Chapter One: Symptoms
Verne Vera first met Lisa Mulberry at the Southeastern Fundraiser for Pediatric Vascular Disease, which was held every spring at Duke Memorial Hospital in Palmetto City. Later, they started dating, but at the time, she was just a cute girl who liked his sarcastic sense of humor. He'd been going to the fundraisers ever since he was a kid – his parents insisted. All of the kids who went got most of their check-ups and medicines paid for, so his family couldn't afford not to attend. He'd probably glimpsed Lisa in previous years – she'd attended at least twice before – but it was three weeks before his eighteenth birthday when they finally hit it off at the fundraiser.
Back then, in April three years ago, he'd still been thinking of going to college. He had a full ride scholarship offer from UNC Wilmington, which was just down the road, and offers from Duke and NC State a little further away. And in the week after the fundraiser, he'd been so enthused by Nick Desmond's speech – and so excited by his budding relationship with Lisa Mulberry – that he sent his acceptance to Wilmington to start studies in the fall before abruptly changing his mind two months later. But on that warm April afternoon, Verne and Lisa held hands and listened to a man with the same disorder they had preach hope and aspiration.
"When I was diagnosed with neurovascular chimerism – NVC – over two decades ago, I was only seven years old and our understanding of the disease was in its infancy. Back then, the life expectancy for somebody with NVC was twenty-one years old. Now, thanks to modern medicine, we've got that up past twenty-eight, and by the time some of you kids are grown-ups, I bet it'll be a lot higher. I'm thirty and I'm doing fine..."
This last part, Vern could tell, wasn't quite true. Nick Desmond had approached the lectern with a cane and there was a slight tremor in his left hand. These were almost certainly the after-effects of a mini-stroke. Once the brain's vascular system gave up the ghost and started to break down, NVC patients would get mini-strokes, little burst blood vessels in their brains. Lucky patients just had one massive aneurysm and checked out in one go. But more often, your brain checked out bit by bit over two years or so, the patient's brain and soul dying a fragment at a time until vital functions ceased.
"With NVC, you can have a life. You can have a future," Nick continued. "That's why it's my pleasure to announce the creation of the Clandest Vascular Pediatrics Center right here in Palmetto City. You know, kids, I went to school for architecture and now I get to design these things. You can go to school, have careers, have real lives. And with the help of the Clandest Center, you'll have chances the kids before you never had. You might even be grandparents some day. But for today, let's just have some ice cream and cake, have yourself a coke, and let's have a big round of applause for Mrs. Clandest for making this dream a reality!"
The crowd applauded and Lisa squeezed Verne's hand, and he leaned over and kissed her, surprising both of them. It was one of the happiest moments of his life, and for a minute he forgot about the ticking time bomb of NVC in his head.
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That June, Verne went out and visited Lisa for two weeks. She lived in Knoxville, which was only six hours away by the new fast rail. He went out and visited her for two weeks, stayed in the guest room in the Mulberrys' house, and proceeded to lose his virginity as soon as the opportunity presented itself. It wasn't Lisa's first time, but it wasn't far off, and they fumbled and giggled about her bed, making a sweaty mess of it.
Lisa wasn't a classically beautiful girl, and most wouldn't even call her pretty, but Verne didn't care. She was broad of frame with a bit of a pear shape, but she kept active. Her face was round, but her features were pleasant, and when she smiled, her eyes and lips lifted up in a way that made Verne's heart melt. Her skin was soft, and she sighed beneath his touch. Neither did she seem to mind that he wasn’t exactly Chris Hemsworth, either – he took after his mother, with her thick, curly black hair, slim build, and a beak of a nose over thin lips. People said he looked serious, dignified, and 'unique', but Verne would have rather looked like a GQ model. Oh well.
"Do you think you'll ever have kids?" Lisa asked him. "They wouldn't have NVC. Well, they'd have the same chance as anybody else... like one in a hundred thousand or whatever."
"Kids?" Verne chuckled. "I'll probably be dead before I'm ready for kids."
"Yeah," Lisa sighed. "I feel bad, though... my parents don't have any other kids, so I guess the line ends with me."
"Mine either," Verne said. "My brother, Wes, he died in a car crash when I was eleven."
"That's sad..."
"I have like twenty cousins, though, and half of them live around Palmetto City."
Neither Verne nor Lisa were fashion plates or future parents, but they found plenty to like in one another, and in retrospect, those two weeks were probably the happiest of his mortal life. After his visit and, inspired by the southwest vistas that decorated the Mulberry's guest room, Verne decided to forego college and travel the country, liquidating all $1,937 of his college savings and taking the train down across Texas and the southwest, eventually winding up in California, where he quickly burned through his remaining funds as he bummed his way up the coast. He found himself down to his last $136, which he spent on discount bus fare from Portland back to Palmetto City, where his parents lived.
His mother hadn't been too happy about Verne blowing his college savings, nor about his decision to withdraw his acceptance from UNC Wilmington. He was a bright boy and could succeed in anything he applied himself to, she insisted. And perhaps she was correct... right up until NVC took it all away from him in five or ten years. He'd heard of NVC patients making it to forty, but that was vanishingly rare. He pacified his mother somewhat by enrolling in imaging tech classes. He could get certified in less than a year and make good money – enough to pay for whatever treatments might extend his life and spare his brain, and maybe give him some expertise in what sorts of questions to ask in order to find a cure.
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Verne blasted through his coursework and got his certificate in Medical Imaging two days before the next annual Southeastern Fundraiser for Pediatric Vascular Disease. The program manager for the MI program had taken a shine to Verne and let him triple-up on classes, and he managed to get his associate's degree in a semester and a half, and they announced that accomplishment at the annual NVC fundraiser. It was the last year of eligibility for both himself and Lisa – the program capped out at twenty years old – but his new job, unsurprisingly, offered pretty decent medical benefits and maybe the fundraiser people would pay him to give his own inspirational story in a few years' time.
That was the year they opened the just-completed Clandest Center, designed (in part) by Nick Desmond. Nick was in attendance that year, or at least his body was. It had been a rough year for Nick, and after a withering barrage of mini-strokes, he was more or less checked out. They wheeled him up to the stage, sang praises about his skill and perseverance, and awarded him a little plaque. They'd even deigned to name a Desmond wing of the center after him. But Verne very much doubted that Nick was aware of much that was going on around him. He slouched in his wheelchair, eyes fixated dumbly forward, or else rolling back in his head, a line of drool dripping down the side of his mouth. When they awarded him the plaque, he shat himself and his mother burst into tears, right there on the stage.
Lisa squeezed Verne's hand so hard he felt a bone pop, and it was everything he could do to keep his own tears in check. Just a year before, Nick Desmond had proudly strode onto that same stage (albeit with a slight limp), delivered a moving speech, and spoke about the center he'd helped design. Now he couldn't even control his bowels in front of a hundred onlookers. And Verne knew he was looking into a forecast of his own future – he had a decade, twelve years if he was lucky, before he found himself in that same spot, and probably without a hospital wing in his honor.
Verne moved into his own place as soon as he'd saved up enough for an apartment deposit. He wanted to have a chance to live on his own before that was taken from him – and he wanted his parents to be able to say they had a grown son who was doing well for himself as a medical tech. His mother was the assistant manager of Rosie's Diner and his father drove a tow truck, and they figured medical tech was a step up – practically white collar work!
Verne wasn't technically in his own place. He shared a two-bedroom flat in East Weeks with Hector Gomez, his best friend from high school. Hector had a job at Professional Wardrobe & Workforce renting and selling work uniforms but, realistically, he made a lot more money selling weed and other low-priority drugs and was generally into shady shit. As far as Verne was concerned, it was all upside, as it meant he had access to as much weed as he could possibly want... and when he had weed, Verne found he didn't need to take his anti-seizure meds, which meant he could drink with his friends.
"Hey, you mind if I pay you in weed for my half of the rent?" Hector asked him.
Verne checked his personal stash. "Yeah, that's good," he said. He was low, and six hundred dollars in weed would last him for months. "Just put it in with my stash – I'm headed out to work."
"Cool."
He and Hector had established a routine over the past two years, and Verne found himself falling into a holding pattern, albeit with a slight upward trend. Now Verne was one of the lead techs at Imaging East, for whom he worked four days a week, and he took the fast train out to visit Lisa at least once a month (and she visited him quid pro quo once a month). It was as much of a stable life as a guy with NVC and humble roots could hope to have. Sometimes, Verne regretted not having gone to University. Sometimes, he wished he could be a doctor like Dr. Parvolog, who headed the medical wing of Palmetto's Imaging East office. But college plus medical school took more years than he had available. Plus, he liked being a medical tech. Verne changed into his scrubs, clipped his ID onto his collar, and headed out the door.
"Have you heard of this Juvechrome shit?" Hector asked him as he left.
Verne nodded – yes, he'd heard of Juvechrome. It was the miracle anti-aging drug being touted by the Hollywood elite and being gulped down (or however you took it) by rich-but-aging people with more money than common sense. At least that's the impression that Verne got, and he told Hector as much.
"Yeah, I agree, it's probably bullshit. But I've had like three people ask me after it in the last week, and I figure that if anybody would know about it, it's you..."
"I don't know much," Verne admitted. "Hey, I'll look into it, okay?"
"Cool. And your rent 'money' will be in place before you get home."
"Cool. Catch you later, Hector."
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Verne 'looking into' Juvechrome mostly consisted of posting to one of the dozen online groups he followed for neurological diseases. He was even the moderator of a few of them and could reliably get input from actual medical professionals when he brought his admin cred to bear. Most people wanted to hear pretty truths about their health and disorders, but not Verne: he didn't want his brain to crap out at 28 or earlier, and he needed the best possible information to see to that.
V: <Hey, guys,> he posted.
V: <I've heard a lot about this Juvechrome stuff lately – you know, the stuff that the Hollywood people are using instead of (or in addition to) plastic surgery. The official specs that they've posted online [link below] are incredibly vague. Does anybody know if this stuff works... and, if so, how?>
D: <Hi, Verne! Gerontology resident here,> DocTomorrow responded.
D: <I always assumed it was just overpriced woo, but after some more digging, I'm not so sure. Basically, the parent company of Juvechrome is Glossa Group, which is a Real Deal ™ pharma company. But where most of their treatments are perfectly normal and above the board pharmaceuticals and biomedical tech. Juvechrome is *not* above the board, is *not* FDA regulated, and has about a phone book of disclaimers that say, basically, that the treatment isn't harmful but that none of the claims have been verified. My colleagues would probably call me a conspiracy nut for saying this, but here's my take home: Juvechrome might actually work, but Glossa doesn't know *why* or *how* it works, and they don't want anybody to pop the hood and peek, because then they'd have to submit the treatment to regulatory review. They're essentially treating this as a 'health supplement', submitting the drug (or whatever it is) to basic treatment screening, but nothing else. I hope this answers your question!>
DocTomorrow did answer Verne's question, though she didn't provide much in the way of workable information. But it also started a little ball bouncing in Verne's brain: would Juvechrome work for him? From what he could tell, there were two courses of treatment for the stuff:
1) Monthly treatments of 'Juvechrome Standard', which cost $5,000 a pop, and which had to be taken for five consecutive sessions, followed by twice-yearly 'maintenance' treatments, guaranteed to slow aging by 30-50%.
2) Bimonthly treatments of 'Juvechrome Deluxe', which cost $30,000 a pop, and which were taken for six consecutive sessions, followed by thrice-yearly 'maintenance' treatments, guaranteed to take 10-15 years of visible aging off of your body and then slow aging by 60-80%.
Either treatment was way out of Verne's price range, obviously, but he suspected he'd need the Deluxe treatment to get any brain improvement. A 30-50% reduction in aging meant he'd 'only' get mini-strokes, seizure storms, etc. once or twice a month when his NVC started to progress, rather than twice as often. But something that could buy him 10-15+ years? That was a game-changer. Unfortunately, all he had in savings were the $15,000 from his RaiseFund effort the year before, which he'd started to raise funds for a $120,000 neurovascular surgery not covered by his insurance and that would lower the chance of strokes for maybe a few years. That and the $7,000 he'd saved up through his job. $22,000 wasn't enough for even the cheaper line of treatments.
"The shit sounds legit," he reported to Hector a few days later.
Hector nodded sagely and ran a finger along the line of his beard, a short, razor-sharp line of beard that followed his jawline and made him look more like a line cook than a low-level drug dealer / lower-level wardrobe clerk. The two of them had just returned from work and were busy playing one another in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. "Any idea how I can get some?"
Verne shrugged. "Not really. Juvechrome is the only place that uses it, and they don't give it to anybody but their employees – customers never touch the stuff until it's actually in their bodies. The only way to get any of the stuff would be to steal it from Juvechrome, and I'd bet anything that they have pretty decent security on the stuff."
"Shit...," Hector said. "Shit!" This latter 'shit' was to Verne beating him in the game again, much more emphatic than learning about the Juvechrome. He shrugged. "Hey, I tried. It wasn't meant to be – I'm not going to jail for some rich bitches obsessing over their looks..."
"Yeah..."
"Shit, man, are you okay?" Hector asked, pointing to Verne's hand.
The reticule flashed on and off the screen as his thumb spasmed. Verne held his hand up and regarded it like an alien creature, twitching and spasming until he willed it to a stop. Even then, he could feel the twitch of little muscles and see them playing across the skin of his hand. Was it a micro-stroke? Was it his first seizure in four years? Whatever it was, it was disconcerting and, Verne was pretty sure, a symptom of his neurovascular chimerism starting its slow advance.
ah I've loved a bunch of your stories on tgstorytime and I'm looking forward to reading this :3 it's a really interesting setup :3 :3
I'm glad you like it! Toward the end of Transfusion, I'm going to post a poll to see what story people want me to release next (one of several that have yet to see the light of day beyond Patreon).
Really cool setup, but your writing makes this read like a biography (maybe also caused by the heavy exposition)
Let me know if it still feels like that after a few chapters (if you want to keep reading). The first chapter is largely retrospective, which might explain the general vibe of feeling biographical. From Chapter 2 on out, almost everything should be in the here-and-now.
@OvidLemma Yeah, chapter 2 is better already
Do you have these books already written down? Or are you seriously writing this fast?
I have a day job, so I 'only' manage write about 10-15k words per week, depending on the week, but I'm releasing the public* portion of my Patreon backlog to Scribble Hub now. This particular story is complete, but this is the first time I'll be publicly releasing it in its entirety.
*that is, the portion that I'm not publishing on Amazon for $$$
Poor Verne!
I really enjoy this so far!
Thanks!
*Depression slides back into my dms*
:c
God that's depressing. Hopefully that drug does wonders.
By now I think one "it's given up its ghost" is mandatory for each of your stories
I'd guess you're German speaking bc I don't think the German idiom "den Geist aufgeben" really translated into English. Never heard it before at least. Nvm if I'm wrong..
I've read two/three of your stories so far (best behaviour plus sequel and unusual cases) and I loved each of them and transfusion and ravencrest Manor are next and I can't wait
anyway, I wanted to let you know that I like your writing style and story telling a lot