Sheep on the Fourth Floor

by Leonie Thorpe

  ‘This way,’ Penelope called out. She led them at a brisk pace along the corridor, down a passage to the left, through some double doors, down another corridor to the right and towards more double doors.

  Anna’s eyes grew wider as they passed further into the building. She buzzed with the thrill that, just behind these very walls, great medical discoveries were taking place. She glanced up as they scuttled past a long row of photographs of past professors. These admirable people, many of whom were long dead, had dedicated their whole lives to scientific exploration, solely for the good of human health. She felt humbled. And as she neared the end of the photographs she sensed a growing conviction that maybe this was where she belonged. Perhaps one day, through a lot of determination and hard work, a photograph of Professor Anna Pascoe would sit alongside these distinguished, virtuous scholars.

  They stopped and waited while Penelope swiped her card to get through the next set of doors.

  ‘How do you find your way back?’ Otis exclaimed, looking around with wide eyes. ‘I’m completely lost already!’

  Penelope shrugged. ‘It’s not so confusing when you’ve been here as long as I have,’ she said. ‘Now, unfortunately this is where I must leave you. Wait here and I’ll send Jeff, one of our students, to show you around.’ She turned to Anna. ‘I’ll see you at home this evening, darling.’

  Penelope disappeared through a doorway with ‘BIOHAZARD’ written in yellow and black above it.

  ‘See that?’ said Anna, pointing the sign out to Kurt and Otis. ‘“Biohazard”. Very serious things happen in there. Perhaps you should be taking photos.’

  Kurt folded his arms and kicked at the black swirls on the vinyl floor, while Otis glanced at his watch.

  ‘Don’t know why I didn’t get chosen to go to the funeral home,’ Kurt grumbled to Otis under his breath.

  ‘Yeah, I bet even the waste-treatment plant would be more interesting than this,’ Otis mumbled back.

  Anna shook her head. How could they still be unimpressed? Could they not sense the importance of the place, or feel the collective buzz of intelligence of everyone who worked here? Did Otis and Kurt not realize that amazing, life-changing discoveries were happening just beyond the doorway?

  ‘You just wait,’ said Anna. ‘I bet the things you’re about to see in here are going to blow your mind.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  It took several minutes for Anna to really believe that Jeff was a scientist. He certainly didn’t meet her preconceived criteria of what one should look like. He was far too relaxed and casual, both with his manner and his rather scruffy dress sense. He didn’t even wear glasses, Anna observed, and what was the story with his hair?

  ‘Cool dreads!’ Otis exclaimed with awe.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Jeff. He turned to Anna. ‘And you must be Penelope’s daughter, Anna. I hear you’re thinking of taking up horse riding.’

  Anna cringed. ‘Did Mum tell you that? I can’t believe she said that. She keeps going on about it and I don’t even like horse riding.’

  Jeff nodded his head knowingly and said, ‘Ah.’

  ‘Horse riding,’ Otis sniggered. Anna scowled at him.

  As he walked them slowly down the corridor, Jeff told them a little about his background and the job he did at the laboratory.

  ‘I’ve been here for the last two years finishing my postgraduate studies,’ Jeff said, beckoning the visitors to follow him down yet another passageway.

  ‘What do you have to do for that?’ Otis wanted to know, trying not to stare too hard at Jeff’s hair. He wondered what his parents would say if he came home with dreads. Otis couldn’t decide if his dad would pat him on the back or strangle him.

  ‘At the moment I’m in the middle of writing a seventy-thousand-word report for some research I’ve been doing on a certain type of bacterium,’ said Jeff. ‘You would have learnt about bacteria at school, wouldn’t you? Well, my particular interest is in a bacterium called Streptococcus pneumoniae.’

  ‘I see,’ said Otis, even though he didn’t.

  Anna smiled. Jeff did sound awfully intellectual. She would have to get him to write down the name so she could impress the class with it during their presentation.

  ‘Seventy thousand words!’ Kurt spluttered. ‘And you can’t even see the thing you’re writing about without a microscope?’

  Jeff stopped at another door and swiped his security card. There was a sign above the entrance that said ‘CLINICAL LABORATORIES’. Just inside was a laundry room. Jeff sized up Anna, Kurt and Otis, and then chose three white laboratory coats for them.

  ‘We have to wear these to protect our clothing, don’t we, Jeff?’ Anna fastened the domes on her coat and smoothed it down. She wished there was a mirror so she could get a glimpse of herself. Did she look like a real scientist?

  ‘That’s right, Anna,’ said Jeff. ‘It could spell the end of humanity if you go home with a deadly virus clinging to your shirt.’ He glanced at their worried faces and laughed. ‘I was just kidding.’

  Anna grabbed Kurt’s arm.

  ‘Photo!’ she exclaimed. ‘We need a photo of us all looking like professors.’

  Jeff offered to take it.

  Anna smiled and folded her arms and the thought that went through her mind as the flash went off was the row of portraits down the hall.

  For the next half hour Jeff led them around the maze of offices and small clinical rooms. He walked slowly with his hands in the pockets of his lab coat, as if he was strolling around a museum.

  ‘Showing you lot around is great,’ he remarked. ‘It’s a proper excuse to have a break from all the studying and writing. I’ve got a bad reputation for sneaking off to have coffee, staring out the window or chatting with the cleaners.’

  Anna could see that Jeff was trying hard to make it interesting but she was dismayed to find herself suppressing a yawn. Though the people who worked here were obviously extremely intelligent and contributing significantly to the world of medicine, the place itself was surprisingly dull. There wasn’t much to see except doctors, scientists, students and technicians scurrying around in white coats amongst machinery, computers and rooms filled with textbooks. She realized she had been expecting to see miracles unfolding in front of her eyes. Perhaps some formerly sick people walking around in rapture after learning their disease had been completely cured. Or, at the very least, ill patients being gently moved from room to room.

  ‘But where does the real action happen?’ Kurt whispered to Otis, echoing Anna’s very thoughts.

  There was a short break from the boredom when Jeff showed them the microbiology laboratory. He made them take off their white coats and exchange them for bright orange gowns. Large yellow and black signs warned of ‘BIOLOGICAL HAZARD’ and that the room was ‘Strictly Staff Only’.

  ‘Take a photo of those signs, Kurt,’ said Anna.

  Jeff took a swab of Kurt’s tongue and they looked at it with a microscope.

  Kurt stared down the eyepiece of the microscope for a while, screwing up his face. He turned to Jeff, looking a little worried. ‘Is that…normal?’

  Jeff laughed. ‘Yes, completely normal. Every healthy mouth looks like that.’

  ‘Yuck, that’s disgusting,’ said Otis, screwing up his face as he looked down the microscope.

  When Anna’s turn came she gaped in amazement. Huge numbers of different-shaped bacteria were teeming around, spinning, rotating, zipping and darting across the slide. All those bacteria were from just one tiny section of Kurt’s mouth. It was fascinating, but kind of gross at the same time. Something she would have to get used to when she got a job in a laboratory, she mused.

  When they left the microbiology lab, Jeff made them wash their hands and discard their orange gowns in the washing hamper.

  ‘Right, gather around, young folk,’ said Jeff. He lowered his voice. ‘Before we go any further we’re going to stop in at the most important place on the fourth floor.’

  Anna breathed with
relief. Finally, they were going to see some real action, something to astonish and impress Kurt and Otis.

  ‘Get the camera ready, Kurt,’ said Anna, nudging his arm excitedly.

  She held her breath as Jeff led them into a small room. It had two white tables, a scattering of white plastic chairs and a large window with a magnificent view of the city. In the corner of the room was a tray stacked with assorted mugs.

  ‘Coffee!’ Jeff exclaimed. He smiled and rubbed his hands together.

  ‘Coffee?’ Anna repeated with disbelief. ‘The most important part of the fourth floor is the coffee room?’

  Jeff caught the look of disappointment on Anna’s face. ‘Sorry, it’s probably not the best staff room you’ve ever been in, is it? Cheap and uncomfortable furniture and nasty teabags.’ He sighed sadly. ‘Mind you, you can’t expect too much from a government department.’

  ‘Smile!’ said Kurt. Anna scowled as Kurt took her photo in front of the water cooler.

  Anna was slightly comforted by the mug of hot chocolate and piece of shortbread that Jeff gave them, but in terms of winning over the class with the laboratory report, she had almost given up. Kurt and Otis were right: the lab seemed boring. Her own expectations had been way too high. Even though Kurt’s tongue bacteria had been interesting, their class report was in danger of becoming a very dull offering.

  ‘So, have I convinced you all to be scientists?’ Jeff stretched his legs under the table and leaned back in his chair. His hands were wrapped around a large cup of coffee.

  Kurt shook his head. ‘I’m going to be a mechanic.’

  Otis sniggered. ‘Anna’s going to be a politician.’

  ‘Shut up, Otis, I am not.’ She wished Otis would grow up. ‘I’m going to be a scientist,’ Anna declared, turning to Jeff. ‘I’m going to do research so I can help cure diseases.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Jeff. ‘We need all the intelligent recruits we can get.’

  ‘But how do you work here every day?’ Kurt wanted to know. ‘Don’t you find it sort of…boring?’

  ‘Kurt!’ Anna snapped. ‘That’s rude! It’s not boring; it’s just because we don’t know the place well enough. Isn’t that right, Jeff?’

  Jeff flicked a thick dreadlock away from his face. ‘I know what Kurt means. There are too many machines and books, aren’t there?’

  Kurt and Otis nodded.

  ‘Too many people just walking around with bits of paper,’ Jeff continued. ‘Not enough real action?’

  ‘Yeah, not enough action,’ Kurt agreed.

  Jeff sighed and drummed his fingers on the coffee-stained table. ‘Well, there’s one lab you haven’t seen yet that you might find more interesting. I don’t know if I’m supposed to show you in there, but…’ He looked at them and his eyes sparkled. ‘No photos or notes. This is just between us?’

  Three pairs of eyes shone back at him with excitement.

  ‘Right then!’ Jeff drained the last of his coffee and stood up. ‘Let’s go!’

  He led them down one passageway, then another.

  ‘I may never find my way out,’ lamented Otis as they followed Jeff further into the maze of the fourth floor.

  They stopped at the end of a dimly lit corridor.

  ‘You want real live laboratory action?’ Jeff asked. ‘Well, here’s the place where you can see science at work.’

  As Jeff swiped his card over the security panel, Anna glanced upwards and a sign above the door made her frown uncertainly: ‘ANIMAL LABORATORY’.

  The room hummed with machinery. It smelled of rodents and straw and disinfectant.

  Kurt’s eyes widened and he pointed to a wall covered in cages. ‘Look! There’s real animals in here!’ Large white rats with red eyes twitched their noses and stared silently back at them.

  ‘Rabbits!’ Otis declared, pointing to a row of larger cages lined with straw. ‘Awesome!’

  The rabbits, too, were on their feet, sniffing the foreign scent of the visitors.

  Jeff smiled, pleased with their reaction. He picked up a bag of food pellets and wandered about the room, feeding the animals through the bars of their cages.

  Anna stood near the door and looked around with a sense of shock and bewilderment. She certainly hadn’t expected to see animals here—skeletons, or organs in jars, maybe, but not live animals. In all her talk about work, her mother had never mentioned them.

  ‘Why are they here, on the fourth floor?’ Anna asked, stepping forwards for a closer look.

  Jeff said, ‘They help us with our research and experiments.’

  ‘How do they do that?’ she replied. A picture appeared in her mind of a rat, dressed in a white lab coat, hunched over a flask of bubbling chemicals.

  Jeff sat on a stool by the laboratory bench. ‘I suppose you can think of them as miniature patients,’ he said. ‘For instance, we recently gave an animal a lung infection and then treated it with a new drug to see how fast it would get well again.’ He folded his arms. ‘It’s an indication of how a human patient will react to the drug.’

  ‘“Miniature patients”?’ Anna repeated in a quiet voice.

  ‘How long have they been here?’ said Otis, poking his fingers through the bars of a rabbit cage. The animal loped towards him, its nose twitching.

  ‘Most of them are here for a couple of weeks, maybe up to a month,’ said Jeff. He picked up a rat from its cage and petted it gently on the back of the neck.

  ‘Where did they come from?’ asked Kurt, wandering slowly across the room, his eyes wide.

  ‘Born and bred in a lab these ones,’ said Jeff, pointing to the rats. ‘We get them from the university when we need them.’

  The information Jeff had given was working its way slowly into Anna’s brain. ‘So, what happens to the animals if the drugs don’t work?’ she asked.

  Jeff drew a finger across his neck and pushed his tongue out the side of his mouth.

  Anna frowned. That was what she had guessed. ‘They die,’ she mumbled to herself, tapping her fingers on a cage. ‘The “miniature patients” die.’

  ‘Better a rat than a human, don’t you think?’ said Jeff.

  Anna’s thoughts were interrupted by an excited yelling from around the corner.

  ‘Hey, look around here!’ It was Kurt, his voice high and urgent. ‘Come and see this; it’s wicked!’

  Still feeling somewhat stunned, Anna moved with Otis and Jeff in the direction of Kurt’s shouting.

  Inside a small room was a larger pen that had straw scattered on the floor. Anna stared at the animal lying motionless at the far end. One side of its abdomen had been shaved back to pink skin. There was a tube coming out of its stomach and another coming out of its hind leg. She was just wondering how long ago it had died when, to her surprise, the animal opened its eyes. It kicked its legs weakly and lifted its head off the ground to stare at the strange visitors. As its glassy eyes met Anna’s, it let out a feeble cry, ‘Mmmmmaaaahhhhh’.

  Jeff grinned and leaned over to scratch the animal’s head. ‘Say hello to Rom,’ he said.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ whispered Kurt. ‘It’s a sheep!’

  CHAPTER TEN

  Doctor Penelope Pascoe stepped through the front door at quarter past seven. She lowered her briefcase to the floor with a groan and took off her coat.

  ‘Hello, everyone,’ she called out.

  ‘Evening, love,’ Peter replied from the lounge. He didn’t look up from his medical journal.

  Penelope looked around for Anna, eager to find out how her day had gone. She found her in the kitchen, threading cubes of tofu onto kebab sticks.

  ‘Hello, darling, how did the lab visit go today?’ Penelope opened the fridge and took out a glass jug of water. ‘Jeff said you were very well behaved. He told me he even dropped you all back at school afterwards; that was good of him.’

  Penelope poured herself a tall glass of water and gulped down a large mouthful, then let out a long sigh. ‘Mind you, I suspect it was just an excuse to avoid
going back to writing his report.’ She replaced the jug in the fridge.

  Anna didn’t say anything. She picked up a small knife and began to hack a red pepper into large irregular pieces.

  ‘Anna?’ Penelope looked at her daughter and frowned. ‘Darling? Helloooo? How did the lab visit go?’

  Anna gritted her teeth. ‘It was okay,’ she replied.

  ‘Okay?’ Penelope held her hand up to her chest and snorted with mock offence. ‘The sacred grounds of the fourth floor were just…okay?’

  ‘Yeah, well, there were lots of machines and we got to look down a microscope…’ Anna suddenly slammed the knife onto the chopping board and turned around to face her mother. ‘There were animals in there,’ she said. ‘There were rabbits and rats. There was a…a sheep!’

  Her mother took a step backwards, alarmed by Anna’s outburst.

  ‘Jeff took you to the animal lab?’ said Penelope. ‘I don’t know if that was such a good idea. It’s unsettling for the animals to have people roving in and out…’

  ‘So you know about the animal lab?’ Anna interrupted, putting her hands on her hips. She had been harbouring an unrealistic hope that her mother had nothing to do with it.

  ‘Well, of course I do, darling,’ said Penelope. ‘I’ve spent a fair bit of time in there over the years. It plays a very important role in a lot of our research; surely Jeff explained all this to you?’