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The Scientist Does Not Look Back

By Kristen Koopman

Feb. 17, 3:40 AM. Audio notebook for new project: revival of a clinically dead patient, 36 year old male, died of hypothermia and shock.

The technician at the morgue hesitated when releasing him to me. I’m not surprised, with the tone that took hold of my voice as I corrected her Mr. to Dr. as she took down my details. When I gave her my name, her pen stalled over the paper—a giveaway that his parents had called before I arrived. I should be grateful that she released him to me anyway, honoring my legal right to the body. I should be grateful for so much, I suppose, even if it doesn’t feel like it, to have this opportunity to—to not let his story end in tragedy.

Nobody blinked an eye as I wheeled his gurney, covered in a sheet, towards my lab. The advantages of working in a medical school.

1:03 PM.

The physical damage to his body is minimal. From what the police told me, his bicycle hit a patch of black ice on the bridge by his office on his way home, and though the winter has been long and cold the river wasn’t frozen over. The shock of the cold water stopped his heart.

And the cold, hopefully, preserved him enough to get him here. His brain and body are still intact. With my colleagues’ preservation techniques, sufficiently low humidity, and proper refrigeration, our research group has successfully held organ donations from skin grafts to spleens for two months without impacting viability. Well—fifty-seven days, if I recall the paper, and there was resulting neuropathy, but fifty-seven days is surely better than nothing. With the body preserved, restarting a heart is a trivial problem, but the brain… the brain has always been the problem with reviving the—those who…

The medically dead.

[A shuddering breath, then a cleared throat.]

Reintroducing oxygen into the brain cells that were damaged during clinical death will be the difficulty; it’s that oxygen, ironically, that causes the bulk of the revived brain’s injuries. My previous research on this front has been promising, but preliminary, and only with models of patients undergoing therapeutic hypothermia. I haven’t even begun testing on animal models, let alone human trials, and he was in the morgue for nearly six hours before I was able to get him.

That beautiful, intricate tangle of neurons and electrical impulses—I can’t risk damaging that.

I can’t risk damaging him.

---

Feb. 18, 3:26 PM.

Vihaan came by briefly and saw the equipment I’ve borrowed. I told him I’m becoming CPR- and defibrillator-certified, that it would make me more competitive for grants in emergency medicine, and his eyes lit up at the prospect of more funding. No doubt he’ll circulate the story to the other graduate students who will hopefully leave me alone.

I’ve also claimed the small examination room off the main lab that my students have previously used to practice preservation techniques. It has more privacy. I only rarely require full cadavers in my work, and—

[Knocking.]

Uh—yes?

[Distant.] “Victor, is that you? Are you filling in for the neuroanatomy dissection lab again? The brain bank said you took six specimens.”

Oh—not exactly a lab but more for some practice demonstrations. I, uh, received a request from one of my students who’s struggling with that class and I—hang on, my recorder’s still going. Let me just—

[Muffled movement of the recorder.]

3:31 PM.

Well, that’s Elise dealt with. The certification line worked on her, too. Hopefully it will buy me a little peace and quiet and discretion when it comes to my borrowed equipment. I’ve also taken what will be necessary to resuscitate him, even if I don’t dare use it until I know I can avoid brain damage. I took five doses of epinephrine, a portable ECG monitor, and an automatic defibrillator in case the CPR causes arrhythmia. I’ll use it if I have to.

A year ago, he shocked himself unplugging a lamp, and I turned to find him laughing and swearing at the same time as he shook his hand out. I folded it in mine to smother the trembling, and his fingertips pressed warmth into the creases of my palm. When I look at him, I can still feel the backs of his knuckles against my fingers, the spots of heat against my skin.

I need to sleep, if only for steady hands.

---

Feb 20, 11:58 AM.

Computer models debugged and moderately promising.

Returned home briefly to retrieve some notes and a change of clothes. Found myself stuffing several of his items into my bag to bring back to the lab. He’s present, he’s there, yet every space still feels so empty of him.

12:39 PM.

I keep using his mug, the one where the university seal has flaked off the sides to leave a mark fainter than smoke. Despite all reason, the coffee tastes better from it. I haven’t done more than rinse it between uses—he would chide me about hygiene if he saw.

I would accept every iota of irritation he has if it meant hearing his voice again.

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Feb. 21, 7:32 AM.

I’ve synthesized the first batch of my new class of glutamate blockers. I proposed this compound a year ago as a way of protecting neurons during reoxygenation; I suppose it’s not theoretical anymore.

First trial on a brain bank John Doe unsuccessful. I’ve identified the problem—while the compound successfully blocks red blood cells from damaging the neurons, it does so by destroying the red blood cells.

All of them.

Throughout the entire blood volume of the body.

To say the least, the effect this would have on the patient would be a net negative.

---

Feb 23, 10:14 PM.

On a trip home for clothes, I knocked over a stack of papers and uncovered his monograph—the one derived from his dissertation on the myth of Orpheus, who played his lyre so sweetly that the Lord of the Underworld let him back his love back to the land of the living, only to look back at the last moment and lose her.

He taught himself to play the lyre while working on the myth in grad school; he said it made for a good break, and once he finished, he kept the lyre hanging on the wall of his home office.

It’s on a free counter in the exam room now. I’ve put the book next to it, so I can see them both in the same glance and remind myself that he was not always a cadaver. He wrote those words, he plucked those strings, and he will again.

---

Feb. 24, 12:33 AM.

I finally broke down and borrowed the lyre. Four trials of serenading were unsuccessful, not that I expected it to work.

He would say that I need lessons.

I think I just need more sleep.

---

Feb. 26, 8:02 AM.

I’ve discovered a process to render my glutamate blocker temporarily inert until subjected to electrolysis. So the careful application of electricity to the brain should keep the effects localized, allowing the neurons to reoxygenate without cell death or systemic repercussions.

Further trials are necessary, but for the first time this feels… promising.

---

Feb. 27, 11:27 AM.

His sister called. She’s the only member of his family who would acknowledge even my existence after our courthouse ceremony.

There’s a family plot, she said, in a Catholic cemetery. They want to bury him there. I asked if they would bury him with his ring, and she didn’t answer.

I’ll need to replace my phone. It didn’t survive being thrown across the room.

3:53 PM.

I can’t sit still long enough to concentrate.

I tore a page from his copy of Virgil’s Bucolics and yelled at him that I would remove pages one by one until he opened his eyes and stopped me. This had no discernible effect on heart rate or brain activity.

Neither did informing him that Classics is a useless degree, a previously foolproof way to rile him up.

I can’t help but think that if he didn’t respond to that, then there must be nothing of him left in that corpse. I can’t help but think—how dare it? How dare it be there, that useless lump of frozen flesh, without him in it?

4:45 PM.

He always said that Orpheus looked back because he missed Eurydice so much. That was Orpheus’s sin, I think. He retrieved Eurydice for himself, not for her.

Bryce had never loved a man before he met me. Never even occurred to him, he said. I grew up knowing what I am, coming to terms with what that meant for how people might see me, but it took him by surprise when his family… well. The new unkindnesses that he saw took him by surprise. To suddenly go from person to political statement, courtesy of obtaining a spouse.

He deserves better than this, and if the universe won’t give him his kindness, then I will.

5:36 PM.

I can’t spend another moment staring at models on a screen. Beginning trials of electrolysis testing in situ.

6:06 PM.

First trial unsuccessful. I need to replace the fire extinguisher. I… also might need sleep.

---

Feb. 28, 3:11 AM.

Despite my care in preserving him, his hair no longer smells like his shampoo. He combed that shampoo through his hair with his own fingers; whistled idly as he rinsed it out, while I brushed my teeth and breathed the steam of his shower; smudged its foam onto the tiled wall as he peeked around the shower curtain and teased me for stealing his favorite boxers, the ones that said “Trust me, I’m a doctor” across the back.

It’s so incongruous to me, that I had on his favorite boxers while his heart stopped, while his organs shut down, while his larynx relaxed to release his last breath, while the beautiful pattern of sparks in his brain that made him him just… stopped.

---

March 1, 10:48 AM.

The second trial of in situ electrolysis was moderately successful, but there’s a complication. The power demands are too much for the lab.

I’ve replaced all the circuit-breakers, but the samples show that the electrolysis wasn’t completed before the breakers tripped.

Between the fire alarm two days ago and the power outage, it’s becoming harder to think of excuses, to fend off the questions. I just need more time.

---

March 2, 11:33 PM.

His sister came to my lab. I didn’t let her in but she pounded on the door and shouted through it, spewing words straight from her parents’ lips. He told me once that she always got cruel to cover up sadness, so she must be downright despondent.

I began packing immediately. According to the flurry of email activity I now see in my inbox, she went to the university police.

We were already long gone.

We used to watch the sun set over the expanse of this lake in the summer. We bought this cabin as soon as our incomes would allow it. The view reminded him, he said, of where he grew up. Since the mutual silence between him and his family meant that he had little of his childhood to hold onto, the purchase was worth it.

We spent a Christmas here, once, although it was less than ideal. The winds off the lake were vicious, the cold was so sharp even the smell of it cut like a knife, and the snowbanks on the side of the highway immediately began slumping into icemelt and got painted ashy with exhaust.

I’ve laid him out in the glassed-in porch. With the cabin kept just warm enough to prevent the pipes from freezing, its lack of insulation has left it the perfect temperature. I’ve repurposed the dehumidifier from the flooding last summer, and that combined with the cold, it’s better than nothing. It certainly won’t be fifty-seven days, but it has to be better than nothing.

I took the resuscitation materials from the lab, and my samples, and what other equipment I could. There are still avenues I can explore.

There have to be.

---

March 3, 2:53 AM.

Something will work.

I will feel the weight of his shoulder against mine as we wait through long gray-morning minutes for the coffeemaker to finish percolating. When I return from a haircut, he will rasp his fingers over the stiff-short fuzz at the nape of my neck and his smile will wrinkle his nose as he tells me it feels like velvet. In the fog-breathed cold of a winter night, I’ll shiver and he’ll tell me I’ve never seen a real winter, not like they have in Wisconsin, and he’ll loop the soft caress of his scarf around my neck. We’ll do one of the hikes we always meant to do and I’ll give him my water bottle when he sips through his. He’ll claim to taste my poor choice of protein bar on its rim, and he’ll kiss me anyway.

I will trace the back of his hands with my fingertips as age sags his skin and makes mountain ranges of his veins, I will watch silver seep into his hair, I will kiss the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and mouth as they deepen, day by day.

He will have those days.

11:12 AM.

He wouldn’t want to be buried in their family plot, not when the most love they could muster for him was to wait until he was dead and pretend he wasn’t who he was.

---

March 4, 3:00 PM.

Made a brief trip into town to obtain materials to access the local electric grid directly. The weather won’t be favorable for the actual physical activity of it for a while; this winter is bitter-edged, with lingering bouts of cold and snow broken up only by the dull, slushy days that barely manage to break freezing.

---

March 5, 12:23 PM.

A late-season storm is rolling in over the lake. The forecasts are warning about whiteouts, high volumes of snowfall, and ideal conditions for thundersnow. It’s not quite so rare, here, due to the lake effect. Despite how winter seems to have lasted forever, the lake is already thawed.

The meteorologists’ excitement is palpable as they talk about cloud-to-ground lightning.

I have an idea. It’s absurd at best.

But… how long until this cabin is found? How long until the university manages to track down the materials I took? How long until his family again attempts to claim his body? Every day feels less dizzying, less like something to be endured and more like a recalibration of my life—my life, not our life—and I refuse. I refuse this tragedy.

We have so few options left.

3:08 PM.

Lightning lights the sky so differently in a snowstorm. The lines of it are smothered by the falling snow, and instead every atom of air flashes with the strike. We’re close. We’re so close.

I’ve set up the lightning rod and placed the electrodes, stepped down the voltage and prepared what I’ll need to warm him back up. I have the latest batch of my compound, but, God, if it’s not right—if it doesn’t catalyze properly, or if it does more damage than good—

There’s just no time.

3:32 PM.

[A dull scrape of cloth on the microphone.]

—six. Seven. Eight. Nine—

[A roll of thunder.]

About two miles away.

I’ve administered the compound.

The power in the cabin is flickering. I keep thinking I have to guide him, bargain for him, but I can’t sing and his lyre is buried somewhere in the wreckage of what my life’s become.

God, his hand is so cold.

[A half-sobbed laugh.]

My hand is shaking.

Please.

Please.

[Sharp-edged thunder and the rattling of windows.]

That—that struck. The power just flickered and—

Is that—

Oh, God—

[Thunder again, moving off. The scraping of plastic on plastic, and the eight-bit tones of three numbers dialed on a cell phone.]

[Distantly:] “911, what is your emergency?”

Yes, I—I need help. I’m about to start chest compressions, but I need an ambulance right away—

[More scraping and a clatter as the recorder is knocked off the table.]

---

March 8, 10:24 AM.

He’s alive. And he’s well. I don’t know how to make that clinical, dispassionate. He’s been released from the hospital. And I—I’ve been released from police custody. They tried to charge me with desecration of a corpse, but it was difficult to do when the corpse was, in fact, yelling at them to release his husband.

I’ve never been so giddy to be annoyed as when he kept insisting this morning that he ‘slept like the dead.’ Or at his disapproving look at the film inside his coffee mug when I was over the moon to be ashamed. The difficulties unroll before us like the longest highway in Wisconsin—I mean, the silence from his family is nothing short of ominous—and the taxes—but I can’t bring myself to care. I won’t be facing them by myself. I—

[A voice, at a distance. Inaudible.]

No, just finishing up some notes.

[A door opens, closer now.] “I thought you were talking to yourself.”

Technically I am. Or maybe the right thing to do is turn these over to the university. They’ll probably want to claim patent rights, or—

“Victor?”

Mmm?

“How about we worry about that tomorrow?”

[The rustling of clothing, and a long, contented sigh.]

Yes. Of course.

Tomorrow.