Cause of Death: Martin Orenson, MD

Every morning, Dr. Martin Orenson arrived at the Epione Hospital ten minutes early, not out of discipline, but to be first through the sterilized glass. Martin loved the hospital, not because it was a place of healing, not for the polished floors and sterile atmosphere. No, he loved the hospital because it let him fulfill his purpose: to heal the sick and wounded. Some said that if you took a photo of Martin’s soul, it would look like the lobby of the Epione.

Watch him walk in, and you’d swear the weight of the world lifted off his shoulders as soon as he crossed that threshold. A bright smile bloomed on his slightly wrinkled face, and it stayed while he scrubbed in and suited up. His smile brightened walking down the pristine, fluorescent-lit halls. It widened when he saw the waiting room, full of people for Martin to fix. Even when it seemed that it couldn’t get any bigger, he saw the rows of rooms holding his patients, and it did. It only faltered briefly when there was an empty room and nobody to help.

He saw a young boy who broke his arm falling from the jungle gym. Martin asked just how much he loved to climb. The boy, stretching his good arm out wide, showed the good doctor just how much.

“That’s a lot,” Martin said. “Not to worry, we’ll patch you up. You’ll be back out there in no time.” He glanced around, good, the nurses were watching. The boy left smiling. There was nobody Martin couldn’t help, and nothing he wouldn’t do, so long as there was an audience. Until, finally, it was time for his lunch break.

Martin swaggered into the hospital cafeteria and glanced at the menu, meatloaf and mashed potatoes. No, he went over to the staff kitchen and made his usual: a single plate of buttered toast. The dish that got him through graduate school, he thought. He sat under the white fluorescents, alone at the long table dead centre in the room. Moments later, his colleague and friend Dr. Joan Gibbs dropped onto the bench across from him, breathless and buzzing.

“I’m working on something,” Joan whispered. She was never one for pleasantries. “It’s big.”

“What is it?” Martin whispered back, slightly mocking her. “Trying to solve medicine again?” Joan’s eyes widened. She glanced over her shoulder.

“I can’t tell you here, too many ears,” she murmured. “I’m presenting it tonight at the disease conference. I’ll tell you there.” She was hunched over her tray, but not eating. She had a manic look in her eye, like she had just realized she was late for a flight. “I promise, it'll blow your mind”

“Ok, I’ll be th-”,

“Great!” she was already up, scraping her plate into the compost, and running out the blue double doors. Dr. Orenson watched her leave. He was chief of internal medicine, dealing with the individual patient. Whereas, she was the director of biomedical innovation, more big picture, healing the world kind of thing. He didn’t always get her, but twenty years of friendship had taught him not to argue. And she had his curiosity now.

Martin finished his lunch, left his dirty plate on the table, and exited the cafeteria. He wrapped up his rounds, walking from room to room and spreading more of his infectious smiles, but his mind stayed on Joan’s discovery. Driving home, the weight that had left him that morning came crashing back down upon his shoulders once he left.

The heavy metal door to his apartment squealed open, and he was immediately greeted with the familiar smell of rot. He stared at the dreary, peeling wallpaper. The place didn’t feel like his. He took off his brown boots, laid them neatly beside the door, and stepped into the grey hush. As he unpacked, he found himself thinking of titles. The title ‘doctor’ still fit. He used to have more, though: ‘husband’ and ‘dad’. He couldn’t remember what was said, but he remembered the feeling. The fight. The silence after the final poisonous word. The bruise of being kicked to the curb. The confusion and hurt in his son’s eyes, watching from the window. He could set bones and stitch skin, but there’s no procedure for grief. He straightened in his black suit and adjusted his bow tie. He took a deep breath and walked out, the metal door clanging like a cell behind him.

The conference was held in a glittering ballroom, vaulted ceilings and a diamond chandelier. A large purple banner with gold lettering read: “Annual Disease Conference 2082”. Tables were lined up with surgical precision, the white tablecloth reflecting the dazzling light. He found his name at the “friends of the speakers” table. He took his seat, ordered a champagne, and waited for Joan to reveal her big secret.

“Who’re you here to see?” asked the man beside him, bald and fidgeting with a pen.

“Joan Gibbs, you?” replied Martin.

“Saleem LeBlanc. I hear Joan is the big finisher for tonight. Nobody knows what she’s revealing.”

“How can that be? Not even the organizers know what she’s presenting?” The bald man shrugged as the lights dimmed and the moderator walked on stage. All in all, the other speakers were fine. Most presenting small miracles and hopeful data, all asking for donations and grants. Then it was Joan’s turn. She walked on stage in a slim red dress and silver earrings, like a flare in the darkness.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” Joan began, clear and practiced. “I have news that will change medicine forever. And I’m sorry to the other speakers, but everything you’ve heard tonight? It’s already outdated.” A murmur rippled across the ballroom. Martin stiffened, hoping she wouldn’t be a punchline by morning. A young assistant ran onstage, handed Joan a syringe, and slipped back behind the curtain. Joan held the syringe aloft like a torch.

“This,” she said, “is the cure to everything!”

In the moments after, the silence of the crowd cracked into disbelief. Joan raised her hands, trying to speak, as a flood of shouts of ‘Snake oil!’ — ‘Bullshit’ — ‘She’s a liar!’ filled the room. Martin flinched, ‘Liar’ hit a bit too close. The room settled, but the tension didn’t. Joan began again.

“I’m not lying. This isn’t a trick. In this syringe, I have the cure to everything.” Her words hit so hard, the world seemed to hold its breath. “My private lab inside the Epione Hospital has engineered our own stem cells. My ‘supercells’ are designed from regular stem cells in your body, ones that can develop into any kind of cell the body needs. Unlike normal cells, these cannot become cancerous, they cannot be susceptible to disease, and they have immune response built in, so the disease can’t even get a foot in the door.” The room was frozen, mouths agape. Martin among them.

Joan kept explaining the science, but Martin was only half listening. A miracle. He thought. This is what humanity has been working towards since medicine was invented. So why did it feel like a guillotine being raised? He started to clap, then froze. A former paraplegic patient, his patient, was walking across the stage. Fully healed. The bald man whispered;

“She was right. This changes everything.” No, Martin thought, it erases everything. Joan pulled him aside the next day, buzzing with logistics. Hundreds of rollout teams, she said, countries lined up like dominos. And she wanted Martin by her side. He nodded before thinking. What else was he going to do? He went with Joan, clipboard in hand and smile plastered on. First to Haiti, then to Mozambique and then to Ethiopia. With every trip, however, something tugged on his soul. With every patient that left his tent healthy forever, Martin’s smile faded a little. By the time they got to Ethiopia, he had no more smiles left to fake. A nurse sees him administer the cure to patient number who-cares that day and incredulously says

“Guess we’re out of a job soon, huh?” He didn’t look up, didn’t even blink, just concentrated on the needle. Later, at the hotel bar, he absentmindedly turned his empty glass in his hands as Joan slid into the seat next to him.

“Doesn’t it bother you?” He asked her, slightly slurred.

“What?”

“You killed the industry. There’s nothing left to do. Nobody left who… needs us.”

“Martin,” She put a hand on his arm. “We’re not obsolete. Yeah, maybe they don’t need healers anymore, but there’s still a million things we don’t know about the body. Genetics, aging, neural maps…”

“No, no. You don’t understand.” Later, alone in his hotel room, Martin opened his laptop like a reflex. At the top of his inbox is an email titled ‘Re: Follow-up cancellation’. He deleted it without opening, he’d gotten too many like that recently. Eventually, Joan sent him home, thinking he was homesick. Martin wished it was that simple.

He only worsened when he got back. There was no relief because there were no patients, everyone already had the cure. Nobody was dying, nobody even had a splinter. Martin had spent a lifetime learning how to fix people. Now, no one was broken. He didn’t leave his house, stopped shaving, cooking, speaking. Until finally, he went back to the Epione.

“Dr. Orenson!” the receptionist beamed. Their smile wilted when he asked about work. The waiting room that had once given Martin so much happiness was silent. Empty chairs, rows of sterile white. Martin asked for Joan, but they said she was still on the other side of the world. Martin thanked them and went deeper into the hospital like a ghost haunting a past life.

No patients in the rooms. No doctors or nurses in the halls. He passed a mirror and flinched, a gaunt old man looked back at him. He creaked open his old locker. Inside were his useless sterile gloves, and an old family picture. He stares at the man in the picture, the one the world still needed.

Martin stood outside the door to Joan’s lab for a long time. The room where she developed that damn cure. He went over to Joan’s computer and pored over the data, opening files, not sure what he was even looking for. Something had to be wrong, it just had to be.

Then he found it. One line in Joan’s data. They engineered the stem cells to work with the white blood cells, but they hadn’t gone as far as they could, just enough to keep it safe. Martin blinked. Read it again. If he could remove that limit…

He looked around, but the lab was empty, the hallways silent. He locked the door. Spent a single feverish night in that lab, engineering something new. The math was all done for him, he just had to push it further. He amplified the code, ramped the immune cells past any ethical horizon. These weren’t protectors anymore. They were predators. At this strength, they didn’t defend, they hunted. Anything they touched, they tore apart. Even the organs they were meant to guard. It only needed to be exposed to the air to infect everyone. Maybe… if the world got sick again, it would need doctors. Need him. But a voice came from the back of his mind. Your oath. The Hippocratic oath, a vow all doctors take never to harm another soul. Martin roared at the ceiling. He shattered bottles and beakers against the floor, keeping his concoction safe and secure in a sealed jar. He collapsed to the floor beneath it and stared. Minutes passed. Maybe hours. Then, his stomach rumbled. The cafeteria was empty as well, but the staff kitchen still worked. He made himself some buttered toast and took it to his seat in a deafening silence. The jar loomed beside him like a storm cloud. He contemplated it, munching. Eventually, his conscience stirred. Something inside said no, and Martin decided that he would destroy the virus before it could get out. His heart hammered in his chest and he began mentally preparing himself for a new job search when he got home. That was the noble thing to do.

But his fingers were buttery. He grabbed the jar off the table, and it slipped through.

Time snapped. The air turned to honey. He watched in horror as the jar hit the smooth, white tile and shattered, releasing the gas into the world. Involuntarily, Martin gasped, taking a deep inhale of the gas. It surged through his lungs, filled the room, leaving through the vents, the doors, into the world. Martin collapsed back on the white floor. Breath clawed at his throat. His lungs were liquefying, cell by cell. Instinctually, he thought to shout for a gurney before remembering there was nobody there.

With a final gasp, Martin died on the white floor that had once made him smile.