Food and Drug Chapter 11
"Anticholinergic toxidrome," Dr. Stanley Hawkins labeled the physiological effects of atropine overdose. "Hyperthermia, mydriasis, anhidrosis, vasodilation, psychosis," he recited the symptoms. "Leading to cardiac arrest and death," he summarized the prognosis.
Hawkins held the needle of the syringe over the side of Emily's neck, up against the carotid artery that carried blood from the heart to the brain. His hand shook, so the tip of the needle wandered over the surface of her neck, one second threatening to nick the carotid artery, another second threatening to prick the jugular vein that carried blood from the brain to the heart. Either way, death was the result.
Emily glanced sideways and downwards at the needle, wondering how she had gotten herself into this mess. She could feel her pulse against the needle, or was it the needle against her pulse? At least she was in the hands of a trained medical practitioner.
Reid stared at the neurologist. Among all the things that he could stare at, he found the neurologist the most disturbing. He shifted his eyes to stare at Emily instead. He stared at her and the needle against her neck. There was no way that he was going to let the drug enter her body.
"Dr. Hawkins," Reid addressed the neurologist in a soft pleading tone that gave the man the upper hand. "Please put down the needle. Let's talk about this without the needle. We're unarmed. We won't make a move if you put down the needle."
"Give me a break," Hawkins snapped, the shaking of his hand incongruous with the sharpness of his tone. "There's no way I'm letting go of her! You're FBI agents, both of you."
"Yes, we're FBI agents, but we're only profilers," Reid said. "We don't carry guns. Guns are not allowed at the FDA. We're no threat to you. I promise."
"Just like you promised to develop a gene therapy protocol in exchange for the antidote?" Hawkins sneered, suddenly emboldened by a sense of wronged righteousness.
"I know that we haven't held up our side of the deal," Reid admitted. "And we're sorry about that. We really are..."
He widened his eyes and nodded, trying to convey his sincere regret. In this moment, his regret was sincere in every way. Reid wished that he had followed through with the deal, neglecting to recall that he would never have tested anything on Emily. Right now, preventing the drug from entering her body was the only thing on his agenda.
"We still have time to develop a gene therapy protocol," Emily spoke up. "We can start right now. Reid, you told me that you've got some ideas..."
"You shut up!" Hawkins pushed the needle against the skin of Emily's neck until the stainless-steel cannula bent, but did not break. "Was it your smart-alecky idea to renege on the deal? Was it your dumb idea to steal the antidote?"
"No!" Reid shook his head emphatically. "She had nothing to do with it!" he gestured at Emily. "It was my idea to steal the antidote. She didn't even know about it. I did it on my own this afternoon. I took unilateral action. It's not her fault. Please let her go..."
"Nice try, Dr. Reid," Hawkins hissed through bared teeth. "Do you really think that I'm going to give up my advantage to a pair of FBI agents?"
"What do you think we're going to do to you?" Reid hissed back. "We don't have our weapons with us. Do I look like the fighting type to you? I'm a scientist, just like you."
"I'm not a scientist," Hawkins corrected him. "I'm a physician. You play around with tubes and vials in a lab. I help people!"
"I know...You're right," Reid agreed with Hawkins. "You're trying to help people with the prion agent. CrCSp, the agent that raises IQ in your experiments? That increases intelligence and intellectual achievement, one human at a time? That evolves the human species as a whole?"
"No!" Hawkins frowned angrily. "I'm not Sandy Maynard. Don't confuse me with her! I could care less about human evolution and the Great Leap Forward. I don't care if people are smart or stupid. All I care about is that I produced something worthwhile."
"After years of losing, you finally won," Reid profiled the neurologist. "You've been trying to help people all your life, and now you finally have something to show for it."
"Trying and failing," Hawkins muttered.
"Trying and failing, but not through any fault of your own," Reid said. "You've spent your career dealing with the most devastating disorders that afflict the human brain, the ones that destroy the mind itself. Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's, ALS - the neurodegenerative quartet. Add in CJD and all the other spongiform encephalopathies, all the proteopathies. The problem was intractable, and it still is, but you've finally wrenched something out of it, right? Your efforts were not wasted. You've found...diamonds in the dung."
"Diamonds in the dung," Hawkins nodded with a chuckle. "Quite a way with words you've got there, Dr. Reid."
"Not really, Dr. Hawkins," Reid brushed off the compliment. "You're the one who's got a way with words. CrCSp to match PrPSc and CrCP to match PrPC. You isolated both prions from the brains of dead patients, right? You hit the jackpot twice in one career."
"I couldn't believe it," Hawkins said. "At first, I couldn't believe that CrCSp increased intelligence in rodents. In mice and rats, the prion formed plaques, quickly, much faster than any other prion, but the plaques were limited in scope. They didn't take over the entire brain, as prion plaques usually do. They didn't kill the cells or turn the brain into mush. I was so surprised! The prion had originally killed someone, but he must have been one of the non-receptive ones, like Elizabeth Prentiss and Isabella Torres. In everyone else, CrCSp has had only beneficial effects. I couldn't begin to guess at a mechanism. I don't know if I'll ever figure it out."
"Probably not," Reid said. "Another intractable problem...The underlying mechanism of human intelligence."
"I never published my results," Hawkins continued. "I had never gotten permission to extract the brain of the original patient, so I couldn't very well publish any results based on that patient. A few years later, I ran into CrCP. Again, I was flabbergasted by what I had discovered. I couldn't believe that CrCP actually cleared away the plaques created by CrCSp. Clearing away the plaques required the re-shaping of one prion by another. Here was a matched agent-antidote pair, whichever prion you assigned as the agent and whichever prion you assigned as the antidote. I couldn't believe it. I was so lucky! It was all so beautiful!"
"You tested the agent and the antidote in rodents," Reid said. "The clinical trial is the first time that you've ever tested the agent in humans. But the antidote? Have you ever tested the antidote in humans?"
"No," Hawkins shook his head. "Only in rodents..." his eyes lit up with understanding as he caught Reid's drift.
"Here's your chance," Reid pointed out. "You can test your antidote in humans at last, in Elizabeth Prentiss and Isabella Torres. A matched agent-antidote pair to complete the experiment."
"Give us the antidote," Emily said. "We can help you. I can test it for you. On my mother. She's running out of time. I'd do anything to help her."
"She's right," Reid said. "Let us test the antidote for you. We can help each other. Don't you want to see how a human brain responds to the antidote? Maybe the antidote is a cure for CJD, for all the spongiform encephalopathies. No one will care that you isolated the original agent without permission. Your discovery is too important to be scrutinized. Those little details will be overlooked. You're going to get the recognition that you deserve...fame, fortune, the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology...Dr. Stanley Hawkins, Nobel Laureate."
"You're going to make sure that it doesn't happen," Hawkins stared coldly.
"We're not going to apprehend you for your role in the clinical trial," Reid reassured the neurologist. "I'm an FBI agent, but I'm also a scientist. I recognize the importance of your work. You should be allowed to continue. I see the beauty in your work. I would never do a thing a stop you. I won't be reporting you to my superiors. As far as we're concerned, you have no role in the clinical trial. You can go ahead and publish your results. There's no need to mention the clinical trial. You can start a new clinical trial of your own. CrCSp to improve the brain, CrCP to save it. The antidote clears away CJD plaques. Maybe it'll also clear away Alzheimer's plaques. You could be sitting on the cure for Alzheimer's Disease!"
"It all starts here and now," Emily interjected, twisting her neck away from the needle in order to speak without touching the tip. "Let us test the antidote on my mother. It's the first step. Everything else will follow."
"I don't believe you," Hawkins said. "I don't believe a word you say. You reneged on the previous deal. You're going to renege on this one as well. As soon as I give you the antidote, as soon as I take this needle off her neck, you're going to arrest me and put me away for life."
"No! We would never do that! You're too valuable a mind to be arrested and put away," Reid argued.
"But that's exactly what you're planning to do," Hawkins said. "You're going to put me away so you can take credit for my discoveries. You're going to analyze the antidote in the lab, figure out its structure, find a way to synthesize it from scratch, go a few steps farther than I have."
"Believe me, Dr. Hawkins, I would never be able to pass off your discoveries as my own," Reid tried to placate the man with reason. "How would I have found time to make these discoveries? I spend all my time running around the country chasing down serial killers."
"You're a genius with an IQ of 187," Hawkins said. "People will believe you when you claim my discoveries as your own. I'm not going to let you do that. Those vials," he tilted his head at the ice bucket containing the thawed prion samples. "Are those my samples?"
"Yes," Reid nodded warily.
"I want you to open them, one by one, and pour them down the drain," he tilted his head at the sink.
Reid stared at the neurologist, frozen by the unexpected order. Despite his vociferous denials, the neurologist was absolutely convinced that Reid was going to usurp his work. He would rather destroy his work, the product of elbow grease and luck combined, than have someone else take credit for it.
"Please don't do this, Dr. Hawkins," Emily whispered. "You can take the samples. We're not keeping them from you."
"You've already analyzed the samples," Hawkins said. "You've collected several microliters and frozen them away for safe-keeping. A few microliters is all you need to amplify the prion. Protein misfolding cyclic amplification...You've heard of the process, haven't you, Dr. Reid? You know that it's easy to amplify a tiny amount of prion in an excess of the normal protein. That's what prions are - infectious proteins. They exist to multiply."
"What can I do to make you believe me?" Reid asked. "I don't have any samples stored away. I can delete all the experimental results from the computer. It'll be like I never knew about the prions in the first place."
"That's not good enough," Hawkins rejected the offer. "This is your last chance, Dr. Reid. I want you to pour my samples down the drain, along with every other tube and vial of every other substance in this entire lab."
"Most of those tubes and vials aren't even mine," Reid argued. "I can't pour everyone else's work down the drain."
"You can if you have to," Hawkins pressed the tip of the needle against Emily's skin and placed his finger over the plunger.
Reid eyed the needle - the tip and the cannula - and the syringe - the barrel and the plunger. He looked at Emily. He made the only decision that he could make. He shuffled slowly towards the sink. He grabbed the ice bucket and took one last look at the colorful tubes within. He hoped the Emily would forgive him someday.
"Don't do it, Reid. Please don't do it," Emily begged in a tiny whisper, not daring to stretch her vocal cords for fear of the needle.
"I'm sorry, Emily," Reid said softly without looking at her. "It's all my fault, I know. I got the profile wrong. I trusted Ames. I thought, wrongly, that the scientist was the only one who was innocent. That's what I wanted to believe, but I was wrong. She was in on the project too. She informed him, as soon as she left here tonight."
"What are you talking about?" Hawkins barked out a hard laugh. "Ames doesn't know anything about the project. We're only taking advantage of her for the clinical trial."
"Then how did you know that we would be here tonight?" Emily asked.
"I did a little profiling of my own," Hawkins replied. "What's profiling? Getting into people's brains? I've spent my entire career getting into people's brains! You don't have a monopoly on that! After Lee and Maynard told me about your visit, I did some research on you, the two of you. I read up on you, Dr. Reid. I followed you around - lab to home, lab to home, lab to home...You two seem to be living together now. I knew that you'd get smart-alecky and figure out a way to renege on the deal. I knew that you'd never have the guts to test anything on her. You hide your weakness behind a veil of ethics, thinking that you're so high and mighty, doing good for the world, running around the country chasing serial killers. You should be ashamed, Dr. Reid. Someone with your intellect should not be doing what you do for a living."
"I am ashamed," Reid agreed. "I should be using my intellect for some higher purpose, something more important, than what I do in the FBI. I should...I should've..." he opened the first tube and poured the contents down the sink.
"Reid, stop it!" Emily cried as she opened all her boxes and poured the contents into her brain. "Don't do it! Please don't do it! We need those...I need those..."
"I should never have gotten distracted," Reid said. "This whole stint in the BAU...It was nothing but a distraction. It was procrastination. I should've been using my natural-born talents for a different purpose," he poured a second tube down the sink. "The problem that could not be named or shared or solved," he opened two more tubes and poured them simultaneously down the sink.
"Please, Reid," Emily let the tears roll down her cheeks. "I need those...They're the only things I have...My mother is the only thing I have..."
"I'm sorry, Emily," Reid opened the final two tubes. "I'm going to pour everything down the drain. Our experiments too...I'm sorry that all your hard work is going to waste. I'm so sorry," he sniffled slightly. "These samples," he held the tubes up to the light. "They're the only things you have to keep your mother alive. You want to help her so much. You'd give anything to help her. I understand. For a few minutes, before he came in, you thought that you had found the solution. You had! But it wasn't the result of your own hard work, so it's not really yours to keep. I'm sorry that I couldn't do better for her," he sniffled harder. "Or for you," he poured the tubes down the drain. "Back to square one," he turned on the faucet to wash away the milliliters of liquid.
When he turned to face Emily, she could see that he was crying, his tears matching her tears. Seeing his tears through her tears, she collected her sadness, frustration, and anger from where they ran rampant in her brain and compressed them into a shining glittering diamond. Her last coherent thought, before the physician emptied the syringe into her neck, was that the tubes, with their contents swirling towards the Potomac, had never been the only things that she had.
"Hot as a hare, blind as a bat, dry as a bone, red as a beet, mad as a hatter," Dr. Stanley Hawkins recited the mnemonic that described the physiological effects of atropine overdose. "Dead as a doornail," he summarized the outcome.
Hawkins held the needle of the syringe over the side of Reid's neck, up against the carotid artery that supplied the brain with oxygenated blood via the aorta. His hand shook, so the tip of the needle wandered over the surface of his neck, one second threatening to nick the carotid artery, another second threatening to prick the jugular vein that voided the brain of deoxygenated blood through the superior vena cava. Either way, "dead as a doornail" applied.
Reid glanced sideways and downwards at the needle, wondering how he had gotten himself into this mess. He could feel his pulse against the needle, or was it the needle against his pulse? At least he was in the hands of a trained medical practitioner this time.
Emily stared at the neurologist. Among all the things that she could stare at, she found the neurologist the least disturbing. She couldn't look at Reid, because there was a needle against his neck, and she couldn't look at the needle, because the needle was against Reid's neck. She boxed up all the other images and focused in on the neurologist instead.
"Dr. Hawkins," Emily addressed the neurologist in a soft pleading tone that gave the man the upper hand. "Please put down the needle. Let's talk about this without the needle. We're unarmed. We won't make a move if you put down the needle."
"Give me a break," Hawkins snapped, the shaking of his hand incongruous with the sharpness of his tone. "There's no way I'm letting go of him! You're FBI agents, both of you."
"Yes, we're FBI agents, but we're only profilers," Emily said. "We don't carry guns. Guns are not allowed at the FDA. We're no threat to you. I promise."
"Just like you promised to develop a gene therapy protocol in exchange for the antidote?" Hawkins sneered, suddenly emboldened by a sense of wronged righteousness.
"I know that we haven't held up our side of the deal," Emily admitted. "And we're sorry about that. We really are..."
She widened her eyes and nodded, trying to convey her sincere regret. In this moment, her regret was sincere in every way. Emily wished that she had followed through with the deal, neglecting to recall that no one could have come up with a gene therapy protocol in the time that she had before her mother's brain turned into mush. Right now, preventing her mother's brain from turning into mush was not at the top of her agenda.
"We still have time to develop a gene therapy protocol," Reid spoke up. "We can start right now. I've got some ideas..."
"You shut up!" Hawkins pushed the needle against the skin of Reid's neck until the stainless-steel cannula bent, but did not break. "Was it your smart-alecky idea to renege on the deal? Was it your dumb idea to steal the antidote?"
"No!" Emily shook her head emphatically. "He had nothing to do with it!" she gestured at Reid. "It was my idea to steal the antidote. It's not his fault. Please let him go..."
"Nice try, Agent Prentiss," Hawkins hissed through bared teeth. "Do you really think that I'm going to give up my advantage to a pair of FBI agents?"
"What do you think we're going to do to you?" Emily hissed back. "We don't have our weapons with us. Does he look like the fighting type to you? He's a scientist, just like you."
"I'm not a scientist," Hawkins corrected her. "I'm a physician. He plays around with tubes and vials in a lab. I help people!"
"I know...You're right," Emily agreed with Hawkins. "You're trying to help people with the prion agent. CrCSp, the agent that raises IQ in your experiments? That increases intelligence and intellectual achievement, one human at a time? That evolves the human species as a whole?"
"No!" Hawkins frowned angrily. "I'm not Sandy Maynard. Don't confuse me with her! I could care less about human evolution and the Great Leap Forward. I don't care if people are smart or stupid. All I care about is that I produced something worthwhile."
"After years of losing, you finally won," Emily profiled the neurologist. "You've been trying to help people all your life, and now you finally have something to show for it."
"Trying and failing," Hawkins muttered.
"Trying and failing, but not through any fault of your own," Emily said. "You've spent your career dealing with the most devastating disorders that afflict the human brain, the ones that destroy the mind itself. Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's, ALS - the neurodegenerative quartet. Add in CJD and all the other spongiform encephalopathies. The problem was intractable, and it still is, but you've finally wrenched something out of it, right? Your efforts were not wasted. You've found...diamonds in the dung."
"Diamonds in the dung," Hawkins nodded with a chuckle. "Quite a way with words you've got there, Agent Prentiss."
"Not really, Dr. Hawkins," Emily brushed off the compliment. "You're the one who's got a way with words. CrCSp to match PrPSc and CrCP to match PrPC. You isolated both prions from the brains of dead patients, right? You hit the jackpot twice in one career."
"I couldn't believe it," Hawkins said. "At first, I couldn't believe that CrCSp increased intelligence in rodents. In mice and rats, the prion formed plaques, quickly, much faster than any other prion, but the plaques were limited in scope. They didn't take over the entire brain, as prion plaques usually do. They didn't kill the cells or turn the brain into mush. I was so surprised! The prion had originally killed someone, but he must have been one of the non-receptive ones, like Elizabeth Prentiss and Isabella Torres. In everyone else, CrCSp has had only beneficial effects. I couldn't begin to guess at a mechanism. I don't know if I'll ever figure it out."
"Probably not," Reid said. "Another intractable problem...The underlying mechanism of human intelligence."
"I never published my results," Hawkins continued. "I had never gotten permission to extract the brain of the original patient, so I couldn't very well publish any results based on that patient. A few years later, I ran into CrCP. Again, I was flabbergasted by what I had discovered. I couldn't believe that CrCP actually cleared away the plaques created by CrCSp. Clearing away the plaques required the re-shaping of one prion by another. Here was a matched agent-antidote pair, whichever prion you assigned as the agent and whichever prion you assigned as the antidote. I couldn't believe it. I was so lucky! It was all so beautiful!"
"You tested the agent and the antidote in rodents," Reid said. "The clinical trial is the first time that you've ever tested the agent in humans. But the antidote? Have you ever tested the antidote in humans?"
"No," Hawkins shook his head. "Only in rodents..." his eyes lit up with understanding as he caught Reid's drift.
"Here's your chance," Reid pointed out. "You can test your antidote in humans at last, in Elizabeth Prentiss and Isabella Torres. A matched agent-antidote pair to complete the experiment."
"Give us the antidote," Emily said. "We can help you. I can test it for you. On my mother. She's running out of time. I'd do anything to help her."
"She's right," Reid said. "Let us test the antidote for you. We can help each other. Don't you want to see how a human brain responds to the antidote? Maybe the antidote is a cure for CJD, for all the spongiform encephalopathies. No one will care that you isolated the original agent without permission. Your discovery is too important to be scrutinized. Those little details will be overlooked. You're going to get the recognition that you deserve...fame, fortune, the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology...Dr. Stanley Hawkins, Nobel Laureate."
"You're going to make sure that it doesn't happen," Hawkins stared coldly.
"We're not going to apprehend you for your role in the clinical trial," Emily reassured the neurologist. "I'm an FBI agent, not a scientist, but even I can appreciate your work. I recognize the importance of your work. You should be allowed to continue. I see the beauty in your work. I would never do a thing a stop you. I won't be reporting you to my superiors. As far as we're concerned, you have no role in the clinical trial. You can go ahead and publish your results. There's no need to mention the clinical trial. You can start a new clinical trial of your own. CrCSp to improve the brain, CrCP to save it. The antidote clears away CJD plaques. Maybe it'll also clear away Alzheimer's plaques. You could be sitting on the cure for Alzheimer's Disease!"
"It all starts here and now," Reid interjected, twisting his neck away from the needle in order to speak without touching the tip. "Let us test the antidote on her mother. It's the first step. Everything else will follow."
"I don't believe you," Hawkins said. "I don't believe a word you say. You reneged on the previous deal. You're going to renege on this one as well. As soon as I give you the antidote, as soon as I take this needle off his neck, you're going to arrest me and put me away for life."
"No! We would never do that! You're too valuable a mind to be arrested and put away," Emily argued.
"But that's exactly what you're planning to do," Hawkins said. "You're going to put me away so you can take credit for my discoveries. You're going to analyze the antidote in the lab, figure out its structure, find a way to synthesize it from scratch, go a few steps farther than I have."
"Believe me, Dr. Hawkins, I would never be able to pass off your discoveries as my own," Reid tried to placate the man with reason. "How would I have found time to make these discoveries? I spend all my time running around the country chasing down serial killers."
"You're a genius with an IQ of 187," Hawkins said. "People will believe you when you claim my discoveries as your own. I'm not going to let you do that. Those vials," he tilted his head at the ice bucket containing the thawed prion samples. "Are those my samples?"
"Yes," Emily nodded warily.
"I want you to open them, one by one, and pour them down the drain," he tilted his head at the sink.
Emily stared at the neurologist, frozen by the unexpected order. Despite their vociferous denials, the neurologist was absolutely convinced that Reid was going to usurp his work. He would rather destroy his work, the product of elbow grease and luck combined, than have someone else take credit for it.
"Please don't do this, Dr. Hawkins," Emily whispered. "You can take the samples. We're not keeping them from you."
"You've already analyzed the samples," Hawkins said. "You've collected several microliters and frozen them away for safe-keeping. A few microliters is all you need to amplify the prion. Protein misfolding cyclic amplification...You've heard of the process, haven't you, Dr. Reid? You know that it's easy to amplify a tiny amount of prion in an excess of the normal protein. That's what prions are - infectious proteins. They exist to multiply."
"What can I do to make you believe me?" Reid asked. "I don't have any samples stored away. I can delete all the experimental results from the computer. It'll be like I never knew about the prions in the first place."
"That's not good enough," Hawkins rejected the offer. "This is your last chance, Agent Prentiss. I want you to pour my samples down the drain, along with every other tube and vial of every other substance in this entire lab."
"Most of those tubes and vials belong to the scentists who work here," Emily argued. "I can't pour everyone's work down the drain."
"You can if you have to," Hawkins pressed the tip of the needle against Reid's skin and placed his finger over the plunger.
Emily eyed the needle - the tip and the cannula - and the syringe - the barrel and the plunger. She looked at Reid. She made a surprisingly easy decision. She shuffled slowly towards the sink. She grabbed the ice bucket and took one last look at the colorful tubes within. She said goodbye to her mother.
"Don't do it, Emily," Reid followed her movements with his eyes, not daring to move his neck for fear of the needle.
"I have to," Emily choked back a flood of tears. "I'm sorry," she apologized to her mother.
"I'm sorry, Emily," Reid said softly. "It's all my fault, I know. I got the profile wrong. I trusted Ames. I thought, wrongly, that the scientist was the only one who was innocent. That's what I wanted to believe, but I was wrong. She was in on the project too. She informed him, as soon as she left here tonight."
"How could you think that she was innocent?" Hawkins barked out a hard laugh. "Charlotte is a eugenics fanatic, just like the others. I met her when she was a postdoc at Georgetown. One of the brightest minds I've ever met. Everyone thought that she was crazy to take a position at PhenoPharm when she could've become a hotshot professor. But we needed her to get that position, so we could take advantage of it for the clinical trials. She completed the triad - the administrator, the scientist, and the physician."
"Then why did she help us look for the antidote today?" Emily asked.
"The antidote!" Hawkins smirked. "The antidote isn't exactly what you think it is. It originally killed someone, remember?"
"It doesn't work?" Emily stared intently at the tubes. "It doesn't clear away the plaques?"
"Oh, it clears away the plaques alright," Hawkins laughed. "But it also happens to give the patient CJD. That what it is! A prion! What did you think you were getting? A magical elixir to wash away all your problems?"
"So it's not an antidote at all," Emily mumbled in defeat. "All this for nothing," she opened the first tube and poured the contents down the drain.
"Emily, stop it!" Reid startled her with his firm tone. "Don't do it! It's still an antidote."
"It's useless!" Emily snapped at him. "It's a prion that causes CJD!"
"Yes, it's a prion that causes CJD," Reid said slowly. "But it's also an antidote for CrCSp. It clears away the plaques. It alleviates the symptoms. The agent will kill your mother faster than the antidote."
"What are you suggesting?" Emily stared in shock. "Are you saying that we should give this to my mother anyway?"
"Yes!" Reid replied. "It's the only chance she's got! It'll cure her, and it'll give her CJD. The antidote is a slow-acting prion. It's not like the agent. It'll take years for CJD to develop. I read an article the other day. The researchers found that the incubation period for CJD could be as long as 30 to 60 years. For your mother, it won't even matter that the antidote causes the disease."
"Then it could work," Emily shook at the thought of what she was about to do. "It could actually work," she cried as she opened all her boxes and poured the contents into her brain. "Please, Dr. Hawkins, you could help someone," she begged the neurologist. "I know it's not much, but in this case, a prion could actually be a cure. Please let me help my mother..."
"Three, two..." Hawkins rolled his eyes towards the ceiling, unswayed by her pleas.
"I'll do it! I'll do it!" Emily opened up all the tubes, dropped the caps into the sink, poured the contents down the drain, and turned on the faucet to wash away the milliliters of liquid.
She stared blankly at the empty tubes. She held her hands under the water from the faucet. She steadied herself against the sink, sobbing with an inconsolable grief that was sadness, frustration, and anger all rolled up into one. When she turned to face Reid, she could see that he was crying with her, his tears matching her tears. Her last coherent thought, as the physician emptied the syringe into his neck, was that now, she had truly lost everything.
Master Post