“Your friend is a very strong man,” said The Doctor.
He withdrew one hand from the gauntlet to take the cigarette that was about to burn out, took a drag on it, put it down, and continued the bizarre symphony he was orchestrating.
“Look at the graphics on the monitor,” he pointed out with his chin.
Folding his arms to avoid touching anything unintentionally, Malin got close to the screens orbiting around the examination table. She didn’t know about medicine, nor did she know how to read the graphics on the monitors, but she understood the movements that made the blue lines that marked Juzo’s heart rate, and with a little common sense, she guessed everything was just fine. She didn’t see red lines, which used to herald danger, nor did she hear any rapid beep, beep, beep, that was synonymous with alarm.
“His pulses are stable,” the Doctor continued. Cigarette smoke was coming out of his mouth. “To be honest, I’ve seen no one who endured the Ambrosia as smoothly as this kid does.” He pointed out with his chin again. “Look! Look!”
Searching the screens for what caught the Doctor’s attention—a small graphic, perhaps; a warning sign that had just popped out, a fall in Juzo’s biorhythm, something—Malin moved closer, and the alcohol reek of him made her wrinkle her nose. She restrained herself from making a more explicit gesture of disgust and concentrated on seeing what could be so wonderful.
“His heart rate values,” the Doctor said.
On the main screen, Malin saw a numbered scale that ran from one to ten, along with a dot of blue light that stood between five and six.
“Whenever I finish applying the Ambrosia dose to the heart,” the Doctor said, “the patient’s heart rate goes off to eight or nine. That’s when I have to apply a blood pressure regulator to them; otherwise, they’d suffer heart failure, and they’d die. It’s happened to me, and not because we are in this filthy place where I don’t have the equipment the Imperialists have in their labs, it happens because the human body reacts that way to Fluo-Pink.”
“Fluo-Pink?”
“Yeah.” The Doctor showed the remains of the pink substance in the syringes’ empty containers. “Fluo-Pink is the pet-name we give The Ambrosia around here.”
Malin nodded. Surely Juzo’s resistance came thanks to that eighty percent of Ecuadorian DNA he had; most of those who had survived treatment barely reached sixty-five percent, just a little more than the minimum required. Still, she mentioned nothing about that; she didn’t know how knowledgeable the Doctor was about the relationship between the patient’s genetic profile and their chances of surviving the treatment.
“Doctor…”
“—Gami,” he said and giggled. “Shini Gami.”
Shini-Gami, a god of death? Seriously?
“Dr. Gami…” Malin moved away to avoid the stench of alcohol from the man. “If my friend has endured the first dose of Ambrosia, do you mean there will be no problems continuing with the treatment?”
The man took the cigarette to his mouth and discovered that it had been consumed; he looked at it, puzzled, and threw it into the trash can that was filled with used syringes, open plastic sachets, and gauze buns with bloodstains.
“Of course, there will be no problems,” he said. With a frown, he checked Juzo’s vital signs on the monitors and muttered something Malin didn’t come to understand. “Yes, yes. Look, I usually wait for the patient to wake up, ask him how he feels and all that jazz, and if he’s in the mood to continue with the treatment. I let a few hours go by, and then I get on with it again.”
Indeed. Although in her mind everything had been one single agony, as she later learned from Rigel, Malin had received the first dose in the morning and the second in the afternoon, spending that time gap between each one, sleeping in a room.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Some people tell me that the first dose is fine,” the Doctor added, “that they will be back next week for the second part, but then they don’t show their hideous faces again in this place. I think your friend isn’t that kind of man, and I think his body can put up with the second dose right now. I’m telling you, it’s a scientific prodigy that someone can take the Fluo-Pink so well. I’m intrigued to know how far his body’s stamina can go.”
“I don’t like you taking my friend for a lab rat,” Malin said. Afterward, she pondered it for a while, but considering Juzo’s good condition, she decided that the procedure should continue. “All right, let’s do it.”
Gami stood up and cracked the bones of his hands and neck as if he were a fighter preparing to enter the ring.
“This should be done by the same patient, but in this case—” he said, nodding and ordered, “Take off his shoes and pants.”
Malin obeyed. She untied Juzo’s shoelaces and took his boots off, along with his stocks. She unbuttoned his belt and zipped down his trousers to make them easier to remove.
“Hurry up!” The Doctor said as he set up the new operation on the computer. He glanced at her, struggling with his pants. “Oh, come on! As if you hadn’t taken those off before.”
Malin glared at him. “Excuse me?”
“Nothing, nothing.” Gami waved his hand. “You can leave his underpants on,” he said when Malin finished pulling out Juzo’s pants. “No shot goes into the buttocks, and at least on my part, I’m not interested in seeing his private parts.”
Malin stuck her tongue against the inside of her teeth, holding back the insults she urged spitting. You damn drunk. If I didn’t need you, I’ll—
“Help me turn your friend around,” Gami asked.
He took Juzo under his shoulders; she took him by the feet, and together they turned him and left him face down. Gami opened the facial hole in the examination table, and placed Juzo’s face inside it, pulling his hair away to clear the back of his neck. Malin placed his partner’s feet and walked away.
Gami sat down again in front of his octopus-machine, pulled another cigarette from his lab coat’s pocket, lit it, gave it a deep puff, and placed it on the instrument tray. He activated something on the computer and watched as the pink substance—the Ambrosia, or Fluo-Pink, as he called it—emerged from crystalline containers, ran through a circuit of plastic tubes, and ended up filling the chambers of the syringes. He wedged his hands into the gauntlets and wiggled his fingers to make sure the mechanical arms responded well to his commands, and the second stage of treatment began.
With the left gauntlet, Gami moved the middle arm and placed the syringe on the nape of Juzo’s neck, inserted the long needle right there, and unloaded the fluorescent content, slowly. He studied the data on the screen as the Ambrosia entered his patient’s body.
“It’s amazing,” he muttered.
Malin got close to the screens. According to the numbered scale, Juzo’s heart rate still didn’t cross point six. The red lights didn’t appear, and no alarm went off. She couldn’t see her friend’s face in that position, though she was sure he’d still have the same expression of calm she’d seen before.
The Doctor activated the right gauntlet and distributed the four mechanical arms on the young man’s legs; two went to the popliteal fossae—the opposite side of the knees—right at the joints, and the other two to the soles of the feet. The four needles penetrated the skin at the same time and released the Ambrosia.
“His body… His body…” Gami repeated as if an idea were flying around his head, waiting for the right moment to land. He was so enraptured that he had forgotten to give the cigarette a puff. “It’s like—if he accepted it. Yes, yes! That’s it! His body… His system accepts Ambrosia as if it were his own blood!” he exclaimed, and the veins of his wrinkled neck swelled, and with his eyes popping out of his head, turned to Malin, “His genetic map must have at least 70% Ecuadorian DNA, right?”
Well, so the Doctor did know the little secret, all right. Malin didn’t say a word, though; she only gave him a blank stare.
Gami understood her silence, gulped, and turned his attention to Juzo.
“It’s unheard of, y’know?” he continued. “If my patients had been like this boy, I would stop buying fuel for the incinerator. No more corpses to burn!”
Malin understood the reason for the surprise, but she was more interested in wrapping up the session and leaving than discussing the formidable compatibility between the substance and Juzo, so she remained silent and made no comments. There would be time to theorize about the factors that made his friend such a special patient. That, of course, if there was anything truly special about him to theorize about. According to her, Gami’s enthusiasm came more from his love of liquor than from the discovery of some scientific wonder.
“There’s the gunpowder, now we’re going for the trigger,” said the Doctor. “Implants?”
Malin withdrew a small container with two tiny electronic implants from her pocket and handed it over. Gami opened the container, dumped the implants into the palm of his hand, and looked at them as if to make sure they were in good condition. Then he cleaned Juzo’s wrists with iodine and took a scalpel.
“Well. Let’s operate on those tendons,” he said and proceeded to complete the treatment.
Meanwhile, the cigarette, forgotten in the instrument tray, released its last trace of smoke.