Chapter 48: A-Bio (3)

There was a Starbucks on the first floor of the A-Bio building. Young-Joon ordered an iced americano with the employee benefits card that was given to him yesterday.

“Could you put it in this tumbler, please?” Young-Joon asked as he handed the worker a tumbler.

“You have a tumbler?” Park Joo-Hyuk asked.

“I saw one rolling around in the kitchen cupboard, so I brought it.”

“It says Jungyoon University on it. I guess it’s from school.”

“You’re right. I just saw it.”

Young-Joon checked the writing written on the side of the tumbler.

[JUNGYOON UNIVERSITY]

“I guess I got it sometime during school. I was there for ten years, from undergraduate to my doctorate,” Young-Joon said.

“No, I don’t think so,” Park Joo-Hyuk replied.

“How do you know?”

“Because it says 2019 in small letters below it. It’s way after old people like us graduated. It’s obviously your sister’s. You live together now, right?”

“...”

“I remember Ji-Won bawling and making a huge fuss when you took her four-colored pen to school.”

“Ji-Won was eight.”

“That was when her personality was similar to our cocker spaniel.”

“...”

Young-Joon stared at the tumbler, then said, “This is a secret, right?”

“Wash it thoroughly and put it back. I’m scared of her, too.”

“Yeah.”

Sipping their coffee, they headed to the elevator.

“After I set up the labs here, I’m going to invest in a few small and medium-sized businesses and do collaborative research projects,” Young-Joon said to Park Joo-Hyuk as they walked.

“With where?”

“Celligener, Cell Bio, Reaction Chemistry, and a sunbae I knew in undergrad, Lee Jae-Hong who studied bioinformatics, launched a start-up company. I was considering there as well.”

“What’s bioinformatics?”

“So, it’s like... Huh?”

A lot of people came to this building, and there were a lot of new faces due to the recent interviews, but Young-Joon had never seen this elderly woman before.

“Are you here to see someone?” Young-Joon approached her and asked.

“Uhm... No.”

The elderly woman turned her head and tried to leave.

[Synchronization Mode: Would you like to analyze stage-6 Alzheimer’s dementia? Fitness consumption rate: 0.7/second]

‘... No? What are you talking about?’

Staring at her back as she turned around, Young-Joon was lost in thought for a second. This wasn’t where they were doing the clinical trial. The Clinical Trial Management Center was at A-Gen headquarters, and Sunyoo Hospital was the Clinical Investigation Institution.

‘Why is she wandering around A-Bio?’

“Ma’am, do you have someone with you?” Young-Joon asked.

She shook her head.

“Can you tell me your name?”

“...”

Again, there was no response.

‘She must have a guardian. Do I have to make an announcement and find them?’

As Young-Joon was contemplating what to do, he saw two people running towards them from the washroom at the end of the hall. It was an elderly man who looked like he had a hard life and a young woman.

“Dear!”

“Grandma... Hup!”

Shin Young-Yeon, a Scientist from A-Gen’s Stem Cells Department stopped in her tracks when she saw Young-Joon. She did come all the way here to A-Bio to meet him in the first place, but she was a little nervous now that she was actually facing him.

“H-Hello, sir.” Shin Young-Yeon greeted him awkwardly.

“Hello.”

“I’m Scientist Shin Young-Yeon from A-Gen’s Stem Cells Department,” she introduced herself.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Ryu Young-Joon from A-Bio.”

After shaking her hand, he glanced at the elderly couple, who seemed to be a patient and her guardian. They seemed to be with her. The reason a Scientist from A-Gen’s Stem Cells Department was here probably had something to do with them.

‘Are they here because of the clinical trial?’

“Can I ask why you are here?” Young-Joon asked.

“I was wondering if I could ask you for something...”

* * *

Sixty-nine-year-old Park Joo-Nam.

She worked at a barbershop from the age of nineteen. Countless young men from the neighborhood hit on her because of her pretty face, but she had someone else in her heart. It was Kang Hyuk-Soo, a taxi driver.

Back then, taxi drivers had sort of a professional image. Nowadays, twenty-year-old newbies drove safely and conveniently with GPS and the help of automatic gear systems and advanced driver assistance systems, but it was not like that back then. Not only did they have the ability to find the directions to anywhere the customer said like they had a map on the palm of their hand, but they were sometimes required to be conversational in English depending on the situation.

Park Joo-Nam fell in love with Kang Hyuk-Soo at first sight at how handled a manual transmission skillfully and drove well when she happened to get in his taxi. Kang Hyuk-Soo often came to the barbershop to shave. Thanks to that, she was able to find connections with him easily as she had many opportunities to meet him.

They got close quickly, became a couple, got married and had two kids.

“You look like a bandit when your beard grows because you have a scary face.”

Park Joo-Nam became a stay-at-home wife as she raised the kids, but she put her skills to use and shaved Kang Hyuk-Soo’s face every morning.

“I guess I always have to shave your face if you don’t want customers to run away.”

When Kang Hyuk-Soo sat in his chair after breakfast, her soft, pale fingers would spread white foam all over his lower face. The blade of her razor made crisp sounds as it moved along the texture of his skin.

Kang Hyuk-Soo loved his mornings where he could watch her face as she concentrated. Even if she got wrinkles and time bore itself on her face, her beauty was unchanging.

The two of them grew old together. It was just a normal and ordinary life story. Like other people their age, they went through small and large events in modern history like the military dictatorship, democracy protests, and IMF. They got involved in various incidents and went through trouble, but they endured it well together.

But not Alzheimer’s.

At first, it just seemed like Park Joo-Nam’s forgetfulness had just gotten worse. They were things like forgetting to turn off the heat after cooking and asking the same questions again. Then, she started getting slow and clumsy in calculating money, confusing the few friends she had, and forgot how many children the young couple in the neighborhood had.

Then one morning, it happened. Kang Hyuk-Soo still clearly remembered the shock he felt that morning.

“Can you shave my face?” Kang Hyuk-Soo asked as he drank a glass of milk for breakfast.

“Shave? ... What was that again?”

With an anxious heart, Kang Hyuk-Soo held her hand and went to the hospital. She was diagnosed with stage-four Alzheimer’s. She was prescribed medication like tacrine, an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor, and was treated regularly at the hospital, but her cognitive abilities and memory progressively worsened.

And now, a few years from then, her cognitive function had decreased significantly, and she could not tell what the date was or what season it was. She needed Kang Hyuk-Soo’s help to dress for the weather, and it was hard for her to eat, wash her face, and brush her teeth. Sometimes, her conscience would come back, but sometimes, she did not even recognize him. She also began to suffer from urinary incontinence.

Now, Park Joo-Nam spent the entire day in the passenger’s seat of Kang Hyuk-Soo’s taxi as she required her guardian’s help for everyday life.

* * *

“Doctor Ryu.”

Kang Hyuk-Soo suddenly grabbed Young-Joon’s arm.

“Please, Doctor. Help us.”

“Pardon?”

“Please include us in the clinical trial.”

“You have to talk to the primary doctor of the clinical trial at Sunyoo University.”

“We did. And she was supposed to participate,” Shin Young-Yeon answered instead. She sounded a little depressed.

“By supposed to, are you saying that she isn’t anymore?” Park Joo-Hyuk interfered and asked.

“Yes. They suddenly changed their minds.”

“Why?”

“They said it was because she has high blood pressure.”

“Hm...”

For this clinical trial, the method of delivery was intravenously administering stem cells and sending them to the brain through the blood vessels. The AKKT gene in the stem cells used was manipulated to make them sixty percent smaller than regular ones. A cell membrane with a caverlin ligand was used to pass the blood-brain barrier and reach the brain. After, a drug called 3K3A-APC was administered to differentiate the stem cells in the brain to nerves and regenerate the destroyed brain. As such, the heart of this experiment was for the stem cells and drugs to flow through the blood vessels well.

‘Is that why the primary doctor excluded patients with high blood pressure?’

But it didn’t make sense that they excluded someone already chosen just because of something like high blood pressure. It wasn’t something like heart failure either. Furthermore, they would have chosen her as a participant after confirming that she had high blood pressure during the screening process. Had they made a mistake?

“Was there a restriction for high blood pressure in the participant selection conditions that we proposed?”

“No, just heart failure,” Shin Young-Yeon replied.

“Then it should be fine. If it’s just high blood pressure... How high is it?”

“It’s one hundred fifty over ninety-five.”

“It’s not too serious.”

“I guess they want to conduct it with the healthiest people possible to ensure safety,” Park Joo-Hyuk said.

What he said was also right. The clinical trial for this cure was still in phase one; if this was something like cold medicine, this would be when it was administered to normal, healthy people to prove that it had no side effects. This treatment was directly administered to the patient due to its nature, but it was only to a small number of people, around eight people; they didn’t have to include a patient with high blood pressure.

But what kind of reason would they have to exclude someone they had already chosen?

‘Rosaline, could there be problems during treatment for a patient with this blood pressure?’

—You already know the answer.

‘There aren’t any, right?’

—It does not matter. This treatment will even work on a patient with heart failure. You do not need to care about blood pressure that high.

‘But why did the doctor exclude her?’

As Young-Joon was lost in thought, Kang Hyuk-Soo called him.

“Doctor Ryu, we do not have much time left.”

“Pardon me?”

“The doctor said that she has dysphagia. Apparently, it happens with severe dementia. They said it’s when they have difficulty with swallowing. The doctor said that it gets inhaled into the lungs, causing pneumonia. She won’t be able to spit out phlegm either. The doctor said that she will get stiff, and that she will have to lie down more often because it’s difficult for her to move. They said that I should be careful of bedsores.”

“...”

“When those complications happen, her immunity will decrease and she’ll suffer fall injuries. They told me that’s how people die, not from dementia itself. So, I have to take good care of her. But... Doctor Ryu, I’m seventy-four. To be honest, I’m not sure if I can keep working to feed and take care of her alone. It’s not because I don’t want to, but because my body can’t keep up,” Kang Hyuk-Soo said. “I keep thinking about what would happen to her if I can’t get up the next morning.”

“What are your children doing?” Park Joo-Hyuk asked.

“How could we burden them when they’re busy taking care of their own kids... And our kids are living abroad...”

After some thought, Young-Joon said to Shin Young-Yeon, “Could I talk to you?”

He took her to a corner that no one really came to and asked, “Do you know if all eight spots have been filled?”

“Yes, they have.”

“Do you happen to know who took her place?”

Young-Joon was suspicious of what was happening. He thought that the reason Shin Young-Yeon came to him instead of convincing and comforting Kang Hyuk-Soo was because there was something going on.

“I don’t know their information because we only get the participant identification code... But there is something that our manager heard through someone they know at Sunyoo Hospital. Apparently, they are top VIP,” Shin Young-Yeon said.

“Who is it?”

“Um...”

Shin Young-Yeon pulled Young-Joon to the side and whispered, “It’s Congressman Shim Sung-Yeol’s mother.”

“Shim Sung-Yeol?”

Shim Sung-Yeol’s mother was eighty; she was old. Five years ago, she had gone to a nursing home after getting Alzheimer’s. Shim Sung-Yeol had continued to act like a dutiful son, but to be honest, he was sick of picking up after his old mother. He was tired of going to the nursing home once in a while to show his face, and he thought that the thousands of won going toward her hospital fees were a waste. His eyes were only focused on one thing: the upcoming election. Everything that would add to that was good, and everything that didn’t help was useless.

To someone like him, Young-Joon’s clinical trial for Alzheimer’s was one of the best things that could happen. If it succeeded, he could piggyback off of Young-Joon’s image and be seen in a positive light. Even if it failed, he would gain sympathy votes. Of course, it would be best if Young-Joon succeeded, but wouldn’t he, since he was so outstanding? Even Nobel Prize recipients came to work with him.

—Scientists must be independent from politics.

The face of that young man who declined his request right to his face when he went to visit Son Soo-Young kept popping up in Shim Sung-Yeol’s mind. He was an international scientist star right now.

‘I will do as you say for now,’

Shim Sung-Yeol thought as he pushed the director of Sunyoo Hospital.

‘Next time, I will visit you to thank you as the dutiful son of a clinical trial patient, not as a politician, Doctor Ryu.’

* * *

“Joo-Hyuk!”

Young-Joon, who was talking to Shin Young-Yeon for a bit, returned to them.

“Huh?”

Park Joo-Hyuk looked a little flustered.

“What did you guys talk about? Why are you so angry? Man, you look like the time when Ji-Won ate all our Haagen-Dazs ice cream when we were young...”

“We have to go somewhere right now,” Young-Joon said.

“Go where?”

“Sunyoo Hospital.”