Their Fragile Strength

Blood Samples

Julian stares at the doc with mouth slightly open, head cooked with a dubious look on his face. I don't blame him. I myself am not sure of the Doc's sanity, however I am curious about the unconscious man and his mysterious leg wound. Mr Clean said it was a bite mark but for some reason the circumstances of the bite and who or what did the biting are a secret.

Rather impatiently I wait for doc to continue or say something. Instead his long fingers are tapping against his smiling lips. He is not a particularly tall man but his lanky figure give the impression that he is taller than his five feet, ten inches. Despite the Doc's tall impression, it would not be too much of a leap to assume the pale man with the sharp, long nose adorned with wire rimmed glasses and bushy eyebrows that almost touch was victim to some bullying as a child.

After a moment of everyone staring at him perplexed he looked at the men with the guns and then at us and said with a small stutter that wasn't there before, "I cant diagnose but if I could I'd say maybe he was bitten by a rabid dog a few times causing an infection from the bacteria overgrowth due to late treatment." The doc I know is reserved but very sure of himself so his sudden meekness surprises me.

I mull over what he just said. "Rabid dog, huh?"

"Uh-huh," he says leaning over the leg and coming closer to me as a result. "Y'know, the kind of rabid dogs that aren't dogs but at least 4 times the size of most dogs," he whispers.

Catching on I start to list the most common infections caused by bacteria commonly found in dog's mouths.

Julian grabs some test tubes, he's already grabbing syringes and alcohol wipes as he's handing the tunes to doc.

I grab some more test tubes. As I hand them to him my eyes meet a raised bushy eyebrow from doc and I shrug. "There's a lot of possibilities, " I say. "Instead of waiting to do the next test when a test is negative we can run them all at once and to do that we need more samples."

My heart is pounding as I wait for him to speak. I know both him and Julian see through every bullshit word I just uttered. I pretend confidence and shrug again like I don't care. I say nothing else in defense and they both say nothing.

The truth is just a couple samples could quite literally run a few hundred tests on the top of the line machinery we have both in our labs and in the labs shared in the building. However to do some tests these G.I Joe's wouldn't approve of I'll need more samples to run some tests later. Doc grabs Q-tips and antiseptics and started cleaning the leg wound.

He is constantly telling us orders in a hushed but urgent tone. Sometimes when he gave an update outloud in his hushed tones he leaned in and adds information for Julian's and my ears only. That information is usually contradictory to whatever he said aloud.

We grab samples before the wound is fully cleaned and grab more samples after disinfecting the strangers leg. He remains unconscious but not medicated and occasionally the pain is so great he jerks and grunts. At some point I thought he'd wake but he never did.

For every sample that we did, one was put in the bacterial identification mass spectrometer which took one sample and broke it down and separated it so each organic material was in separated tubes before identifyint It. Once the bacteria separated I made it look like I put multiple samples in and pocketed the others. When I got to the other side of the table near the trash I dropped in the extra samples and kept going. A couple samples got wrapped in my gloves and discarded in the trash to be retrieved later.

After a long 3 and half hours doc tosses the scalpel he had to use to cut off some part of the mans leg that had necrosis and takes his gloves off. He wipes his brows and the look in his eyes is that of a man who has had an incredible journey and is bursting to talk about it. Instead he nods and gives the smile of a boy who is very pleased with himself.

There is bloody rags and pieces of flesh and death around him but he seems overjoyed and not at all scarred by the fact that a man's life had hung in the balance. Perturbed by this side of him I look away from his wild eyes and I look towards Carrot Tops. Since Dr. Bryant put down his scalpel Carrot Tops hasn't said a word. The other men however look like they are collectively waiting with baited breath. I take off my gloves and turn to Julian. He helps me take off the apron and I grab his along with mine and put them in the soiled clothes bin. We grab more gloves and blood cleaning kits and pick up blood and chucks of leg and bloody rags.

Twenty minutes into Julian and I cleaning and the Doc standing there examining his handiwork with the leg and tracking the stitch marks we all hear a small whimper. We look to the table and the man on it doesn't move but makes the sound again but with a bit more anguish.

I know it's coming. I have gooseflesh as alarm bells sound in my head. I look around quickly, for what, I don't know. A moment later comes an earth shattering cry of a man whose flesh has been dissected and put back together.

The hushed awkward silence is broken by this auditory bomb. And though Doc, Julian and I startle and freeze in panic, the five men with their military training quickly jump into action. Carrot tops points his hands and signals with two fingers at a time and the men disperse accordingly and grabs their screaming comrad, puts a hand over his mouth and inject him with something. Another assist the one who had drugged his comrad and picks him up. Two more flank them and then Carrot tops turns back to us.

He barks orders at us about not uttering a word about this event and he pours some kind of chemical on the table we had operated on. He also pours some more in the biohazard waste bins we had used to get rid of the blood and cloths and chunks of flesh. In much the same fashion they had barged in without warning or consideration, they left. In their wake the three of us stand dumbfounded and at a loss for words