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"--course it could be used to restart the heart, but there are no benefits to revitalizing muscle tissue before the brain!"
Are you kidding? Without blood flow--"
"We avoid reperfusion injury!"
"--we can only have a temporary solution! You know that resuscitation can't be--"
"There is no point in restoring blood flow until we can repair the autolytic decay! It would only damage our samples FURTHER!"
"But eventually we'll have to--"
"If we can regrow the necrotic cell mass, all we'll need is a damn defibrillator! Until then, we'd be restoring, what, sixty or seventy percent efficiency? Hah."
"I'm not attacking you, Herbert! This isn't a thesis defense! You asked for my help."
"I asked for a second opinion on a tissue sample, Dan, not your undoubtedly brilliant half-baked insights into my life's work!"
"Jesus, Herbert--"
"Do you really think I--" He interrupted himself mid-sentence, freezing halfway through a gesture before lurching violently in the direction of the bloody and plastic-lined trash can. He flung himself over it just in time to gag and vomit a startling quantity of brownish fluid, turning the already-disturbing garbage into a swamp of bodily fluids. There was a weak and aborted attempt to catch his glasses that failed miserably, and he flinched as they landed lenses-down in the mess.
“What the hell?” Dan demanded, moving quickly to his side. He touched his roommate’s back and felt him convulse and retch a second time, choking on stomach acid and coughing wetly. A moment later, another round of dry heaves left Herbert shivering and clinging to the edge of the trash can, wiping his mouth shakily on the back of his hand.
“Coffee,” he croaked, keeping his head down.
“Yeah, I noticed,” Dan snapped worriedly, rubbing circles on his back. He felt a bit sick, himself—the smell of bile was mixing with the sharp, acidic tang of the experiments and a lingering undertone of decay. “And what else?”
Herbert glanced furiously back at him, squinting without his glasses.
“What have you had to eat in the last… forty-eight hours?”
His roommate made a derisive noise and spat the last traces of vomit into the garbage, not dignifying the question with a reply.
“Shit. How are you even— Of course.” He stopped rubbing Herbert’s back abruptly.
His roommate frowned up at him myopically, trying to read his expression.
“Your damn serum. For someone so smart, you’re a fucking idiot sometimes.”
Herbert stayed silent.
“You know there’s no replacement for food and rest in the human body. You can’t just… just shoot up,” he snarled, “Like a junkie, and keep going forever.” He shook a thin shoulder. “Look at me, Herbert. You’re going to kill—“
“Kill myself?” Herbert hissed back, spinning to face him and smacking Dan’s hand away. “Am I. With my own reanimation serum.” He looked younger and more vulnerable without his glasses, even with his face twisted into a furious scowl. “What don’t you understand, Dan? I am so close, so close to the solution.” His hands curled into fists, and he forced them open in a tremulous, pleading gesture that was sharply at odds with the manic desperation in his voice. “This isn’t a term paper, Dan. This isn’t med school, or even a patient’s life. This is every patient, every living being. This is death, Dan, and I can stop it. I can stop. Death. I don’t have time to sleep. This is bigger than anything our species has ever dreamed, and I can almost touch it! Dan, please. Try to understand. Look at what we’ve done, it’s—“ He made a sweeping gesture towards the lab, and flinched when his roommate caught his wrist.
Dan examined his face for a long moment. “Herbert. Go to bed.” His voice was gentle and slow. “You'll think better when you've slept, anyway. It can wait a few hours. I'm not asking you to give up, but you don’t have to destroy yourself to do this.”
Herbert stared up at him, wide-eyed and still and trembling with unbearable energy. “Dan.” His voice cracked. “Every second that I waste, people are dying. Do you realize that? Every single human life that ends before I finish this serum is on my head, Dan. If I could... If I could just... I..." He stared wildly around the lab, looking lost and more than a little frightened.
Dan swallowed. “Let’s start with your life, okay? You need to rest.”
Herbert cracked a smile, made a sharp little sound, and abruptly broke into high, hysterical laughter, slumping back against the trash can and gasping for breath between bursts of giggles. His roommate watched, frowning and concerned, until he trailed off into panting breaths. “I think…” A breath. “I think you may have a point.”
“…okay.”
“About blood flow.” Herbert smiled up at him, wide and unnerving. “We’ll try that in the morning.”
Dan closed his eyes for a moment, then managed a small smile in return. “Good. Yeah.” He stepped closer and made shooing motions at his roommate. “In the morning. Tomorrow.” He herded Herbert up the stairs and into the kitchen, poured a glass of water, and set it on the table. “Drink this, then brush your teeth and go to bed,” he ordered.
“Yes, Dr. Cain,” Herbert sneered, not without affection. He was still staring at his roommate and hadn’t touched the water when Dan finally gave up on their battle of the wills and marched dutifully back into the basement, to tug on latex gloves and approach the trash can.
“You’re going to be a doctor,” he said aloud, peering into the mess of regurgitated coffee, bile, and twice-killed liver tissue. “You’ve seen worse.”
It was probably a lie.
When he returned to the kitchen with Herbert’s newly sterilized and spotlessly clean glasses, the water glass was empty and Herbert was nowhere to be seen. Both the bathroom and Herbert’s bedroom were empty, doors standing open, and it took Dan a moment of contemplation to realize that his obsessively private roommate might have violated someone else’s privacy.
Dan knocked on the door to his own bedroom.
“Yes?”
“I swear to god, Herbert. Are you going through my stuff or is this some kind of weird sexual—“
Herbert was sitting on the bed, back propped up with pillows, squinting at a textbook. “Hello, Dan. Oh, are those my glasses?” He peered nearsightedly at Dan in the doorway. “Good.”
The absurdity of his presence—and in a fresh pair of green scrubs—was dwarfed by a sudden wash of memories. “What are you doing?” Dan demanded, louder than he meant to.
Herbert looked slightly alarmed, but covered it up quickly. “If you’re going to force me to…” His lips twitched derisively. “…get some sleep…” The doubt was palpable. “I feel that it’s only fair to force you to keep me company, since—“
“What are you doing,” Dan repeated, sounding strained, “On Meg’s side of the bed?”
Herbert went rigid. "Meg," he repeated slowly. "Meg is dead, Dan."
“Yes. I know.”
“Do you? Then—“
“Your serum made doubly sure of that.”
“My serum.” Herbert stared at him, as though it had never once occurred to him that the whole ordeal might be laid at his doorstep.
“You know, the one that brought back the things that killed her. The one that couldn’t bring her back. Your ‘life’s work’. That serum.”
“Oh. I see.”
“Do you? Herbert, I had to—“
“You blame me. That’s why you left me to die.”
“What? I had no choice! I tried to save—“
“Did you?”
“Herbert—“ Dan started, furious, but Herbert wasn’t done.
“Did you expect me to be alive? Were you grateful that I survived, when Meg--" He spat her name like a curse. "Hadn't? Or did you resent me? Do you resent me, Dan?" He glowered coldly at his roommate, withdrawing into the pillows.
"Yes," Dan all-but-shouted back. "Yes! Is that what you want to hear? At first I thought, 'Why is he alive? Why couldn't it have been her?' But now I'm just glad that one of you made it out! You're the only person I have left, Herbert, and I'm trying to take care of you! You're still living in my house, aren't you? I help you with your research. I try to make sure you eat and sleep and I soak your stupid bloody shirts in bleach, and if you could just do even one thing to make my life easier… Like, like laundry, or letting me mourn the girl I loved…”
Herbert scowled petulantly and swung his legs off the bed, dropping the textbook onto the mattress.
“No—Herbert. You can stay.”
His roommate eyed him with narrowed eyes.
“Here.” Dan held out the freshly cleaned glasses. He took a breath. And then, “…so do you always sleep in scrubs?”
Herbert snatched the glasses and slid them onto his nose, then sat slowly back against the pillows. “I don’t own any pajamas.”
“None? Really?” Dan dug in a drawer for his own. “I don’t know why I’m surprised. I can’t even picture you in a t-shirt.”
"I prefer to be taken seriously. I dress--"
"To make up for how tiny you are?"
"I am not--"
They argued themselves to exhaustion and fell asleep by midnight.
Dan had only just managed to orchestrate a five minute break. He was halfway to the coffee machine when a nurse stuck her head out of the break room and shouted after him.
"Cain? Dan! There's a phone call for you?"
He shot a longing look at the coffee, then sighed and detoured into the room. "Who is it?" The nurse shrugged, and he picked up the receiver. He had something more than a sneaking suspicion, but it was nice to imagine, for a moment, that he'd hear something other than-- "Hello? Dan Cain speaking."
"Dan."
Nope. "Herbert. What's the matter?"
"Does this hellhole of a house not have heat?"
Dan rubbed at his eyes. "Of course it does. Is it cold?"
"Freezing," Herbert hissed in distress. "I lost feeling in my fingers while I was working! I nearly--"
"Well why the hell were you in the basement at..." He glanced at the clock. "Two in the morning? We're in Massachusetts. It gets cold, especially at night." It was the first really cold night of the winter, so it very well might be cold inside-- not that that excused calling him at the hospital to complain. "Look, my bed has better blankets. You can sleep there, and I'll be home in a few hours." He made a face at the nurse, embarrassed.
"...fine." Dan had learned to differentiate between the different types of short, abrupt speech his roommate used to communicate. This was less unhappy and more petulant. "You're home at five?"
"Yeah. Bundle up and get some sleep. Good night, Herbert."
Herbert West sniffed primly down the line and hung up.
...
It was nearly six when Dan made it back. It was cold in the house, and he turned up the thermostat with a frown, rubbing his hands together. Herbert’s damn experiments were already driving up the electrical bill—the winter was going to be an expensive one. He moved quietly into the bedroom, thinking about bills and spaceheaters and hoping vainly that his roommate might actually be asleep.
"Dan," Herbert offered by way of greeting. "Will you get my neurochemistry book out of my room?"
"Hello to you too," Dan groused, smiling at the mess of books and papers spread across his bedspread, and then at the man himself. "Is that--"
"It's cold," he snapped defensively, tugging the sleeves of Dan’s Miskatonic University sweatshirt down over his fingertips.
“You’re cute.”
“Dan.”
“Yeah, yeah, neurochemistry book, I’m going.”
It was one more piece of Herbert's slow and inexorable move into his room, but he was too tired to mind. He fetched it quietly and dropped it on the bed.
"Scooch over," he ordered, stripping off his scrubs tiredly and rooting around in his drawers for something warm to sleep in. He pulled on a worn t-shirt and dug further, frowning and pantsless. "Do you know if my sweatpants are in the laundry?"
Herbert made a small, awkward noise, and Dan looked up suspiciously.
"Herbert."
"Freezing. Cold." He looked sulky and embarrassed.
"They can't possibly fit you."
"They don't. You're huge."
"I am not-- you're just tiny.
Herbert huffed in outrage. "I--"
"Scoot over, come on, I want to go to bed!" Dan hopped awkwardly into a pair of flannel pajama pants.
His roommate glowered at him, but shifted slightly to the right, moving some of his research to the nightstand as Dan slipped in next to him.
"And stop trying to look threatening. That sweatshirt just makes you look smaller, and your nose is all pink."
The rest of Herbert's face reddened to match it. "Dan." He tried to sound stern.
Dan pulled the covers up to his nose to hide a smile. "Y'know, if you turn out that light and go to sleep, you'll be able to get all the way under the covers."
"Let me finish this."
"Fine, fine." He turned over and buried his face in Herbert's thigh.
"Dan."
"I thought you were cold. I'm the warmest thing in this house."
His roommate gave a dubious hum but let him be.
By the time Herbert piled his books and papers on the floor and turned out the light, Dan had dropped into a comfortable doze. He stirred when Herbert got up, but didn't open his eyes. His roommate seemed to have assumed he was asleep, and slipped back under the covers carefully. He yelped when Dan slipped an arm around his waist.
"Dan," he protested again, and Dan could hear him scowling.
"Go to sleep," he mumbled back,
"Is this really necessary?"
"You get my warm clothes and my blankets, I get your body heat." He curled around his roommate comfortably. "...you really are tiny," he added, setting his chin on top of Herbert's head.
Herbert tilted his head back sharply and cracked it against Dan's jaw.
"Ow! Shit!" He laughed helplessly and pulled his roommate closer. "If you do that again, I'll tickle you."
"You will not."
He nuzzled into his roommate's hair. "You going to find out?"
Herbert maintained his furious silence until they both fell asleep.
He woke up with his face buried in Dan's shoulder blade and one of his legs trapped under a solid weight. He snarled sleepily and shoved at his roommate.
"I'm about to fall off the bed." Dan sounded only marginally awake. "If you want more room, get back on your side."
Herbert turned over to eye the rest of the mattress, noticing with vague surprise that they were both crammed into approximately a third of the space. He started to shift into the open region, then paused. "What?" His eyes narrowed.
"What?" Dan parroted sleepily. "I can't move any further this way. You're even bossy when you're asleep... Get back on your side if you don't want to cuddle."
"My side."
Dan cracked his eyelids and shifted to glare at his roommate. "The side that you're not currently on. That side of the bed that neither of us are on. The one that we would both be asleep if you were on."
Herbert shot him an abrupt and unsettlingly sincere smile. "Of course."