Unsaid: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

Charlie, that quickly became a meaningless guideline. Charlie was a remarkable creature—curious, playful, intelligent, and very aware. If you’ve never looked into the face of a chimpanzee up close, you simply cannot imagine how human-like and expressive they can be. But it was Charlie’s hands, not his face, that I remember most; they were not only incredibly dexterous, but also soft and warm and vulnerable, like a child’s hands. I soon found that I was spending whatever free time I had with Charlie in his enclosure. When he saw me arrive each day, he would point at me and his face would light up.
    Whenever I went to visit Charlie, Jaycee was already there. If I was smitten with Charlie, Jaycee was singularly absorbed by him. When I was with the two of them, I sometimes felt like I was the third wheel eavesdropping on a jealously guarded love affair.
    Three months into our relationship with Charlie, we received in our mailboxes a new memo from Vartag decreeing that the oral supplements would stop and injections would begin.
    Vartag assured us that the shots were merely a potent combination of vitamins B 12 and C—harmless. She also told us that we were only required to give one shot to Charlie every other day. Finally, she told us that if we were not prepared to follow her harmless protocol, then we didn’t get to keep our jobs. It was that simple—“No shots, no Charlie.”
    I could walk away from the money without any qualms, but abandon Charlie? We convinced ourselves that if we didn’t do it, someone who cared less about Charlie would take over and hurt him. As far as we know, rationalization is a uniquely human defense mechanism. I was lathered in it.
    Pygmy chimpanzees actually are not much smaller than regular chimpanzees, and they are about as powerful. If Charlie had fought us on the shots, we never would have been able to administer the supplements without anesthetizing him. But Charlie trusted us by now, as Dr. Vartag clearly understood. She counted on that trust.
    I remember so clearly the look of hurt and betrayal on Charlie’s face when I first jabbed him with a needle. Instead of a source of play and joy, I had suddenly and unexpectedly become an instrument of sting and fright. It was just a quick shot, and probably didn’t even hurt that much, but I swear he never looked at me the same way. Although a few treats and toys seemed to placate Charlie andwe moved on to happier things, I never again saw that look of unfettered vulnerability in his eyes. The guarded gaze that replaced it grew only more distant as the shots continued.
    We tricked, cajoled, and sometimes begged Charlie in order to give him his shots, but toward the end he simply submitted to the puncture by extending his arm and looking away. Seeing this exercise in learned helplessness was the worst of all for me by many orders of magnitude.
    In my work with Charlie, I had ignored one important aspect about the field of immunology—the most important aspect, actually. How do you really test the strength of an immune system? You try to make someone sick.
    When Charlie’s lab tests evidenced the correct number of T-cells, proteins, prions, or whatever marker Vartag was looking for, she injected him with blood contaminated with hepatitis C. We didn’t know.
    The diarrhea hit Charlie first and hard, then the bouts of vomiting, refusals to eat, lethargy, and the bone-racking fevers. Before my eyes in a matter of days, Charlie went from an animated bundle of activity to the type of being you would expect to see in late-term hospice care.
    And still the supplement shots continued. Now, however, Charlie was more apt to turn away from me when he saw me and offer me his thigh or behind for the injection. More and more often, when the shot was over, Charlie would not turn to face me. Even Jaycee was unable to get him to rise. She spent hours just stroking his fur.
    Charlie knew something was different, that he felt ill, but he had no sense of