Total pages in book: 26
Estimated words: 25004 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 125(@200wpm)___ 100(@250wpm)___ 83(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 25004 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 125(@200wpm)___ 100(@250wpm)___ 83(@300wpm)
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
CHAPTER 1
JASE
“The lab results are in.” Calvin, my assistant, places the most recently run report next to my elbow.
“Thanks,” I reply without looking up from the study I’m reading. The numbers aren’t matching up like they should, and it’s giving me a headache.
“It’s nearly six, Dr. Ali.”
“Okay.” The healthy controls’ average age is too low compared to the ones for Lewy bodies and Alzheimer’s patients.
“Have you eaten?”
Why would we create a control pool that doesn’t match? I need to look at the protocols and recruitment data.
“We ordered food an hour ago. It’s cold now, but I could heat some up before I leave.”
“No.” The intake data pool had to be within the correct parameters. Did we pare the healthy control group too aggressively or not aggressively enough?
“You haven’t eaten all day, Dr. Ali.”
“Not hungry.” I pull up the eligibility criteria for the clinical trial. The age groups were the same for all patient populations.
“I’ll leave the food in the break room. You can just stick the tray in the microwave. Press the second button for a two-minute reheat.”
“Two minutes. Second button. Got it.” At this stage, it would be prohibitively expensive to restart the trial, but I don’t remember the age discrepancy from the first two stages. I click around and find the first stage report and begin to read. The ages in the abstract are different. Something happened in the last stage then. I hunt for the preliminary reports. As I study the data, the outside noise starts to filter through.
“He’s not been eating well for ages.”
“I’m seriously concerned about him. Is he always like this?”
“No, this is definitely the worst it’s been. I swear he’s subsisting on caffeine and nuts and not much more.”
“What should we do?”
“What can we do? He’s a grown man plus our boss. You do your best, Calvin. You’re his assistant, not his maid.”
“Or personal chef.”
“I know, but when he doesn’t eat, he’s…”
“Difficult?”
“An asshole?”
“He’s like a robot.”
“Maybe all he needs is caffeine. Like that’s the robot oil for Dr. Ali.”
“Stop worrying, Calvin. Let’s all go home. It’s ridiculous we have to be here for so long just because Dr. Ali is a machine.”
I shut the voices out and continue reading. Hours later, I have my answer. Stage two ended up weeding out too many of our older healthy control members, leaving us with a sample pool that averages four years younger than the non-placebo patients. As fatigue courses through my body, I let my head fall back to the top of my chair.
The clock on my desk says it’s midnight. My stomach grumbles. The mug next to my keyboard is empty. What did Calvin say about the food? Red light? No. It wasn’t lights. It was minutes. I drop my glasses onto the report he’d brought in and make my way to the kitchen. Inside the refrigerator are containers of food. One of them has a yellow stickie that says Eat me.
Suddenly very hungry, I filch a fork from a stainless steel bin on the counter and start eating the congealed cheese and pasta cold. It slides down the back of my throat, but my stomach revolts. I drink some water down, and take deep breaths until the feeling of puking subsides. Calvin is right. I haven’t always been like this. I need sleep. That’s the key here.
I wash my glass, collect my keys, and head for home. The throaty purr of my Bugatti soothes my spirit, and by the time I arrive at my townhome, the buzz in my head has subsided.
I stumble inside and throw myself on the nearest horizontal surface.
Hours later, the sun streaming through the living room wakes me up. One of these days, I’ll make it to the bedroom, but I guess it wasn’t yesterday. My stomach grumbles at me, but last night’s episode makes me wary. I opt to run on the treadmill for an hour instead. Sweaty and tired, I get ready for another day at the lab. The results of stage two testing were promising, but with the age discrepancy, I’m worried about the usability.
My phone dings at seven. I throw on some clothes and run upstairs to the fifth floor of the townhome. My mother’s nurse greets me.
“I didn’t hear you come in last night.” The fifty-year-old hands me a cup of coffee.
I buss her cheek. “You’re a peach, Bri. How is Mom? Is she okay enough for me to read to her?” Some days, my mom’s dementia is so bad that she’s afraid to be in the same room with me.
Bri pats my shoulder. “It’s a good day. She’s out on the terrace.”
I pick up the book of Tennyson poems on my way out to the rooftop garden where Mom is sitting next to a row of orange trees. She has a basket of tangerines on the table beside her. I peel one for her and set it down. “Mrs. Ali, I’m Jase. I’m with the Montgomery Mobile Reader’s Program, and I’ll be your reader for the day.” It’s the spiel that Nurse Bri and I came up with so that Mom would be okay with a stranger visiting her every day. On some rare occasions, Mom recognizes me as her son, Jason Ali, neuroscientist, but that’s once in a very blue moon. Most of the time, I’m unrecognizable to her even though I’ve read to her every morning for the last five years.