Forever and Ever

by Dan A. Baker

  “Are those the fastest jet fighters in the world, the ones we saw today?” Roy asked, sleepily.

  “Yeah I think so,” Earl said.

  “How fast will they go?”

  “I think they go about, uh, about fifteen-hundred miles per-hour,” Earl said, suddenly exhausted.

  Jasmine went by herself for a walk on the beach when the sunset. The enormity of what they were doing was still troubling her, but Roy’s reaction to the treatment concerned her most. She seemed surrounded by a larger vortex of forces, and it became so overwhelming and confusing, she simply ignored them.

  ‘When sundown pales the sky, I wanna hide a while, behind your smile…’

  Marjorie had started Jasmine thinking about her youth, and some of the songs from those years would drift into her thoughts. ‘I wanna hide a while, behind your smile.’ The innocence and humanity of the 1960’s flooded back to her in an unfamiliar wave of nostalgia. I want that again. I want that feeling of unlimited life again. I can’t help it, she thought.

  Earl had decided to administer the first treatment that night. Jasmine watched Earl carefully when he put the big needles in. He had the gift of waving pain away with his big, kind hands. “I’m sleepy,” Roy said, and closed his eyes.

  Jasmine hung the first two IV bags, looking at the cloudy white mixture. “I guess this is it,” she said, looking at Earl.

  “Yeah, this is it,” Earl said, crossing the small room. “We can stop here. We can leave now, and not do this and have a wonderful life in retirement together. We can walk away from the world if we want to, but we can’t do both,” Earl said. “We can’t do both.”

  Jasmine reached over and turned the small white valve on each IV bag.

  “When you’re a jet, you’re a jet,” she said softly.

  “All the way, you’re a jet,” Earl said, and walked out on the balcony.

  It was dark now. The ocean was quiet and the wind had died down. The distant twinkling orange lights of the shrimp boats blinked on and off as they dipped below the horizon. Jasmine sat on Earl’s lap, and felt his hands on her upper arms, gently chasing the chill. They both knew there was never really a question. It just felt good to hear that there was an option. “When you argue with life, life wins every time,” Earl said.

  “Life has done a lot of winning,” Jasmine said.

  “And life has done a lot of losing.”

  Roy slept until noon the next day, hardly moving in the big bed. When he did wake up, he was a little punchy, and the sound of the TV seemed to bother him. Earl brought a big picture book of rattlesnakes of the Southwest. Roy’s eyes got big when he opened the picture book.

  “Is it a green rattlesnake?” Roy kept asking.

  “Yes it’s green, and the Mohave Green rattlesnake has the most poisonous venom of all the snakes in North America,” Earl said, reading the text.

  “I’ll have to be very careful when I stab that one,” Roy said, sleepily.

  They read the big book for an hour, and then Roy drifted off to sleep. Jasmine took his temperature and pulse every hour. They watched Mexican soap operas to pass the time, which was a relief, because they could not understand the words.

  “People communicate by emotion anyway,” Earl said.

  He was right, Jasmine thought. You could tell what was going on by the expression and emotions of the actors. Who cared what the details were anyway, she thought while dozing off. They all slept in the darkened room. Slept and slept and slept. The deep fatigue was all the way inside their bones, inside their hearts, and inside their minds. Jasmine would wake up briefly, and actually feel the fatigue. It felt like a huge bar of lead, wired to her spine. It was so heavy it pulled her back into the long hours of dreamless sleep.

  Roy finished his second treatment at about two in the afternoon on the second day. Earl had added a very small amount of Seconal so he would sleep through the day. He slept all day and all night. He surprised them both by waking them up at six a.m. with his clothes on.

  “Let’s go to the beach!” he said loudly. Jasmine and Earl both laughed, never quite getting used to his humor. Then they noticed his skin had much better color, the redness around his eyes was almost gone, and he was standing up straight.

  “Can’t be,” Earl said, quickly flicking on the light.

  “I’ll check his blood pressure,” Jasmine said, while Earl took him over to the lamp. The shine was the first thing he noticed. Roy’s skin had a very slight shine to it, instead of his normal chalky paleness.

  “Roy, do your bones hurt you? Earl asked.

  “No, they don’t hurt today! Let’s go to the beach before they do!” he said excitedly.

  They took him for a short walk on the beach in the early morning light. His gait was upright, and his hobbling movement was missing.

  “It’s almost like the color in the salmon,” Earl said.

  “What do you mean?” Jasmine asked.

  “You can see the life returning to him in his skin. The color, the shine, the texture,” he explained. “I can’t believe that Will’s stem cells would work that fast,” Earl said.

  “I wonder if they all migrated to his epidermal cells. Maybe we should have spread the treatment out over four days,” Jasmine said.

  “That’s a good point, but Will is the only one with any real experience in this treatment, so we had to take his advice,” Earl said.

  Roy suddenly became a ravenous eight-year old, eating virtually all day. Earl had prepared for this, and had brought two boxes of protein rich candy bars. He amazed the servers in the courtyard café, as he wolfed down his meals. “Can we have Huevos Rancheros every day?” Roy asked, finishing the last of his refried beans.

  “Sure we can,” Earl said, noticing Roy was taking full deep breaths, and sitting almost upright.

  “And we can go swimming everyday too?” he asked.

  “Every day,” Earl said.

  They had been in the pool every night since his treatment. The first time he simply held on to the little blue paddleboard and walked around the shallow end. By the third day, he was swimming around the entire pool, holding onto the little Styrofoam board and kicking furiously.

  “Do your legs hurt you now Roy?” Earl asked again.

  “Not now, they don’t hurt at all!” Roy replied, starting his second lap.

  The effects of the treatment astonished both Earl and Jasmine. The stem cells seemed to have done what Will had predicted they would, provide chondrocyte cells that would lay down cartilage and restore the elasticity to Roy’s ribcage and quickly reverse the damage from his arthritis by rebuilding the connective tissue in his large joints.

  “I think we should leave two days early. I want to get him back to Lake Havasu for an MRI and an EKG,” Earl said, watching Roy sleep.

  Jasmine stroked the boy’s face as he slept. “That sounds like a good idea,” Jasmine said. “Let’s leave today.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “He’s back,” Will said as he started up the wooden stairs to the last white aluminum trailer in Lake Havasu.

  “Who’s back?” Jasmine asked, trying to hold Roy’s hand.

  “Sid Vicious is back. I’ll have to find a broom. Stay here and hold on to Roy. You can show him one of evolution’s more intense genomes if you like.” Will slapped his hand on the railing. The dry shuffling rattle began softly, and then quickly became an intense buzz that immediately froze them. No sound had ever halted Jasmine in her tracks before. Roy began to tremble slightly, but stood up on his tiptoes to see the big rattlesnake.

  “No one’s found a use for the proteins in his venom yet, but the Copperhead’s venom makes a great short term blood thinner,” Will said, coming back with an old push broom.

  “He’s big,” Jasmine said, leaning in over the railing to look at the snake.

  “Not too much closer. They can strike about a foot farther than you think they can,” he warned, leaning on the broom.

  “It’s really green!” Roy said in an exc
ited whisper.

  “Just like Sid Vicious,” Will added.

  “They’re all business,” Jasmine said, impressed with the snake’s powerful bearing.

  “He’s the flip side of the fuzzy kitten miracle of life thing,” Will said, beginning to perspire from the early morning heat. “Most of what got us here is what you’re looking at: a ruthless, uncompromised killing machine, with renewable fangs, horrendous venom, and a body that’s ninety percent muscle,” he said in a very deliberate tone. “And nothing has really changed.”

  Jasmine was momentarily mesmerized, observing the snake’s head as it followed his hand.

  “You can put a cookie on its head,” Will said absentmindedly. “I tried it last week.”

  “You tried what?” Jasmine replied.

  “See how it’s backed up against the door, head pointed this way? There’s a reason why they do that. Roy, give me one of your Doritos,” Will said, with a crazy smile on his face. As Roy opened the small bag of chips, the buzzing increased. Will went around to the side door and let himself in, quickly opening the door behind the rattler.

  “It’s a strange thing about life. Even the worst, smartest, most heavily armored competitors have a blind side.” The snake buzzed so loudly now the porch vibrated, and the head swung from left to right, tongue darting rapidly. Jasmine held Roy tightly, and choked her call for Will to stop, as his hand approached the big head. She felt a strange tinge of excitement and an unwanted appreciation for Will’s courage. Will slowly bent down behind the snake and casually set the corn chip on its head. Will sat on his haunches admiring the snake.

  “They can’t turn around,” Jasmine said slowly.

  “They can’t turn around, which is why they like to have their back to something solid. Like the mobster who always sits at the corner table. Will slowly reached out and picked up the corn chip, munching it loudly. “Come on Sid, off the porch.” Will reached for the broom and gave the snake a good push.

  As it crawled off, it stopped for a moment, stretched out to its four-foot length. The snake almost disappeared; its colors and patterns blending perfectly with the ground. “Look at that camouflage. It is absolutely perfect. That’s one thing they share with human beings,” Will said.

  “Camouflage,” Jasmine asked, losing sight of the snake for a moment.

  “Yeah, humans do that well, really well,” Will replied. “Too bad we don’t have rattles. You never know when a human being is about to strike.”

  Jasmine looked up at Will for a brief moment, seeing the years of scarring in his bold face.

  “I didn’t realize there was so much green in the dirt here,” Jasmine said softly, touching Will’s hand.

  “Is it okay for us to be here?” Roy asked, slightly ashen.

  “We just have to be a little careful,” Jasmine replied.

  Will flipped the lights on in the MRI trailer and checked the thermostat.

  “It’s going to be hot, and then some, today,” he said, noticing Roy was having trouble keeping his fishing hat on.

  “Is it too tight?” Will asked.

  “It keeps falling off,” Roy said.

  “That’s because you’re getting better,” Earl said from the doorway.

  “You missed Will’s lion taming act,” Jasmine said, still tingling from the sensation.

  “I saw it from the driveway. Hope there’s plenty of anti-venom in Lake Havasu,” Earl said, not meaning to be sarcastic.

  “There’s plenty here,” Will said, opening a small refrigerator, with a flourish, obviously annoyed at Earl’s chiding remark. “And even some juice for Roy and a super surprise.”

  “A surprise,” Roy asked.

  “I heard you liked rattlesnakes, so I got you one,” Will said, with his hand behind his back. The raspy noise of the rattle froze everyone again. Roy stood motionless, Will finally handing him the fourteen-button rattle.

  “Is it real?” Roy asked.

  “Too real,” Will replied. “That one did bite me, but it was all a misunderstanding. He was just out of law school.” Will laughed his crazy nervous laugh and headed down into the trailer.

  Roy endured the long MRI session with the incessant noise and vibration like a professional patient, shaking his rattle the entire 30 minutes.

  They pulled up each image on the big flat screens as soon as they were processed. “Ventricle wall has thickened two millimeters, aneurysms on both sides of the aorta disappeared, normal flow in cardiac vessels, and oh yeah, fibrous tissue in the mitral valves showing much better elasticity. The stem cells went there first, bless their little hearts,” Earl said, clicking through the images.

  “He probably wouldn’t have lived without the stem cells,” Jasmine noted.

  “Probably not, bone mass in the femur is starting to thicken,” Earl noted.

  “Nothing like a little moonshine,” Will said softly, admiring the work of his cloned embryonic stem cells, while Jasmine and Earl navigated through the brightly colored images, overlaying the baseline MRI images with the new images.

  “Skin and bone,” Jasmine said.

  “Bone first, then the skin,” Earl said, carefully measuring the growth in the femur with the measuring tool. “Total bone mass density is way up.”

  Jasmine was impressed. “How do they do that? How do the stem cells know where to go?” she asked Will.

  “The stem cells have a homing mechanism that tells them where to go first, which adult stem cells to morph into first,” Earl replied.

  “I have the data here on the proteins that signal the stem cells to stop and morph,” he said causally.

  “You do?” Jasmine asked.

  “Yeah, there’s a group in Israel. They like to water ski and they don’t publish much,” he said.

  “But I haven’t seen anything in the literature, and I looked just last week,” Jasmine stated.

  “These hombres work at night,” he quietly remarked, looking at her, stroking her hair with his eyes.

  “His entire circulatory system will be normal in another six weeks,” Earl said, rocking one image back and forth.

  “Assuming he lives,” he replied.

  “I think we should activate today,” Jasmine said in a soft and commanding manner.

  “It’s your call,” Will agreed, while pulling up the blind on the small window.

  “The double P-53 transcription error checkpoint seems to be working perfectly. None of the dead endothelial cells we looked at last night were pre-cancerous,” Earl said.

  “Well, you’ll have a permanent Mighty Mouse circulatory system,” Will said, dialing in the activating frequency for the radiation controlled response elements in the telomerase expression genes.

  “Lungs,” Jasmine said to no one.

  “Lungs and renal function,” he said.

  “If we had more stem cells we could inject them directly into the pulmonary artery, which would dramatically increase the number of lung fibroblasts and improve lung elasticity,” Earl said.

  “Good idea,” he replied.

  “And if we had a batch for the kidneys we could clamp them off and treat the kidneys, hopefully producing a new batch of glomeruli cells. He’s going to have a tremendous increase in breakdown products in the blood,” Earl said quietly.

  “Good idea,” was Will’s reply.

  “Body Heat,” Jasmine said, letting the comment hang in the air.

  “Anytime you try a decent crime, there are fifty ways to fuck up. If you think of twenty-five of them you’re a genius,” Will answered with Mickey Rourke’s line from the movie.

  “And you’re no genius,” Jasmine said, finishing the line.

  They looked at each other for a long moment, wondering if the relentless momentum would ease, and give them a chance to reconsider. It didn’t.

  “We’ll follow everything we can, insulin, thyroids, steroids, and hope we can keep him from too much exercise until we can finish his treatment. But I’m worried about liver function,” Earl said, intently
tracing the liver on the MRI.

  “If anyone will make it, it’ll be Roy,” Jasmine said.

  “I’ve got another six-hundred million stem cells ready for him,” Will said.

  “And Nielsen just bought me a laparoscopy surgery suite.”

  “You have six-hundred million stem cells for him?” Jasmine said, standing up.

  “Yeah, I had a little space in the incubator, and I thought we might arrive at this point,” he concluded.

  Jasmine crossed over and hugged him, “Will, you’re, you’re…,”

  “Just put me on your Christmas card list when you get a rockcrusher.”

  “You have an operating room here?” Earl asked, in disbelief.

  “In the north campus,” Will replied, softly, as Roy had fallen asleep with the rattle in his hand. “And yes, I work on weekends.”

  Jasmine clicked through the MRI images for another hour, looking intensely for problems, for tissue damage, for anything they might have overlooked. As she stared at the last high-resolution image, she finally realized what they had hoped and believed would work was working, and it was working exactly the way they had expected.

  “I wonder what will kill him,” she said softly.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  When Earl decided to skip the breakfast trip with Will for an early morning hike in the desert, Jasmine felt an unfamiliar leap of excitement. Although deeply repressed, her attraction to Will was a source of delicious excitement. Jasmine found herself looking at Will, as he drove the boat across the smooth blue lake in the warm morning sunlight. She was trying hard to put her finger on just what it was that fascinated her. Was it his quirky humor? His boyish fascination with science, or was it his reckless abandon? She laughed inwardly, knowing that whatever it was, it turned her on, and made her feel alive, and sexy. Although dedicated to Earl and their marriage, she cherished these fleeting moments of fantasy and romantic abandon.

  ‘On the other side of town a boy is waiting, with fiery eyes and dreams no one can steal. She drives on through the night anticipatin’, cause he makes her feel, the way she used to feel…”