Chapter 15
The psittacosis patient had made a complete recovery.
A day had passed since the antibiotics were started. The fever from earlier was gone, and the other symptoms had clearly improved as well.
The doxycycline seemed to be working.
“When can I be discharged?”
I put away my stethoscope.
There was no murmur in the heart sounds anymore.
“Your heart sounds better, too... Still, you'll need to take aspirin for a month. We'll decide about your discharge after a few more tests.”
“What a hassle.”
The patient seemed to have already forgotten that they had nearly died. It wasn't as if I could remind them, either. I just smiled.
“Yes, but make sure you take it.”
“You said this was because of the chickens, right? That my chickens gave me pneumonia and made my heart sick.”
I nodded.
“That's right.”
“What should I do? The kids love the chickens and collecting their eggs.”
Well, the textbook said the poultry should be culled. But it was hard to tell someone to have their chickens slaughtered.
I scratched my head.
“Hmm... Usually, chickens with a serious disease that can spread to humans are culled.”
The patient grew serious.
“Isn't that a little cruel?”
“You should take them to a vet.”
“Couldn’t you give them my medicine...? I sold my car to come to this hospital. I can’t sell my house just to take them to a vet, can I?”
This was America.
A place where astronomical medical bills could pile up to tens of millions, even hundreds of millions, of won in the blink of an eye.
Veterinary clinics were even worse than hospitals for people.
I did feel bad for them.
I was about to refuse, but two children who looked like the patient's son and daughter were staring up at me. When had they been hiding by the bed?
I met their eyes.
“Do you have to kill all of Coco’s family?”
No, when did I say that?
Come to think of it, I had said something like that.
One of the children burst into tears. The patient half sat up in bed.
“Don't cry. The doctor said we have to get rid of all the chickens to keep everyone safe.”
I sighed.
All right, all right.
“Okay... I'll make some medicine at the hospital that the chickens can take. Is that good enough?”
The children nodded.
“You should say, ‘Thank you, Doctor.’”
“Thang you.”
Well, I'd picked up a strange side quest.
I fiddled with my stethoscope as I left the room. Where would I find that? Should I calculate the dosage based on the chickens' body surface area?
Still, it was an interesting problem.
***
This was the pharmacy at Stanford Hospital.
The compounding equipment was haphazardly laid out across the workbench. I'd never thought I'd see the day.
A hospital pharmacist I'd never met before stopped on the way into the compounding room and stared at me, as if wondering what I was doing here.
I turned around.
“What are you doing?”
I was making medicine for chickens. I set down the antibiotic I was grinding for a moment.
“I'm protecting children's dreams and hopes.”
“I-is that narcotics?”
I didn't know why Americans liked narcotics so much. I stared at the pharmacist.
“What do you mean?”
The pharmacist frowned and looked at the bottles I'd set out. There was white powder from ground-up pills, along with doxycycline powder.
“As long as it's not narcotics, it's fine. Well, good luck. Sorry to bother you...”
The pharmacist stopped what they were doing and left the compounding room, as if trying to run away.
I didn't think much of it.
Those things happened. At least the veterinary textbook had instructions for treating poultry, so that was a relief.
If I could save ten chickens with thirty minutes of work, I had to do it. What else could I do?
I spent a long time pondering the pills in my hand.
‘Done.’
Fortunately, doxycycline could be given orally. I hadn't really come up with a way to inject chickens.
***
Professor Ellison looked at the medical records.
The blood tests for the patient who had just left confirmed psittacosis, exactly as that Asian doctor had said. Was that doctor really a genius?
They'd been about to treat the patient for a myocardial infarction and another heart condition. Infectious endocarditis was usually treated with penicillin, and myocardial infarction with aspirin...
The whole treatment would have gone completely off course.
Thanks to that doctor, a life had been saved.
Ellison closed his eyes.
That had been close. Why had that first-year resident spotted the problem before Professor Ellison did, despite his decades of studying medicine?
It was embarrassing.
‘Psittacosis.’
With the technology of the 1970s, there was no easy way to culture the bacteria that caused it.
It was hard to confirm, too.
Even for this patient, it had taken several days just to get the test results. Where on earth had this resident learned about psittacosis?
From a textbook?
Professor Ellison couldn't help understanding, to some extent, what so many professors had said over the years.
So it wasn't a lie.
The things the resident had said seemed more and more like magic the longer Ellison thought about them. It was as if the resident had far more research and clinical experience.
***
That was taken care of.
I took the letter from the Lasker Foundation and went to see Professor McDevitt—the professor who'd written a paper with me that would change the history of immunology.
I had to brag. In medicine, the Lasker Award was second only to the Nobel Prize.
Some people even called it the American Nobel.
Professor McDevitt had moved his lab to Stanford's immunology research building. Where was it?
“Professor! Look at this!”
The world outside the hospital was more peaceful than I remembered.
No one had probably died during Professor McDevitt's day, and no one had come close to dying.
The professor looked up at me.
“Oh, it's you.”
“Look at this. They've decided to give me the Lasker Award for my immunology and molecular biology research, and my Lancet paper on Kawasaki disease.”
I hurriedly bragged.
Professor McDevitt slowly read the letter from the foundation and nodded.
“The Lasker Award? Really?”
“Yes.”
“You might be the youngest recipient ever. We really did raise a monster.”
Why did everyone keep calling me a monster?
All I'd ever done was save people and think about ways to save them.
At the bottom of the letter was a list of the papers the Lasker Foundation had considered.
There was more than one or two.
The professor clicked his tongue again.
“How did you write so many papers? Four in Nature and one in The Lancet. And a few more where you were listed as a coauthor...”
“I've been writing them since my first year.”
They were the fruits of seven years' work.
I'd drawn on knowledge of the future, sought out the leading researchers of this era, and made use of my experience from my previous life.
I'd worked hard.
“Do you see a lot of patients at the hospital?”
“I've published clinical papers, too.”
Professor McDevitt set the letter down.
“About that. I'm also set to receive a Lasker Award in basic medical research this year. It's thanks to the immunology research I've done since meeting you.”
“That's great.”
I'd expected it.
If I was receiving a Lasker for my work in immunology and molecular biology, it made sense that the senior professors who'd worked with me would receive something, too.
Professor McDevitt grinned.
History hadn't changed all that much.
Of course, we'd begun studying these concepts a few years earlier than in the original timeline. Just as I'd planned.
In fact, we'd received the awards sooner than I'd expected.
What I really wanted was a Nobel Prize, but those were usually given only to senior researchers who'd spent decades at it. I'd have to wait.
Professor McDevitt looked at me again.
“Have you ever been to New York?”
“No.”
“The Lasker Award ceremony is usually held in New York. A lot of world-famous scholars come, too.”
It was on the other side of the country.
New York was on the East Coast, way up north.
“There's still some time. Talk to the hospital and clear your schedule, then think about what you want to do in New York. And congratulations on the award.”
I nodded.
“Are you satisfied with the Lasker Award, Professor? You have to go win the Nobel Prize with me.”
“If you'd said that before, I'd have laughed.”
The gap between the Lasker Award and the Nobel Prize no longer seemed impossible to bridge. With a little more work, the Nobel was a goal within reach.
Anyway, the award ceremony was only a few weeks away. I had to go home and brag about it, too.
***
I went home for the weekend.
I couldn't miss the chance to brag. As soon as I walked in, I brought up the award.
“I won the Lasker Award.”
“What's that, some kind of campus contest?”
My parents weren't familiar with things like that.
“It's one of the most prestigious medical research awards in America. You can think of it as the Nobel Prize for American doctors.”
“Is it that impressive?”
I nodded. My parents didn't look as surprised as I'd expected.
“How amazing... I knew you had a special talent, but I didn't know you'd win a campus contest at Stanford, too.”
I scratched my head.
They didn't seem to understand what I meant. Well, I supposed that was only natural. I set the Lasker Foundation's invitation on the dining table.
“Anyway, I hope you'll come.”
“Of course we will.”
When should I bring up the pharmaceutical company?
There was a lot to do, and a lot to talk about.