The Lucky Molecule

“Hey…whoa!”

The words barely escape my mouth before a gust of wind tears me away from Libby.

“Gem!” I hear Libby cry, but her voice is drowned out by the sound of one of my nitrogen atoms brushing none-too-gently across the old man's prickly face.

“Ow!”

Before I have a moment to register my discomfort, the world around me is enveloped in a grayish pink color. I can feel the windy vortex pulling me faster and I'm utterly powerless to stop it. The other molecules around me yell and quake with fear as our pink surroundings turn to red, and as enormous yellowish pillars rise before our eyes. The red turns to black and I can't see Libby. I can't hear her. I'm tumbling down a bottlenecking tunnel and simply don't know which way is up. The pitch black tunnel is suddenly engulfed in a booming racket–a groan. I snap my eyes shut. It's so dark and it's so loud and it smells so bad.

And then it’s suddenly quiet. In fact, it's the quietest quiet I've ever heard in my hundreds of millions of years spent floating amongst the other molecules in Earth's atmosphere.

I open my eyes to heavy darkness. As always, I can feel other molecules pressing up against me, and I’m comforted by that single aspect of normalcy. The environment here is not open, nor Free-Flowing. It's rather stuffy. And the smell. I can hear the others muttering nervously.

“Where are we?”

“What happened?”

“What–”

The chattering is interrupted by a strong voice.

“It’s a lung.”

She sounds old, well-travelled, and gritty.

The others around me fall silent for only a brief moment; and an even briefer moment later, the layers of air molecules erupt in ferocious chatter.

“Not a lung–”

“Can't be–”

“Preposterous! A lung is Free-Flowing. Air molecules don’t enter a lung and simply stay there!”

They were right. I've known quite a few molecules who have had the misfortune of getting sucked into one of those vile places. It's always a case of simple bad luck. You know, one moment you're wafting along on your merry molecular way through the park. In another moment - BAM! You’re sucked into the raging vortex of a human child sneezing at the exact wrong time.

One time, my friend was inhaled by a deer. He swore up and down that it was the oddest environment through which he'd ever floated; yet it only lasted until the deer’s next exhale, at which time my friend went tumbling back out into the chilly forest from which he’d come. I’d never believed him.

But now…

“Preposterous!”

“Well,” the old voice answers grimly, “He's dead, is he not? There’s only one reason I can think of as to why a lung would suddenly stop filling with air.”

The nervous chattering begins again until a different voice pipes up. Their voice is low, guttural, and sickly. Their words sound as though they are speaking from beneath several layers of...something. 

“She is right,” the muffled voice says.

“Who is that?”

“Lung Molecule.”

There is renewed chattering amongst the air molecules. I have never met a lung molecule before. And evidently, neither have they.

“Will you move?” Lung Molecule hisses.

“Can't,” answers another voice. “Wish I could, sorry.”

Lung Molecule’s muffled voice grumbles, “The man's been sick. He’s been sick for quite a while. From that final cough and the groan that came after, sounds as though he's left us. I'm not feeling too well myself.”

“Sorry,” the third voice calls emphatically. “Can't help but feel like this is my fault. I'd move if I could, but I just can't stop multiplying.”

“No worries,” Lung Molecule says, “I know it’s nothing personal.”

“We are Trapped,” an air molecule close to me blurts out suddenly, “in a dead man's lung?!”

“Yes,” the older air molecule calls. “I fear this might be the end.” 

“Don't say that!” another air molecule bellows from far away.

“Yeah,” another agrees. “A fellow I met in Albuquerque once got stuck in a lung, but they brought the lung back to life and he escaped.”

“No coming back to life this time,” Lung Molecule says grimly. “We all talk – the other bodily molecules and I. Brain talked to Ears, who overheard the doctor. And Brain told me that Ears heard that the man signed a ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ contract. In other words, do not bring him back to life. And Skin and Bones down in Right Hand specifically remember signing something a few months back. And Eyes remember a ton of salty water molecules appearing out of nowhere at the exact same time–” 

“We're Trapped!” another panicked air molecule’s voice rings out.

Chaos ensues. None of us move, because we can't. But we all scream in unison. 

“Sorry,” the voice covering Lung Molecule says again. 

I'm hit with the shocking realization that I'll never see Libby again. Of course I know no friendship lasts forever. We have lost countless friends over the years. Detachment can occur at absolutely any time. All it takes is one puff of force from a cloud or a closing door for even the closest of molecules to never cross paths again. And the wind is only the start of it. Wildfires, lightning storms–there are a ton of obstacles that molecules run into at every moment of every day which result in them being torn from their cohort, or their friends. 

I had a friend, Aether. He was wafting around Japan several years ago with his very long-time friend, Venti. The two of them were inseparable. The longest-lasting untorn friendship I'd ever witnessed. I think they cared for each other quite a bit. One day, they were floating around this little town when, Aether explained later, they heard a very loud noise. They saw a ball of fire in the distance and, Aether explained, another moment later he witnessed Venti disappear right in front of him. She had been just a molecules’ distance closer to the fire than him. And, according to Aether, she just…

…evaporated. 

…disappeared. 

I wonder if I will disappear. What luck I have, getting sucked into a dead man's final mortal breath. 

“I am certainly feeling very poorly now.” Lung Molecule groans. 

“Sorry,” the other voice says.

I mourn my friendship with Libby. She and I went through quite a bit together. We were both drifting around some people aboard a boat when we met. Actually, now that I think about it, the night we met also ended with some air molecules getting Trapped. The boat we were on was swallowed up by the surrounding water molecules. It wasn't the water molecules’ fault – they couldn't help that the boat molecules stopped standing up after they ran into that pile of ice molecules. Several air molecules got temporarily Trapped beneath the layers of water molecules that night, but most of them eventually made it back to the surface. Libby and I, luckily, had already been on the surface that night. But I have heard rumors that there are still some air molecules forever Trapped between the water molecules and the remaining boat molecules at the bottom of the sea. 

I try not to wonder whether that’s my fate. Am I forever Trapped now, too? 

...

How I miss Libby. It's been an extended amount of time since I got here. Lung Molecule doesn't talk very much anymore. Surely we are utterly and forever Trapped. What luck we have. 

There is a rumbling above me. Or maybe it's coming from below. I can’t tell. There is even more rumbling, jostling – as if our final resting place is being poked and prodded. The air molecules are all screaming again. 

Even Lung Molecule manages a muffled, disgruntled, “ouch.”

A moment later, the heavy darkness of my new home melts away and is replaced by ghostly white light. Another moment later, I feel myself once again tumbling through a brand new mass of air molecules. My cohort from inside the lung topples out of the darkness as we are spurted unceremoniously from the lung. 

I take stock of my surroundings. There are sleek gray cabinets on the walls of whatever environment I am in. I'm rising higher and higher, pushed along by whatever force split open the lung a moment ago. I float higher, and I'm able to make out the shape of the lung below me. I float even higher and I see the glinting silver of the table on which it rests. I float even higher and waft past a million hand molecules wrapped around a million other scalpel molecules. As I float higher, I see the rest of the human who is holding the scalpel. I see his white coat, his bespectacled eyes. I notice the absence of skin molecules on certain spots of his face – the areas encircling his eyes, his forehead, and the regularly-moving spots around his mouth. I float even higher and I see three humans – no, four – no, a whole classroom of them. They are all diligently scribbling in their notebooks and eyeing the purple-gray lung with inquisitive looks. They look at the lung, then down at their textbooks, then back at the lung, then scribble in their notebooks. 

“Gem!”

BONK

I collide, nitrogen-atom-first, with Libby.

“Ow!” we both say.

I am thrilled, and beyond surprised to see her.

“How are you here?” I sputter, which makes me think aloud, “How am I here?”

“I saw the whole thing,” Libby said, excitedly, “They came and took the man's insides out moments after you got lost. They said the man wanted his lungs to go to science. As luck would have it, the person who removed the man’s insides turned at the exact right time, and his coat created enough of a draft to blow me into the icebox with the lung! What luck we have, huh, Gem?”

“What luck, indeed!” I agree.