| General Fiction posted November 1, 2025 | Chapters: |
...27 28 -29- 30 
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Lettie is visited by Julia and Earl at rehab
A chapter in the book Beating the Devil
Beating the Devil - Chapter 29
by Jim Wile
| Background A cancer researcher invents an early cancer detection system. |
Recap of Chapter 28: Lettie’s family visits her at the hospital, where she requires surgery for a broken hip resulting from slipping on ice. Sammy suggests a visit by Julia and Earl at the rehab center where Lettie will go for several weeks following the hospital stay.
Mal calls Julia and tells her Sammy’s idea, and Julia calls the rehab center and makes arrangements to come for a visit.
Brian and Bertie chat while working in the lab. Bertie raises a good question: If their system detects cancer during the Phase 1 human trials, what will happen if an oncologist can’t detect it with current methods?
Chapter 29
At 9:00 on Monday morning, Julia and Earl arrived at Atrium Pines Rehab Center and met with the Volunteer Services assistant coordinator. Earl had on his therapy dog vest and sat patiently at Julia’s side while she showed her credentials to the assistant.
Being a rehab facility in which patients follow precise schedules of therapy, activities, meals, etc., the assistant had prepared a schedule of visits, which she handed to Julia. She would meet with six patients in their private rooms for 10-15 minutes apiece, and there would be two 10-minute breaks within that time. Julia and Earl would debrief with the assistant at the end of the visit.
Lettie was their fourth stop. When they entered her room, they found her seated in a chair by her bed, and her face lit up.
“Hi, Miss Lettie. You look pretty perky,” said Julia as they came into her room. Earl was on a short leash, as he was for his entire time there.
“Hello, Julia. I could hardly wait for y’all to come. Hello there, Earl.”
Earl recognized her and started wagging his tail immediately. He walked over to greet her and danced around while she patted his head and scratched his neck.
“Earl, sit,” said Julia, and Earl sat right down next to Lettie’s chair.
“What a good boy, Earl,” said Lettie, who continued to pet him.
As Lettie and Julia chatted, Earl began getting restless. He stood up again and began sniffing all around. He eventually made his way to Lettie’s chair and began working his head beneath the arm of it and poking his nose between her side and the chair back.
“Earl, no!” said Julia firmly. “Come.”
Earl reluctantly returned to where he had been.
“Sit.”
He sat, but he was distracted. He snorted and shook his head.
“I’m sorry about that, Miss Lettie. I don’t know what got into him. He’s usually very polite.”
“Oh, he’s fine, Julia. Me and Earl good friends.”
But Earl shuddered. What was that smell? It was very faint and vaguely familiar. He suddenly remembered what it was. It was the smell that had been hurting Grandma! He’d hated that smell and wanted to protect her from it. And as that smell grew worse and scarier, he wanted to be near her even more, but she was fading. He tried his best, and then one night, she was just gone.
He shuddered again, got up, and began pacing.
Julia was surprised by this odd, uncommon behavior. “Earl, what’s wrong?”
He whimpered a few times.
“I’m sorry, Miss Lettie. I don’t know what’s gotten into him.”
“Tha’s alright, Julia. Maybe he just don’ like the way I smell. He was actin’ kinda funny at that Labor Day party at y’all’s house too. Tha’s what yo Momma and me was laughin’ about so much.”
Amused at the memory, Lettie turned to Earl. “’S okay, Earl. Maybe I put on some perfume next time you come visit me,” she said, chuckling.
With a wan smile, Julia said, “Miss Lettie, maybe he just needs a break right now. We usually take a break after every two patients, and he may just be a little antsy for one. I’m so sorry about this.”
“Don’tchu worry ‘bout it, Julia. It jus’ nice to see you both.”
“Maybe we could try again in a few days?”
“That’d be real nice. I’ll look forward to it.”
That evening, Julia discussed the visit with Brian. “It was just so strange the way he stuck his nose between the chair and her back and kept sniffing. I’ve never seen him behave like that with any other patient.”
“And you say he whimpered a few times?”
“Yeah. He snorted and shook his head, then he stood up and began pacing and whimpering.”
“Hmm… and Lettie said he was doing something similar at the party?”
“She didn’t elaborate. She kind of jokingly said Earl must not like the way she smells and that she and Mother were laughing about it. I remember seeing them laughing together, and it warmed my heart. I hadn’t seen her like that in a long time.”
“Oh, brother. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” asked Brian.
“Yeah, maybe. Earl spent so much time with Mother that he got used to the smell of cancer, and maybe he detected it in Lettie too?”
“Exactly what I was thinking. We might have our own cancer-sniffing dog here. That’s the way Bo began. Maddy said he kept sniffing her friend’s crotch, and she ended up being diagnosed with ovarian cancer.”
“What should we do? God, if only someone could invent a device able to sniff cancer to confirm what a dog smelled.”
“Huh, what a clever idea,” said Brian, laughing. “And what a great opportunity it would be to actually try it out on someone. All of us in the lab have tried it on ourselves, but it never registered any cancer. Not the pill part, just the breathalyzer.”
“I’m wondering, though,” said Julia, “is it ethical to use it on someone before it’s undergone human testing?”
“It’s a good question. I think there’s no problem if we only use the breathalyzer like Mal, Bertie, and I did. There’s no impact on a person using just that. Giving them the untested nanoparticle pill would be an ethics breach, though, because that could potentially affect a person.”
“Why don’t you and Mal discuss using just the breathalyzer and see what he thinks before possibly frightening Lettie with it?”
“That’s a good idea. I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”
“Tread softly, babe. That family’s had their fill of medical problems in the last couple of years.”
“I will.”
“Bertie, dear?”
“Yes, Malcolm, darling.”
“I want to thank you for completing rat duty for me last week. I will happily make up the time for it this week.”
“No need. It was my great pleasure.”
“Much as I appreciate that, I must insist.”
“Awright, den,” she said, using her gravelly Billy Bob Thornton impersonation from the movie Sling Blade.
Mal laughed. “You’re getting better at that.”
Brian came to the door of his office and said, “Mal, do you have a few minutes?”
“Sure, Brian.”
When he came in and sat, Brian told him of Julia and Earl’s visit to Lettie at the rehab center.
After he had described it, Mal said, “Yeah, that pretty well matches what Momma told me. She also mentioned the party and how Earl had behaved strangely there too. Are you thinking there’s something going on?”
“Could be. Earl spent an awful lot of time with Marie the three months she was here. He slept with her most nights. He was a great comfort to her. And it’s possible he smelled the same sort of smell coming from your mother. Not that Earl would know exactly what he was smelling. He’s not trained to detect cancer, but it’s possible the similarity was there, and he was reacting to it.
“I think Earl associates that smell with Marie’s illness and death. He was the one who notified us the night she died when he came scratching at our bedroom door and whining in the middle of the night. I don’t mean to frighten you, Mal, because God knows your family has been through a lot recently with Sammy and now with your mom. But, you know, we do have a means of early detection at our disposal that might just confirm what Earl smelled. I’m talking about only using the breathalyzer, not the pancoliver pill. What do you think?”
“I don’t see any downside if she’s agreeable, and I’m sure she would be. Let me talk to her and explain everything. Wouldn’t it be something if falling and breaking her hip ended up being a blessing in disguise?”
 Recognized |
Brian Kendrick: A 43-year-old neuroscientist and cancer researcher
Julia Kendrick: Brian's 43-year-old wife. She is also a world-class violinist.
Johnny Kendrick: Their 8-year-old son
Lindsay Kendrick: Their 6-year-old daughter
Earl Kendrick: The Kendrick's chocolate Labrador Retriever
Dr. Marie Schmidt: Julia's mother
Abby Payne: Brian's partner on the project. She is 67 and a brilliant mathematician.
Malcolm Roberts (Mal): One of Brian's two lab technicians
Tanya Roberts: Mal's wife
Samantha (Sammy) Roberts: Mal's 6-year-old daughter
Letitia Roberts (Lettie): Mal's mother
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
Cedric (aka Cecil) Washington: Marie's premier violin student and friend
Maddy McPhail: Owner of Bo
Bo McPhail: Maddy McPhail's cancer-sniffing therapy dog
Dr. Renee Houlihan: Marie's oncologist
Dr. Paul Rieke: Brian's former chemistry professor and mentor, now a good friend
Picture courtesy of Imagen-4-Ultra
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