- The trip to Albuquerque was slowed by road construction and Max barely had time to drop the Jeep off in long term parking and pass security when the last call for boarding was given. He ran down the corridor just in time to board, the gate agent closing the door behind him. Within minutes the small regional jet was taxiing for takeoff and after a brief wait for landing traffic, leaped in to the air, heading for Chicago. Max sat back and looked out the window, already planning what to do on arrival. He'd check in to the hotel later - first he needed to get to the Medical Center and look it over before the Parkers or anyone else who knew him was there. He needed to find a locker room that wasn't being used - open a locker - find a medical center identification badge he could copy. In a place that big it was almost impossible that people knew every employee by sight. With the ID, he'd just be one of the employees - lost in the background of a busy medical center. Food service, he decided, was best. They went everywhere, picking up and dropping off food trays, and hardly anyone noticed them. If he could make himself an ID badge and find a white coat, he could wander the place almost unnoticed.
Back at Roswell Airport, the air ambulance aircraft was just arriving. It quickly refueled, and the interior was set up to receive Liz and her party.
At the Roswell Medical Center, Isabel waited with the Parkers. The plan had been for them to meet at the hospital and for the Parkers to take Isabel and Maria to the airport in their car - behind the ambulance carrying Liz. But somehow the plan had already gone awry. Maria hadn't shown up yet, and they were taking Liz down to load her in the ambulance.
"I'm sorry," said Jeff to Nancy and Isabel, "...the aircraft has a flight plan it has to follow and it's going to Midway - the small airport in Chicago near the hospital. They have a noise curfew, and the captain of Liz's Air Ambulance says they really can't wait any longer. Perhap's she'll meet us at the airport." The Parker's quickly piled in the Parker vehicle and drove off toward the Roswell airfield behind the ambulance carrying Liz and Izabel.
"This is simply unbelievable," said Amy. "This is the same thing that happened nine months ago. This transmission is new - it's still under warranty."
"Well, it's a good thing it's under warranty," said the tow truck attendant, "because it's going to have to be replaced," he finished, looking dubiously underneath the Jetta where a reddish fluid seemed to be leaking from the transmission. "I'll tow this to the transmission shop."
"Could you give me a ride to the hospital?" asked Maria, "..or better yet, to the airport?"
"Well, yes, but it'll take me a little time to get this vehicle loaded and the airport may look close," he said, nodding at the distant runway, "...but we need to drive around three sides of a square to get to it. I hope you aren't in a big hurry."
Amy knew what was coming when she saw Maria take her backpack that she was using as a carry-on out of the back seat of the Jetta."
"Mom... can I call Michael?"
Informed consent (M/L ADULT) [COMPLETE]
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Re: Informed consent AU M/L ADULT 3/25/2009(2)
Last edited by greywolf on Thu Mar 26, 2009 11:31 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Re: Informed consent AU M/L ADULT 3/26/2009
- Amy shook her head, wishing she could bring herself to say no, but in the end Maria won. The tow truck quickly loaded the broken Jetta on its back and two blocks later was at the pay phone at a nearby gas station. Maria made the call and broke out in a smile as the phone was answered at the other end. In less than five minutes Michael was there.
Amy actually trusted Michael - at least as much as any mother of a seventeen year old girl trusted any seventeen year old boy. Michael, she was sure, would never willfully hurt Maria - or even push her to do something she was reluctant or unwilling to do. Unfortunately Maria's reluctance did not extend to the dirtbike Michael now had. At least, she saw as it came leaping through the desert to the service station, he had worn his helmet this time. He had one for Maria, too, which struck Amy as one of those good news-bad news things. Good because he was careful enough to have a helmet for her - bad because of the unstated assumption that Maria would be riding the motorcycle a lot. The motorcycle wasn't registered, licensed, or insured - Michael swore he never rode it on tyhe streets, and Maria appeared to love the damn thing almost as much as Michael did.
Amy wasn't a big fan of motorcycles, and certainly not this one. Michael had found it wrecked in the desert - obviously thought by the previous owner to be beyond economical repair. An ancient 305cc Honda only slightly older than Amy herself, the bike had started out as a street bike. After a crash in the early 1970s, someone had converted it crudely into a dirtbike. By the time it had been abandoned it had been beaten up pretty badly by decades of hard wear - not to mention it's terminal crash. The last legal owner had walked away from it - or more likely, Amy believed, been taken away in an ambulance - and the carcass of the bike had served as shelter to a small group of desert lizards for some years until Michael had found it. Exactly how Michael had gotten it fixed and running again, Amy wasn't too sure. It wasn't like anyone stocked parts for the ancient machine. But run it did and Michael could make it fly through the desert. As her daughter loaded on the back behind Michael and put her helmet on, Amy had little doubt Maria would make it across the desert to the airport on time - if she survived.
Of course, Amy hadn't ALWAYS trusted Michael. In fact, she hadn't trusted him very much at all three and a half months ago when she'd barged in to Maria's room on a Saturday morning and found Michael and Maria asleep in bed together. THAT had been an interesting day.
It wasn't like Amy made a habit of wandering in to her daughter's room without knocking, but there had been a truly dreadful thunderstorm throughout the night, and the rising sun had created an awesome double rainbow and she'd had not a clue that Maria would be doing anything but sleeping in on a Saturday morning after working the closing shift at the Crashdown the night before. Silly her.
Maria had immediately protested that they hadn't done anything - just slept. Amy had retorted that she'd heard that excuse before - in fact used it herself once upon a time - only realizing after the words slipped out how admitting that had all but destroyed any chance she had of claiming moral superiority over Maria that morning. But in the end, she actually believed the two - in part because both were still in their clothes - Michael's clothes sodden from walking in the thunderstorm - and because of the condition Michael was in. His arms were bruised and swollen, his face a little battered as well. Michael had tried to leave - claiming it was from a motorcycle accident, but she remembered the pattern of bruising too well to believe him. She had kept Michale there and called Jim Valenti. Michael had been evasive with Jim at first, trying to pretend everything was fine. Jim had told him he could tell the story there or downtown - that he could take his pick. Eventually the truth had come out.
On the face of it it had been ridiculous that Michael had ever been fostered to the Guerins. Hank Guerin was a known alcoholic and his wife Angelina had called the police on him for domestic violence - only to change her mind and deny it - on several occasions, even before Michael was sent to live with them. But even if it hadn't been for that, once Angelina had left Hank and gotten a restraining order against him - again for domestic violence - it was incredible that the Child Protective Services had allowed Hank to retain custody of the then ten-year old boy. But they had. Despite three additional DUIs and a charge of public intoxication, they had continued to pay Hank Guerin to provide 'care' for Michael in the dilapidated trailer the man called home. But Jim Valenti's detective had found out why.
The immediate cause of Michael being out in that storm was that a drunk Hank Guerin had assaulted him when he'd refused to tell him the location of the distributor cap to the pickup truck the drunk man had been trying to take out into the storm to get more whiskey. Michael grudgingly conceded that he didn't really care if the ornery old man lived or died, Hank Guerin was a mean drunk, and little better sober, but Michael wasn't going to allow another innocent person to get hurt - like had happened to Liz Parker. He'd had to push his way past a furious Hank Guerin to get out of the trailer, and he'd taken quite a few hits doing so. Jim had asked him why he didn't call the police and Michael had simply shrugged and said he didn't want any trouble. Amy had asked him why he didn't just clober the old drunk himself and Michael had shaken his head. He'd said Hank Guerin wasn't strong enough to do him any serious damage and that as long as Hank wasn't threatening anyone he cared for, he couldn't see himself hurting the man. Once you started down the road of violence, it sometimes took on a life of its own. The way he'd said it had appealed to Amy's pacifist tendencies - although drawing a look of doubtfulness from Jim Valenti, who had said he ought to have struck back to defend himself - he'd have been less beat up.
Ultimately, Maria had been seeing quite a lot of Michael Guerin, and Amy herself had been dating Jim Valenti. It was through Jim that Amy had learned the rest of the story. Apparently Hank Guerin was one of a large number of inappropriate foster parents who were given children to foster - and the state funds that went with them - on condition of providing kickbacks to bureaucrats in the department of child protective services. The investigation ultimately went as high as the deputy director in Albuquerque who apparently was getting rich off the scam. The grand jury had already indicted twelve people on a number of charges including child endangerment and being accessories to rape - apparently even child molesters were permitted to become foster parents if the kickback was adequate. Within a week when the indictments were served, Michael and the other children who had been inappropriately fostered were all going to be removed from their foster parents and reassigned. Since Michael was too old to easily find a foster home for and didn't wish to leave the area, they were going to offer him emancipated minor status and support him well enough to pay for a small apartment and living expenses until high school graduation.
Amy watched the dust rise as Maria scooted across the desert behind Michael. She had, she admitted to herself, reservations about Michael having his own apartment. But as the not quite 35 year-old mother of a 17 year-old daughter, she knew that she would be on moral thin ice if she voiced them - particularly considering the SOB she'd married once he'd gotten her pregnant when she was herself only sixteen - the 'man' who'd subsequently abandoned both his wife and daughter. The fact that she knew all the secret grand jury stuff because of pillow talk with Jim Valenti was yet another issue. Which reminded her - Maria would be gone for at least two nights. Maybe she'd give Jim a call.
Maria loved this feeling - the wind in her face - Michael's body bouncing against hers as they went over the open desert. If only Liz were OK - her world would be perfect. She was almost certain they'd make it as Michael brought the bike up to the desert beside the airport parking lot. The plane was still on the ground and it wasn't like they had to go through security or anything. Michael hopped the curb and drove through the parking lot up to the terminal. He took his helmet off and reached for hers, only to be met with a quick kiss.
"I owe you,Michael, that's just a down-payment but I have to run. They have already started the engines.."
"Take care of yourself," he said. He didn't say 'I love you,' too mushy and too public. But he thought it.
"I will. Take care of mom for me, OK?"
"I will," he said - although he rather expected Jim Valenti would be taking excellent care of Amy DeLuca in Maria's absence.
Re: Informed consent AU M/L ADULT 3/28/2009
- “I’m sorry sir,” said the pilot, “… if we are going to beat the noise curfew into Midway, we need to be starting engines…”
Jeff looked out the window at the small Roswell business jet terminal building one last time. No sign of Maria. “Well, it can’t be helped I guess. It just surprises me. Maria is usually so reliable.”
The copilot closed the door and sealed it as the pilot slid in to the left seat. The copilot slid into his and they started their engine-start checklist. As the right engine started to spool up, the pilot looked out the left side of the aircraft and saw a figure come running out the door of the terminal her head capped with curly blonde hair and a pack on her back. The girl was running straight for the aircraft.
“Hold start on the left engine, Dick,” he said to the copilot. “I think our last passenger just arrived.”
Jeff saw the copilot unstrap and come back into the cabin, not sure just what was going on as he opened the door – the right side engine still running. The copilot – Dick – motioned with his hand and Maria came scurrying up the airstair door into the cabin.
“I am SO sorry,” said Maria to the copilot, “… we had car trouble and I had to hitch a ride to get here.”
“That’s alright, Miss,” said the copilot. “Get in your seat and put your seatbelt on, I’ll get the door closed up, and we’ll be on our way in no time.”
Maria looked at Liz’s comatose body on the litter and gave her hand a quick squeeze as she went by, then walked by Jeff and Nancy to sit in the seat next to Isabel. Within minutes the aircraft had started to taxi. A few minutes later it was at the end of the runway and the captain called the tower for approval.
“Roswell tower, Lifeguard 28, ready for takeoff runway 3, IFR to Chicago-Midway.”
“Lifeguard 28, amend departure clearance to fly runway heading, maintain 10,000, expect higher in five minutes. You are cleared for takeoff, runway three.”
“Roger, fly runway heading, maintain ten, expect higher in five. Lifeguard 28 is rolling…”
A minute later the tower called back, telling them they should contact departure frequency on 119.6, and they were on their way to Chicago.
On the desert floor below, Michael watched the jet climb slowly out of sight. It was, he told himself, somewhat ironic. He’d kidded Max for over a decade about the crush that Max had on that ‘Earth-girl,’ back when Michael had been so sure that they should embrace their alien roots. He’d been sort of an idiot, he decided, siding with Izzy in that dispute. He imagined part of it was resentment – they had parents who really cared about them and he’d had nothing in his life to convince him that his ties to Earth were anything more than a pain in the ass. That had changed so much – everything had changed after Liz’s accident.
Max had become truly obsessed with curing Liz and Izzy had become obsessed first with keeping Max from going insane with worry and later – after she’d come to know Liz in the dream-orb – devoted to helping Max and at first resigned to – but Michael thought now actually looking forward to – being closer to Liz in the real world as well. Then of course, there WAS Alex, who if Michael was any good at reading Izzy – and he was – was certainly becoming more than just someone to share a dream dance with.
At first, he supposed, it had just been that he and Maria had both had idle time. She and Liz had been inseparable for most of their lives, but once Liz was in a coma – well, Maria visited her twice a day, but – it wasn’t the same. Since fifth grade he had always had – and only had – Max and Izzy, but Max was so involved researching how to save Liz, and Izzy was now seeing both Maria and Alex… it had been over a month since the three of them had gotten together at all.
‘I probably should have told them about me and Maria,’ Michael thought as he saw the jet go behind a cloud and slip out of sight. But he knew why he hadn’t. It wasn’t that Max was going to razz him about having an Earth-girlfriend, after all those years of him doing it to him. It wasn’t even that Izzy was going to give him a bad time about possibly getting ‘too close’ and giving away the secret. If he was any judge of alien-human hybrid nature – and lately he felt he could read Izzy like a book – the girl was working up her courage to get close – maybe even too close – to Alex. No, the real reason he hadn’t told them – hadn’t told either of them that he and Maria had somehow become not just a couple, but a very close couple, was that he just couldn’t do that to Max.
After most of a lifetime of Max loving Liz, Michael just hadn’t been able to bring himself to telling him that he, Michael, someone who had helped Izzy keep him away from Liz for all these years, now was the main man and principle squeeze of his comatose love’s best friend. And of course to tell Izzy was to tell Max, so he hadn’t told her either. Still, he hadn’t told Maria anything about ‘the secret’. It wasn’t like his dating her had put Max and Izzy at any risk. He’d talk to them later – when Izzy got back from Chicago, He sure hoped that Liz’s treatment worked. It was funny – Liz Parker was important to all three of his best friends now.
As he fired up the motorcycle to go back to the trailer park he looked at the helmet dangling from the handlebars and smiled. Maybe he’d paint it pink.
As the aircraft climbed through 15,000 feet, the pilot told everyone it was now safe to move about the cabin. Jeff went forward to ask how long it would take them to get there while Nancy joined Maria and Izzy to make sure Liz was secure.
"I thought for sure you wouldn't make it..." said Nancy to Liz over the noise of the engine.
"Car trouble.... Sorry," replied Maria."
"No harm done," said Nancy. Nancy looked at the one unused seat and turned to Isabel. "Izzy - I'm sorry about your brother. Jeff was just so spooked about what the detective in Albuquerque said - and Liz being like this. I know he's over-reacting, but...."
"It's OK, Mrs. Parker. He's just hurting," said Izzy, squeezing Liz's hand gently, "... we are all just hurting."
"I know, but I just can't help thinking of Max sitting home not knowing what's going on - worrying..."
"Oh, he's not. Sitting home that is. Mom suggested that he do something to get his mind off Liz - like that would be possible - so he and Michael went off in the Jeep this morning to go camping on the Gila."
"Michael?" Nancy said, preempting Maria who was about to say the same thing.
"Yes, Michael Guerin. He's a friend of ours. I'm sure you've seen him."
"Yeah," said Maria, "...looking from Izzy to Nancy and back again, "...the guy with the freaky hair...."
"Oh yes, I remember him," said Nancy.
'Me too,' thought Maria, fighting to keep her face expressionless. She looked at Isabel Evans who appeared to be tucking the blanket in around Liz where a strap had pulled it back. 'Curiouser and curiouser,' Maria thought to herself.
Re: Informed consent AU M/L ADULT 3/29/2009
- It was late afternoon when the small jet got in to the gate at O'Hare, and Max walked quickly through the terminalto the ground transport to board the shuttle in to town. It actually dropped him off quite near his hotel, but he didn't check in. He got on the El and went instead to the University of Chicago Medical Research Center.
He tried his best to be unobtrusive, joining other people who were using the afternoon visiting hours to see hospitalized friends. He quickly saw what he wanted - a food service person pushing a tray delivery cart. He followed the man back toward the cafeteria and saw the door just outside of it that said 'men's food service locker room'. He slipped quickly inside.
The room was empty of people but there was a bulletin board on the wall listing a work schedule. He saw that two employees were on vacation. It took him only a minute to find the locker of one of the employees on vacation, and he used his powers to open it. In the labcoat pocket was the man's hospital identification badge. He quickly pocketed it and strode out of the locker room. He'd take out the original picture later at the hotel and substitute one of his own that he'd brought. The magnetic stripe would probably let him through any card reader door in the place - everyone had to eat - but even if it didn't, he could still swipe the card through the reader and use his own powers to unlock the door. It would work. He'd make it work. On the way out he grabbed a pamphlet with a map of the building, and left for the hotel. He would study it there and be ready for his opportunity when the moment came. Another quick trip on the "El" and he was back at his hotel where he checked in to room 619 which he had reserved.
As the Learjet taxied in at Midway airport Izzy could see the ambulance waiting at the business jet terminal. Liz was quickly off-loaded and they piled in to the ambulance with her - Izzy and Maria in back with Liz and the attendant, the Parkers up front with the driver. The drive to the hospital was a short one.
They were met at the neurosciences pavilion by a woman who introduced herself as Dr. Sara Worthington, the research assistant to Doctor Hanshaw who was the principal medical advisor for the study. She saw to it that Liz was settled in to a room in the neuroscience coma unit and took the copies of her medical records and scans for review. The other Parkers were settled down in a room reserved for families of hospital patients. Izzy and Maria asked where they could get a taxi to the hotel, and Doctor Worthington offered to drop them off on her way home. As night was falling they were delivered to the doorway of their hotel and she told them how to take the "El' back to the hospital in the morning as she bid them goodnight. The presentation to the Parker's as part of the informed consent process for experimental treatment would begin at 8AM sharp. Maria and Izzy checked in to Registration and were given key-cards for room 620.
"It's been a long day and I have more than my fair share of Roswell desert dust on me from the car breakdown. You mind if I hit the shower first?" asked Maria.
"Be my guest. I'll be in there as soon as your done," replied Izzy.
Izzy waited until Maria was in the bathroom and she heard the shower running before she unlocked the door between the two rooms and knocked on it twice. There was a click and it opened.
"I got the adjoining room so we won't have any trouble dreamwalking.," he said. "I've also checked out the hospital and gotten fake ID," he said, holding up a badge that now had his picture on it. "Everything I can think of is ready."
"OK, the first meeting is at 8AM tomorrow. I'll let you know after that when she gets the test dose. Are you going to stay here until then?"
"Yeah, might as well. Here's the telephone number for my room. Let me know right after the briefing, OK Iz?"
"OK, Max. See you in Liz's dream as soon as she has one tonight. We can explain to her what's going on then."
Maria turned on the shower and waited for the water to warm. It was not the most modern hotel, and the water was apparently heated in the boiler seven stories below. 'What the hell,' she thought, she might just as well talk to Izzy while the water warmed. She went to the door and opened it - just in time to see Izzy closing the door to the adjacent room. All at once, this wasn't as funny as it had been. First Izzy lied about Michael - now she apparently knew someone in the adjacent room. 'What in hell is going on?' she asked herself uneasily as she quietly reclosed the bathroom door and returned to her shower.
Last edited by greywolf on Fri Apr 03, 2009 12:48 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Re: Informed consent AU M/L ADULT 4/3/2009
- Twenty days previously
In the dream-orb
"... and tomorrow they'll talk to your mom and dad - tell them about the research program and how they use the neurotrophins. Once they have been fully briefed and give their consent, they'll start the test. I need to sneak in to your first PET scan somehow. It's the one that localizes where the damage is. That way when they do the second one - the one to see how effectively the neurotrophins are fixed by the damaged tissue - I know where to make the test look positive. I've tried it with TV sets - making one part of the screen brighten where I wanted it to - I'm sure I can do it with the screen in the imaging room."
Liz smiled and shook her head. This wasn't really Max - she understood that - but still. "Max - that wouldn't work. All you'd be doing was changing the picture on the monitor in the scanner. When they replayed the data, it would just show the original image again." Liz didn't really want to be having this conversation. In fact, since Izzy was off in the mists, she'd rather be necking. OK, so it wasn't really Max. A girl could dream, couldn't she? Especially when she only had dreams left?
"You are right!" Max said, his eyes growing wild. "I'll have to get to the computer room - modify the data itself..."
In the mists Izzy could hear the sudden silence, like Max was lost in deep thought working on the problem. At least that's what she thought until she heard the soft moans. She still couldn't tell if those came from Max or from Liz. Most likely, it was a joint effort she decided, wishing suddenly that Alex was there with her......
Re: Informed consent AU M/L ADULT 4/4/2009
- The alarm clock buzzed briefly and Isabel’s hand moved reflexively to shut it off with the snooze button. In the next bed over, Maria mumbled “Just five more minutes, Mom, – then I’ll get up,” and appeared to roll over pushing her face into the pillow to protect it from the light making it’s way through the closed window blinds.
“I’ll hit the shower first, we’ve still got almost an hour until we need to catch the “El” to the hospital,” said Isabel.
Maria appeared to mumble something unintelligible into the pillow as Isabel looked at her and shook her head. As she started to get up, the picture book fell from under the covers and she looked quickly over at Maria to see if she’d noticed. Not a chance – the girl was dead to the world. Isabel picked it up quickly and turned off the LED booklight that had been on all night. It was a very small album – just her folks, Max, Liz, Michael, and Alex. She actually didn’t need Max’s picture to sleepwalk him any more, and probably wouldn’t have needed Liz’s picture either if she were back in her own room and Liz were in her usual hospital room. Knowing the person well, and knowing their physical location let her dreamwalk them without the necessity of an image to concentrate on. At home she could dreamwalk Michael and Max without pictures at all – as long as she knew where they were. Alex, too, these days. She sighed deeply. As she looked at his picture. She’d tried hard last night – after Liz’s dream-orb had faded, but she Chicago was definitely too far from Roswell to pull anyone in – as nice as a relaxing dance with Alex would have been. Isabel looked back at Maria – her face still buried in the pillow, and put the picture book quietly into her makeup bag.
As the alarm clock buzzed a second time, Maria tried to ignore it, but after thirty seconds of buzzing it was obvious even to her sleepy brain that the damn thing wasn’t going to go away. Time to get up.
As she shook the cobwebs out of her brain she heard the shower start. Maria looked at the closed bathroom door and reached for the phone. She dialed the number easily from memory and waited for it to ring.
Michael grabbed the phone on the second ring. Hank had drunk himself into a stupor last night and probably wouldn't have awakened in any event, but he wanted to answer it quickly anyway. If Hank actually DID awaken, he'd no doubt have a raging hangover and be unfit company for man, beast, or likely even alien-human hybrid.
"Hello" he said, trying to keep his voice low. The voice on the other end was both familiar and welcome.
"Hello yourself..."
"I've missed you...," he said. What he wanted to say was that he loved her, but talking about such things was difficult for him.
"I've missed you too," Maria replied. She wanted to say that she loved him, but she'd be damned if she would before he did it first. "Uh... Michael, I wanted to ask you a question. I take it you've never told Max or Isabel about us?"
"Us?" he asked, not really sure where this was going.
"Yes, US," Maria replied emphatically, "... there is an US you understand?"
"uh, yes Maria, ... there is an us," Michael replied, still somewhat worried about where this was going. Part of the problem was that he'd never really expected there to be an 'us', and wasn't altogether sure just how the 'us' had come into being, although it certainly had. A tuning point, he knew, had been that night in the rainstorm. Of course Max and Isabel were kind to him - they were of a kind. He hadn't seen a whole lot of human kindness in his life - spent mostly in the foster care system, the majority of that with Hank Guerin. That one night had been the start of a revelation.
First of all, there was Maria herself. Perhaps Michael had never needed a friend any more in his entire life than he had that stormy night. Izzy and Max were tied up with their own problems - trying to help Liz. He wasn't sure just what had brought him to stand outside her window in the rain - or what he expected to happen once she saw him. But what had happened had amazed him. She'd trusted him when she had no reason to trust him and helped him when she had nothing to gain by helping him. Nothing had happened that night, but even so, he expected her mother to kill him the next morning when she discovered them. But that hadn't happened either.
Like Maria, her mother too had been kind. He'd almost panicked when he found out she had called the Sheriff - she'd said she was just calling a friend who could help him - but even that had worked out. The Sheriff was not the monster that old Hank had led him to believe all the years that he'd threatened to call the sheriff on him if he didn't do the work around the trailer Hank wanted him to do. Even the District Attorney had been kind to him, and had suggested - strongly - to the department of social services that they agree to the deal he'd worked out - that or the DA was going to test just how much immunity the department had from criminal prosecution.
So the revelation that all humans weren't bad had been a real one for Michael, and the revelation that one human - Maria - could care about him deeply and unselfishly - could actually love him - had rocked his entire perception of the world in the last four months. Yes, there was an 'us' alright. Michael just wished that he could somehow think of a way to tell Maria the truth about himself. OK, so he hadn't actually said it. He knew he was in love with her, was pretty sure she did too. But how do you tell someone something like that?
Michael didn't communicate all that well and he realized that. Interpersonal skills were just not his forte - too little practice and - he feared - too little aptitude. He'd wracked his brain, rehearsed various scenarios in his mind - even dreamed of different ways to explain the situation to her - but he'd never gotten the courage. It wasn't like it was easy. Max hadn't told Liz until she was in a coma, for Pete's sake, and Izzy was still agonizing about how to tell Alex last he'd talked to her. Why should he be any better at this than they were?
"Uh -no, Maria. I don't believe I actually told either Max or Isabel about us. Is that important?"
"Not right away, it's just that - well, I think that Max is using you as an alibi right now. It would probably be best if you didn't go visit the Evanses or even call them right now."
"OK... I sure do miss you. Any idea when you'll be back?"
"Depends on how this goes. With luck, four or five days. They'll administer the treatment and she can be transported home to see if it works. With bad luck, just a couple. She won't qualify for treatment at all."
"Well, I'll keep my fingers crossed. Oh and, I miss you..."
"I miss you too, Michael," she said, knowing that she loved him but damn well not going to be the first to say it. As she heard the shower stop Maria said, "I've got to go now. Call you later."
"Later...," he said as he put the phone down, wondering why he didn't have the nerve to actually tell her how he felt about her.
Re: Informed consent AU M/L ADULT 4/13/2009
- Isabel rinsed the last of the conditioner from her hair and shut the shower off. She reached out to the towel rack and grabbed a towel, wrapping it around her head, and then took a second towel and quickly dried off before she stepped from the shower.
Max often called his sister a bathroom-piggy, and even Isabel would have admitted that the title wasn't entirely unfair. The Evans house had three bedrooms plus a guest room and what the realtors would call two baths and two half baths. One bath was in the master bedroom and the second connected her room to Max's room and the architects intent was for it to be shared by the occupants of the two rooms. In point of fact, it was doubtful that Max had seen the inside of that bathroom in several years. Long ago, Princess Isabel had claimed it for her own. In early adolescence Izzy would spend hours in there, trying different hairstyles – different combinations of cosmetics – different nail polish – different clothes combinations. She used the tub to take long bubble baths, sometimes luxuriating in bath oils. Max used the half bath down the hall with the small fiberglass shower enclosure – the one intended for the guest bedroom and general use by visitors.
But today was different. There were two young women who had to share this bathroom this morning, and then take the 'El' to the hospital in time to have breakfast in the hospital cafeteria with Jeff and Nancy Parker. Izzy had taken a short shower, not having the time to do her usual bath oil soak. She'd shampooed briefly, applied conditioner, and quickly rinsed it. The job now was to get dry, get dressed, and get out so Maria could start a similar ritual. She did what she always did, toweled off her body, got her underwear on, then took the towel off her hair and quickly dried it with her powers. The cosmetics she intended to put on could certainly be applied using the room mirror, there was no need to tie up the only bathroom. Isabel grabbed ger cosmetics bag, reached for the doorknob, and – froze.
The heel of her right hand impacted abruptly into the center of her forehead. 'You almost blew it THIS time,' she thought, setting the cosmetic case back down. She actually had a hair dryer – given to her by her mother – but she wasn't sure when the last time was she'd used it. She hadn't bothered to pack it though – it was scarcely part of her usual cosmetic armamentarium. Using her powers was so much quicker, and in the privacy of her own bathroom really no problem But there was precisely no way she could shampoo herself here and step out without actually using a hair-dryer to dry her hair, it would be a dead give away. Her eyes quickly fell on the hair dryer attached to the wall and she took it out of it's holder and turned it on to the blow-only setting, laying it on the counter to run while she applied her own cosmetics – using her powers to alter the colors and move them around to her satisfaction. When she was done she closed her case and picked up the hair-dryer, waiting what she judged to be a reasonable period of time before opening the door and exiting.
“All yours,” she told Maria.
“Thanks, Izzy, “ said Maria as she entered the bathroom and closed the door.
Five minutes later the shower was again running. Izzy dressed quickly and went to the door between the two rooms. She opened her side, then used her powers to open the door on Max's side of the passage. She stepped through and closed it behind her, using her powers to move the latch through the door back to its original position.
“Max, are you awake,” she called softly into the darkened room.
“Yes, I'm awake, but I don't plan to stay that way long. I'm going to have breakfast, and then I'm planning on putting a do-not-disturb sign on the door and resting all day – so tonight I'll be fresh when I go to the hospital to try to rig Liz's test. That means you'll be seeing her alone tonight unfortunately. Give her my love, will you?”
Izzy smiled at her brother. I will, but I'm sure it's not going to be the same.”
“Look, Izzy, I know sometimes we get a little uh....”
“Enthusiastic?”
“Yeah, something like that. I want to thank you for giving us what privacy you can, you know...?”
“Well, I want to apologize for all those years that I gave you a hard time because you liked her. I was wrong – I know that. Heck,” she said smiling, “I'm not sure you could have convinced Miss Skeptic of the truth even if you had flat out told her. I sure didn't have to worry about her finding out by accident and – even if she had – I don't think it would have mattered. In fact, she seems to have cared for you just as much as you cared for her. And if she didn't, she certainly appears to care that much now.”
“Yeah, maybe. Of course, she still doesn't really believe...”
“Like that'll make a difference...”
Max shrugged his shoulder somewhat doubtfully. “Easy for you to say – but I notice that you haven't been able to bring yourself to share any secrets with Alex yet...”
“It's a little more complicated than that with Alex, I'm thinking about it, but I just don't know...,” said Isabel, leaving the sentence unfinished. It wasn't quite a lie. Of course she loved Alex – she'd give anything to spend her life with him – anything that was except Alex's happiness. Right now Alex had two Izzys – the girl of his dreams who shared his dances with him and – in his dreams – would someday share his children, and the Izzy who was a friend and with whom he sometimes shared coffee-dates.
But what if humans and alien-human hybrids weren't all that compatible? What if they couldn't have children? What if they couldn't even have sex enjoyably with one another? Was it fair to use years of being his dream-Izzy to trap him in some sort of a relationship that would keep him from ever having the home and family he really wanted? And that was only part of the problem. How would she tell him something like that? How do you break something like that to the guy you care about? Uh Alex, I neglected to tell you, I'm not from around here – I can turn ketchup into mustard through molecular manipulation and knock over cars with a powerblast from either hand. And as for our future twins you dream about – I'm not sure that I can bear Earth children – or even have sex with you, for that matter. Now just how exactly did one work THAT conversation into a coffee-date?
Next door the shower was being turned off and a wet Maria reached for a towel. Her shower had been short because she'd had one last night to wash the desert dust from the motorcycle ride with Michael off of her, but her hair had still needed a quick shampoo. She towel-dried it as best she could and then reached for the hair dryer on the wall. She turned it on and slid the control to 'low' heat from blow – the cool air continued to come from it unabated. She pushed it up to 'high' but still – nothing but cool air coming from it. She shut it off and opened the door – surprised to see Izzy gone – and went to her own cosmetic kit to pull out her own hair-dryer. On the trip back to the bathroom she noted the door to the corridor – the chain still across it. Isabel couldn't have gone out that way – 'Where could she be?' She checked the one diminutive closet and looked out on the faux-balcony – it was only about six inches wide - she sure wouldn't miss her there – but no Izzy.
Her eyes finally fell on the door to the adjoining room. 'That must be it,' she thought. 'I'll bet Max is right next door.'
Maria went back in the bathroom and closed the door, starting to dry her hair when the memory of the door hit her – the bolt had been across the door – no way could Isabel have gone through that door and then put the bolt back in place across it – but she wasn't anywhere else, and she certainly couldn't have gone out in the corridor and put the chain across the door there either....
Maria felt a cold chill run down her back. 'No girl, DO NOT go there. That is SO not possible.' But the memory of a long-ago conversation with Liz about logical thinking came back to her suddenly. Liz had said that when you eliminated everything that was impossible, whatever was left – however improbable – was the truth. Of course Liz couldn't have meant something this – bizarre – or this – personal? Could she?
Maria's eyes fell on Izzy's cosmetics case. She would have sworn that the noise made by the wall-mounted hair dryer was the same noise that had come from the bathroom when Izzy was drying her hair, but it obviously wasn't because the hair dryer on the wall didn't even work. So if she opened the cosmetic case, there would be another hair-dryer in it – and it would sound just like the wall mounted one – wouldn't it? Setting her own hair dryer on the counter – still running – she opened Izzy's cosmetic case. The total amount of stuff would have been unexceptional even for someone who wasn't an Ice Princess and budding high fashion model – mostly just the basics – and certainly there was no hair-dryer.
'This,' Maria told herself, '...simply wasn't happening.' Or if it was, it had to be some bizarre sort of coincidence – her mind playing tricks on her. It could NOT be real, no matter what Liz said about logic. Maria's mind struggled to come up with some alternative explanation to what she was starting to think but none came readily to mind. Then she saw it – buried in the bottom of the cosmetic case. She took the small book out and pulled it out – and opened it.
'This can't be happening,” Maria told herself as she thumbed through the pages. The pictures of Max and Michael were old – probably the fifth grade. The picture of Alex she recognized from their seventh grade yearbook. Liz's picture – it was the one that had appeared in the town newspaper the day after her accident. That's all there were – that and a small LED booklight. Maria's head was shaking in disbelief – trying desperately to keep that disbelief. In her mind there was a war going on between acceptance and denial. It took long minutes, but ultimately denial won out.
'There MUST be some more rational explanation for explanation for all this,' she told herself. 'It's all just some crazy coincidence – If I can just hold myself together, I'll figure it all out and probably end up laughing at myself.'
Maria slowly dried her hair with the hair blower – it took a while with the heater coils not working, but it gave her time to control her hyperventilation. By the time she heard the knock on the door – almost fifteen minutes later - she had managed to convince herself that there was a rational explanation somewhere – one that DID NOT involve Max, Isabel, and most definitely - Michael - being aliens. She just had to find it.
“Maria – if we are going to leave we can't wait much longer.”
“I'm coming,” said Maria. “Just had a few – hair problems...”
As she dressed she looked at the door. It was again closed and latched. She watched Izzy out of the corner of her eye – whenever the girl wasn't looking in her direction. The girl seemed normal enough. No, Maria thought, she was being silly – the stress of knowing how important today was for Liz was getting to her. She was confusing dreams and reality. She told herself – and that seemed reassuring. Still, the coincidences were certainly piling up. She looked up at Izzy and was rewarded with a friendly smile.
“We walk one block east and one block north, and there is a platform for us to get on the 'El.' We can be at the hospital in fifteen minutes.”
Maria smiled and nodded. She had to keep it together, the day was too important to Liz to freak out. She opened the vial of sandalwood oil and took a deep relaxing breath.
“I'm ready when you are, Izzy.”
Re: Informed consent AU M/L ADULT 4/17/2009
- Dr. Sara Worthington, the research assistant to Doctor Hanshaw started the presentation for the Parkers - and Izzy and Maria - at 9AM.
"Before the research institute has met its legal obligation for informed consent under the rules given by our Institutional Review Board when they approved this research protocol it is necessary to give you some background information. Since the patients themselves cannot - in a coma study - give their consent, it is necessary to obtain that consent from the family members or others who have been delegated in a living will to make that decision. In the case of your daughter, who is a minor under the law for another two plus weeks, that consent can be given by her parents even in the absence of a living will. After that - well, the law would require that her spouse give consent, in the absence of a living will, so as a practical matter it is fortunate you didn't wait any longer before bringing her here."
Dr. Worthington dimmed the lights and started projecting slides on a screen in the small conference room.
"To understand about the difficulties of a specialized cell like a brain neuron in repairing itself you have to understand the geometry of the cell itself. There is a relatively small cell body or soma approximately 4 microns in diameter with axons or dendritesdendrites that reach out to connect with other cells. In the case of some neurons - like those of the reticular activating system – these axons may be three tenths of a meter in length. The cell nucleus sits in the soma but the damage to the cell invariably occurs way out in the dendrites and axons.
For purposes of comparison, let’s say that nerve cell body or soma was the size of a tennis ball. The nucleus within it would be approximately half that diameter – the dendrites perhaps the diameter of your index finger but the length of those dendrites would be almost a mile and a half. When the dendrite is injured the nucleus must direct repair of that dendrite from an average of three-quarters of a mile away through that narrow tube – without any specialized repair apparatus. For the most part, that just isn’t possible. A nerve that has a dendrite severed cleanly as by a surgeon’s scalpel will usually survive. The dendrite end will eventually heal and if it is a peripheral nerve with a sheath of Schwann cells to guide it, the severed end may eventually grow down the sheath of Schwann cells to reattach to it’s original position, although this growth is very slow. But most cells damaged by concussive forces can’t survive at all – they simply are injured too badly, because a concussion typically does not sever them cleanly but rather tears them longitudinally through something called diffuse axial shear.
Because of the brain cells unique geometry - the injury is very distant in terms of cellular size from the nucleus of the cell, this may take quite awhile - months certainly are not unusual - perhaps as much as a few years. Even if we treat these cells, many may go on to die anyway. The neurotrophins we use definitely stimulate the healing process, but all they can really do is get the maximum performance out of these cells normal ability to heal themselves. They can't force the cells to work any harder than the maximum performance of their normal healing processes. What we really need, and someday may have, is the ability to use nanorobots or something similar to actually repair these cells. That requires manipulations at the molecular level which we just don't have the ability to do today."
"Molecular manipulation....?" Maria repeated, her eyes growing wide. She could feel the blood draining from her face and was fighting to keep from passing out. 'This can't be happening....It has got to be some sort of a wild coincidence. I must have read about this somewhere.'
Maria looked carefully to her side where Izzy was sitting. The girl was sitting watching the presentation. Maria's eyes looked furtively at the others in the room. In the darkness, her reaction had apparently gone unnoticed by everyone - but not her comment.
"Yes," said Dr. Worthington. "If we had the ability to actually go in to the damaged axon and repair the membrane there - it's a bilipid layer," she said, punching up a new slide on the screen, ".... with pores to let ions pass through. The polarization and depolarization of those axons and dendrites is what passes the messages through the brain and the pores for the ions are what allow that to happen. It's not a complicated structure and if it weren't so small, would be relatively easy to repair. But without the ability to manipulate molecules at the molecular level, well I'm afraid our ability to actually repair those cells is nonexistent. All we can do is to use neurotrophins - which are a stimulant - to sort of flog the cell to do as much repairing quickly as it can."
There was a battle going on in Maria's mind. Fortunately the darkness was concealing her wide eyes, and the trembling of her hands. She had begun arguing - with herself this time.
'Yeah, sure Maria. You MUST have read about this somewhere. THAT'S the answer. Like HELL you did - Liz might have read something like that - or maybe Max - in a million years you wouldn't have been reading anything like that. Did Max tell you anything about that? Right, like Max would talk biochemistry with me..... now with Liz maybe... '
She suddenly found herself wondering when the last time Max had talked to Liz was. Was it before the accident .... or after?
'OMIGAWD Maria, don't think things like that - you're going crazy!'
But she couldn't help it. Couldn't help the shaking of her hands that was fortunately concealed by the darkness - couldn't help leaning slightly to her left - away from the girl who was no longer Izzy but in her mind was back to being Isabel Evans - Ice Princess and .... and what?
'If you can't say it, Maria,' she told herself, '... can you at least think it?'
Izzy looked to her left and saw Maria looking at her. The presentation was probably over her head, she thought. No surprise, it was pretty technical for her, and she had the advantage of actually knowing some of it intuitively. She smiled sympathetically at her, before looking back toward the screen.
Maria saw Isabel Evans look at her and smile, nodding at her before turning her attention back to the screen. She looked so friendly - normal - human.
'At least have the courage to THINK the word, Maria,' she told herself.
Maria looked at Isabel one last time before turning her head back toward the screen. She kept her face a mask as she mentally shouted back at the voice in her own mind that had been taunting her.
'OK, ALIEN....I said it. Are you satisfied now?'
Apparently the voice was satisfied, because there was no response. Maria tried to shake off her fears, trying to pay attention to the rest of the presentation. She seemed safe here - she'd have to decide what to do about her suspicions later. Right now it was important for her to understand what was going to happen to Liz.
Re: Informed consent AU M/L ADULT 4/22/2009
- Dr. Worthington continued in what was obviously a canned presentation to provide information to everyone who required information to provide truly informed consent for their family member to participate in the study.
"A further problem," she said, "was what happens over time as large numbers of these damaged cells undergo cell death. The brain can tolerate isolated cells dying - it probably happens all the time - but when a large local concentration of cell death occurs, something very different happens. toxins are released by these dying cells, and adjacent cells that were normal - or at least not too badly injured to survive if left alone - now are further poisoned by these toxins leading to more cell death and a cascade that typically leads to the death of adjacent cells. This will sometimes have a sort of domino-effect, leading to a progressive process of cell death that causes the coma to gradually deepen over time.
Sometimes counteracting this process of cell death is the process of laying down of replacement neurons by brain stem cells which persist to a degree even in the adult. This is a photomicrograph of mouse brain stem cells - dyed green on this slide - differentiating into oligodendrocytes and astrocytes and new neurons.
The treatment we are investigating in this study utilizes neurotrophins - substances that stimulate growth and repair of different types of nerve cells in the nervous system normally, as a treatment for damaged and dysfunctional nerve tissue. These neurotrophins occur naturally in the body in small doses. What we are doing is taking neurotrophins that have been created artificially through molecular bioengineering and using them artificially in large doses to hasten the repair process.
Normally," said Dr. Worthington, putting up a new slide, "neurotrophins act in three ways;
First, they take multipotent neural crest cells - the stem cells found in the human brain, and they convert these cells into new brain cells, into the Schwann cells that serve to provide nourishment to axons that the nucleus of the cell is simply too far away to provide while providing insulation to the nerve tissue in peripheral nerves, and into some smooth muscle supporting structures. They also cause an increase in the reproduction rate of those same stem cells, permitting more cells to be available for general repair work.
Second, they also stimulate an increase in the reproduction rate of a type of stem cell called the glial progenitor cell. These produce more astrocytes and oligodendrocytes - again through conversion by the appropriate neurotrophins - into Astrocytes which have a principal role in repair of damage to the neurons, and oligodendrocytes which form the insulation within the brain, similar to the function provided by the Schwann cells in the peripheral nerves.
Last, and for our purposes probably least, the neurotrophins can stimulate formation of specialized tissue in the body in the sympathetic nervous system and adrenal glands."
The doctor looked around and gave a sympathetic smile. "I realize this is pretty technical, but there really is no easier way to explain it."
Jeff felt Nancy squeeze his hand and lean toward him. "You know, I sort of wish that we'd brought Max along on this trip. He might have been able to explain this in terms we'd actually understand...."
At one level Jeff was inclined to agree, but at another level.... All of this was so terrifying and so difficult to understand at all, let alone make reasoned decisions about it. The boy and Liz - somehow that was more clearcut. The Albuquerque police said he was a threat - they were the experts - and Max Evans was a threat he could actually do something about.
As he looked back at the briefing he shook his head slowly. He was WAY out of his comfort zone here. But he'd sit through this and listen, and in the end almost certainly permit Liz to be part of the experiment. Over the months he'd established a rapport with her doctors in Roswell and they had made it clear that this was Liz's best - and perhaps her last - chance.
As for Max Evans..., he certainly wasn't going to fight with Nancy over it, but he saw no reason to trust the boy's scientific opinion than he did to trust the boys intentions toward his comatose and helpless daughter.
Beside him in the darkness, Maria was time-sharing between watching the screen and presentation, and watching Isabel. Isabel wasn't Liz - or even Max - but she understood more about this than any of the four of them who had come with Liz, that was clear from the way the girl -do you call a female alien a girl? - from the way that 'Izzy' was responding to the presentation. But why was she here? Why was she doing this? What was her motivation? Was it really to help Liz? But if it wasn't, why was she here at all? Liz's doctors in Roswell hadn't QUITE said 'no hope' or 'lost cause,' but this whole thing was what Kyle Valenti would have called a 'Hail Mary' pass. The probability of success was heartbreakingly low already. Would 'Izzy' really have undertaken this much effort to sabotage Liz - like she seemed to have been sabotaging Max and Liz getting together since third grade?
Somehow she couldn't make herself believe 'Izzy' - human or not - would do that. Somehow 'Izzy's' affection for Liz had seemed all too real. 'Or is that just what you want to believe?' she asked herself.
As the lecture droned on, four people who knew and loved Liz sat there, each lost in their own personal thoughts.....
Last edited by greywolf on Sat Apr 25, 2009 11:09 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Re: Informed consent AU M/L ADULT 4/25/2009
- “Because of the great disparity in brain injuries that cause comas,” continued Dr. Worthington, “…the first thing we do – even before deciding if we can accept the patient into the program – is to assess the type and degree of damage. That way we can compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges when we assess outcome. Those coma victims who are in particularly deep comas based on their Glascow Coma Scale have a certain likelihood for recovery that is different, for example, than those victims who have a less deep coma. To determine the success or failure of this experimental process we need to adjust for this in our comparison of our results with the corresponding untreated outcomes. The precise anatomical lesion involved is also important. Some comas are due to diffuse areas of the cerebrum being involved – others to small lesions in the midbrain. It is necessary for us to precisely assess just what the lesion is and where it is to the best of our capability. This gives us the ability to both tell you what we believe the likelihood of success is with and without treatment and – to a degree – what we think the result of the treatment might be if there is improvement. Unfortunately, not all treatment is successful and even for the treatment that results in improvement, a complete return to normalcy is unlikely. We wish that were different – we are working hard to make that different – but we are still in the experimental stage of this procedure.”
“Might it be better,” asked Nancy, “… if we waited? Waited until you had perfected this treatment?”
“Well, unfortunately people in coma – even young otherwise healthy people like your daughter – don’t do well in a coma Mrs. Parker. “We aren’t really designed to just lie there. Even with the best of physical therapy and nursing care – deterioration is inevitable. In fact, generally it would be better to treat in the first few months – your daughter right now is at about the limit of what we will accept in terms of duration since the mishap that caused the coma. Doubtless some deterioration has already occurred, and I think that’s evidenced by the declining frequency and duration of her REM sleep. I’m afraid for your daughter it’s sort of now or never.”
Jeff nodded his head grimly. Liz’s doctors had told him pretty much the same thing.
“The first step in this assessment,” continued Dr. Worthington, “… is to inject your daughter with a biologically engineered immune globulin that will briefly attach itself to the injured cells. Immune globulins are formed in the body to attach themselves to and destroy infecting cells. These immunoglobulins are artificial and incomplete. They will attach themselves to the damaged cells – but they lack the mechanism to actually kill or even harm these damaged cells. What they do is carry a radioactive tracer to the area of the injury and we use a PET scan – like those your daughter has had before – to precisely localize the injury. If you decide to participate in the treatment, we then have a baseline for the degree of severity of the initial injury. In the event that you opt for your daughter to NOT undergo the treatment, we are still asking that we be allowed to follow your daughters progress untreated as part of our control group.”
“Control group?” asked Jeff.
“Yes,” said Dr. Worthington, the control group is a comparison group for our treated group. If you should choose not to have your daughter participate in this drug trial, she would still be valuable to us from a scientific point of view. We would compare her ultimate outcome with that of a study participant who did receive treatment – matched as nearly as possible as to age, gender, and type and degree of injury, to assess the effectiveness of treatment. Once we define the precise nature of your daughter’s condition we will do a second test to assess the likelihood of her actually responding to treatment. Should your daughter qualify for inclusion in the treatment group, we would then be able to compare her to similarly matched members of the control group, to ascertain the efficacy of treatment.”
“And the second test is…?” asked Jeff.
“The second test is in many respects similar to the first test. In this case, though, we use radioisotope labeled neurotrophins. This is a relatively low dose – far lower than would be required for treatment – and we administer it as soon as we know the outcome of your daughter’s first test – but only if you opt for her treatment.”
“Why wouldn’t we opt for treatment?” asked Jeff.
“Well, let’s just say that there are a variety of possible outcomes from treatment.”
“It might make Liz worse?” asked Nancy.
“Well, physiologically, no,” said Dr. Worthington, ‘but …. Well. it’s a rather complicated matter, and rather than put you through it all – perhaps totally unnecessarily – it would be better if we got the preliminary testing done first. The principal medical investigator for the study – Dr. Hanshaw – will read the first preliminary test and be ready to tell you sometime after lunch what your daughter’s prospects are, both with and without treatment.”
“So what is this second test,” asked Jeff, “…the one that tells if Liz is a candidate for treatment.”
“For neurotrophins to work,” said Doctor Worthington,”… they must attach to receptors in the cells and stimulate neural growth and repair. In some patients – all too many patients really, the neurotrophins don’t attach. That may be because the receptors just aren’t present in some people, but that would be unusual. More commonly it comes down to two things – the cells have been damaged so badly and the whole cell death process is so far progressed that the receptors themselves are no longer viable, or the cell receptors are already saturated with endogenous – that is the patient’s own – neurotrophins. In the former case, the neurotrophins can’t force any neural cell healing because the cells are already too far gone, in the latter case the body’s healing process is already doing everything it can to heal, and flogging it with additional neurotrophins simply doesn’t do any good. What we do is to administer the tagged neurotrophins, wait 18 hours, and see what percentage of the tagged neurotrophin winds up bound at the injury site.
What we would LIKE to see, is a large area of moderate damage causing the coma. The smaller the area and the greater the intensity of the damage, the less likely it is for treatment to be effective.
But we won’t know any of that until we get the preliminary PET scan this morning, and to do that I’m afraid there is an awful lot of paperwork that has to be filled out."
Over the next fifteen minutes, Jeff and Nancy signed paperwork, indicating that they understood the presentation – something that neither really did – and that the neurological institute could proceed with the first part of the assessment procedure – the immunoglobulins and the PET scan. Maria and Isabel were told they could go see Liz and they did. Isabel going happily, Maria just a mite warily.
Last edited by greywolf on Tue Apr 28, 2009 2:02 pm, edited 2 times in total.