Chapter Two: Juvechrome

The twitching in Verne's fingers eventually subsided, but something about his hand still felt off. Maddeningly, he had no idea whether that was because the problem was still there or simply because he was paranoid over it. The next day, he started taking his anticonvulsant medicine again. It meant he couldn't drink anymore, but it would keep him from having seizures under most circumstances. He also arranged to have a scan done at work – he convinced Dr. Parvolog that it would be helpful for training the new girl starting as an imaging tech in their software and the doctor, knowing a bit about Verne's diagnosis, agreed on the condition that Verne let her use the data for her own professional edification.

"Try to relax and stay as still as possible. A beep will sound to let you know when the scan starts and stops, and the total scan time should be thirty-four minutes," Kate (the new girl) said.

"Okay, now turn the com off and start the scan," he heard Dr. Parvolog say in the background.

So Verne found himself spending forty-five minutes in the Imaging East MRI machine, with its hums and clicks and the weird sensations that he always wondered about – were those the magnetic fields somehow playing upon his perceptions, or just the knowledge that a three-Tesla magnet was slamming electromagnetic fields through his body's tissues? It wasn't his first time in an MRI, or even his fifth, and so after Dr. Parvolog had Kate run through the instructions, he found himself without much to think about beyond his simmering existential dread. And his thoughts drifted to work, to the woman he'd scanned that morning.

He'd only gotten a glimpse at her file, but Verne had a pretty good memory for details, and he'd taken her history for Ram, the duty nurse. The woman was 72, but Verne would have pegged her at closer to mid-to-late fifties, and she was in good physical shape even for that younger age. She was at Imaging East for a cranial MRI because she'd started having migraines for the first time in two decades and wondered whether there was something wrong, and Verne had to wonder: migraines usually decreased with age... had Juvechrome literally made her brain (and its blood vessels) younger? He decided to look into the matter, which meant sneaking into Ram's office.

"Doing anything this weekend, Verne?" Dr. Parvolog asked.

"What, me? No! I mean... my girlfriend is coming in from out of town," Verne said. She'd caught him red-handed, so to speak, his hand on the door handle to Ram's office, the door cracked open less than an inch.

"That's nice," she said. "Well... I won't be in tomorrow. Have a good weekend."

"Um, thanks. You, too, doctor."

By the time he'd thought of a passable excuse, the doctor was half way to the elevator. Verne felt like a criminal... which, actually he was. What he was doing was absolutely illegal. He wasn't authorized to look at patient records, and he definitely wasn't allowed to go onto Ram's computer to do diagnostics and pore over the shift nurse's notes. But that's just what he did – Ram left his computer unlocked and never even bothered to log out from the records system, so Verne was able to access Mrs. Hurd's scans and patient history and confirm that she had a wonderfully healthy brain, right down to the slightly (but not worryingly) small ventricles, indicating lots of healthy gray matter – and, of course, a beautifully healthy cerebrovasculature more suited to a woman in her forties. And her patient record indicated that she'd been taking Juvechrome since practically as long as it had been available – about a year and a half.

"Hey, Verne, you getting me those updated files?" Ram asked.

"Shit!" Verne almost cursed, but he bit his tongue. "Um, yeah." He could have sworn that Ram was out for the rest of the day, but he must have been doing an overtime shift. He loaded up the most recent file in the system – a thoracic scan from their CAT machine – and hoped it was the right one. "Staying late?"

Ram shrugged. "The Paxton is backed up, so I thought I'd pick up another half-shift. Hey, I thought Cody was working on our network issues?"

"He asked me to help," Verne said quickly. "Okay, all done. Catch you later, Ram." Verne wiped his hands against his pants – his forehead was beading with nervous sweat and his palms felt like greenhouses.

Verne shuffled past Ram, down the hallway, and collapsed onto a chair in the staff lobby. He took a deep breath, willed his pulse to slow down, and considered what he'd just learned. Mrs. Hurd, who he could tell was absolutely loaded (partly based on how she carried herself, but mostly from the sheer volume and quality of jewelry she unloaded before climbing into the MRI), had taken Juvechrome and it had de-aged her brain vasculature... that's what all of the evidence suggested. And that was exactly what Verne needed to halt (or cure?) his NVC. He had to get his hands on some Juvechrome.

+++++

Neurovascular chimerism (NVC) was a rare disorder, happening in less than 1 in 100,000 live births. Chimerism was rare enough, though it was a lot more common than once thought – around 1 in 1,000 people had it. The disorder was caused when fraternal twins fused in the womb, resulting in a single fetus with DNA and cells from both individuals. In the case of NVC, since the brain and circulatory system were formed from different fetal cell layers, the brain and its blood vessels had different DNA, which lead to the brain's internal immune system attacking and degrading its own circulatory system. That damage was slow but progressive and, once it passed the ability of the brain arteries to heal, that's when the blood-brain barrier started to break down... and not long after that, the brain bleeds started.

Verne's own diagnosis at age ten was after a series of anticonvulsant drugs failed to stop the seizures he was having a few times a week. A blood test revealed two sets of DNA circulating around his bloodstream – Verne and his absorbed twin – and not long after that, Dr. Seth connected the dots and made the diagnosis. That was seven months before Wes died in the car accident – it had been a hard year for the Veras. But now, maybe, Verne had a stay of execution.

"Juvechrome? It can't be that easy," Lisa said.

She snuggled next to Verne on his oversized beanbag chair, the two of them watching TV on his tablet, sharing earbuds and hits from his bong. Verne took a decent hit and held it in, considering his response.

"Not easy," he said, with a little cough. "The weak sauce is crazy expensive... like five thousand a session... and the good shit that we need is way more than that. And it's alternative medicine, so there's no way it gets approved by insurance..."

"Yeah, but somebody would have tried it before, right?"

"Somebody who happens to be loaded enough to blow a few hundred grand on anti-aging treatments, who happens to have a kid or grandkid with NVC, who happens to think of applying an age remedy to a sick kid?"

"Yeah, okay," Lisa agreed, taking the bong and lighter from him. "So what? We try to save up for the stuff? I mean... we've both got years, I hope. The average age of first symptoms is twenty-six, and the average age of bad symptoms is a year after that. So we've probably got five or six years to get our shit together."

Verne shrugged. He hadn't told Lisa about his hand... he wasn't even sure it was NVC-related, now that he really thought about it. Maybe he'd just pinched a nerve at work or something – he sometimes had to do heavy lifting. Maybe it was a baby seizure caused by not enough weed – a possibility he'd certainly remedied for the time being. "I've got twenty-two thousand saved up," Verne said eventually. "I might try to get some of the weak sauce treatment, see if they'll work with me..."

"You just said that stuff wouldn't work, dingus," Lisa said. She handed the bong back and blew smoke rings. They rose up until they hit the current from the cold-blasting AC and dissipated into the fug of the room. With a swing of her hips, Lisa straddled him, her yoga pants sliding against his jeans, her body's weight resting upon his lap. "I don't want to talk about depressing shit right now. I want to fuck."

As she started to disrobe, peeling off her tee-shirt to reveal modest, unconstrained breasts, each a pert handful, Verne couldn't argue with her fuck-plan. He forgot about his problems for the first time in days, nudging Lisa off of him and then carrying her to the bed. She wasn't a small girl – she weighed about as much as him, actually – but Verne had a wiry strength that could get the job done and he was absolutely fine with Lisa as she was. A girl with some meat was way better than a skinny girl in his book. He shucked his jeans off and then wrapped his fingers around the waistline of her yoga pants, sliding them down her hips to reveal the creamy green of her panties.

"The lucky ones," he observed.

"I always get lucky when I wear them," Lisa confirmed, her smile beaming her happiness at the moment. Verne smiled back and saw to it that the lucky streak remained unbroken.