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Justin is still in a coma. The doctors and staff urge Katherine and William to take Justin off of life-support. Katherine has no choice, but to attempt to help Justin herself. Katherine experiments on Katie who is a chimpanzee. Katherine is successful and Katie recovers from her coma.
Chapter 4: Labor of Love
That evening Katherine told William of her discovery. With this great news, they had to discuss the legal ramifications of what she had in mind. They also had to discuss how they could achieve this with the medical staff continually going in and out of Justin's room.
"You do understand that unilaterally doing this procedure on Justin is a felony. You could go to jail.", exclaimed William.
"Of course I know dear, but I have no option. It will take at least five years for this procedure to be passed by the dozens of national and state regulators. It will be held up in conference and committee. They will have to do many studies to duplicate the process. We do not have the time.", cried Katherine.
"I understand your point. Well...at least try your procedure one more time on another chimp."
"Your right. Of course! I got so caught up, it didn't occur to me. I will do that tomorrow."
"We still have the issue of how you can perform this procedure under the watchful eyes of the medical staff."
"I know...I still haven't figured that part out yet."
"What about nurse Latresky?"
"What about her?"
"Do you think she would cooperate with you and help you during the evening shift when she is by herself?"
"Wow, I don't know. I can't see her putting her job on the line and possibly going to prison."
"What if she doesn't have to risk her job or going to prison?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well maybe she can just 'be blind' to what is happening. If you are successful, then it was a 'miracle' that he recovered from the coma."
"I don't know if she will go along with that."
"Well that is the best idea we have so far", said William.
"Yes it is dear", said Katherine as she yawned. "I am tired and I will be very busy tomorrow."
"Goodnight" said William, as he kissed her on the cheek.
"Goodnight."
That morning when Katherine woke up, she jumped out of bed and quickly got ready to go to the lab. She was very hopeful and excited about the possibility that she found a cure! When she got to work she went straight to the lab where she greeted her co-worker, Kyle with a smile. He looked at her curiously and said, "You haven't been this cheerful in a long time. What's up?"
"Oh nothing", she said.
"Okay. If you say so", he said sarcastically knowing she had something on her mind. Then he volunteered with a smile on his face. "I think I will be out of the lab for a while so you should have the place to yourself. Oh, by the way, tell Katie I said hi." He winked and walked out.
She thought how lucky she was to have such a caring co-worker.
Katherine got down to business quickly and started duplicating her procedure with Katie on a chimp named Buzz. Buzz was a male chimpanzee who had been in a coma for two months. Buzz was shipped from Finland and was about 19 years old.
Since Buzz had his skull in tact, she had to saw a small portion to expose the appropriate section of his brain. So she repeated the same steps with Buzz as she did with Katie and writing very specific notes this time, as she may of found a monumental break through. The first step was successful as she first injected Buzz with Phenobarbital to stimulate his brain. Buzz's brain immediately started secreting Plythorium. She then extracted the Plythorium with a dropper and put it into a Petri dish. She then added the additional agents and created her serum. Finally, after she created the serum, she injected it into Buzz. Like Katie, he immediately jerked and then laid still. Katherine prayed as she waited. After 15 minutes she began getting a little nervous. 20 minutes, 25 minutes and then 30 minutes had passed.
This was taking longer than Katie's response. Katherine began wondering if she did anything differently. 45 minutes and then an hour had now passed as she went through her notes frantically. Buzz still remained unchanged. She was absolutely positive that she used the exact measure of chemical ingredients as last time. After a few hours of depressingly going over her notes and retracing her steps, she decided to leave the laboratory and visit Justin.
When she got to the hospital, she saw Blair with his mom Francis there. 'Blair is such a good friend', she thought. Her mouth flew open in astonishment as she noticed the whole room filled with flower arrangements and different sized colored balloons. And planes! Model planes of many of shapes and sizes.
"We just got here." said Francis."
"Where did all the flowers and balloons and planes come from?", said Katherine astonishingly.
"We brought them here", said Blair proudly.
"We hired a delivery service to transport them from school.", said Francis.
"From school?" questioned Katherine.
"Yeah", said Blair. "They came from all the kids and teachers yesterday. Yesterday was Justin Day. I thought of the planes on my own as I know Justin will fly one day, but by himself and without a plane."
"This is amazing!", Katherine said with her mouth still open in surprise.
"And look at this.", said Blair pointing at a huge poster board.
Katherine walked over to the poster board where she saw different kids hand writings all over it. She read, 'We wish you luck Justin' and 'hope you make a quick recovery' and 'Get well soon'. There must of been hundreds of kids who participated. Blair turned the poster board over and the other side was completely filled too. Katherine went over to Blair and gave him a big hug and kiss. "You are sooo wonderful Blair."
"I know." said Blair smiling proudly."And guess what?"
"Wha.." Katherine started to say.
"The whole school had strawberry waffles with whipped cream!"
"How did you manage to get the school to do all this?" Katherine asked bewildered.
"Every day and I mean every day I would go to the principals office and see him. I kept on telling him my idea and..."
"He harassed the principal so much, the principal felt he had no choice", interrupted Frances. "The principal called me to ask him to stop and was surprised when I told him that this was his problem and to deal with it. He didn't want to be perceived as insensitive, so he finally conceded. How Blair got him to do so much, I don't know."
"I do", said Blair. "I started a clan of classmates that I named the Justin Clan. And we got all the students and most of the teachers to join us. Ms. Englemen suggested that we make a, ahh, I think it is called a petit.."
"A petition" added Francis."
"Yeah, a petition. Ms. Engleman helped me write it, but that's a secret. And I got almost all the students and teachers to sign it. Then I took it to the principal."
"Unbelievable!" said Katherine.
"Look!", Blair said pointing at Justin.
"He can hear us now. See? He is smiling!"
Justin appeared to have what looked like a grin on his face.
Later that evening,William was anxious to find out how things went at the laboratory. Katherine first explained how much Blair accomplished with Justin Day. William was flabbergasted and both of them wanted to do something very special for this amazing friend of Justin's.
"But what about your progress at work?"
"Well, it is a good thing I tried it on another chimp first."
"Oh no..It didn't work?"
"Let's have dinner first and then I will explain. You did prepare a seven course meal. Right?", she said jokingly.
"Yes I did. I made a hot dog. The first bite is the first course. The second bite is the second course."
Katherine grinned. "It smells like Italian."
"Yes it is. I am making a simple lasagna"
"What? They will think you are just working on your normal project."
"The average person may think that, but an attuned scientist like Kyle can tell the difference."
"I don't see how, but okay. What happened next?"
"Okay. Now I sawed about a quarter size hole into Katie's skull."
"Next."
"Then I filled the Syringe with Phenobarbital and then injected into Katie's brain. In about 30 seconds she excreted the enzyme Plythorium and I collected it and put it into a Petri dish. Then I combined the other agents. I told you, I have gone through this in my head a thousand times."
"Please just continue, what happened next?"
"Then I put the serum into a syringe" she said getting even more frustrated.
Because of Katherine's obvious agitation, she jerked a little and spilled some wine on her lap.
"Oh great", she said sarcastically. "That wasn't very graceful."
"No. Not graceful at all", chimed in William emphasizing graceful.
"Grace?", whispered Katherine.
"I didn't put the serum into the syringe at that point. Kyle came in. He made a comment about Katie as if to say I know what you are up to. But, he had to monitor his chimpanzee Grace. He was with her for about 30 minutes. The serum mixture I made was sitting for 30 minutes. Hmm." She started thinking deeply now.
"I have one chemical component that may take its time before becoming an active ingredient. I got to go!"
With that thought in mind, Katherine put on her shoes and rushed out the door with wine stained dress and all. On her way, she realized that it would be too dangerous to inject Buzz with the Phenobarbital so soon again and she should wait at least 12 hours from the last injection.
When she arrived at the lab, she still had a couple hours to waste before she could inject Buzz. Katherine went over to Katie who was now in a different area as she was no longer in a coma. When Katie saw Katherine, she gave her a big smile.
"How are you doing Katie?" She quickly checked Katie's vitals to see that Katie doing great.
"At the rate you are recovering now Katie, we are going to have to find a new home for you."
Katie continued to smile. "I wonder if there is a local zoo that...." As soon as she mentioned zoo, Katie started making sounds and was quite agitated.
"You didn't like the zoo, Katie?" Again Katie showed extra restlessness when she mentioned the word zoo. "I will be back in a moment", she said.
Katherine went into another office where they kept the subjects files. She found Katie's files and read that Katie had come from a very small city zoo named Carson Park Zoo. The zoo was located in a small town in northern Wyoming. Katherine went to her computer and did a search for Carson Park Zoo Wyoming.
She found the zoo's main page, but also noticed a few other posts. She found one post that mentioned that they fired one of the grounds keepers as he was sneaking into certain animals cages at night and creating mischief. There was no factual detail on exactly what kind of mischief.
Katherine put two and two together and wondered if the grounds keeper sneaked inside Katie's cage and gave her something. Whether he intentionally tried to poison her or not she couldn't guess, but she thought she would call and find out more when she had the time.
Katherine suddenly noticed the time and realized it was now okay to see Buzz. So, repeating her steps, she first injected Buzz with Phenobarbital to stimulate his brain. And like before, Buzz's brain immediately started secreting Plythorium. She accumulated the Plythorium with a dropper and put it into a Petri dish. She then added the additional agents to create her serum. This time, she let them set for 30 minutes. Finally, she put the serum into a syringe and injected it into Buzz. Again, Buzz immediately jerked and then lay still. She then waited and after 25 minutes, like a miracle, Buzz opened his eyes.
"Oh Buzz! You wonderful,wonderful chimp", she cheered with a huge smile. Buzz looked at her and then blew her a raspberry. She laughed and gave Buzz a big hug.