Cave Johnson have survived Black Mesa's grasping fingers, federal inquiries, even the occasional so-called knife in the dark from his test subjects. The boys in engineering seemed less than surprised about this, but those bums were paid for their trouble, damnit! They even scooped their tumors out for them, free of charge. Chronic long-term effects could kiss his great…the feds didn't agree, of course. Even the slashed budgets didn't stop him, and Caroline stayed by his side, loyal to a fault.
It was just as well that his own research finally undid him. Moon rocks, of all things. The gel would open a whole new dimension to testing, but the grinding process had gotten into the air during development. Cave had stopped wearing the clean suit by that point- it ate up time that could be used to do more science. Now the dust he had inhaled was slowly poisoning him.
He'd made one last audio memo for the facility just days before he found that he could no longer get out of his bed. Now he had tubes coming and going from god knew where, and some he could only suspect. Caroline had done her best to set up a workstation, of course- she always did what she could, and the computer boys had linked him into his old network access through a new little computer that sat on a table as close to his hand as the bed's self-medicate button.
Caroline had been in earlier that day. The lawyers had drawn up papers for some of patents and for the facility after the inevitable occurred. She'd somehow managed to get a new batch of test subjects, a near-miracle considering the new regulations. Her eyes had been clear upon reporting on the progression of the AI project, it's steady, positive and excruciatingly slow progress. The tightening of her hand in his was the only hint of what might lie behind that calm.
He'd thanked her, and took the papers. She'd been gone for half an hour now to run the facility, promising to be back in a few hours. Perhaps he might have carried that calm through the next through hours. He glanced through the executive summary attached to the top of the sheath of legal papers. The lawyers had made Aperture as airtight as possible from the feds, as requested. Caroline had eventually agreed to take control of operations, as the papers showed. Maybe she'd be able to work around them, keep Black Mesa from stealing more of their work. She'd always been subtler that way.
Then the nurse had come in, and his day had gone down the tubes. Oh, she knew her job fine, but he was still a damned proud man, and he didn't feel like making cheery small talk with someone while emptying his bedpan. He'd ignore her, she'd prattle on. He supposed that made her uncomfortable, but it really wasn't his job to make her feel better about that.
The nurse, a perky blonde with skinny arms and a high voice, had been going on about the weather. He would harrumph periodically to break up the stony silence, hoping she'd hurry up and run back to her fabulous weather when she laughed nervously, an infuriatingly high tittering noise. "I guess when life gives you lemons, you just…um." She trailed off as the great, infirm Cave Johnson's face went from merely sour to furious. He glared at her with wide-eyed rage, and the smile slid from the nurse's face. The nurse with skinny arms backed away, stuttering an apology as she all but ran out of the room. The heart monitor began to beep at an accelerated rate, and it was several minutes of stewing in his pique before the erratic sound began to even out again.
"Lemons," he snarled with a shake of his head. He reached for the workstation and turned on the audio recorder. It looked like there was one last memo left in him after all.