Page 2 of A Lab Rat’s Guide to Fated Love

One

The Lab Rat

Nori

Y ears of working with lab rats across stocks and strains hadn’t prepared Dr. Nori Arya for the day she might have to catch one of her own. A viable human specimen, not a rodent.

Nori reached for the cup of masala chai in front of her and brought it up to her nose for a long satisfying whiff of the crisp ginger and cardamom notes before letting the hot elixir travel down her throat.

She set the cup back on the table to scan through the potential candidate’s paperwork again.

Even though she’d gone over it so many times, the data might as well be seared into her brain.

“Damn Tanya, you owe me a subject,” she mumbled under her breath, absentmindedly tapping her pen against a corner of the dossier, leaving a smattering of inky dots there.

“Mine,” she mouthed a moment later, underlining the name Vir Varma repeatedly till the ballpoint nib tore through the page to dig into the ones below .

With a disgruntled sigh, Nori dropped the pen and leaned back in her chair, her eyes scanning the brightly lit cafeteria as it slowly filled with groups of chattering grad students.

She was still seething from her meeting with Dr. Tanya Thakur.

The head of department of the bioengineering research center had chosen to blindside her with the news only a day before Nori was set to meet her very much confirmed and willing human subject, and inform her that the man was no longer viable.

The conversation replayed in her mind for what was probably the twentieth time already since last evening…

“As unfortunate as the situation is,” Tanya explained, passing Nori a dossier labeled with an unfamiliar patient number and the name Vir Varma , scribbled on it with thick black marker. “We had a last-minute acceptance that roughly matches the candidate profile you were looking for.”

“Okay then,” Nori replied, flipping through the pages. “I’ll take him.”

“There’s one caveat.” Tanya tapped her index finger against another folder on her table before handing it to Nori.

“There’s another team that was accepted for the grant this year.

The patient’s profile matches their proposal as well.

And since he’s the only viable candidate we have at the moment, we’ve decided to leave the choice to him. ”

“They’re proposing a bionic heart with a life expectancy of… five years.” Nori looked up from the papers. “Impressive.”

“They’re a little farther ahead in their human trials than you are. But rest assured, each of you will get a chance to speak with the patient before he makes a decision.”

“So, you’re telling me I have to scout this guy to be my lab rat. And I’m up against a team with at least a decade more in experience and actual human precedents to boot. Do you know how ridiculous this sounds?”

“This is our fairest course of action for both teams involved,” Tanya responded calmly. “Well, that or you could reapply next year.”

“No.” She wasn’t conceding the grant. She’d barely qualified this time.

Who knew if she’d be selected again the next year.

Or if the grant would even still be there.

Too many variables. Regardless, starting over to look for another viable and willing human subject would take a painfully long time.

“I’ll take this one. I’ll convince him.”

Vir

B each resorts in— Vir paused mid-typing to switch legs, nudging the laptop to balance on his other knee while his fingers hovered over the keys.

The East Coast wasn’t a good idea. While it was a long enough stretch of uninterrupted coastal towns and beaches, chances of his brother finding him there were too high.

He’d bring Vir home to watch him rot before his eyes, and Vir would be forced to feel his anguish play-by-play the entire time. Absolutely not.

West Coast then. Goa would be too crowded. Maybe Kochi.

The muted click clacks of soft keys interrupted the silence of his room as he finished typing and pressed enter.

The search engine spat out an array of websites with resort listings, articles on things to do in Kochi, and advertisements offering discounted vacation packages.

Skipping the top two results, Vir clicked on the third.

A travel website. He browsed through the listings, looking for a place with longer stay options.

It might take him a few months, maybe a whole year, were he unlucky enough.

A message appeared at the bottom of the screen:

Fehim: Hey! Can I borrow your copy of the Neville Goddard book?

Couldn’t find one at the library.

Vir: Sure, I’ll bring it to you in a bit.

He might as well give Fehim the book, since he wouldn’t be needing it anymore.

Not where he was headed. He minimized the chat to resume searching for the resort where he was going to spend his last days alive.

Along the calming stretch of a sunny beach with no people around to witness him shrivel up and die.

Away from this depressing room where he’d been moping in bed all week, too drained from his last visit home.

Of course, his family hadn’t taken the news well. He didn’t blame them. Who would respond well to their sibling randomly announcing, “Oh, by the way, I’ll be dead in a few months’ time,” over dinner one evening? He wouldn’t. Neither did his brother.

Adi had refused to accept any semblance of logic or facts Vir had offered in an attempt to make him understand why he didn’t want another heart.

Adi’s denial had quickly morphed into rage, resulting in him storming out of the dining room to lock himself in his study, only to reappear an hour later with a whole host of strategies and options—bargaining chips, if you will—to convince him to get on a list for yet another transplant.

“You don’t know if I’ll even survive a third one.

That is, if my name miraculously gets to the top of a list and gets approved with a viable donor in time.

” Vir reasoned, emphasizing the many variables that had to work out just right for him to even have a chance.

A slim one at that. His arms remained stiffly crossed against his chest, less of a gesture of casual nonchalance, more of a way to hold himself from falling apart while watching his only family go through the five stages of grief right in front of him without being able to do anything to lessen the pain of it.

But then Adi had always been much better at emotional regulation than Vir could ever be, and it was evident in the way he sat there with a tall glass of cold-coffee in hand, the ice inside tapping against the frosted walls in muted clinks every time he brought it up to take a sip.

Calm, composed, offering solution after solution, none of which was going to work.

“You will,” Adi spoke with enough conviction, for a moment he had Vir convinced. Only for a moment, though.

“We don’t know that. Even the doctors don’t know that,” he replied. “You do realize you’re hoping for yet another person to die every time you wish for me to get a chance to live, don’t you? I’m tired, Adi. I don’t want to spend the last few months of my life trapped in a hospital ward.”

His brain had blurred out most of his memories from the long, awful hospital stays from the time of his first transplant following a failed surgery for congenital ventricular septal defect.

But he attributed the blessed censorship primarily to him being a clueless six-year-old back then.

The next round had been much worse. Its memories were all still seared into his mind in ultra-high-definition.

From the time he’d collapsed during a sprint at the annual sports meet at his college, mere weeks after his twentieth birthday, to being stuck at the hospital waiting for another donor—another human with a healthy heart—to die, so he could live.

When finally, someone did die, and they were a match, and Vir’s chest was sliced wide open once again to receive its offering of fresh meat.

Followed by months of painfully exhausting recovery.

Now, seven years later, his body had once again decided to attack the very thing responsible for keeping him alive. Dumb move, obviously, because it wasn’t getting another serving of said fresh meat. Nope. He was done.

He’d rather go rot on a beach, drinking mimosas and triple shot lattes, while zipping through as much of his e-reader’s library as he could before he dropped dead.

Alone and unbothered. Away from sterile hospital wards, reeking of spirit-soaked gauze and bodily fluids and getting poked, prodded, and stitched up over and over.

Another notification popped up on his screen, the preview showing a university-ID. He clicked on the email to read:

Dear Mr. Varma,

As per our previous telephonic conversation, and after further careful consideration of your case history, we have selected you to receive treatment, free of cost, under the newly launched Hope Savior Scheme by the Bioengineering Grants Commission.

However, as opposed to what we discussed earlier, our researchers now have two viable treatment options for your consideration, rather than the single option initially outlined. Materials regarding both are attached below.

Kindly respond to this email once you have gone through the documents and made your decision. We would ideally like to see a response by next Tuesday.

In case you have further questions, please get in touch with my office in person or at the number mentioned below.

Regards,

Dr. Tanya Thakur, Head of Dept.

Bioengineering Research Center,

National University of Science, New Delh i

Vir looked up from the screen to stare blankly at the faded beige wall ahead, wincing in time to the low ringing in his ears. It shot up before dimming to a light thrum along the sides of his neck.

It had to be a prank. Or maybe some kind of elaborate phishing scam.