Midnight's daughters

Midnight's daughters 7

I haven’t even started school yet and I’m stressed out. One look at the toxicology text book and I knew it would be hard. So far this is what I have learnt of toxicology. Toxicology is hard. I don’t know half of what it is about. I’ll give you a brief introduction of it:

Toxic kinetics

Or how the body handles poisons

Ø  Absorption into the body

·       As a general rule, fat soluble liquids are readily absorbed through the skin and fat soluble vapours are readily absorbed through the lungs. Notably these routes apply to organic solvents such as hexane, toluene, trichloroethylene and many others. 

Ø  Distribution within the body

·       Many factors affect the distribution of a toxic substance but water or fat solubility is very important. Thus for example water soluble compounds of lead are found (amongst other places) in the red blood cells, while fat soluble ones concentrate in the central nervous system (CNS).

·       The distribution of a toxic substance determines its concentration at a particular tissue and therefore the number and type of cells exposed to high concentrations of it. 

Ø  Metabolism/ biotransformation of toxic substances

·       Toxic substances may be converted into other substances (metabolites) by organs such as the liver and kidneys

·       Thus non-polar and therefore not water soluble organic compounds tend to be oxidised within the liver e.g.:

·       Trichloroethane oxidised to trichloroethanol trichloroacetaldehyde and trichloroacetic acid

·       Dichloromethane (methylene chloride CH2Cl2) oxidised to carbon monoxide (CO)

·       Water soluble metabolites are then more easily excreted by the kidney (see below)

·       Metabolism or biotransformation does not necessarily result in less toxic compounds. For example benzene may be oxidised to an epoxide which then inflicts damage on the DNA in genes, i.e. it is genotoxic and thence carcinogenic

Routes of elimination of toxic substances / or their metabolites

·       Kidneys - especially water soluble substances

·       Lungs - especially fat soluble vapours e.g. - alcohols, or gases such as carbon monoxide

 Treatment

Ø  Treatment:

·       Decontamination e.g. eye washes, showers, etc. 

·       Antidotes e.g. methylene blue for treating methaemoglobinaemisa caused by aniline

·       Other treatment e.g. oxygen for asphyxia

It doesn’t make sense now does it? It doesn’t help knowing I’ll have to use this information to kill someone with poison or heal someone with this knowledge. Why can’t I be like those creepy sci-fi movies where you can easily heal someone with a thought…Of course that never happens you only heal yourself and then decide have revenge by spontaneously causing someone to explode, have revenge, turn bad, good guy tries to stop you etc.

And don’t get me started on the biology. The easiest topic in there was human infectious diseases and that could scar you for life. It was that disgusting. Physics was okay. Trauma care was…unique. It was like learning to be an emergency medic.

First aid training was basically to teach us the basics before moving on to apply our knowledge to situations and then teach us about surgery. It was probably the easiest subject in the entire schedule well until they start teaching you about surgery.  

Hand to hand combat taught us moves to beat people up or kill them and about weapons and how to use them. I don’t know what it says about me but I think my favourite weapon is the whip then the sword followed by the knife and then the gun. Followed by the other weapons I will never use.

Math was like AP math for college students. Chemistry taught us to create and mix the chemicals to create poisons or cures or medicine. It also taught us about poisins we can extract from plants and animals to kill and how to cultivate them. Bacteriology was to teach us to identify bacteria and occasionally use it to cause infections or kill a person. I know nasty.

Satan promised to help me with weapons and hand to hand combat. Poppy promised to help me with math and biology. Zee promised to blackmail the other medic students to help me with whatever I needed help with. This was sweet…in a sick way because it probably involved blackmail. From what I’ve observed about her so far, she knows everything you need to know about everyone here. And by everything you can guess it means very bad things about everyone. So I guess it would be okayish to have her as a sister.

But I still wanted to go home. Don’t get me wrong I love each of my sisters…Well the ones I’ve met so far…but I miss mom. I can’t believe I basically told her I hated her.

“Zee I’m going for a walk on the beach okay?” I asked Zee. In this family she basically took the role of a mother while the rest of us were her troublesome daughters. Though I have known them for a few days, I feel as if I’ve known them all my life.

“Okay don’t be late, dinner is almost ready and it’s going to be dark soon.” Zee responded. I smiled and agreed and went to the beach. I walked on the beach loving the feeling of the sand underneath my feet. I remembered the good times I had with Aaron and mom.

+++Memory+++

“Momma what’s this place called?” I asked shyly.

“The beach.” She said happily. It was rare for her to be happy then and it made me happy.

“What do you do at a beach?” I asked giggling.

“Play, have fun almost whatever you want.” She answered. We had a picnic and played tag. Mom taught me and Aaron how to swim and we saw little ‘fishys’ it the sea and we tried catching them. We ran around and explored the rock pools. We built a sand castle and I was the princess and Momma was the queen and Aaron was going to be the prince but he killed the castle. So he became the monster. On the way home mom saw a wanted poster and went pale.

+++Over+++

After that day she became who she is today. Running, hiding and fleeing. She was never happy after that day. Involuntarily a tear rolled down my face.

Mom.

I can’t believe I told her I hated her. After all the good times we had and all that we had been through.

Now the tears streamed down her face. I love you mom. I’m so sorry. I wish you were here so I can tell you that myself. I miss you.

I heard footsteps behind me and wiped the tears of my face and composed myself. I realised I was staring at the sunset crying. How stupid of me. I took a deep breath and waited for the person to say something to me.