Chapter 34
"The second time…I put it in a canning jar."
The two physicians looked at each other and then back at Superman.
"What did it look like?" Dr. Hamilton asked.
"It was one of those wide-mouthed, glass ones that mo— uh, most people use for jams and jellies." Superman had almost said the word, 'mom,' and given away a small clue to his identity with someone present in the room who did not know his secret. He was going to have to be more careful.
"I meant your blood," Dr. Hamilton clarified patiently. He had found on several occasions now that he needed to remember just how young the young man before him actually was. There was still a bit of the naïve boy left in him.
"My blood?" Superman looked confused. "It looked like blood. It was red and icky and…"
"And liquid?" Dr. Kline asked while Dr. Hamilton turned his head away to hide a smile.
"Of course, it was liquid. What else would it be? I'm not that weird, you know." They could tell by his tone, Superman was getting a little testy. They didn't know that Lois' words about his blood being possibly "green like Spock's" had come flooding back to him in that moment. Somehow it annoyed him no end.
"No, no…it's just that blood clots in about four minutes unless something called EDTA is added." Dr. Hamilton said calmly. "In collection tubes, it's already there. It was most certainly in the tube used the first time when a doctor took your blood, but you had none the second time if you used a …" he shook his head in disbelief at the thought, "…a canning jar."
"Clotting is a problem with blood storage." Dr. Kline started to explain. "You see, Superman, a host defense mechanism called hemostasis is what causes blood coagulation to protect the body."
"I know some of this is hard to follow, but—"
"No, no, I'm beginning to. It's just that sometimes it's hard to piece together things – to know that I know something, if that makes any sense."
Dr. Hamilton nodded, went to the book shelf and pulled from it a book about four inches thick. "Superman, your homework for tonight."
"More reading?" He looked at the book with a thinly disguised look of disgust.
"I don't think you need worry about a full hard drive. Your brain is most definitely capable of far more retention than ours. I'm thinking from what I've observed already, it will take you only about ten minutes at the most. Don't worry about comprehension. You'll retain it. You've retained 100 percent of everything we've thrown at you over the last two days, haven't you?"
"Yes," he admitted, "but it doesn't all make sense."
"No, it won't, not until you have the science background to connect the dots. But you will …I'm betting," he cast a long look around the book shelves lining two of the four walls, "by next week." He smiled knowingly. "Oh, to have your brain in med school!"
Dr. Klein could barely contain himself with anticipation, "Now, could we have a sample from you?"
"Okay." Superman swallowed hard before asking, "Where's the Kryptonite?" He felt a slight uneasiness, for all the trust he had placed in these two men, at the thought that they must have some hidden in the room.
"Oh, we don't want the blood to have been exposed to Kryptonite. That would affect the test results."
"Then it's going to be rather difficult getting it out of me. There's not a needle on Earth that can pierce my skin."
"I was thinking you could do that yourself with one of your own fingernails. It should work." He looked up at Dr. Hamilton. "After all, we can break our own skin with our fingernails; you should be able to do the same."
Twenty minutes later, Dr. Kline was delighted as he swirled the crimson liquid around in the test tube, seeing it continue to be as fresh as the moment it was removed from their unique test subject's veins.
The first attempt to collect the blood had failed miserably as the two doctors watched the small, self-inflicted wound close so quickly they couldn't get their sample. Two more tries yielded no better results, even having the syringe as close as possible to the cut, because the skin had healed over while the needle was in Superman's arm, breaking the metal and sealing some of it beneath his skin. He had watched with his X-ray vision as his own flesh dissolved the steel needle, his invulnerable body treating the foreign object as an invading organism. When he voiced what he was seeing, both men scrambled for their notebooks
"Amazing!"
"Eight minutes, 20 seconds….and still no signs of clotting! This is fascinating."
"So? It doesn't clot. What does that mean?" Superman asked.
"I have no idea," Dr. Klein said happily, as if the puzzle was the best part of all this.
"Perhaps his body, his blood is so resistant to, well, everything on this planet, that it has no need of any host defense mechanisms?"
"And no calcium?"
"Who knows at this point if there was calcium on Krypton?" Dr. Hamilton was smiling too. There were enough unknowns about the man before them and his home planet to fill his research schedule for years.
"Wouldn't my bones have to have calcium in them?" Superman's head was beginning to spin with all the revelations about his own body he'd heard this day.
"Not necessarily. We'll know more about that when we finish the DNA profile and the studies of the saliva samples…and now this. It's just taking so long because Mr. Queen wants us to do all the work on you ourselves, without technicians. I am sorry, Superman, but it's very time consuming."
"And then there's the ancillary study we need to do of the meteor rocks or Kryptonite, as you so correctly named them," Dr. Klein interjected. "They have never been identified anywhere on this planet except in Smallville, near where your ship landed. Their make-up is different from any other meteorites ever found on Earth."
"And the metal of that key…nothing like it anywhere else. Or at least the percentage we can't identify…there is no telling the differences that could have occurred in the periodic table for such a planet. It knocks scientific knowledge on its head, of course, but then, so do you."
"Precisely! No man can aerodynamically, physically defy gravity the way you do. It's just not possible," Dr. Klein stated with certainty.
"Yet you do."
They both smiled. Superman didn't
"So…look…you both know why I consented to all these tests. When do I find out the part I wanted to know?"
"Soon," Dr. Hamilton said soothingly. He was well aware of Superman's impatience, for he had easily guessed the reason for it. Unlike his companion's sterile approach to this research, his own area of medicine was the treatment of the whole patient.
"You know. I'm betting that his body doesn't need the mechanisms, so …"
"Atrophy?"
"It would make sense."
"I would postulate his white cell count will be way below normal."
Normal. Superman thought 'normal' was more unattainable for him than ever. It was still an unsettling thought even though he was beginning to get used to the idea of being so abnormal.
"But his oxygen levels are off the charts. I don't even see why he bothers to breathe," Dr. Kline said absently.
"What does that mean?" Superman was beginning to be annoyed at the way they talked about him as if he weren't even present.
"Oh, sorry, that was a joke. A poor one, I guess," Dr. Klein smiled awkwardly.
"Ah. That's okay. It's just that this is important to me."
"I understand."
"Do you?"
Dr Hamilton cut across him…"Superman, from what I see…I think your fears are going to be put to rest about so many things. But…"
"But?"
"But the findings on the strength tests…those are a bit troubling."
"Why?"
"Because since we started testing you two days ago…you've gotten stronger, quite a bit stronger, in fact. Yet you're not feeling it, are you? You haven't noticed any sudden burst of strength?"
"No…everything feels the same."
"He's adapting," Dr. Kline suggested.
"Yes…could be…this could have been happening since you first arrived here. Sort of like when a man's beard grows…you don't feel it…you just suddenly reach up and there's stubble, but it's grown fairly fast. Your powers are growing but you may be adjusting to them as they do."
"Oh, but we do have the results of some of the vision tests. You'll be relieved at this one." Dr. Kline moved over to his desk and shuffled through a stack of papers to find the one he wanted. "Your X-ray vision…your eyes aren't really putting off any real X-rays." He handed him a paper filled with graphs that made little sense to Superman. "Our theory is that you just have a tremendously heightened degree of perception."
"That's good, isn't it?" Superman asked hopefully. "Not putting off any X-rays?"
"Very," Dr. Hamilton declared. "It means you can't harm anyone by using it. We determined that you must be just seeing through the spaces between molecules. It's sort of like the way you describe your moving at super-speed with everyone about you seeming to stand still, and you are able to move around them without their noticing. Well, your vision seems to be working in a similar way. You are just perceiving information that is unavailable to the inferior eyes of us lowly earthlings."
"Doctors, there's nothing lowly or inferior about either of you. You're certainly a lot smarter than I am," Superman said as he looked over the confusing graphs.
"For now, Superman. For now."
