Jasmin's Panacea

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka!” but “That’s funny …”

 — Isaac Asimov 

After thirteen hours of work and forty-seven minutes of sleep, Jasmin peeled her forehead off the desk and sat back in her chair. The glare of dawn through the window dazzled her momentarily before she lowered her eyes and began rebuttoning her lab coat. As she rose from her seat, she shrugged away the aches and stiffness from her shoulders and neck and walked across the laboratory, muttering under her breath.

“This is it, Jasmin. This is your day. This is it.”

This was it. Leaving, last night, as she had slotted in her car key and turned the ignition, a lightbulb had lit, and the final piece of her molecular puzzle had also slotted into place. Turning the engine off, she had called her boyfriend, exited the vehicle, returned to the laboratory, and been there ever since.

Now the night of graft was over. Her ideas were implemented, and everything was in place. She opened the refrigerator and reached inside. To the back, on the left, was her stage: A single petri dish housing thirty-seven strains of bacteria and fungi. She held the dish in her hand. The array of colors on display in the agar was nothing short of a Jackson Pollock, but her masterpiece stood in the refrigerator door: A test tube containing one milliliter of clear liquid.

For three years of graduate school, Jasmin had been theorizing, preparing, modifying, and perfecting the ultimate drug: the obliterator of all ailments, the curer of worlds, the bringer of health. The life in the petri dish would be the first collection of species, all bane to the human race, to feel the ruthless efficacy of her creation. Not all infectious agents were represented. Viruses, parasites, and bacterial entities deemed too dangerous for the facility were not present, but this didn't matter. Her weapon probed a microbe's very essence. The organism's destructive behaviour, its raison d'etre, would be pinpointed, exploited, and turned back inward. The script would be flipped. When the day was done, her solution would be the fuel to send her name rocketing up the list of legendary scientists and artists who came before her. She picked up the test tube. On its side, in red sharpie, written at approximately 4:30 am that morning, were the words “Jasmin’s Panacea.”  

Jasmin held it up to the light. One milliliter. Enough for a single experiment. She took a deep breath and carried the petri dish and test tube to the biosafety cabinet. Holding both tube and dish in her left hand, she raised the cabinet screen and placed the items inside. 

“Hey, Jasmin,” said Evan as he walked into the laboratory, dropping his bag on a desk by the door. “Sorry, I’m a couple of minutes late. Where do you want me?”

“Just over here, buddy. I need another pair of eyes on this experiment.”

“Oh, ok. There in a second.”

Jasmin waited as Evan put on his lab coat. At 11 pm, the previous night, she had texted him, asking for his help this morning. He wasn’t needed; he was merely an audience. The boy was a friend: he was competent, smart even, but today, he was only a pawn. The show about to take place needed a witness. Jasmin knew the drug could be prepared again, and the experiment repeated, but that would only dilute the moment. She wanted Evan to be behind her, gasping and gesticulating as she spread the news. Better still, if Evan were to run and tell the world, her colleagues could come to her for confirmation. She could even play it humbly. By the time he walked over, Jasmin was in position.

“Damn, Jasmin, you look exhausted! How long have you been here?”

“Oh, you know,” she replied, rolling her eyes. “I was just up watching a bunch of movies until late again last night. Not much sleep… Safety specs, Evan.”

“Oh yeah, thanks.”

Evan fumbled through his lab coat pockets for safety specs until Jasmin handed him a second pair of hers. As he scrambled to put them on, she lifted the lid off the petri dish and picked up a pipette. Using her left hand alone, she held the test tube in her palm and plucked the cap from the top with her thumb and index finger.

“Right, Evan. In that petri dish is a colony of every organism we are permitted to work with in this laboratory. In this test tube is a multipurpose solution crafted to effectively tackle them all. All bacteria and fungi wiped out with a single dose… and quickly.”

“Wow, Jasmin. The red sharpie wasn’t kidding!”

She picked up a tip with her pipette, her thumb knuckle aching from the morning’s work. Dipping the pipette tip in her solution, she sucked it up. “I want you to keep your eyes on the dish. I am expecting fireworks in a matter of seconds.” The show she had prepared for Evan would be nothing compared to the chaos visible under a microscope. The cellular implosion, the disintegration of proteins, and the dissolution of toxins, none of that would be seen today. But what would manifest before the naked eye was the blurring of form, the fading of color to white, the white of a million infectious flags waving goodbye to life. With her hand shaking, she pipetted the liquid onto the petri dish. It was conventional in experiments of this kind to deposit a zig-zag to discern the regions of impact, but this time was different; she pipetted a V; A V for victory. She stood back, and they waited.

Ten seconds passed, and nothing happened. Jasmin tapped her foot against the opposite ankle. Thirty seconds, and still nothing. The silence of the pair was excruciating. Sixty seconds, zero impact. The disappointment began to kick in, and Jasmin felt exhaustion squeeze her brain as the adrenaline neutralizing her fatigue quickly dissipated. Could she have made a mistake? Never! In all her years in the laboratory, she had never so much as spilled a drop. The failure today was not due to human error; it was the cold indifference of science dealing her a brutal hand.

Jasmin slumped. All her hard work had been for nothing. She would surely graduate, but would her name be mentioned in the same sentence as Alexander Fleming? Not on this day, and not in this laboratory. As she closed her eyes, she felt the waves of bathos pass through her, from neck to ankles. The stab of failure penetrated her chest and impaled her heart. Recovery from this setback would be a long one. 

Then, a lifeline. Amid Jasmin’s torment, an utterance fell upon her ear. The words brought hope to her hell. A sentence sounded as if broadcast from the stratosphere and through the clouds by a choir of angels. But this two-word composition was nothing heaven-sent. Jasmin’s angel in this moment was simply Evan.

“That’s funny,” he said as Jasmin’s ear pricked up.

“What, Evan?! What is it?! What have you seen?!”

“Err… what? Oh, sorry, Jasmin, I was just watching this video on TikTok. Here, check it out!”