The TRANSPARENT man

The TRANSPARENT man

Satish reached his house in Mumbai after dropping his one-year-old daughter Archana and wife Vidya at her father’s place in Pune. They were there to attend Vidya’s younger brother’s marriage.  Satish was very much occupied with his office work. So he decided that he would join the marriage function just a day before the actual event which was three weeks away.

Satish finished his dinner and entered the bedroom.  He had some strange feeling in his right hand. He scratched his elbow and ignored it. He pulled the bedsheet on and fell off to sleep.

At around two in the night, he had some irritating sensation on his right hand again. In the dark only he scratched his elbow again and tried to go off to sleep. But this time the awkward feeling he could not ignore. He switched on the light. Satish was shocked. 

Some part of his forehand was looking different. He could see the muscles under the skin. The muscles were contracting and expanding as he moved his hand forward. The network of blood vessels surrounding the muscles was carrying the blood with some force. Satish could not understand what was wrong with him. But slowly the transparency of his skin started spreading. His entire right-hand skin had turned transparent.

Satish was confused. But before he could think of seeing a doctor in the morning, his left hand started getting transparent. Slowly his entire upper half of the body was transparent. He could see the cage of chest bones. With his breathing, the chest cage was expanding and contracting. He was scared. And now his legs were turning transparent. He could see the muscles and bones of his legs. He took out his underclothes. And he saw a complete skeleton in the mirror.

Satish was extremely worried. How could he get on to the road? What if anybody saw him in this state? He decided to call the doctor in the morning and tried to go to sleep.

In the morning when he got up, he looked at himself. The skeleton of his body was horrifying. In a trembling voice, he called the doctor and requested him to visit him for an urgent check-up. The doctor understood the seriousness of the situation.

After half an hour, the bell on the door rang. Satish peeped through the peephole. Yes. That was Doctor Nagarsekar at the door. Satish put a scarf around his face and opened the door and closed it as soon as the Doctor stepped inside. Doctor without raising his head muttered,

“What happened as soon as your wife went to her parents?”

Satish removed the scarf from his face and said.”Doctor…”

Before Satish could gather words to express himself, Doctor looked up. He saw the bare bones of his face. He was shocked. “Satish…”

“Doctor, since early morning around two o’clock I noticed that I could see muscles of my right arm. I tried to ignore it. But some strange feeling continued. My left arm also started showing the muscles. And I could see the bones of my both hands. Then in the mirror, I could see the rib cage of my chest. In minutes I could see the entire skeleton of my body. Doctor, please do something. I do not want to be transparent.”

“Do not worry. You get admitted to the hospital immediately. We will monitor the development.”

“Doctor, I am worried about other people. If they see me in this state, the rumours can spread in no time.”

“You can come along with me. So that nobody will know about this”

“I wish my wife does not hear about this right now. There is a marriage organized in the family some three weeks away. I do not want to create any problem for them.”

“Satish, trust me. We will do everything possible. This is a very rare problem that has come up. We will have to carry out various tests to decide our course of action. Come. Let us go.”

Satish wrapped the scarf around his face and sneaked out of the building.

In the hospital, Satish was put up in a special room with instructions to the staff not to enter the room unless help was called for. Satish was relieved that the secrecy would be maintained. He would not have to face an embarrassing situation.

A trusted medical technician entered the room, took the blood samples from the transparent skin. It was very easy for him to take the blood sample from the blood vessels as they were visible. After taking enough blood to carry out various tests, the technician left the room. Satish was given some sedative drug to put him to sleep as he was mentally very disturbed.

Doctor Nagarsekar, was lost in thoughts. ‘This was a problem of pigmentation. Our skin gets brown, black, white, etc. colours due to pigmentation characteristics in the epidermis part of the skin. It looks like some mutation of some genes has taken place and that has caused the melanin generated by melanocytes i.e. pigment to become transparent. And because of this, the skin has become transparent. So it can not restrict the visibility of the body mechanism which is under the skin. The blood vessels, the muscles, the bones could be seen by the outside world. ‘

Otherwise normal, Satish was able to conduct all his duties properly. He finished his bath and again he got upset when he came in front of the mirror. The network of blood vessels, the flowing blood in them, the contracting and expanding muscles could be seen clearly. He felt he could be an ideal model for learners of physiology. But that idea had him shiver.

He was wondering how to get in touch with his wife Vidya. He wanted to play with his daughter Archana. What would be their reaction?

At lunchtime, his food was brought in by the same confidant. Satish could pick up the food as normally he would do. But the chewing of food, gulping, and further passage of food was visible. From the mouth through the digestive tract, the food entered the stomach. He could see the mixing of enzymes secreted by various parts of the body. The movement of the intestines, the absorption of juices from the food could be seen. Though he did not have any physical pain, Satish was very upset. It was a fact that the entire body mechanism in action was visible to the outside world.

In the evening when Doctor entered his room with the reports of various tests, Satish found Doctor worried. “Satish, we have confirmed that there is nothing wrong physically. You are fit 100 percent. The problem is the pigment of the epidermis. The melanocytes generating the melanin have a problem. There is a mutation of some genes. But we do not have any remedy. We can not restore the functioning of the gene. Our entire team is working on it. We are sure that we will find some solution. But we can not say when?”

Satish was extremely perturbed. He wanted to see his dearest wife and daughter. He decided against speaking to them on the phone as he could not gather any words to tell them about the situation without creating panic in the family which was in a great mood of enjoyment of approaching marriage function.

After some time Dr Nagarsekar entered the room with a high-quality camera recording system. He set up the cameras in the room to picture Satish’s entire body when he was carrying out his normal activity. This was the first time that one could visually monitor the movement of muscles, blood flow, food movement from mouth till digestion live without any external agent such as X Rays, Gamma Rays, etc. which may be influencing the actual operation of different parts.

A unique situation indeed, Doctor Nagarsekar thought. While observing Satish’s internal parts behaviour in detail, actually never seen before, Nagarsekar made some notes for his reference.

Dr. Nagarsekar’s team of Researchers was working very hard to find a way to restore the pigmentation of the epidermis. After working for the entire week, they called Dr. Nagarsekar to let him see the result of their struggle. And Dr. Nagarsekar was extremely happy to see the positive results. By injecting enzyme-R in the epidermis, the pigmentation could be restored.

Delighted Dr. Nagarsekar injected the enzyme-R in Satish’s hand, and in 15 minutes results were there to be seen. Satish’s skin was getting restored as wheatish as he was before.

Extremely happy, Dr. Nagarsekar entered Satish’s room. It was two days after his skin got restored and the camera set-up was removed. He checked Satish thoroughly. The skin was normal. 

After one more day under observation, Satish was discharged. Happy Satish immediately packed his duffle bag and headed for Pune to join his wife and daughter at the wedding function.

Doctor Nagarsekar had some futuristic ideas. He discussed with his team, the enzymes which must have caused the skin to become transparent.

In a day, the enzyme-T was tried on two rats. To their dismay, both the rats had become transparent. The entire body mechanism of the rat that was covered by skin now was visible from outside. After a day, the enzyme-R was injected into the skin and in a short time, the rats had become black as normal rats.

Ecstatic Dr. Nagarsekar presented his papers to the medical council which gave acceptance to his conclusions immediately.

After a year of confirmation, Dr. Nagarsekar decided to use his findings on his patients having some unspecific diseases.

One of his patients had very confusing symptoms giving pains in the leg. Nothing could be concluded. Dr. Nagarsekar used his new technic of making the skin transparent using Enzyme –T to visually monitor the functioning of the entire body without using any external agent which may influence the normal functioning of the organs.

Once the patient was transparent, the Doctor visually monitored the entire functioning of his body. And he was surprised to notice a clot in the blood vein in the foot. After careful observation, the Doctor found that slowly but surely it was moving upwards towards the heart. Though for the time being, it was causing problems only in the leg, it had the potential of moving closer to the heart resulting in restricting blood supply to the heart and consequently a heart attack.

By assaulting this blood clot right in this initial stage would eliminate all the anxiety due to the clot in the vicinity of the heart.

Dr. Nagarsekar attacked the clot in the blood vein in the foot and eliminated the hassle of the future.

Slowly the enzyme-T and enzyme-R played an important role in non-invasive diagnostic methods.

Vijay Likhite