Murray Brozinsky

The Sad Story of Seymour Bernstein

 

 

I, Seymour Bernstein, being of sound mind and not much else, swear that the story I am about to tell you is true, to the extent memory is capable of preserving events as they actually occurred. As I ruminate upon it now, it seems a fiction except for the very real circumstances in which I find myself. Upon hearing my story, you will no doubt proclaim: ‘he is mad’. Guilty as charged, if by mad you mean seized by desire to attain so great a goal that no means are too mean to achieve it. What could be nobler than that? I am mad, mad like Ahab in his monomaniacal pursuit of the White Whale. I beseech you to put yourself in my shoes. Regardless, I could not settle for the alternative, a life spent. Period. Faceless, nameless, lost to history - that would be mad. So judge me as you would judge yourself in my stead, on the precipice of great achievement with all options extinguished. Only Job has known my suffering. Call me Job.

 

My story begins the day the letter arrived. It came in a plain white envelope. I weighed it in my hand, deferring the news it contained as I poured myself a brandy. Its mass just a few ounces, posted with a single thirty-seven cent stamp. I like my ladies thin but not letters from the National Institutes of Health. Greenspan watchers used to predict when the Federal Reserve would hike interest rates based on the thickness of the Chairman’s envelope. Similarly, I had divined a correlation between letter thickness and grant winning: the thicker the better. I held the envelope under the glow of my desk lamp. I could not make out the words on the letter inside but I gleaned there was just one paragraph, a sure sign of rejection. I sank into my chair and took a swig of brandy. I felt warm as the alcohol coursed through my body, yet I knew in my gut I had just been left out in the cold.

 

I am a biophysicist – Seymour Bernstein, Ph.D. I began my career as a surgeon, but I wanted something more. Sure I made a comfortable living, but my impact was limited to the patients on whom I operated. It was a rainy night, I remember, over brandy with a colleague, when I figured I might save perhaps ten thousand lives over the course of my career, if I was lucky. That was not enough for me. Not enough. I needed more leverage. I yearned for my impact to radiate far beyond my physical reach; the way shockwaves of an earthquake shake the ground miles from the epicenter. To hell with the money! I possess a keen sense of History - the story of the Immortals. Immortals like Vesalius, Leewenhoek, Jenner, and the greatest of them all: the pitiless Harvey, who heartlessly vivisected his animals without anesthesia in pursuit of the most important discovery of Western medicine: the circulation of blood. The Immortals made impact not money, and they were all mad - in the spirit of Ahab. So I traded laparoscopy for the lab coat and left my thriving surgical practice.

 

I spent the following decades conducting research into growing organs. Unfortunately, in recent years funding began to dry up. The research institute sponsoring my work was under pressure to produce ROI in addition to good science. I vaguely remember the three-letter acronym standing for ‘return of investment’, although I still cannot fathom why any investment in science should be returned. Worse, my research had become linked to the stem cell controversy and suffered a drought of federal funds. The letter from the National Institutes of Health was my last hope in a long campaign of grant applications. My last hope extinguished. Extinguished. I was on the verge of making a breakthrough - one that would save millions of lives, one whose impact would reverberate far into the future. Yet the administrators, in their smallness, could not see the crossroads of Science at which I stood. They cut off my funding. I spurned money to pursue the single-minded goal of regenerating human organs to prolong life. Now money was my lifeblood, and I was dying.

 

How to get my hands on the precious shekels I needed to complete my work? I tallied up my assets. My house and car were still owned by the bank. I had a paltry four thousand dollars stashed away for a rainy day, and my personals had more sentimental than monetary value. How much would I need? Equipment, lab technicians, assays. I calculated the cost in the hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of dollars. Frustrated, breathing heavily. Time was ticking by. Tick. Tick. I could feel History slowly passing over me like the Angel of Death passing over the first born sons of the Jews in Ancient Egypt. The Immortals shook their heads in resignation, Harvey averting his eyes. I needed money in the worst way. Think. Think. What was it Father used to council before he died a horrid death from liver cancer? Oh how I wish I could have saved him. ‘Play to your strengths,’ he used to say. Strengths. What are my strengths? Organs. Organs are all I know. Organs are a goldmine, a voice grumbled from deep inside me. It was my gut or perhaps my pancreas. Yes. Yes. Harvest organs.

 

I made haste for places with no hope, no dreams, traveling to eldritch encampments not on any map. I met with godforsaken men in a shadowy underworld of organ traffickers. I found a shadow-man who offered me a tidy sum to remove a kidney from a Croatian woman. Tidy. I was hesitant, at first. She was perfectly healthy. The shadow-man turned to leave. Hesitancy yielded to reluctance. Resignation. Eagerness. She was giving her kidney willingly. A human life would be saved. I needed the money. I scrubbed in. The light was dim. Given the sanitary conditions, the patient’s prospects were dimmer. Anesthesia was in short supply so the doped-up anesthesiologist administered a just-shy-of-lethal dose of morphine. I performed adequately considering I had not held a knife in over two decades. She winced only once, at the first cut. Perhaps I sliced prematurely. When it was over the shadow-man placed the kidney in a cooler and gave me an envelope with five thousand dollars cash. He left a twenty-dollar bill on the table next to the woman and receded into the shadows. Twenty dollars would feed her family for a month in these parts. I made my way back to the city and sat at an outdoor café. I expect this is nauseating you. If so, it is a consequence of small thinking. Keep in mind the Big Picture and Time and History. The Immortals had stopped shaking their heads. I was hungry. Hungry. Needed to find more organs.

 

For months I crisscrossed the globe, harvesting organs in war-torn Liberia and other marginal places - Mombassa , Bosnia , Libya . It is curious how people see only the ends: a patient with a new liver or kidney miraculously jumping back through Death’s Door. They have no stomach for the madness behind the miracle, euphemizing it with quaint descriptions like ‘finding a match’, as if it were an Internet dating service. In reality it’s closer to sausage – appetizing as long as you don’t think about where the meat comes from. In the thick of the means, the organ is the patient. The not-yet-dead, not-quite-alive cadaver merely a container for body parts until I am ready to extract them. You think me a butcher. A butcher. Plying my medieval trade of evisceration in an age of non-invasive medicine. Can you not see the Big Picture? There is a shortage of organs. Even if everyone on the planet became were to become donors there would still be a shortage, so small is the window in which to retrieve organs once the heart stops. I need to fight free radicals, salt, and lactic acid to keep the body alive until the organ recipient is ready. If I lose the battle the body will rust and bloat and the organs will die. They are like orphaned children, these organs, and I must save them. A dim orange kidney brightens once transported to a sunnier clime; the heart of a dead man beats hard to scare off the knife sent to cut it out but resumes a healthy periodicity in its new chest cavity. Regeneration is the future, the transmutation of stem cells into liver cells fulfilling the age-old dream of the alchemist. I have a dream. But until then … alas, dreams do not come cheap.

 

I hit pay dirt in China , where a shadow-man hooked me up with an army hospital. I removed organs from corpses of recently executed prisoners. Five thousand a year are executed for such high crimes as mail fraud. I discovered the mother load of my grisly ore. I bribed security guards at execution sites with twenty-dollar bills to acquire corpses. After the deed, they would rush the body to a makeshift operating table in a corner of the crematorium where I harvested kidneys, livers, and skin. The hospital sold skin to burn victims for one dollar thirty per square centimeter.

 

One day I was sent with a group of doctors to extract kidneys and skin from a man sentenced to death for stealing scraps of food. I gave him a shot, which I said would make him relax. Its real purpose was to prevent blood clotting. The executioner who I ordered not to damage any organs shot the man. He lay writhing on the table as we extracted his kidneys. My eyes grew large as I held his huge purple liver in my hands. Afterward, I was in thrall to see him breathing and his heart still beating. Stubborn life! Stubborn. The executioner aimed the gun to finish him off. I told him no need to damage the skin. With both kidneys and liver removed he would die soon enough. We waited for his heart to stop beating before harvesting the skin.

 

I returned from my world tour with nearly one hundred fifty thousand dollars in my pocket and went about installing a lab in my house. After a few months of work I realized I had not enough money. I had spent it. Spent. I harvested millions of dollars worth of organs and tissue but received only a small fraction thereof. The shadow-men who ‘owned’ the organs were cleaning up. I needed more money. Money. Think. Think. I was an agent. What I needed was to be a principal.

 

I recruited a former surgical colleague who had been fired for impropriety. He was a wreck, but I was certain he still had good hands. Hands. All I required were his hands. I offered him seventy-five hundred dollars, with the promise of more to come. He agreed and solicited the services of a similarly questionable anesthesiologist who was hard up for cash. I used the last of my black-market earnings to buy the requisite surgical materials for my home lab cum operating room. I drifted into unconsciousness on the operating table with a mix of nervousness and pride in my resolve. I woke with excruciating pain in my back. The surgeon put out his cigarette and came over to greet me. Disoriented from the gas I vomited. He cleaned me up and administered Demerol for the pain. He held up a quart sized plastic jar packed with my kidney in chilled slurry. I felt like I imagined a proud papa would feel. Proud. After my convalescence I descended into the underworld with my kidney and emerged with ninety thousand dollars, less ten percent for the shadow-man who brokered the sale. A month later I received fifty seven thousand for my left lung.

 

Now I imagine your nausea waning and conceit waxing. You want to holler at me ‘Madman! You have no more organs in your body with a duplicate. You have failed.’ I make sacrifices in pursuit of my goal to save humanity, yet humanity mocks me at every turn. Who is mad now? As I declared from the outset I am of sound mind. Sound. I am a planner, as most researchers are wont, and I calculated my plan carefully. I invested the proceeds from the sale of my lung and liver in recruitment of more members for my surgical team.

 

I went under the knife for removal of my legs. I had no further need to ambulate. All of my time excepting convalescence would be concentrated in directing experiments and documenting results related to regenerative tissue growth. I had to discover the Grail before Time ticked by and History passed over. We extracted two hundred fifty grams of bone marrow from my femur, tibia and fibula. If a kidney is gold then bone marrow is platinum, twenty two thousand dollars per gram! Net of shadow-broker fees and payroll for the surgical team (now numbering ten), the transaction deposited nearly four million dollars into my research coffers. I hired researchers and bought equipment. I rolled around the lab in my wheelchair checking the scaffolding on which grew tissues – synthetic and human. And on the growing brood of animals in whose bodies various organs incubated. My favorite was a white rat named Ethel who had a human small intestine growing on her back. Still, Time ticked by, loud in my ear, and the Immortals grew impatient. History was passing over. I needed to break the code. I needed more experiments. I needed more money. More.

 

I directed the surgical team to amputate my arms. No more need to write. I had assistants taking dictation and acceptable voice recognition technology. Bone marrow from my humerus, ulna, and radius yielded two million, net. I expanded the team and doubled the number of experiments. My progress was linearly correlated with the amount of money to fuel it. Time, History, Immortality demanded more. Ten times more. Ten. What need did I have of this stump? This torso? Could I not sell the vital organs and tissues and fluids contained within and build a cheaper mechanical power plant to sustain my brain? I recruited neurosurgeons and micro-surgeons and electrical and mechanical engineers, of high skill and low repute. They were scientific mercenaries. Mercenaries. I paid them well and they worked day and night on the feasibility of such a prospect. The conclusion: given enough money it could be done. Done!

 

I took stock of my remaining assets and with careful study calculated their value. There were the organs: Kidney – ninety thousand; Lung – fifty seven thousand; Heart – sixty thousand; Liver – fifty five thousand; Transferrin, a protein in the liver – four hundred thousand; Pancreas – forty thousand; Small intestine - seventy thousand, and perhaps forty thousand for my Skin. The real value, though, lay in the tissues and fluids: A few million for the remaining Bone Marrow; three grams of Apolipoprotein from the cell walls at five hundred thousand dollars per gram; six grams of DNA at over one million a gram; and sixty or seventy grams of the antibody IgG at sixty thousand a gram! Surely all that would be more than enough to develop the power plant and fund my research. Once again I descended to the underworld, stump strapped in wheelchair pushed along by my caretaker, to make the Faustian bargain. My inventory was in great demand but I accepted a steep discount in order to receive cash in advance. I ascended with nine million dollars for the promise of twelve million dollars worth of body parts and fluids. I had nine months to build the power plant and deliver the goods - or the shadow-men would have my head!

 

The mercenaries said it would cost more than originally estimated to complete so ambitious a project in such a short period. They no longer worked day and night. They demanded more compensation. I paid them more, what else could I do? They sensed my desperate situation. I was between a rock and a hard place. Hard. My payroll ballooned to forty people – scientists, engineers, and technicians, along with surgeons and other medical personnel. We contracted with a burgeoning ecosystem of suppliers and vendors to manufacture parts and assemble sub-systems for the power plant, as well as a special plastic bubble environment I would need to keep me insulated from germs after extracting my anti-bodies. Within eight months we had everything ready and tested. On the appointed day the nurses lifted my appendage-less body onto the operating table for the third and last time. I felt no trepidation as the anesthesiologist administered the gas. I was a pioneer in a new frontier, a fearless warrior in a war against death. Fearless. My last thought as I lost consciousness was of my Father whose liver cancer sparked my quest to grown organs. Oh how I wish he could see me now.

 

Hours later my eyes blinked. I was alive, feeling groggy but no pain. I looked into the eyes of the surgical team staring back at me. Their expressions seemed a curious mix of incredulity and disgust. No matter. They suffered from small thinking, too. Hired guns, they do what they are paid to do. Funny, I did not feel bodiless. I could feel my stomach grumbling just as I still felt lingering sensation in my arms and my legs. The brain is an amazing organ. Amazing. The lengths it will go to deceive itself. I instructed my assistants to deliver the biological treasure – packed in cardboard boxes, plastic jars, and coolers - to the shadow-men in the underworld, as I was no longer mobile. But my head was mine own. Mine, with a month to spare.

 

Back to my pursuit. I directed scientists who reported results to me on a rotating schedule, as I could no longer move about. Progress. So close, I could feel it. But Time, how long would it tick for me now? History stops briefly, like a city bus. The Immortals beckoned me aboard, Harvey holding the door. The scientists demanded more money. I gave them more money, what could I do? My accountant informed me that I was fast depleting my capital. How could that be? I had raised nine million dollars. Yes. But the last procedure, the custom equipment, the increases in compensation - all added up to more. Money would not last the month.

 

I summoned my staff. “We are on the cusp of a profound advance in science,” I told them. “We will grow organs and tissues that will save the lives of millions who would otherwise have died. My Father, god rest his soul, would have been alive today had I made this advance during his lifetime.”

 

The staff was not inspired. Most averted their eyes. A few looked at me with contempt. “We are running low on money,” I told them. “But you are not in this for the money, nor for my vision, nor to save lives. You are in this to make History. So I beseech you, all of you, to redouble your efforts and you will be enshrined in the Pantheon of Immortals.” They groused, yet I thought I had rallied them.

 

Note to self: Someone is entering the lab. It appears to be two of my surgeons.

 

“What is the purpose of this visit; it is not scheduled?”

 

“Doctor, we are not in this for the glory, or for History, as you put it. We are in this for the money, pure and simple. The accountant tells us you are bankrupt.”

 

“Impossible, I have money for a month yet.”

 

“No doctor, you don’t. We have just approved a compensation increase, by unanimous consent. You have been paying less than market rates for the risk we have undertaken in supporting your twisted project. According to our calculations you owe us more than six hundred thousand dollars.”

 

“This is blackmail.”

 

“Call it what you will, doctor. We demand payment.”

 

“I have no more assets. Finish the project as you agreed.”

 

“Doctor, we are mercenaries. Mercenaries get paid. Time to pay up.”

 

“What are you saying?”

 

“Twelve grams of Thyrotropin should fetch six hundred sixty thousand on the black market.”

 

“Thyrotropin? I have no Thyrotropin.”

 

“Oh but you do Doctor, you do. - Get the plug.”

 

“Do not touch that plug. Are you crazy?”

 

“Doctor, as you well know, Thyrotropin is a hormone found in the human brain. It sells for fifty five thousand dollars per gram. I think you would be more comfortable if we pulled the plug before harvesting."

 

“You’re both mad!”

 

“Guilty as charged, if by mad you mean the monomaniacal pursuit of money.”

 

“No, no! Plug it back in, I besee…”

 

“His eyes are rolling back into his head. Shall we prep for the procedure?”

 

“Ah yes, eyes. I believe we can get four thousand apiece for the corneas.”

 

The police were summoned when the landlord stopped receiving rent and checked in on her tenant. What they found upon their arrival at Seymour Bernstein’s rented house was a human head, sans brain and eyeballs, mounted on a metal contraption with a power cord dangling from it. On the table next to the desiccated head a voice-activated tape-recorder (the transcript of the tape you have just read) and a pile of unopened mail. On the bottom of the pile lay a thick manila envelope from the National Institutes of Health. The cover letter reads in part:

 

Dear Seymour Bernstein, Ph.D.:

 

We are pleased to offer you a Special NIH grant in the amount of ten million dollars for your work on regenerative tissue growth. As I wrote in my previous letter to you, the NIH grant board felt your work was vital enough for consideration in our Special Grants Program which provides researchers adequate funds to enable exclusive focus on his or her work without the distractions of money. The NIH looks forward to supporting this important work and to being part of what promises to be an historic achievement.

 

 

 

 

Murray Brozinsky's stories have appeared in numerous literary journals, including: DM, 3711 Atlantic, 400 Words, Ascent Aspirations, decomP, Duck & Herring Pocket Field Guides, GHOTI, Laughter Loaf, Opium Magazine, Peeks & Valleys, Rumble, The Big Jewel, and Yankee Pot Roast. He has written essays for Brink, Business 2.0, Prose Toad, Science Creative Quarterly, and Wired Magazine. He has been a semi-finalist for the Theatre Oxford's Ten Minute Playwriting Contest, winner of Oxford University’s Cuppers Playwriting competition, and been a reader at San Francisco's InsideStoryTime reading series.