Percival Chapter Two Part Two

“You’re not going there, man? They give out free pot. The real good shit. You know, government shit.”

“Why are they giving you pot?”

“They only let you smoke it there. You can’t take it with you. Then they give you a bunch of weird stuff to do, like throw a ball into a basket or read something out loud. Like I said though, their full today, so you’ll have to come again next week. Shit, they got enough stuff for twenty more people.” The kid turned and swaggered down the hall.

The Disease Lab Three that he entered was on the other end of the building. He entered a spacious lab room and was greeted by Dr. Marcowitz.

“Mr. Watkins, so glad to see you,” he said. He put down his clipboard on the table and reached out to grab his hand, shaking it violently.

“Same here. So what do you have planned today?”

“Just some routine tests and needle work. We’ve got to see how that new drug is holding out .” Percival assumed that he was going to go through the usual needle probes but he went through the formality of asking. He wouldn’t be surprised if they wheeled out a large mouse wheel for him to run on.

The first few tests used a variety of needles. Each time the needle pierced his skin, he would think about how Clarrisa voluntarily shot herself up. When he was a child he couldn’t look at the needle, but after the first hundred shots he grew fascinated with the process, how it first indented his skin, then slip inside like a parasite and slide out with only a slight sting. It really didn’t hurt until it left your skin.

Then the scavengers began to circle. Six doctors hovered over him, working on six different projects, while he rested on the cushioned examination table and watched the chaos around him. The doctors, all wearing protective suits and gloves, performed a choreographed dance, where one doctor would take a vile of plasma, and another would inject a drug into his shoulder.

They all talked to him as if they were close friends. “How are you feeling lately?” , “Have you been excersing because you look in tip top shape?” , “How’s school going?” Percival kept his responses to a few sentences each. These men weren’t his friends.

The only good thing that coming here did for him was to stop him from using illicit drugs because they would catch it in one of their tests. Anything that they found would go directly back to Philip and he didn’t want to disappoint him. A year ago he had arrived at the laboratory a little tipsy from a rare night with Franco and the doctors were pissed because they couldn’t get their tests done. The alcohol would mask some of the results, they said.

The tests switched over to the physical section. They attached wires to his bare chest and he jogged on a treadmill. They gathered around the computer monitors to watch lines bob and weave, giving them some type of information. Percival held his breath and watched the lines rise drastically and when the doctors looked at him, he would wave.

Halfway through the jog, two men entered the lab holding hands. A tall gentleman wearing a buttoned up dress shirt tucked neatly in a pair of browm' slacks and his friend, a bald pale-faced individual, that looked like the walking dead. They both took a seat in two chairs near the section of the lab were the paperwork was filled out and put away. They talked to Dr. Marcowitz. He gave the sick man a folder and a pen and the two men bent over and flipped through it, writing inside periodically.

The zombie coughed into a dark blue hankerchief and his companion kept patting him the back. During a loud cough, a glob of phlegm leaped from his mouth and splattered on a page they were working on. He smeared the stain with the hankerchief, while the well dressed man apologized to the doctor.

Percival felt the treadmill speed up and his legs strained to keep up. One of the doctors asked if it was up to high and he nodded no. I’ll show you, he thought and ran until his legs burned. This must have amazed them because he could hear murmuring from behind the monitors. Then the machine slowed to a stop and he hopped off. They removed the wires and gave him a bottle of water, probably putting a new prototype drug into it.

His eyes kept wandering to the sick man across the room. The man peeled off his shirt. His pasty skin was pulled so tight that his ribcage showed. His companion looked into his eyes and by the way he held him steady made it obvious that they shared a stronger bond then that of a family or friend.

Only a solitary doctor overlooked the dieing man, while seven worked on Percival. Percival was fine now but at any moment that could be him, fatigued and just hanging to a sliver of life. If it wasn’t for some miraculous barrier that prevented the disease from destroying his immune system, he would be dead.