| General Fiction posted September 10, 2025 | Chapters: |
...10 11 -12- 13... 
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The first test of the home breathalyzer
A chapter in the book Beating the Devil
Beating the Devil - Chapter 12
by Jim Wile
| Background A cancer researcher invents an early cancer detection system. |
Recap of Chapter 11: Abby arrives at the Kendrick house, and the kids tell her all about the new puppy they are getting. Brian takes Abby downstairs to the basement lab, where she greets Larry, who fawns over Abby. When Brian asks him if he will have a breathalyzer ready to begin testing the following day, Larry promises to work late to complete one. Brian sees through this and knows he probably already has one ready because he knew about Abby’s visit and was just trying to impress her with his dedication.
At dinner, Abby relates what prompted her to get involved with the early cancer detection project. She tells a funny story about her and her husband’s good friend Eddie, who died of pancreatic cancer that went undiagnosed until it was too advanced.
Chapter 12
Larry was true to his word and had the first home breathalyzer built and ready for testing on Tuesday morning.
Abby said, “Larry, perhaps you could show me the main components from the half-built ones here on the table. I have a general understanding of how they all work together, but I’d like to see what goes into the construction.”
“I’d be happy to,” he said, picking up the first of the major components. It was a small chamber fitted with a polypropylene filter. “When the user breathes into the breathalyzer, this filtration system needs to filter out the moisture and any non-VOC particulates from the breath.”
He placed that down and picked up the next major component. “The filtered breaths then flow into this mini-gas chromatograph, which separates out the different VOCs.”
He placed that down and picked up the other key component. “The separated VOCs are then identified and quantified by this mini-mass spectrometer. It also contains the data processing unit that you wrote the analysis algorithms for. That’s the real heart of the cancer detection right there, as you well know. All the rest just provides the data for you to analyze. The results are then sent to the mobile app, which resides on the user’s phone. That’s it in a nutshell. Sounds simple, but there’s obviously a lot to it.”
“Thanks, Larry. You described that very well,” said Abby. “But your test subjects are rats. I assume there must be some modifications for the difference in size between rats and humans.”
“Great point, Abby,” said Brian. “You’re exactly right. What Larry just described through his excellent summary was the setup for a human breathing into the apparatus. A rat’s lung capacity is only 1/500th the size of a human’s, though, so we have to concentrate the VOCs, or we’d never detect them. Why don’t we begin the testing, and we’ll show you how that’s done?”
“Perfect. I’m going to take some notes,” said Abby.
“Me too. Let’s mark down the time and date of our very first test of the home breathalyzer: 9:00 AM on July 18, 2031.”
Larry retrieved rat #1 that had been induced with liver cancer and placed him into a clear plastic collection box.
Brian said, “This box serves much the same purpose as a puppy crate, like Julia told us about. It allows the rat to relax and breathe normally without producing any stress-related VOCs.”
Together, Brian and Larry described the different modifications they had made to concentrate the rat’s breaths so they would mimic human breaths for pumping through the breathalyzer.
When the home breathalyzer test was complete, and the results were recorded, Brian told Abby, “Now we need data to compare these results to, so we’ll also employ the standard laboratory method of analysis using the lab’s breathalyzer, full-size gas chromatograph, and mass spectrometer.”
When this new set of data had been compiled, the three of them made the comparison. “Hmm,” said Abby. “Not particularly close. I guess it would have been a miracle if they were on the first try.”
“Yep. About what I expected,” said Brian.
“Damn! I thought they’d be almost identical,” said Larry.
Brian had a wan smile and couldn’t help but give a slight shake of the head at this remark, which he knew to be a form of shameless flattery. “Now, we need to do it all over again and see if the results are repeated. If so, we’ll begin adjusting things from there.
The second complete test on rat #1 took them right up to noon. It was a tedious process that would likely require hundreds of iterations with lots of tweaking in between and thousands of hours. It was an absolutely critical step, though, in creating a repeatable, accurate detection system.
The team broke for lunch. Larry was a Taco Bell junkie and headed out, while Brian and Abby went upstairs to join Julia and the kids.
“How did it go?” asked Julia.
“I guess about how we expected,” said Brian. “The results were not very close by comparison, but we identified the factors to look at and tweak to get them closer. It’s going to take a while.”
“Ah, too bad they weren’t closer.”
“There are just so many things that can affect the outcome,” said Abby. “Larry was a lot more confident than we were.”
“Yeah,” said Brian, “but that was just Larry being Larry. Who knows what he really thought?”
“Well, are you ready for a nice lunch?” asked Julia. “I made some chicken salad, and we’ve got croissants to make sandwiches.”
“That sounds wonderful, Julia,” said Abby.
The kids joined them for lunch and filled Abby and their daddy in on the puppy purchases they made that morning at the pet store.
“Momma says we have to puppy-proof the house,” said Johnny. “That means we have to take away all the fun stuff to chew.”
“What if he tries to chew Nadia, Momma?” said Lindsay.
“I think Nadia will be able to take care of herself. She’ll give him a good swat if he tries. Your brother used to get plenty of swats when he got too rambunctious with her.”
“I still do, but it’s kind of funny when she swats me now.”
“Funny to you, maybe, but you probably annoy her.”
He was sorry he mentioned it, so he changed the subject back to puppy-proofing the house. “And we bought these things to cover all the electric wires to lamps and stuff so he can’t chew ‘em.”
“That’s smart,” said Abby. “Did you also buy him some things that he can chew instead?”
Lindsay said, “We bought him a squeaky pork chop, and a real pig’s ear, and a xylobone.”
Johnny said, “It’s a Nylabone, stupid. You’re thinking of a xylophone.”
Brian said, “We don’t use that word in this family. Apologize to your sister.”
“Which word: Nylabone or xylophone?”
“Johnny, you know the one I meant.”
“Sorry, Linds. You’re not that stupid.”
The grownups stifled a laugh, but Lindsay seemed okay with it and said, “I like xylobone better.”
“Attagirl, Linds,” said Julia. “You call it a xylobone if you want to.”
The conversation about the puppy continued until the doorbell rang at 10 minutes to 1:00.
“I think our applicant is here,” said Brian as he got up to answer the door.
Brian greeted Roberta Chen and introduced her to Abby and his family. Then he, Abby, and Roberta headed down to the lab. Larry had arrived back from lunch, and when he got his first sight of Roberta, he was both surprised and delighted.
 Recognized |
Brian Kendrick: A 41-year-old neuroscientist and cancer researcher
Julia Kendrick: Brian's 41-year-old wife. She is also a world-class violinist.
Johnny Kendrick: Their 6-year-old son
Lindsay Kendrick: Their 4-year-old daughter
Dr. Marie Schmidt: Julia's mother
Madison (Maddy) McPhail: Owner of Bo
Bo: Maddy McPhail's cancer-sniffing therapy dog
Abby Payne: Brian's partner on the project. She is 65 and a brilliant mathematician
Callie Bennett: The programmer on the project. She is Abby's cousin.
Malcolm Roberts (Mal): One of Brian's two lab technicians
Larry Posner: One of Brian's two lab technicians
Vivian Delacroix: An oncology professor at Wake Forest University also doing early cancer detection work
Roberta (Bertie) Chen: Brian's new lab technician
Picture courtesy of Imagen-4-Ultra-Exp
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