“How was the house?” Reina called to Valerie, preventing Valerie from entering her room and sneaking into her bed to go to sleep.

            “It’s a large house. I doubt I would even be able to tell if John’s around or not.”

            “Why did you get such a big house? It’s not like you need the space.”

            “Well, it looked smaller online… And it is right next to the medical school,” Valerie explained attempting to misdirect her sister.

            “Sure, sure,” Reina said, thinking that Valerie was hiding something.

            “Uh, let me put my stuff down. I need to make a few phone calls, and then I’ll be right back out,” Valerie said, sneaking away to her bedroom.

            In her room, Valerie first checked the time. As she was going to be eating soon, she decided now would be a good time to take her second dose of medicine for the day. When she did that, she called her realtor to request from them an email containing a list of recommended home remodelers. Then she looked up the specific items she had in her old home lab and began ordering them off the list she made before she left Japan. The largest items were the biosafety cabinet and autoclave which she was going to have to figure out how to get down into the basement, not to mention she wasn’t going to be able to regularly go up and down the stairs, even though there were significantly less steps than what was used to go up to the second floor.

            She decided that an elevator or lift was probably going to have to be installed, while the other renovations were occurring. It wasn’t a bad idea, there was plenty of space in the basement for one. However, all of these obscure items were going to be expensive. Valerie had saved a lot of money choosing to devote her time and hobbies to her research before getting her diagnosis, but after the diagnosis she had purchased all these items in Japan to investigate a treatment for her disease and then subsequently synthesize as much of the prototype drug as she could. When she left, she was able to sell most of the items on the second-hand market, but it was the compounds that went in to researching and then developing her treatment that were the most expensive. She knew she was going to have expedite the research she had been conducting officially in her lab, to get it into clinical trials. But that would only help with the cost of her treatment, the real problem was that this drug prevented the disease from progressing. At the moment any damage to organs that the accumulated proteins have caused is untreatable.

            Valerie didn’t see the damage as permanent, it was hard for her to. In her mind, because she saw her condition in terms of its biochemistry, she had surmised that all she had to do was remove the accumulated misfolded proteins and all her cells in her heart muscle would function as they were born to. She did all she could to ignore the symptoms, the facts that she became tired easily and often had to catch her breath when she attempted anything more than a brisk walk. Her hope was that these symptoms could be reversed, but their presence constantly weighed on her mind, whispering that she needs to hurry her research or else. There wasn’t a clear definition in her mind as to what the else could be but, while her symptoms were something she could live with, death was not an option. And every time her mind went there, to that dark, empty, nothingness she imagined for her death, tears always welled up in her eyes falling only when her eyes could hold them back no more and they fell down her cheek fast. Just as fast she wiped them up because she was around people who she didn’t want to know about her condition. At least not yet. First, she wanted to change her imagination of death into memories with her family that she would at least carry with her as she passed, whenever that time might be.

            A soft knock rang out on Valerie’s door as she was getting control of her tears.

            “Valerie? It’s time for dinner. Are you done with your phone calls?” Reina asked through the door. She was doing her best to not open it, for Valerie’s privacy, but when they were little girls there were no boundaries and it was tempting to fall into bad habits.

            “Yeah. I’ll be out in a minute,” Valerie replied. She put her laptop and notes away, then quickly checked her face in the vanity mirror. There were remnants of tears near her jaw line that she rubbed off her face. She stared at her left eye then her right and made sure they weren’t red, not that there was enough time to cool them off if they were. But neither her eyes nor nose nor any other facial feature showed an indication of her tearful state. Satisfied, Valerie exited her bedroom and rejoined her two family members outside for dinner.