Afflictions

It seemed the entire hospital had been cleared for this event. All floors swept clean for this prestigious and historical occasion. The doctor smiled broadly at her now captive audience, her hands behind her back. As protocol demanded, she was dressed in her doctor’s lab coat thrown over her white blouse and black dress. She carefully looked into every eye in the room. She could not believe it was finally about to happen. She was about to make history right here in the hospital.

‘We did it...’ she finally spoke grinning at each of the faces before her. Obviously they smiled back. This was a power-grabbing opportunity none of them were willing to let pass them by. ‘…Finally, we have done it, and what is it that we have done? Well, centuries ago, in the seventeen hundreds, cancer reared its ugly head and fast forward to today, we have innumerable incurable diseases, some of them being AIDS, diabetes, ALS, cystic fibrosis to name but a few. Physicians and scientists all over the world are in a constant never-ending race to save mankind from these plagues that continue to indiscriminately snatch the lives of so many a man, woman and child.’

She paused and browsed the eyes once more. The men stared hungrily at her, some even licking their lips. Of course she was attractive: her skin a soft hazel, eyes the shape of wayward acorns with coffee black pupils. To test her theory, she flung her hair from the nape of her neck, but the eyes of her audience stayed in hers. Yes, they were definitely not interested in her looks.

And so she proceeded, ‘We have witnessed people cower in fear, doctors continuously perplexed and troubled by these ailments. By these…these afflictions. The greatest of scientists put their minds together and eventually found a way to keep these diseases at bay, to at least slow down their effects on and in the human body. You know the stuff; the chemotherapy and the Anti-Retro-Virals,’ she brushed off the terms as if they were obsolete and inconsequential, drawing mild laughter from her audience. She was willing to drag this out for as long as possible. This was her moment.

She said, ‘But despite these quantum leaps in research and treatments, most of the sick would still end up dying excruciating deaths because, I’m sorry to have to say this, we did not work hard enough.’ There was applause accompanied by flashes from the cameras of the journalists standing at the back of the room. Some of the nurses had even shown up for this event, smiling at her from the far ends of the room standing in awkward and subtle postures like meerkats.

‘So without taking up any more of your time…’ she stepped aside to reveal the gurney. The suited audience and journalists immediately drew closer, not wanting to miss a single moment of it, the camera flashes now more rapid. ‘What if I told you that after today, all these problems shall be no more?’ She shrugged, ‘Well, that’s only because what I am telling you now has finally become a reality. For fifteen years my husband Rodwell and I have worked year after year, day and night to find a way to salvage these problems and this…is what we came up with.’

She turned to the man strapped on the gurney. He was a middle-aged man with a thick jaw, a crew cut and one of those hard-beaten faces you only see on the convicts on TV. The doctor smiled in amusement when she saw the apprehensive looks on some of the faces on her audience after seeing the man. ’Don’t start calling the police now, the young man is a willing volunteer for the procedure, aren’t you, Gary?’

The man named Gary nodded vehemently from the clutches of the gurney. He smiled nervously, ‘I just hope I’ll get my lollipop afterwards, doc.’ The people laughed, obviously.

Smiling from ear to ear, the doctor walked towards a small safe right behind the reception counter, she punched in a code, there was the beep allowing her access and moments later she returned from behind the counter with a tiny vile between her fingers and an injection in the other hand. She began making sure Gary’s restraints were tight. She said, ‘After our long and grueling search for a cure, my husband and I came up with this.’ She held the vile in their eyes, shook the green liquid inside and as she expected, there were gasps and eventually, applause.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the beginning of the end of human suffering. Once injected into the bloodstream, this serum becomes a vital aid to your immune system, a more efficient and reliable lifetime support for your immune system and can seek out and target cancer affected cells or the HIV virus and destroy them faster than either one can attempt to mutate. But of course, the patient has to continue taking their prior prescribed treatments for three consecutive months after receiving this serum. And just in case you were wondering, we tested this serum on animals first; forty three different species over a period of seven years.’ The doctor poured the serum into the injection and reached for Gary’s arm. She stroked his forearm gently and reassuringly. Her face now looked serious. She looked over her shoulder, ‘I apologize, my husband couldn’t make it but he does send his regards.’ She looked back at Gary. ‘Now, ladies and gentlemen, I think it’s time we made history.’

Everyone clapped their hands, reluctantly as if not sure if this said serum was even going to work. It was as if reality had finally reminded them that what this woman was attempting to do had never been accomplished before. Many had tried and had failed and continue to fail miserably. The reason most of them had been excited and cheering on for this procedure was because they had been enthralled by the idea alone, that maybe it was possible that AIDS and cancer would be no more, but now that the procedure was now underway, logic replaced ambition.

The doctor rolled Gary’s shirt further up his body all the way up to his chest to reveal the festering cancerous growth that had consumed half his body. The crowd immediately cringed and their voices of abject nausea echoed through the room. Not wanting to lose the crowd, the doctor immediately plunged the needle into Gary’s forearm. She pressed and the green serum rushed up his vein. She took a step back and waited, her needle pointed up into the air like a now empty pistol.

Gary just lay there looking down at his body, but nothing was happening.

The doctor played with the needle between her fingers. She knew there had been no miscalculation this time. Extensive research had been carried out, sufficient and reliable data had been gathered and many test subjects had shown impressive results. She wondered if she really had gone crazy, or simply had made a hasty decision to finally test the cure in front of all these people.

Five minutes had now passed. The room was still silent, completely, and the doctor was about to turn around and call it a day when she heard a gasp. ‘Look!’ came a voice from within the crowd. A finger was pointing at Gary. After looking hard enough, the doctor began to see it too. Slowly, but certainly, the growth was receding. Smaller and smaller the boil-like protrusions shrunk until there was not a single grey area on Gary but just clear white skin. The cancer had completely vanished.

If it had not been a steady structure, the entire building itself would have collapsed from the deafening applause that rung through its walls; applause for the genius scientist before them that had accomplished the impossible. History had truly been made in that very room and they were proud to be a part of it. The doctor walked back to Gary amidst the loud applause and placed her hand on his shoulder. ’How do you feel, Gary?’ she asked him.

The applause softened into near silence to hear his reply. Gary looked at their expecting eyes before bringing his attention back to the doctor. He gave a splendorous grin and said, ‘I’ve…I’ve never felt so alive.’

The doctor stroked his head as the spectators exploded into much louder applause than before. Hugs and high-fives were shared throughout the crowd.

The doctor straightened herself up and turned to the audience, her hands at the edges of her coat. She was definitely smiling. ‘Tell your neighbors, friends and loved ones that vaccinations are good to go.’ The crowed swarmed her and engulfed her like a house fire as they shook her hand and congratulated her on such a feat of victory. They called it the greatest leap in medicine ever known to the human race.