Aldous Turner sat at the picnic table on the corner of third street, eating an egg salad sandwich. Cars rolled by and sent streaks of light across his bespectacled face. It was a warm spring day in the city of Tacoma, Washington. Rain had fallen the night before and left dark stains on the surrounding pavement.

A cherry blossom meandered toward the table, pirouetting on a zephyr. The flower landed next to Aldous’ left hand. The pink petals were the same shade as a Mary Kay Escalade. Picking up the flower, he inhaled its scent before placing it where it had landed. 

Gobbling down the rest of his sandwich, Aldous hurried back to the lab. Fluorescent bulbs flickered a monotone pulse across checkered tile flooring. He heard his apes chattering halfway down the hall. 

The door unlatched just a moment after he scanned a keycard. Lab assistants adorned in flowing white coats bustled through the large room. Grabbing his smock, Aldous headed to the nearest cleaning station. The suds felt comfortable to him. His forearms were raw and pink due to the years of constant cleansing. Snapping on gloves and a facemask, he used his elbows to push open the door to the primate containment unit. 

Dr. Glass stood next to a ten by 20-foot wire cage. She held a clipboard and was jotting down notes. An anxious chimp wandered from end to end. 

“New tenant?” Aldous asked.

She didn’t bother looking up from her clipboard. “Yup, subject T1212. Optical nerve damage on the right eye due to oxygen deficiency at birth.” 

Aldous looked at the chimpanzee. Its eye carried a milky haze It bared its teeth, breathing heavily. “Looks like it hurts. What’s the specifics?”

Dr. Glass looked down at her chart. “Intraocular pressure placed on the optical nerve, causing atrophy and eventually death to the organ.”

Aldous bent down and stared into the creature's black and milky gaze. His lips formed an O and a nervous whoop barked from his throat.

“Don't look them in the eye,” Dr. Glass scolded. “How many times do I have to tell you? Eye contact is perceived as aggression! They are different than us in that way.”

“I was just looking at his eye. With any luck, we’ll be giving him back his sight. I doubt he’ll hold a grudge.” He stood back to his feet and glanced at the chart in Dr. Glass’ hand. “Does he have a name?”

“T1212, I think it has a nice ring to it. Don’t you, doctor?”

Aldous balked. “First things first, he needs a name.”

Dr. Glass leaned back with her arms folded across her chest. “How about Tim? He looks like a Tim to me.”

He shook his head and scowled. “No, Tim is my father’s name. How about Frank? I think he could pass for a Frank.”

A curious expression found itself perched on Dr. Glass’ face. “But, Frank is my father's name. Did you know that?”

Aldous’ eyes went wide. “I’ll be damned. No, I didn’t know. Frank won’t do either, then.”

“No, it will not.” Dr. Glass gazed down at the caged ape. “How about Ivan?”

“A strong name for a strong chimp.”

Dr. Glass nodded, admiring the beast's stout musculature. “Now that that business is over with, should we get to work?”

“Yes, but first could I get a copy of his chart?”

“Of course.” She snapped her fingers and a pimply-faced lab assistant materialized at her side. His trembling hands indicated at an overly caffeinated nervous system. “Print out a copy of T1212’s chart. And, if it’s no trouble could you change his name to Ivan?”

The assistant nodded and sped off, the lower half of his lab coat fanned out a few inches above the ground. 

“Remember when we were young like him? Fresh out of college, brain spilling over with information and enthusiasm,” Aldous sighed.

Dr. Glass rolled her eyes. “Some of us are still young, Aldous.” 

His eyebrows crinkled into mock shock. “I am offended. Careful, you may be young still, but no one escapes time’s cruel fate.”

“No one has escaped yet,” she corrected. “But, through science all things are possible! Even if we don’t understand how yet.”

“Ah,” Aldous held up his index finger “There’s the enthusiasm so abundant in youth.”

Dr. Glass shook her head, a slight grin parted the corner of her mouth. “You’re not old, Aldous. You have plenty of enthusiasm for the both of us.”

“So, are you saying that I shouldn’t invest in a new walker?”

The acne covered assistant made a beeline for me. A lock of his hair stuck up like the mast of a ship. A thin sheen of perspiration covered his dermis. Aldous took the clipboard and grunted in affirmation. Without words, the assistant turned and hurried across the lab.

Big bold letters displayed the name Ivan across the top of his sheet. “Estimated age: 38 years. Looks like I’m not the only senior citizen in here.”

“History of abuse, doesn’t trust humans, poor creature.” Dr. Glass bit the top of her pen as her eyes danced across the sheet. “No known allergies, and rH positive blood. I think we are good to go.”

“We are going to have to trank him.”

“It’s for his benefit.”

Ivan started to breathe heavily, his eyes darted from Aldous to Dr. Glass. His fingers curled around the wire mesh. His lips were drawn back to what looked like a human smile but to the great ape, this expression meant nothing other than fear. 

Dr. Glass snapped her fingers and the nervous assistant was at his feet once more.

“Yes, Dr. Glass?”

“Has he eaten this morning?”

“No, not yet. It’s on the chart.”

“Get him some food and put some tranquilizer in it, will you? There's no need to bring out the dart gun if we don’t have to.” She looked down at the chart. “Especially with what he's been through.” 

Aldous cracked a few knuckles with his index finger. “Do you think it’s going to work this time?”

“We’ve slaved over this for thousands of hours. We’ve put in the work.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

Dr. Glass bit her lip. “Dammit, Aldous. I hope so, for Ivan’s sake. If it doesn’t, we’ll put in the next thousand hours until it does work. This is medicine, not a construction job. We don’t have the luxury of having a timeline.” 

The pill was slipped into a banana. After a suspicious sniff, a bite was taken. In a furious dash, the ape shoved the remaining food down his gullet. Aldous marked the time ‘12:45-pm’ onto the margins of his chart. 

Within the hour, Ivan’s eyelids started to droop. He rocked back and forth on his feet and used a weak hand on the wall to steady himself. With one last yawn, the beast collapsed onto the ground. A slight rise and fall of his chest was accentuated by soft snoring that indicated his unconsciousness. 

“Subject fell into a medically assisted sleep at 1:02-pm.” 

Aldous jotted chicken scratch on his paper. Two assistants appeared a few feet behind him. “Alright, we have two and a half hours. Let’s be quick and precise, I don’t want any complications. Ivan has already been through enough. He doesn’t need to deal with a botched surgery.”

A tray of medical equipment was materialized. Metal instruments clinked against the stainless steel tray. A bottle of iodine and cotton swabs took up the left hemisphere of the tray.

Aldous took the cart and rushed over to Ivan’s cage. His key card buzzed the door open. The creature had a different kind of elegance sprawled out on the floor. Hard looks had softened to a tranquilizer fueled oblivion. His nostrils flared with each intake of breath. 

He’s beautiful, Aldous remarked unconsciously. 

They wasted no time. A small incision was introduced right beneath his tear duct. A small crimson stream spilled from the open wound. 

Dr. Glass gripped a cotton swab with a pair of forceps and dipped it into the iodine. The dark brown liquid stained the snow-white swab. It seeped into the wound, streaming down into the crimson flow.

The assistant passed Aldous a small metal cylinder. The pressurized container popped as he twisted it open. Wisps of vapor circled the rim. A small pellet fell as he tipped it out into the tray. Using a pair of tweezers, he picked up the innocuous gray object and placed it into the incision. The dissolvable stuck to the exposed fatty tissue. Aldous dropped the tweezers and picked up the suture line. He dunked it into a tin of rubbing alcohol to sterilize it. The curved needle gleamed underneath the LED lights that hung a few feet above their heads. The sharp point pierced the primate’s leathery skin with pinpoint accuracy.

Aldous stepped back and admired his handiwork. The chimpanzee’s chest rose and fell in a shallow rhythm. The stitches underneath his eye gave the animal the appearance that it had gotten into a bit of a brawl. His cheek twitched and yellow fangs peeked out from beneath dark pigmentation. His parted lips let out a slight whistle. 

“Operation complete at,” Dr. Glass glanced down at the watch on her wrist. “1:35-pm, no complications.”

“You don’t have to tell me, doctor. I’m the one who performed it!” Aldous teased.

This time, his joke was not met with a smile or a chuckle but a cold stare. Aldous swallowed his guffaw. His eyes flicked over the chart, searching for a piece of information that he had missed, or a mistake he had made to offend her. His search came up wanting.

“I’m going to take my break,” Dr. Glass said through an exasperated sigh. 

Aldous watched as her lab coat traced the tile behind each step. He hoped that he had not come across as a fool. Professionalism was the scaffolding that held the scientific community together and allowed progress to be built around it. He wanted her to respect him, but not only that. He hoped for friendly connection, a cohort to spend the day isolating molecules and taking measurements with. If Dr. Glass thought of Aldous as nothing more than a clown, friendly respect was out of the question. Aldous sighed and tapped his pen on his clipboard.