Chapter 97 Bonus Story Six: Nathan’s Laboratory Bonus Chapter 25: The Disease He Couldn’t Forget

Chapter 97 Bonus Story Six: Nathan’s Laboratory
Bonus Chapter 25: The Disease He Couldn’t Forget
Nathan first became interested in biomedicine when he was fourteen.
At the time, he was in high school. Not his old school, but the new one he had transferred into after skipping a grade. He did not know many people there. He did not have many friends either. Most of his time was spent in the library.
It was not that he refused to make friends. He had tried. But his classmates were two or three years older than he was. They talked about things he had no way to join, played games he had never learned, laughed at jokes that reached him a beat too late.
He stood at the edge of every group like a tree planted in the wrong soil.
The school library was not large, but its magazine shelf was surprisingly complete.
Scientific American. National Geographic. Popular Mechanics.
All kinds of titles, lined up in neat rows.
Every time Nathan went to the library, he would check the newest issues first. Then he would pick one, sit down, and read slowly. He liked that feeling.
Quiet. No one disturbing him.
Only the sound of turning pages and his own breathing.
One afternoon, he came across a medical magazine.
On the cover was a scan of the human brain, red and green and tangled in ways he did not understand. He had meant to flip past it. For some reason, his hand stopped.
He opened it.
Inside was an article about Alzheimer's disease.
There were many terms he could barely understand. Beta-amyloid. Tau protein. Neurofibrillary tangles.
He understood only half of it, maybe less.
But he understood the interviews with the families.
One wife said her husband no longer recognized her.
Every time she walked into the room, he asked who she was.
Nathan sat in the library for a long time after he finished reading.
The library windows were wide, and the afternoon sun came in from the west, falling over his desk until the magazine page looked washed almost white. He sat there with his fingers resting on the edge of the paper, unmoving.
He thought of his grandmother.
She had died when he was still young. He did not remember much about her, only that near the end, she had stopped recognizing people.
Once, when he went to see her, she was sitting on the living room couch in a floral blouse, her hair completely gray. She had looked at him with eyes that held no light, as if he were a stranger standing in the wrong house.
After a while, she lowered her head and began flipping through an old photo album on the table.
When she reached one photo, she suddenly stopped. Her finger touched the face in the picture, and she murmured something under her breath. No one could understand what she said.
Later, his mother told him the photo was his grandmother's wedding picture.
His mother also told him the disease had a name.
Alzheimer's.
Nathan checked out the magazine and brought it home.
After that, he made a decision.
One day, he would study that disease.
When it came time to choose a college major, Nathan hesitated for a long time between medical school and biomedical research.
He had an offer from medical school. He even had a scholarship. If he accepted, eight years later, he would be a doctor. He could earn money. Support himself. Support his family. His parents would not have to work so hard anymore.
He held that offer letter and read it again and again.
The paper was thick, pleasant to touch, with a gold-embossed school crest that caught the light every time he moved it.
He had imagined himself in a white coat, standing in an exam room while patients called him doctor. That life seemed good too.
But it felt like someone else's life.
What was his life supposed to look like?
He did not know.
He told Chloe about it.
That day, they were eating at a little restaurant near her college. The place was small, its walls covered in stickers and photos, the air thick with the smell of fries and ketchup. Chloe ordered chicken wings. Nathan ordered a Coke. They sat in a corner booth.
Chloe was a sophomore then, currently being tortured to death by organic chemistry, at least according to her extremely dramatic reports.
She listened while gnawing on chicken wings, sauce on her fingers, her mouth shiny with oil. After he finished explaining his dilemma, she tilted her head and thought for a moment.
“Then study biomedicine.”
“Why?”
“Because you like it.” Chloe put down the chicken wing and wiped her hands carefully with a napkin. Then she looked at him, serious now. “You don’t like the idea of being a doctor. I know.”
Nathan froze.
He had never told Chloe that.
In fact, in front of many people, he had said he wanted to become a doctor.
“Every time you talk about being a doctor, your face has no light in it,” Chloe said. “But last time, when you talked about that experiment you were doing in the lab, your eyes were glowing. Don’t you know that?”
Nathan opened his mouth.
He wanted to say something, but no sound came out. Something seemed to have lodged itself in his throat.
Chloe smiled.
“Okay, stop overthinking it. Study biomedicine. It just takes a little longer, right? I’ll wait for you.”
She said it easily.
But Nathan knew it was not easy.
A woman’s best years, and she was willing to spend them waiting for him.
Later, he chose biomedicine.
During his first year of graduate school, Chloe was a senior.
She was interning at an advertising agency, working nine to five, then spending weekends rushing through proposals. Her intern pay was not high. Her apartment was far from the office. Every morning, she had to take the bus for forty minutes.
But every week, she still came to see Nathan.
Sometimes she brought food. Sometimes she brought nothing at all. She would simply sit there quietly and watch him work.