Chapitre 7: Valerie (1)
I lay in bed staring at the white ceiling as I thought about the actions of the previous day. It felt like a dream, everything moved in slow motion and my actions flowed so naturally without any real thought. On top of that, I felt bones break with each strike I landed and yet I didn't suffer any injuries or even feel any pain.
<What the hell is going on? This has to do with my cells changing, right? A month ago, they were a fourth their normal size and there was four times as many…..I need to see if this has changed at all.>
With that, I decided to use my medical school connections to get access to one of the labs so that I could investigate what was going on further. It took a bit of convincing and a bit of pleading but after a week of negotiating, I was finally able to get access to the lab. They only allowed me access because of my medical background, and they believed that it would help take my mind of the events of the last few months. After I was granted access, I wasted no time in going to work on testing myself. I drew some of my blood from my left index finger and I took a vial of blood from my left cubital fossa, however it took an unusually great deal of force to break the skin, which struck me as quite strange and deepened my curiosity. I used the blood from the pin print to create a basic blood film by heat fixing the cells to the slide and staining it using Romanowsky stain. While I was waiting for the stain to dry, I ran a full blood count analysis on the vial of blood. The stain had dried before the machine had finished computing my results, so I decided to examine it under the microscope first.
"What the fuck is going on? I know I did the stain correctly…where are my cells?" I mumbled frustratedly under my breath as I stared down the microscope. I couldn't make out individual cells even at four hundred times magnification, all I could see was a sea of red. I added the emulsion oil and went to a thousand times magnification. This was the highest magnification I could use with a light microscope in this lab, the highest in the hospital was only five hundred times more magnification, so there wasn't too much difference in the magnification capacities. Under the one thousand magnification, I was able to make out too much detail, but I could see slight outlines of my red blood cells. From what I could tell, their diameter was roughly 400 nanometres, for reference the normal red blood diameter is between six to eight micrometres. My red blood cells were now roughly a sixteenth the size of normal red blood cells and there was a lot of them, far more than there should be.
<At this size, I should be too oxygen deprived to be out of hospital, yet alone be able to function normally and brawl in an alleyway.>
Whilst I was still deep in thought, the blood analysis machine beeped to let me know that the results have been completed. I checked the results and my jaw almost hit the floor. My average cell volume was much smaller than normal, which I expected thanks to the blood film, and my cell numbers and haemoglobin levels were all far greater than the normal reference range, roughly sixteen times the normal range.
<Well this explains why I can still function normally, despite having far smaller cells, there are so many of them that they can still perform the functions they need to with ease. Actually, they can probably perform them better. I'm going to need to test this...>
With that thought, I packed up in the lab and headed home. When I got home, I went straight to the self-contained gym shed in the backyard. It was a very unassuming shed, typical grey silver panels all around and a large sliding door on the front. The shed itself was approximately eight metres wide, five metres long and three metres tall. The sliding front door took up half the length of the shed.
<If what I remember from my hospital stay was correct then it's not just my blood cells that were smaller and more numerous, but all my cells.>
It made sense to me that all my cells would be affected given the greatly accelerated healing time from my numerous injuries, however I still needed to test the theory. I decided to test my theory by testing my strength. Before the accident, my strength was never lacking, and I took great joy in my strength training. However, this was the first time I'd even thought about training again. I used to train with Amy regularly and now she was gone I was unable to face the gear we gleefully shared.
<I need to do this….>
I took a deep breath and slide the door open, letting the afternoon sun into the shed. The squat rack, flat bench and Olympic weightlifting gear was all covered in a few months' worth of dust. After I cleaned all the equipment, it was time to test the theory. I started with some deadlifts, I loaded up my usual starting weight of 100kg and did one rep.
"Hmmm, I must have misread the weights and gone too light….I can't feel any resistance" I muttered to myself quite perplexed as I re-examined the weights. I double checked the weights and discovered, I had been correct in my original loading, it was indeed 100kg worth.
<I would have expected something, I haven't trained in over three months. Though, if my theory is correct….>
I decided to skip the warm ups and go straight to a deadlift with every weight I had in the shed. The bar now weighed 250kg, it was far beyond my previous personal best.
<This will be a good test.>
I braced myself for the heavy lift and tried to deadlift it. To my somewhat surprise, I lifted the weight without any effort, it felt no different that the 100kg lift. My theory was starting to look a lot more realistic.
<I wonder….>
With a passing thought, I tried to do something that would have been deemed reckless by many and downright dangerous by the rest.
<Focus….>
I moved the 250kg barbell with one fluid movement from the ground to over my head as I dropped below it in a deep snatch position and easily stood up with the barbell held out above my head.
Once I was satisfied with my technique, I dropped the barbell to the ground to a thunderous crash that only a 250kg weight could do when dropped from a height.
<What the fuck just happened!?! That was a 250kg snatch, that's gotta be some sort of record! And it felt easy, like really easy.>
As the enormity of what I had just done started to sink in, a euphoria spread over me, driving me to find just how far I could go. After an hour or so of training, I had exhausted my ability to learn anymore from my equipment. I had performed every weightlifting and strength training exercise I knew, I did each of them with the maximum weights I had available and I did each of them at least one hundred times each without stopping. I didn't feel fatigued in the slightest after or even during all the training, it felt no different than picking up a coin off the floor.
"I'm going to need to find something heavier." I laughed with a gleeful grin spreading from ear to ear.
Before I could go on the hunt for something heavier, I was interrupted by my phone buzzing. I checked my phone to find one new message from Valerie. She wanted to take me out for dinner one night to say thank you for helping her and her brother that night. I told her to pay it no mind, that I just did what anyone looking on would of have done and to know that they were safe was all I needed. I thought that would be the end of that, but I was wrong, very wrong.
Later that week, Paul came around to my house to watch the cricket and have some drinks.
"Do you really think Australia can come back from this? The need 100 runs of 60 balls. They look pretty cooked to me." Paul grumbled begrudgingly, he was a die-hard Australian cricket supporter and never took their losses particularly well.
"You never know mate, they've pulled off so pretty amazing come…." I trailed off as I was distracted by my phone buzzing. I checked it to find another message from Valerie.
"Who is it?" inquired Paul?
"Valerie, the girl from the alleyway fight."
"I know the one, what does she want?"
"She wants to take me out for dinner to say thanks. She keeps asking and I keep saying there's no
need."
"Why?"
"To say thanks?"
"No, I mean why do you keep saying no."
"Because there's no need, I just stepped in to help someone out. There's nothing special about that. They're safe, I'm happy, nothing else needs to be done."
"Well, no one else did step in, on we did. Everyone else tried to ignore it as they walked past, so you know that excuse is crap. Also, every thought maybe she wants to take you out for other reasons? From what I remember she was pretty…"
"I know, but I'm just not ready for anything like that yet. It's only been three months. Everything is still too raw."
"I get that, but still….Also, you know you're being pretty rude constantly turning her down with a really shitty excuse. I get that you're not ready for anything but at least be up front with her about that or meet her for something more low key like coffee or some shit."
"Fair play, although I don't think she sees it as anything more than repaying some debt that she feels like she owes me for some reason. That damsel in distress falling for their white knight shit only exists inside anime and your head, real world doesn't work like that."
"You'd be surprised."
"Doubt it, anyway you're right that I should at least offer an alternative."
Our discussion prompted me to message Valerie that dinner seemed like a bit much but that I would happily accept a coffee. She replied almost instantly and suggested a time next weekend, to which I reluctantly agreed. After a week of chipping away at it, she had finally got what she wanted.
État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone