Ari explained, “If something bad happens to him, or anyone around him, we’ll have a hell of a time keeping the study quiet. And once it’s out, everyone will blame the nanorobots rather than the disease.”
Susan could not argue. Once someone posted an accusation, no matter how false or corrupted, others with an agenda would cling to it even after its debunking. Cody shook his head, turned his gaze to Susan, and rolled his eyes. “Nothing bad is going to happen just because a man who happens to have schizophrenia decides to lose himself for a day or two.”
Ari growled something wordless. He cleared his throat and spoke again. “Why did it have to be our man with schizophrenia? We should have admitted him for the week.”
Cody heaved a deep sigh. “Were you planning to pay for weeklong hospital stays for all our study patients out of your own pocket? Or do you have some magic words to allow them to stay for free?” He shook his head. “And how many of our patients would willingly allow us to coop them up? Would you hold them against their will?”
Ari had no answers. He continued to grumble to himself but did not speak aloud again.
Uncertain what to say, Susan shuffled her feet. She could understand Ari’s concerns. Although Cody made sense and spoke the truth, she could not throw off a vague feeling of dread. Her thoughts went back to the protestor. He had known about the study and her role in it, which meant the study was not wholly secret. She could not imagine him snatching a grown man from his bed, but coincidences did not sit well in those circumstances. “Is there anything I can do?”
Cody winced and glanced at Ari. He clearly did not want to speak of anything negative with his partner already in a snit. “We had another patient for you to inject, but he backed out. We’re scraping the bottom of the barrel for possible replacements. Do you have any suggestions?”
Susan shrugged. “I’m the wrong person to ask. It’s my first rotation, and I’m on the PIPU. I’m only working with children.”
Ari said softly, “We’re cleared for children.”
That surprised Susan. She had little knowledge of research, but she had always heard safety and efficacy had to be proven on adults before the administration allowed children to participate.
Cody nodded. “Special exemption for time and need.” He did not go into details, which relieved Susan. She did not need to hear a recitation of hundreds of rules governing medical research. These two knew them backward and forward. If they said children could participate, it was the truth.
“Hmm.” Susan considered the possibilities. “Let me think about it for a bit, and I’ll get back to you.”
“Sooner is better than later,” Ari said. “The quicker we finish and get the data out there, the less chance the SFH has to interfere.”
Susan would have liked to wait until she found Ari Goldman in a better mood, but she realized not speaking now would make it look as if she had hidden something later. “You should know I got accosted on the way into work this morning. Nothing violent or dangerous, but this man knew enough about the study to call it” — she tried to remember his exact words — “‘making cyborgs from mental patients.’ And he warned me to ‘get out.’ ”
Now, even Cody’s smile vanished. “Did he say why? Did he threaten anything?”
“No,” Susan said. “They trained us to ignore protestors, and I disengaged as quickly as I could.”
“Good job,” Cody said, arousing a pang of guilt. Susan could not help remembering her first day and the conversation she had held with one of those protestors. She shook away the thought with the knowledge that the conversation had had nothing to do with robots or research. At the time, she did not even know the study existed.
Ari’s frown deepened. It seemed to permanently score his aging features. “Making cyborgs from mental patients. Now I’ve heard everything.”
“Oh, I’m sure I could say a few things you haven’t heard yet,” Cody teased his partner, running a hand through his unkempt hair and leaving it mostly standing on end.
Ari ignored the taller, leaner man. “But wouldn’t it be cool if we had that technology?”
Cody shrugged. “We do, depending on how you define ‘cyborg.’ There are people with functioning, robotic limbs with neural connections.”
Ari dismissed him with a brusque wave. “I mean mental cyborgs. Positronic brains in human bodies. Toss out the old, malfunctioning head and replace it with working wire coils that can think and learn.”
The thought seemed chilling to Susan, and Cody must have had a similar instinct. “Don’t say that where the Society for Humanity can hear you. They’d have a field day.” He rolled his gaze toward Susan again, indicating with a glance not to take certain musings of Dr. Ari Goldman seriously. “Isn’t it the intellect that makes the man? I mean, somewhere, there are freezers full of cryogenically frozen heads waiting for replacement bodies.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. I thought I read that somewhere.”
Ari defended his idea. “I’m not really suggesting we toss some human’s thinker into the garbage and put Nate’s in. I’m just saying we might replace a section of brain, say after an accident or stroke, with positronic circuitry. If we can map the brain down to the molecular level, perhaps we could replace a misfiring synapse or two and cure all mental illnesses.” He gave Cody a pointed look that probably passed for return humor. “Maybe even your arachnophobia.”
“Hey! That’s a carefully guarded secret.”
Both men looked at Susan, who made a zipper motion across her lips.
The casual speculation convinced Susan her encounter with the protestor would neither get her banned from the study nor essentially killed, as Dr. Bainbridge had suggested in his initial lecture to all of the incoming residents. “If you don’t need me for anything today, I’m going back to the PIPU.”
Ari waved a gruff good-bye. Cody shrugged. “Without Payton Flowers, or the newest patient, your schedule has completely opened. We’ll call you if anything else comes up.”
That suited Susan just fine. She turned to leave.
“Oh,” Ari added, “I’m serious about letting us know if you find another subject. Someone desperate with nothing to lose.”
“Desperate with nothing to lose.” The phrase hung with Susan long after she left Hassenfeld Research Tower and headed back toward the unit. She could see how that phrase would make people worry about becoming a part of the study, but she also knew anything new and different required such a warning. In some ways, it harmed the research process, because medications and procedures that might help people in mild circumstances seldom got tested. In other ways, it helped, because it ensured that any new medication or procedure had to work on even the most extreme cases to get notice and approval.
Susan realized if they had asked her the first day for patient suggestions, Monterey would probably have nanorobots circulating through her cerebrospinal fluid right now. The breakthrough with Nate had made even the controversial electroconvulsive therapy unnecessary. She wondered how the protestors would feel when the hospital and mother gave up the battle. Would they use Monterey’s improvement without ECT as an I-told-you-so victory for their agenda, or would the loss of a rallying point disappoint them? Would they savor their win and head for home, or would they channel their energy into a new cause, energized by their success?
Susan shook those thoughts aside. She had no real interest in the political aspects of medicine, other than simple curiosity. Her job was to see the patients, diagnose them, and make them better, to ease the burden on the children and parents in her charge. The journalists, protestors, and politicians could go to hell for all she cared. They mostly just got in the way of the practice of competent, proper medicine.