Title: The Blue Boy (Chapter Ten)
Author: Lexikal
Fandom: Criminal Minds
Summary: Spencer Reid is starting to develop what looks like serious depression. But is he really depressed, or is there something else going on?
Rating: T
Author's Note: I started this fic years ago. I had every intention of finishing it, but got sick while writing it and at the same time, my computer went on the fritz. It was a popular story, though, so I think I might try and finish it. Sorry for the crazily long delay in this thing. As a general rule when reading my work, if "delays" drive you nuts, only read my short stories or the ones which are already complete. I agree with a recent poster, that this story can be life-affirming, and I know more about how to regain health now, so I might use this story as a platform to do just that.
24 hours later
Reid had propped himself up in front of his laptop and was doing research on cancer. On a doctor named Tullio Simoncini from Rome who believed all cancer was the body's natural defense to excessive fungal spread of a mycellial fungus called candida albicans which normally lived in the digestive tract but which could get out of hand given the right conditions (acidic diet, environmental toxins, dehydration, genetic predisposition). He claimed that utilizing an alkaline diet to alkalize the PH of the cellular fluid was the way to health, and one of his most simple recommendations was to consume water containing sodium bicarbonate. In other words? Baking soda.
Reid got up. Slumped his way to the kitchen and pulled the little orange box of Arm & Hammer out of the cupboard. This stuff contained aluminum traces. He'd ask Morgan to pick him up some of the non-aluminum stuff tomorrow. The page he was on now said that there was a brand called "Bob's Red Mill" which made non-aluminum baking soda, and Reid was pretty sure he'd seen it at Wholefoods. The young genius spooned a tablespoon of baking powder into his glass of purified water (he was trying to avoid fluoride from the tap water), stirred it. Drank it down.
He didn't puke it up, which was something. And possibly he was having a placebo reaction, but a half an hour later, when he went to pee, his urine seemed a little less acidic.
Reid did some more research and two hours later he was on a sight for an auto-immune bladder condition called Interstitial Cystitis, reading everything he could about "baking soda therapy". Then he switched to reading about the alkaline diet and the anti-candida diet. Every single alternate website Reid went to told him the same thing: processed carbs and sugars, in all its forms, were to be avoided, as well as nitrates (such as those found in processed meats), antibiotics (both prescription and those used in animal-based food production such as the egg industry) and all artificial sweeteners (aspartame being at the top of the list of neurotoxins). Reid went to his room, pulled out a pad of foolscap and a pen and came back. Took rapid notes. The chemo had made his brain fuzzy, and he wanted to remember the important bits.
Stacy was sitting on the sofa, studying. She looked over at him time from time, still a little unsure of how to act around him.
"This is interesting research. This possible link between the mycellial fungal form of Candida albicans and cancer. Cancer as the body's natural defense. Have you looked into this?" Reid said, eyes glued to the screen of his laptop.
Stacy shook her head.
"No, I haven't."
"I am going to ditch all the processed sugars and start drinking alkaline water. Right now the Arm & Hammer, and tomorrow, alkalinized with non-aluminum sodium bicarbonate. They sell some at Wholefoods, I saw it there 213 days ago when I was looking for baking supplies to make chocolate chip cookies with Garcia. I am also interested in a supplement called Cell Food. It was designed by a man named Dr. Everett L. Storey in the 40s. Storey was a genius who helped to develop the hydrogen bomb," Reid said, voice slurring a little with fatigue. Stacy watched him. Smiled at him. Morgan had told her Reid was prone to rambling speeches like this. What she found most encouraging was that he had life in his eyes now, even if his hair was gone and his cheekbones were hard enough to cut flesh on.
His eyes were dancing with hope and it was impossible not to smile at that.
"I am working on an alkaline, no sugar diet for myself. I am going to have to throw away all the boost. There is a local food delivery service. They will bring me organic eggs from chickens that haven't received antibiotics," Reid was making rapid notes. Stacy noticed that his hand was shaking a bit. From adrenaline? Fatigue? Excitement? All three.
"I want to get my calories up," Reid confirmed. "But not by ingesting processed sugars. Do you know anyone who can use the boost meal replacements?"
"I am sure I could find a use for them," Stacy said. She put down her medical text, came over to Reid and sat beside him on the couch he was on. It was an old battered thing that Morgan had apparently hauled over from a thrift store a week or so ago, and out of place with Reid's decor, but much more comfortable than Reid's pre-cancer sofa. Reid had taken to falling asleep on the couch, IV imbedded in his hand, eyes glazed over from internet research or paging through xeroxed medical studies.
"Oh yes, Storey," Reid said, getting back on track. "He helped develop the hydrogen bomb, but then, later... began to sick. As did many of his colleagues. Here, let me read," Reid said bluntly, and before waiting for a response from his nurse, was dictating to her what was in front of him on his laptop screen.
"But after the war, Storey and many of his colleagues discovered a more personal crisis: they were dying of radiation poisoning, a result of their exposure while witnessing bomb tests. It was then that Storey developed the conceptual blueprint for CELLFOOD. He theorized that the same water-splitting technology that produced a bomb could be made to heal a human life. By utilizing hydrogen's non-radioactive isotope, deuterium, and a full blend of required trace minerals, enzymes and amino acids, he would create a solution, an 'electromagnetic equation' that could release vital oxygen and hydrogen into his blood, continues on reverse stream, remove toxic radiation, rebuild his systems, and return him to health. Storey stated:
"It is time for the general acceptance of the concept that even in some terminal cases, our bodies can, given essential building blocks, repair and reconstitute every living cell within a span of 11 months."
It worked and the world was presented with CELLFOOD. Benefiting from its healing effects, Everett Storey lived into his late 70's," Reid stopped and looked over. He was grinning. "I have been looking at the tests on this product. USP challenge test. :D50 acute oral toxicity safety study and, and... dark field microscopy report. Free radical analytical studies. The list goes on and on."
Stacy smiled at him.
"Reid... there are lots of products that are supposed to help-"
"I'm trying this," Reid said resolute. "And the alkaline diet. The sodium bicarbonate water. I also want some matcha green tea powder and spirulina powder. And coconut milk. Coconut oil for the caprylic acid and the high omega 3 counts. Also, also..." Reid trailed. His words were slipping and sliding over each other. He was almost manic with excitement, with hope.
""Do you know what Hippocrates said? The founding father of modern medicine?"
Stacy shook her head. She had no idea what Reid would blurt out, but couldn't stop smiling at him, at his enthusiasm, his passion for life.
"He said: 'let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.' Pretty amazing statement. Even stranger, the average medical doctor in the west has fewer than 12 hours of education when it comes to nutrition and the benefits of nutrition on the human body. Weird, right?"
Stacy just nodded.
"Cell food. Non-aluminum baking soda. Avocados. Cold pressed coconut oil. Low-sugar miso soup base. Kimchi for the probiotics. Raw sauerkraut for the probiotics. Hmmm... unsweetened carob. Extra virgin olive oil. Wild caught salmon. I will also need urine PH test strips from the health food store. Ideal human PH is between 7.35 and 7.45, but cancer sufferers universally are much more acidic, and testing one's urine is apparently an easy way to judge if you are becoming more alkaline overall, with diet changes. Also, I want organic milk kefir for the probiotics. And... and I will need milk kefir grains, to make my own kefir. Cheaper. Probiotics, to restock good bacteria to the bowels." Reid was speeding, not really speaking to his nurse, just speaking. He clicked on a few keys. "Here, 45 minutes away. Someone is selling milk kefir grains for 2 dollars a tablespoon. I will take 8 tablespoons and drink a liter of kefir a day, that should be sufficient..."
"I am glad you are so excited," Stacy said, eyeing him. She really was. But at what cost? One thing was for certain, he was going to sleep like the dead tonight. No pun intended.
"Very interesting research here on phenolated iodine, a quarter cup a day apparently helps with brain fog due to candida albican die off and..." Reid murmured these words three minutes later and stopped talking, attention drawn to whatever article his eyes were leaping across. Then he fell silent, pulled back into the storm of his own curiosity and hope. 30 minutes later Stacy looked up to find him slumped over and sleeping, mouth hanging open, drool slowly pooling down the side of his face and onto the collar of his white t-shirt. His cheeks were flushed, brow sweaty, skin a bit pallid. He'd worn himself out. Stacy went over to him, gently moved his laptop so it wouldn't fall from his lap and crash on the floor, and looked over his notes. They were shaky, messy and written in a hurry, but full of life and fervor. She was reminded of the feverish research and study of any great genius, or anyone facing imminent death who refuses to give up. Crises really did tend to bring out tenacity in people.
And if anyone had a shot beating this disease, Reid did.
Reid, suddenly, was a young boy again. Maybe 8, maybe 10 years old. Not pubescent, but not so tiny as to be completely unable to understand reality and the nature of death. He was wearing his yellow pajamas, the one-piece ones with the white zipper from the throat all the way down to the crotch, the padded feet, the fabric soft and almost furry, like the body of a Jim Henson muppet, the cuffs around the wrists and ankles white elastic material. "Your good dream" pajamas. His mother had purchased them for him when he had suffered his first existential night terror regarding death and the eventual certainty of his own demise. He had known about death and dying much earlier, of course, from the earliest days of his childhood. His mother had never been one to shelter him from any inconvenient or hard truths in life. But intellectual understanding wasn't the same thing as emotional, existential terror.
The concept of death opened up a sidewise 8 of obsessive rumination in his head, an infinity symbol of fear. He became, for a time, scared of going to sleep, lest his heart stop beating in his sleep. The unknown was darkness, and death was darkness, the lack of consciousness, of self-awareness and intellect and identity. All of this had terrified him to the bone. Deeper than the bone, really. And the nightmares had stared, so Diana Reid had purchased her little genius child a pair of fuzzy yellow pajamas more suitable for someone half his age and finagled a fisher price cassette recorder, used, at a yard sale for 2 dollars and 50 cents. At Radio Shack she had purchased little Spencer a set of tapes, so if he woke up in the middle of the night with existential questions, with racing thoughts, he could talk into his tape recorder. In this way, the tapes would become a record of his fear and his progress to come to terms with his own physical mortality (Diana wasn't certain about non-local consciousness, and, being agnostic, told Spencer there was no way to really know about such things one way or the other). She had also purchased the young prodigy a collection of cassettes, everything from Michael Jackson to Prokofiev and back to the childish realm of Raffi. For the long, lonely nights of the soul when his mind raced and fear griped him. Because really, the fear of dying as a fear that could not be readily sorted out. Not if what you feared wasn't pain or suffering, but the unknown and possible endless lights out of consciousness which death seemed to imply. The eternal shadow. Thoughts of death leaped to thoughts of fate, free will, time, possible lack of time, overlap of dimensions... it just didn't stop. Metaphysics had blurred with distant religious teachings, with scientific discussions of transhumanism, with biological explanations for death. His mind twirled and swirled and he felt like he must be going mad, like his mother (like mother, like son, and oh boy! He could hear the schoolyard taunts now). The cassette tapes had helped some. The music. On the worst nights, when he felt like he was going mad (did everyone experience this profound existential horror? The kids at his school didn't seem to be so pallid and pensive, with dark circles under their eyes and some of them were one and a half times his age or more) he would listen to Prokofiev's Dance of the Knights and he could tell from the music that somewhere along the long march of human lives, others had felt like he had. Maybe for different reasons, but the horror and fear and gnawing rat-pain of uncertainty, the sheer torment of repressive benighted existence, so tender and fragile... others had experienced this. He wasn't alone in his fear.
And now he was that yellow boy again, yellow figuratively and literally, clad in his muppet one piece pajamas. He was running through a maze of root-like trees, stretching their tendrils towards a burnt orange sky. What had happened to the sky? The sun was gone, that was for sure. The sun had exploded, he knew this instinctively, but where... where was that hellish orange light coming from? The tendrils swarmed and pulsated in the eerie, eldritch light.
Suddenly he was staring at one of the trees and was sure that it wasn't a tree, but a fungus. Mycellium? A sickly green, and it was talking to him. He followed the waving, pulsing movement of the fungus-strand and felt a horrible vertigo roll through his belly, then his head. The fungus had eyes! And it was glowing an unnatural green like "Slimer" from the Ghostbusters.
"Cancer is a crab," the fungus said to him, and continued to wave in the orange-red night sky.
"A crab?" Little Spencer confirmed. Not out loud. In his mind. And the fungus heard.
"A crab is cancer. It will cut you up with its sharp little claws!"
"You aren't making any sense," Spencer informed the fungus.
"I am a fungus."
"I know that."
"I am a fun guy," the telepathic mycellium said stolidly.
"No, you're not," Spencer informed the dream-fungus. "You're horrible. You are making me sick, aren't you? You are killing me."
"I gave birth to a tumor. It lives in your brain."
"Will you kill me?" Spencer asked. The creature before him seemed honest. Cruel, but honest.
"Yes. No. Nooooo... I don't like oxy-geeeennnnnnnnnnn..."
"You're hard to understand."
"Feed me sugar, or I will die," undulating, telepathic fungus said then, and it almost sounded pitiful.
"I want you to die!"
And then, it began to laugh.
"All cancer is fungus, squared." And it began to laugh harder. Then the laughter turned into a bleating, like a goat. No... sharper than a goat. Like, like an alarm.
And Reid woke up to the sound of his phone ringing. He checked the clock. 11:53 a.m. Stacy had left at 6:30. He knew if he got up and wandered into the kitchen there would be a note wishing him well for the day. She would be back at 7:30. Crazy hours, but good pay. She worked 5 days, then 2 days break. In the daytime, walk in clinics were open in case Reid needed to see a doctor, but didn't need an ambulance. It was the best option. Insurance wouldn't pay for round-the-clock care. He wasn't sick enough.
Not yet.
Reid rubbed at his eyes. He felt foggy headed, not quite present, not quite awake. Half drunk, half high. But suddenly certain. He ran the dream through his head. All cancer is fungus, squared.
And he smiled.
chapter end (sorry it's been three years, I will finish this puppy- didn't intend to, but if it is a life-affirming story for anyone, then I suppose it is worth finishing- please review!)