Snowblood

Chapter 3: Warm Hearted

"So I guess this is it, Doc." The thirteen year old girl gave Yukie a smile which slipped away like a drop of liquid mercury, swift, shiny and elusive. "Time for the big ice nap."

"Yes," Yukie replied. "You're all topped up with anti-freeze. Or almost all." She beckoned to the nutritionist, who began preparing the final medication given before sedation. "This is the final dose."

Her patient's name was Lark, and for the last two weeks she had been undergoing treatments to prepare her for being frozen alive, a state known as cryobiosis. They'd taken a sample of her bone marrow and frozen it against the time when it would be cultured in preparation for cryorevival.  Blood thinners, buffering agents, metabolic depressants, and a suite of glycoproteins in suspension trickled into the girl's veins drop by drop, slowing her heart and reducing her body temperature by a degree a day. Instead of 98.6° F, her core thermal reading was now 83.2° F and dropping. The human body could get used to a great deal, provided it happened gradually.

The nutritionist finished what he was doing and set the tall, frosty, chocolate milkshake, complete with whipped cream, sprinkles, and a cherry, on the table tray in front of the girl. Her eyes grew wide as she looked at it. "Wow, that looks good. But even if it's no sugar added, I can't have that much."

She had Wolfram Syndrome, a rare genetic disorder which presented first as diabetes Type I. Those who had it usually began losing their sight and their hearing at age eleven or twelve, went on to develop problems with balance and coordination by early adulthood, accompanied by intensifying psychosis and depression, before dying at age thirty or younger. There was, as yet, no cure.

Lark had just begun to show signs she was in the first stage of losing her sight. That was why her parents were willing to have their only child put into suspended animation against such time as a cure could be found. Cryobiosis was not simple, fast, or inexpensive, nor was it without risk. If she were frozen too quickly or too slowly, if blood clots formed on her brain and then froze, rupturing cells, or if her tissues dehydrated....there was a great deal that could go wrong, and that was only during the freezing process itself. Storage and revival had their own dangers.

Fewer than a hundred people around the world were qualified cryobiosis specialists, and Yukime Kuwano, MD, was one of them. That was only one reason why the Salazar Group was considered a world-class medical clinic.

Yukie smiled at her young patient. "Today it doesn't matter. In less than an hour, you'll be asleep, and about three hours after that, you'll be deep in cryosleep. When you're revived, there'll be a cure." Hidden in the milkshake were more glycoproteins, which were essentially anti-freeze, their slightly odd, fishy taste concealed by the chocolate, which tasted all the richer for it.

"Yeah..." Lark said. She looked at the milkshake as though it might bite her, then reached some resolution and pulled it towards her. Taking a good slurp, she closed her eyes in ecstasy. "Oh, that's good. That's the real stuff. So, uh, Doctor Kuwano...you've talked to people who did this and were revived, right?"

Yukie smiled again, and took a seat by the girl's bed. "Yes, I was an intern during the first clinical trials."

"That was when everybody who got frozen were prisoners on Death Row, right?" the girl asked.

"Yes. You did your homework! Their sentences were commuted to life in prison without parole if they survived."

"It actually was homework.  We were studying Ethics, and that was one of the topics.  Did they tell you what it was like, when they were out?" Lark slurped more shake.