Post 253: First Study Clinics, p7

This is the girl he was telling me about? His sister? She certainly looks like the girl in those video clips.

It’s Tuesday, midafternoon. Between today and yesterday I’ve seen maybe a dozen of these women for the study come in and out of the office. I’d signed off on all their charts, maybe actually - with the help of our Medical Assistants - examined about half of them, given them their injection, the APRNs handling the others. All were young, childbearing age, very different from the seniors I’m used to having as patients. Though I wasn’t made privy to backstories, didn’t have much time myself to chat with these women, what I’d been able to surmise was that they seemed hand-picked by Evolution for the first wave of the study, connected in some way, or of privilege. I even recognized one of them as a local news girl, and apparently one was some type of minor celebrity. They were all excited about starting this supplement, obviously knowing more about it than I, as did the MA’s. Some, it seemed, had already been seen in the clinic at Evolution, and had had a dose or two over the past several months. Their charts (paper, not electronic…weird) were (also weird) not in English, and I’d needed help from Karen and Morgan translating what I’d need from the Cyrillic. Good thing they both knew Russian. Should that have made me nervous?

This one, my 3:15 Tuesday patient - “Subject #F8.009” - had the thickest Evolution chart of all. She’d apparently started treatment back in the spring - which was before the company even had approval for human use, I thought.  This was to be, here today, her sixth monthly dose. She was, also apparently, the sister of one of these paranoid men that fancied themselves some sort of resistance force, the one from whom I’d been receiving these bizarre emails as of late:

REFUSE THEM ENTRY!! DISALOW TREATMENT!! ABSCOND ALL WRITTEN MATERIALS ANDWAIT FOR FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS!!

-ANDRSN

He’d warned me that this one, “Number Nine”, would be coming in. His sister. Good god, what was I messed up in?

Anyway, as weird as this was, I still smiled when I entered the room, still put on the confident, professional demeanor I’d cultivated through my years of clinical work. Even at my reduced height, I was still able to manage that. I, yes, recognized her immediately from the strange video clips I’d found online, apparently hacked (if it was to be believed) from Evolution’s secure servers. “Hello, how are you…Mary Jane, is it?”

She was seated up on the exam table. Her eyes rose to meet mine.

The girl - and she was young, though I hadn’t been able to make heads or tails of her birthdate from her arcane chart - was striking. Beyond striking, but of an earthy, natural beauty. She was tall - 176cm was listed in her chart - lithe of body but big of chest. Her hair was long, medium brown and unkempt. Dramatic eyebrows, a long nose and full pouting lips defined a face that immediately struck me as insouciant. Her long pale legs were shapely, crossed at the knee and on full display in a set of too-small black denim cutoffs and old sneakers. Big hoops dangled from her ears and as bracelets jangled on her wrist and god help me I recognized her top from one of the video clips I’d seen: a striped tank of black and white zipped fully down to display a “v” of full, soft cleavage - the breasts of a full-grown, well-developed woman, not a girl.

She’d looked at me, but hadn’t said anything, yet. She seemed to be regarding me with a slight smile. She looked somehow both bored and bemused.

“M-Mary Jane…” spoke a woman with a shake to her voice and sitting in the corner, probably the girl’s mother. In the light of her daughter’s physical presence, I hadn’t noticed her. “...don’t be rude.”

“Be quiet, mother,” the girl spoke, her voice a shockingly sharp command to the older woman, who I watched shrink back, “this is my visit. It’s about me.I shouldn’t have even brought you.”

The mother resembled her daughter in a few ways - the complexion, the chin and eyes - but seemed just a smaller, older and almost insubstantial presence. In the room, with the force of nature that was her daughter and Silvia - my tall, buxom medical assistant who stood to the side readying the injection - this woman was almost an afterthought. I could tell from where her daughter got her chest, though; the mother was wearing a turtleneck and breasts nearly as large as her daughter’s were apparent underneath. I silently cursed myself for even noting such things.

The mother - god help her, this poor woman seemed utterly flummoxed on how to control her bombshell of a daughter - muttered something in apology and I watched her eyes glaze over. At the same time, a whiff of perfume - strangely familiar - washed over me, swirling about the room. Was this girl…whoah…

I stumbled, a bit, coming into the room, and had to catch myself with one hand to the countertop. The girl, Mary Jane, watched me with what was now an amused smile.

“You’re clumsy, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Mary Jane…?” Silvia stepped up and spoke, turning to the girl and fixing her with a look that seemed a reprimand, “Remember what we’ve said…” The two shared a glance, and Mary Jane sat back, turned her head and snorted, derisively. It was then that I noticed Silvia was wearing a surgical mask, and was now offering me one. I haven’t worn one of these in the office since the pandemic earlier in the decade, and waved her off. She shrugged, but something in her eyes told me I should take it.

“Yeah, she thinks you better put that on…<cough cough>” Mary Jane jeered, faking a delicate, girlish cough, “...I’m sick.” At that she chuckled, watching my confusion. This girl was making me anxious, and it was amusing her to no end. She looked at her nails, suddenly again nonplussed.

I took another step into the office, deeper into a pool of perfume, struggling to read the dynamics of the room. Something was going on, of course - what was the history, here? - and gathered myself. As I feigned looking over her incomprehensible chart, standing at the counter and definitely not looking at her legs in the mirror next to the sink, I made some small talk. I asked about the weather outside, asked her about school.

“School?” the girl laughed, “I haven’t been to school in months.” Apparently, I soon learned, she was working as an assistant of sorts, to an executive at a big local financial firm. She’d taken her mother’s old position, it seemed.

That’s weird, right?

The weight of her perfume, already heavy in the air, was slowly increasing as we talked. I felt slowly more and more lightheaded, and took a deep breath. That didn’t help. I examined the syringe, getting the injection set, drawing up the necessary cc’s from the ampule with the plunger.

“You’re here to make me a Queen Bee,” I heard Mary Jane speak, from behind me, her voice like a soft command that caressed the back of my neck, began to make its way up into my skull, “Give me double the dose.”

I glanced at mom, over in the corner. Though her eyes were even more unfocused than before, she was nodding, and I unconsciously started nodding along with her. My assistant Silvia, I knew, saw me pause and falter, watching me turn back to the task at hand and draw up the necessary 0.6ml…or is it supposed to be 1.2? “I really think you should wear this…” I heard Silvia say, and without another word she was slipping a surgical mask over my head, adjusting it for me around my ears. Strangely it smelled, too, of perfume, as if embedded with a scent…but different than Mary Jane’s, even more familiar. It stirred me. 0.6ml. That’s the dose I’m supposed to do…

“Seriously?” I heard the girl behind me huff in derision, “You too?“ What did she have against masks? I could feel the heat of her girlish frustration palpably through my back.  “Just give me my shot,” she said, finally.

I turned to her, unsure of myself and what I was even supposed to be doing with this syringe, but feeling my faculties return with each new breath through my scented mask. I saw Mary Jane read my face and then sit up proudly, watching me, regarding me and the chaos she’d so easily brought, now seeming to take pleasure in it all. She crossed her shapely legs, saw me glance down at them. She gave me a smug smile, looking down from on high.

“You’re all just like my brother, with his gas mask, afraid of me…” she scoffed, “I can’t wait ‘til the day I can just melt those fucking things off your faces...”

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