[Chapter 5] Youth is Wasted on the Young
Chapter 5: Crisis in Nashville
For the Halloween season, this is a story with some horror elements while also being science-fiction. A new chapter will be posted each week exclusively for paid subscribers. If you want to become a paid subscriber, I’m offering a 14-day free trial.
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Without further ado, here is Chapter 5: Crisis in Nashville
Mia woke up in her chaotic bedroom. She took a deep breath of the damp soil and the clean smell of ozone from an air purifier she’d hacked together from a salvaged box fan and a UV-C bulb. She kept the overhead light off, instead lining her walls with a rainbow of LEDs from a long LED strip. The room was cast in a dim twilight that helped her adjust to the brightness of the day.
Her bed was an island in a crowded office-slash-garage. All around her were tall PVC pipes drilled with holes. Lush green leaves of lettuce, kale, and basil rose out. Smaller tubes connected them all together to deliver a nutrient solution of her own blend which was made from water, nitrogen, and various composted minerals. Her DIY system occasionally led to disputes with her parents, but she was happy with how alive it all felt.
Yet she didn’t care about any of the plants. She was staring at the small screen in her hand, and the moody shot of a wall of jungle from within a tinted window.
Jonny: Love you too. Think we’re close now.
She hadn’t minded on the first day, or even the second. It would be a big change for him. She dismissed it that he was busy, probably tired after the intense schedule. And Young’s whole talk about optimization probably meant little time for scrolling on a phone.
As the days passed, her excuses were wearing thin. There was a growing anxiety that caused her to check her phone at inopportune times, even in middle of family dinner. Her parents didn’t like that, but she just stared at the hopeful blue bubbles waiting to be received.
Mia: Are you there yet? I hope it’s as cool as Young said.
*Delivered*
Mia: Are you okay? Just send a thumbs up even if ur busy
*Delivered*
Mia: I’m serious Jonny. Are you okay?
*Delivered*
Mia: ????
*Delivered*
The last one she had sent, late last night, hadn’t even been wrapped in a blue bubble. The phone number had been removed from RCS, leaving her text wrapped in a jarring green. The words *Sent as SMS* made her shake.
His phone was off or somewhere so remote it couldn’t even register with the modern RCS network. The satellite network that was promised was either a lie or... she wasn’t sure what the alternative was. The only thing she knew was that Jonny was trapped.
She was about to type in another message with a trembling thumb when her phone started buzzing. It shocked her so much it fell on the bed face-down. Her heart started to hammer in her chest. Was it Jonny?
When she grabbed the phone again, she realized it wasn’t him. It was an unknown number but from a Nashville area code. She slowly swiped the call icon across the screen to connect.
“Hello?” she asked, her voice tight and suspicious.
“Mia, oh thank God is it you?” the voice sounded exhausted and scared. It took Mia a few seconds to realize it was Lucy’s mom.
“Mrs. West, what happened? You sound...”
“It’s Lucy!” she let out a sob.
“What happened?”
If something was wrong with Lucy, who had been involved with Mr. Young for several months, that may also mean that Jonny could soon be in that same danger.
“She just collapsed. In the middle of her lesson she just fell. She’s at St. Thomas now. I’ve been talking to so many doctors. Oh... they keep discussing her kidneys. They say they’re failing. They don’t know how to fix it.”
Mia suddenly pictured Lucy back in that penthouse hallway, pale, sweaty, and her arm full of bruises. The picture was so vivid, like she had taken a photograph.
“I’m on my way,” she said with a surprising calmness.
The ICU at St. Thomas was a completely different world. It was quiet and Mia felt intimidated by all of the doctors and the foul odor of antiseptics that reached down her throat. As she walked through the clinical hallways, she could hear the soft beeps of a heart monitor, the mechanical hissing of a ventilator, and the low, urgent alarms that nobody seemed to notice. Nurses moved all around her as if she was just an obstacle in their way.
When she reached Lucy’s room, it was far worse than she had imagined. Lucy looked as pale as a ghost as she lay under a stark white hospital blanket. Her skin was like a translucent white, close to wax. An oxygen cannula had been placed over her ears, feeding clear plastic tubes into her nostrils. Her eyes were closed. It seemed like she was in a deep sleep. An IV stand dripped fluids into a port in the back of her hand, on the unbruised side.
On the other side of the bed was a dialysis machine which was humming with its singular focus. A thick tube stretched out from a catheter in her neck, pumping blood to and from the machine. Mia watched as the machine swirled and filtered it before sending it back through a second tube. As Lucy’s kidneys couldn’t do it, the machine was the only thing keeping her alive right now.
Mia was frozen as she watched this horrible scene from the doorway. This seemed to be the endgame of the thorough medical screenings for the Young Foundation grant. This was not a random collapse.
She walked in and was immediately wrapped in a hug by Mrs. West. Her dad was sitting in the corner with his head in his hands.
“Mrs. West, she...”
“She’s not doing well,” Mrs. West sobbed.
“Excuse me miss,” a resident came into the room and shut the door.
“It’s okay,” Mrs. West looked up. “She’s family.”
Well, basically.
“Her glomerular filtration rate is close to zero,” the resident spoke apologetically. “That’s a way to measure the function of a kidney. For a healthy person, that rate is over ninety. Lucy is measuring single digits right now. We are seeing signs of proteinuria and some warnings she might develop acute tubular necrosis.
“Unfortunately, we have not been able to find any precipitating event. It’s nearly impossible to develop these problems on their own, but we haven’t found an infection, any autoimmune markers, or any history of drug use,” he shook his head. “To be honest, this kind of thing for someone as young as her should be impossible. We can treat the symptoms, but as for the cause...”
He trailed off. Lucy’s mom resumed her silent weeping. Her dad stood up and wrapped his arm around her. His face was a mask of numbness.
Mia listened to the doctor’s words. She understood the jargon, but the doctor was stymied as to the cause. Yet she knew. The bruises, the handler, the penthouse... It was _the_ cause. Yet she had no idea how to explain it, what she saw and why she hadn’t spoken up before.
A man at a party gave my friend a grant, and now her kidneys are destroyed. That sounded insane.
Maybe she was going insane as the people she loved around her kept getting into trouble.
Then the door opened and a woman came in to break up the pity party. She looked to be in her late fifties with intelligence in her eyes. Her long dark hair had been pulled back into a professional knot. She wore a simple lab coat over her dark pants and had a large tablet in her hand.
“Hello West family, my name is Dr. Singh,” she announced loudly. “Dr. Hirschman called me in as a specialist.”
“Dr. Singh,” the young resident adjusted his posture. It seemed like he had a lot of respect, perhaps even fear, for this new doctor. “This is the patient. Lucy West. Eighteen years old. No relevant priors. Presented with syncope and now she’s in complete renal failure. Creatinine is at 12.8, BUN is over 100. An hour ago we began a procedure of continuous veno-venous hemofiltration.”
Dr. Singh didn’t respond as her face was buried in the tablet, swiping through pages of data. She approached Lucy’s bed and studied the data.
Then her flicking stopped. Even her breathing seemed to pause. Her clinical face changed as something seemed to come to mind. She recognized something. She seemed even frightened by what she knew.
She looked over at the resident and Lucy’s father. She walked over to them and her presence seemed to command the small space.
“Who has been treating her?” she asked, her voice sharp and harsh. “I’m talking about outside of this hospital. What doctors? What clinics has she been in?”
“None. She’s been healthy,” Mrs. West answered.
“Nothing? No special programs? No grants?”
Mia’s blood turned cold.
“Grants?” Mrs. West was confused. “She... she won a music grant. A prestigious one.”
“She got the grant from the Young Foundation,” Mia heard her voice quivering as she answered. “My boyfriend, Jonny, also got a grant at some sports camp in Mexico. I haven’t... I haven’t heard from him in several days.”
Dr. Singh’s head snapped towards Mia and went stark white. They shared a silent moment of alarm. Singh knew something but was not eager to share it.
She waved her hand out the door to a passing nurse. “You there, get this girl’s parents to the private waiting room. Get them coffee, a chaplain, anything they want. Just go. Now.”
The nurse nodded, startled by Singh’s harsh words. Silently and gently she ushered Mr. and Mrs. West out of the room.
“What are you doing? Do you know how to treat her?” Mrs. West pleaded as they walked out.
As soon as they left, Singh shut the door behind them and watched them disappear out of earshot through the window. Now all that Mia could hear was the disturbing rhythmic beeping of the machines.
“Continue treatment for now,” she commanded to the resident, her voice frigid. “Page me if there is any change. And I mean _any_ change. Tell nobody I was here. This consultation is not happening and did not happen. Do you understand?”
The resident simply nodded.
“You can leave us now,” she flicked her head towards the door and he practically raced out.
Now it was just the two of them, alone with the form of Lucy laying in the bed. Dr. Singh turned back to Mia and her eyes were wide and serious.
“I was once Young’s partner,” she spoke in a low hiss. Lucy could sense the regret in her voice.
“You know him?” Lucy asked with wonder.
“The Young Foundation was my idea. We founded it together, many years ago. But he was always the face of it. I was never one for publicity. I liked the science. I built it,” she ran her hand through her hair anxiously. “I thought we could just do regeneration, things like tissue engineering and organ scaffolding. A way to do medicine regeneratively. He took everything I made and corrupted it.”
She took a step closer to Lucy.
“I tried to stop him. When I found out what he was doing with my research... I blew the whistle. I talked to the ethics boards, the medical journals, even the press,” she stopped to let out a breathless scoff. “But he was Conrad Young, the famed billionaire with money and lawyers at his disposal. He buried me, called me a fraud, and banished me from the organization that I created.”
“All of that... just for Jonny? And Lucy? But why?”
“Oh, child, it goes much further down than you could imagine.”