Angus yet?”
“Yes, but it’s not the one you think,” Kat replied.
“Oh?”
“There is a new therapy, not available to the general public yet, that I would like to try before going the final step.”
“A ‘new therapy’?”
“Yes. It’s come up at the research facility that I’m working at, but I’m going to need your help to give it a try on Angus.”
“Well, of course, Kat. Anything I can do to help, you know I will. Remember, I love Angus almost as much as you do. He’s a fine little fella, and he deserves all we can do for him. Now, just what do you need from me?”
Kat hesitated. “Um, I’m gonna need some fetal dog brain tissue. It doesn’t have to be from a Scottish terrier—any fetal dog brain tissue will do.”
Dr. Washburn said, “So, is this some sort of stem cell therapy?”
Kat hated to lie, but she had no choice. “Yes, Doctor, it is something like that, but it’s being used in a completely new way.”
“Hold on a moment, and let me check my surgical schedule.”
Kat held her breath until Dr. Washburn came back on the line. “We’re in luck, Kat. Tomorrow I’m doing a spay on a bitch that is four weeks pregnant, and so I should be able to get you the tissue you need. I should be through with the surgery around two o’clock, if all goes as scheduled.”
“Oh, Dr. Washburn, Angus and I are so grateful.”
“One thing, Kat.”
“Yes?”
“If this doesn’t work, and Angus remains in pain, you have to promise me to let me help take him out of his misery.”
“Of course, Doctor. Now, I’ve got to go and get everything ready for the procedure.”
“Okay, and I’ll give you a call right after the surgery and you can come and pick up the tissue at my office.”
“Great. And—thanks.”
After Kat hung up the phone, she took a deep breath. Now all she had to do was convince Burton Ramsey that their next experimental subject should be her dog, Angus.
She glanced at her watch. It was already after eight o’clock. She quickly dialed Kevin’s number.
When he answered, she said, “Kevin, I’m going to be late to the clinic this morning. If Dr. Ramsey drops by, let him know that I’ll be there by nine or nine thirty.”
“Is everything all right, Dr. Williams?” he asked, concern evident in his voice, since Kat had never once been late to the clinic before.
She sighed. “It’s Angus, Kevin. He could barely walk this morning, so I had an early consultation with Dr. Washburn.”
“Uh-oh, she’s not still trying to get you to put him down, is she?”
“Kevin, I’ve got to get ready and get on the road, or with Houston traffic I won’t make it before noon. When I get there, you can fix me some of your wonderful coffee and I’ll tell you all about it. I have an idea I want to run by you and get your opinion on.”
“Sure thing, Kat . . . uh, Dr. Williams.”
She laughed. “I think it’s about time you started calling me Kat, Kevin. Especially when we’re alone. In front of company, it can still be Dr. Williams, but when it’s just us, Kat will do nicely.”
“Okay, Kat. I’ll have the coffee ready when you walk in the door, and I’ll have Angus’s bed nice and warm for him, too.”
* * *
It was nine fifteen when Kat walked into the lab, Angus wrapped in a blanket and cuddled in her arms.
Kevin rushed to take the dog from her and turned and gently laid him in his bed next to Kat’s desk, first removing a heating pad he had placed there to keep the pillow warm.
He stood up and turned. “I’ll get your coffee now, Kat.”
She frowned. “Not just yet, Kevin. I need to have a quick word with Dr. Ramsey first.”
He shook his head, scowling. “I don’t know why you’ve started working with that asshole, Kat. We were doing just fine by ourselves.”
She stepped over to him and placed a hand on his arm. “That’s part of what I want to talk to you about. Keep my coffee warm and I’ll be back soon. What I have to say won’t take long.”
She strode out of her office and walked down the hall and around the corner to Burton Ramsey’s lab. When she opened the door, he was standing next to Dottie’s desk, going over a list of equipment for her to requisition from BioTech.
He glanced at her and actually smiled, just one of the several changes that had occurred in their relationship since they’d started working together with their combined formulas.
She smiled back, ignoring the scowl on Dottie’s face. “Burton, I need to have a word with you, if you have a minute.”
“Sure,” he said in his brusque voice. “Dottie, why don’t you go down to the cafeteria and get me a couple of sausage, egg, and cheese taquitos? And get two for Dr. Williams and two for yourself, too. Just tell them to put it on my tab.”
Dottie looked at him, then at Kat, and then she just shrugged and walked out of the lab.
Ramsey gestured for Kat to sit in a chair next to his desk and asked, “Would you like some coffee, Kat?”
She shook her head and sat down. “Burton, you know about my dog, Angus?”
He grimaced. “Yes, and to tell you the truth, I don’t think he has much longer to live.”
“That’s what I want to talk to you about. Last night you said it was about time for us to try our serums on larger animals, like monkeys or dogs. I would like to give Angus the serum and see if it will work on him like it does on the rats.”
He raised his eyebrows. “You realize the risk in him being the first large animal we try it on? We won’t have the exact proportions figured out yet, and I would imagine there are some ingredients that you might have to change in going from rats to a dog.”
“Yes, there are, but I�
��ve already made arrangements to procure those, and, in fact, I will have them by tomorrow afternoon. If you don’t have to change any of your ingredients, and if we work really hard today and tonight, we should be able to get a close approximation of the changes necessary in amounts to use the serum on a dog. Most of the changes should be easily figured by simply increasing the proportions by the differences in weight.”
He nodded slowly. “I agree, it is time, just so long as you are willing to accept the very real possibility that we might do more harm than good in our first canine patient.”
Her eyes welled with tears, and she gave a low sob. “I don’t have time to try it on other dogs first, Burton. I’m afraid he has only a few days left, and he is in constant pain.”
Ramsey was flustered and embarrassed by her tears. He had never been a very compassionate or sympathetic man, and he simply had no idea of how to react to a crying woman. He leaned forward and awkwardly patted her shoulder. “Okay, Kat. As soon as we’ve finished our breakfast, we can get down to figuring out just what adjustments we need to make to our serums for Angus.”
She shook her head and stood up. “I’m too nervous to eat just now, Burton, but thank you anyway. Besides, I’ve got to go to my lab and explain what we’re going to do to Kevin.”
He frowned and said, “I told you, Kat, we need to keep some separation between our work and our assistants. The fewer who know what we’ve accomplished, the better.”
“You might as well know right now, Burton. I trust Kevin with my life, and I have no intention of keeping him in the dark about this. His knowledge of organic chemistry has been an enormous help to me in formulating my serum, and I think he will be a great asset to us going forward, especially if we run into any problems as we transition to larger and more complex animals.”
He sighed and held up his hands, palms out. “Okay, okay, if you are sure he can be trusted.”
“I am! And that brings me to another subject.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“I think you should endeavor to get Sheila involved in our project. With her knowledge of both medicine and geriatrics, she, too, will be invaluable to the success of our work.”
He pursed his lips. “I don’t know. She was pretty adamant about our not using humans in our experiments, and you know that would be the next step.”
“Burton, I think she will come around if we show her our success with dogs and monkeys, and if we do with humans like we are doing with Angus and find a subject that is so near death or that has such a terrible life that she will agree to the experiment.”
He snapped his fingers and grinned. “I think you’ve hit the nail on the head, Kat. While we’re working on Angus, I’ll see if a suitably miserable human subject can be found and see about getting him or her in to see Sheila so she can see that our serum would be the poor soul’s only hope.”
Just then Dottie entered the door with her arms full of taquitos.
Kat nodded and winked at Ramsey and said, “I’ll head back to my lab. You two enjoy your eggs.”
* * *
As soon as Kevin saw her enter the lab, he went to the Keurig, popped in a K-Cup, and fixed her a steaming cup of coffee. He added three teaspoons of sugar and had it on her desk just as she sat down.
“Now,” he said, leaning back in his chair next to her desk, “you said you had some things you wanted to talk about.”
She sipped her coffee and smiled at him. “Perfect, as always.”
He grinned. “Quit stalling, Kat. Please get to it . . . the suspense is killing me.”
“Okay, here goes . . .” Kat began at the beginning and told him how her serum had first showed great promise, only to finally lead to further disintegration and death in her rat subjects, until the fateful day when she had borrowed some of Ramsey’s rats that had been injected with his formula.
“I know the rats began to do better right after you accidentally combined our formula with Ramsey’s, but since I don’t know what his formula does, I have no idea why.”
She nodded. “At first, I thought the rats were simply doing better because of the changes I’d made in our formula, but when I tried our new formula on rats that weren’t from Ramsey’s lab, they didn’t do nearly as well—in fact, they all died. Finally, Ramsey discovered that I’d taken his rats and braced me about it . . . That was when I finally had to accept the fact that it was the combination of our formulas that made the difference.”
Kevin shook his head. “And I’ll bet the asswipe wouldn’t tell you anything about his formula, would he?”
Kat grinned. “Yeah, and I had no idea what to do. I knew he would never reveal the details of his formula to me, him being, as you say, a total asswipe.”
“So, what did you do?”
“I did what any self-respecting woman would do . . . I went straight to his wife.”
“No shit?” Kevin asked with a laugh.
“No shit,” Kat replied, laughing with him. “In fact, I threw myself on her mercy, telling her how I’d ‘borrowed’ her husband’s rats and how the resultant error had led me to believe we’d stumbled upon one of the most important findings of this century, one that could possibly cure any number of neurological diseases.”
“Do you really believe that?” he asked, a skeptical look on his face.
Kat narrowed her eyes. “Well, what do you think, Kevin? Here we have a serum that not only reverses the physical changes to the body and brain caused by aging, but also somehow enhances the mind, not only making it younger but also increasing its intelligence.”
Kevin whistled. “I knew the rats were acting younger and could run the maze faster, but I had no idea the changes were so profound.”
Now Kat looked embarrassed. “That’s because, at first, Dr. Ramsey and I decided to keep you and his assistant in the dark about the progress we were making.”
When he started to protest, Kat held up her hand. “I know; it wasn’t my finest hour. But just to let you know, I just told Burton that from now on, you are going to be in all the way, no secrets, and no funny business. I told him I trusted you with my life and that as far as I am concerned, we are partners all the way in this.”
Kevin’s eyes filled and he looked away. “You really said all that to him?” he asked in a low voice.
She put her hand on his arm. “Yes, and I meant it, Kevin. I could not have come this far without your help, and I certainly do not intend to proceed without you beside us.”
He covered her hand with his and nodded. “Then, I am all in, to the very end.”
“Good,” she said, and got to her feet. “Now, for the next surprise, I am going to go to Dr. Washburn’s office and get some fetal dog brain tissue, and then you and I and Dr. Ramsey are going to figure out a way to make our formulas work on Angus.”
He stood up. “Okay! I’ll get on the computer and see if I can quantify the changes in each of the components we’ll need to make to account for the difference in weight between Angus and the rats.”
She hesitated and stared into his eyes. “Figure it good, Kevin. We’re only going to get one chance at this, and Angus’s life depends on us getting it right the first time.”
CHAPTER 16
It was late that night before they had the serums combined and adjusted to what was their best guess of what the proportions should be for Angus. Kat had ground up the fetal dog brain tissue and added it to her serum in place of the fetal rat brain tissue, and she felt they were good to go.
When they finally gathered around Angus’s bed in the lab, just before midnight, he looked up at them and wagged his tail. His large brown eyes stared at Kat, almost as if he knew she was there to try to relieve his pain and suffering.
Kevin gently took his right leg and shaved a bare patch over the vein, then held the leg while Kat inserted the needle and emptied the syringe containing the precious serum.
When she was done, she leaned over and hugged Angus to her breast, her eyes filled with tears.
&n
bsp; Behind her, Burton Ramsey cleared his throat. Even he was overcome with emotion at the tender scene before him. “Whatever happens, Kat,” he said, “it will be for the best.”
She gently laid Angus back into his bed and said softly, “I know, Burton. Thank you for agreeing to let me treat Angus with our serum.”
He reached down and patted her shoulder, then he turned and walked toward the door. “Be sure to call my cell and let me know as soon as there are any changes,” he said over his shoulder.
“Do you want me to help you get Angus into the car so you can take him home?” Kevin asked.
Kat shook her head. “No, I think I’ll just let him stay here for tonight. I’ll make up a bed on the couch, and that way if he needs anything in the way of medicine or chemicals, I’ll be here in the lab.”
“Would you like me to stay?”
“No, thank you, Kevin. If it’s all the same to you, I’d really rather be alone with my big guy tonight . . . whatever happens.”
In spite of thinking she’d never be able to get to sleep, fatigue overtook her and within an hour she was deep in slumber.
* * *
The next morning, she awoke to Kevin gently shaking her shoulder. “I think you’d better get up and look at this, Kat.”
She jerked awake, threw off the blanket covering her legs, and rushed over to Angus’s bed.
He was lying there, shivering and shaking and moaning, and most of his fur had fallen out and was on the pillow next to him.
“Oh my God!” Kat exclaimed, placing her hand on his muzzle. “He’s burning up with fever.”
Before Kevin could answer, Ramsey rushed into the room and over to the bed. He knelt and ran his hands over Angus, shaking his head.
“Do . . . do you think he’s dying?” Kat asked fearfully.
After another moment of checking Angus’s pulse and feeling his muscles, Ramsey shook his head. “I’m not sure, but I think he may be just reacting to a vastly sped-up metabolic rate. That would certainly account for the rise in temperature and the shaking.”
“That also might be the reason his fur fell out,” Kevin added. “The faster metabolic rate would speed up the hair follicles’ regular regenerative processes and increase the normal rate of his fur loss.”
Dust to Dust Page 13
