After her mom died when Delilah Timmel was three years old, she never left her father’s side. He was a scientist and worked in the lab everyday. Since Delilah could never be without him, she would accompany him. The two of them practically lived there. The other scientists in the lab started to just get used to her being there. She was even homeschooled there by some of her father’s assistants. They even ordered a lab coat for her, and as she grew she would save the old ones. As the years went on the white lab coats continued to get bigger. Delilah was on her way to becoming a Bachelor of Science when she got the call that her father had gotten himself into an accident.

“He must have left the stove on” one doctor said. Delilah knew her father never cooked, he simply didn’t have time! Suddenly Delilah regretted leaving him to go to college. All she wanted was to be like him. She admired the work he did, that’s the reason she left. “These are third degree burns, we will have to take him to the Operating Room immediately” said the plastic surgeon. Delilah knew she couldn’t leave, graduation was in a week and she needed her father’s support. Three days past, since her mother died, Delilah always deemed the number three as bad fortune. It was then when Delilah got the news that would change her and her father’s lives forever. Dr. Timmel was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease May 15th, 2008.
“He is a scientist, he is a scientist, he is a scientist” Delilah would say over and over again in her head. After all, it is a disease that could harm her father’s ability to think. Thinking is what scientists do. They think of a hypothesis and think to solve it. Although that wasn’t even what Delilah was most worried about. She knew about Alzheimer’s, she studied it for a semester in her sophomore year. The most dominant symptom of the disease is memory loss. Her father is her best friend, she would loose him in a slow and painful process.
Five days later, Delilah placed a cap on her head and put on her gown. It was the day she had been waiting for. However what she was really waiting for was the proud smile on her father’s face. That’s when the first symptom became obvious. Dr. Timmel acted as if Delilah were any other student. He was the only family she ever knew. There were no cheers for her as she received her diploma. She could only hear voices in her head telling her “none of this is real.”
She knew she was wrong. This was really happening to her. Weeks after her graduation, Delilah had gotten her first job. She wanted to keep busy so she wouldn’t be constantly worrying about her father. There was a lab nearby her childhood home where she worked under one of her dad’s old counterparts. Her dad didn’t want anyone to know about his diagnosis when he first found out, so for the most part, she kept silent. Except she did tell her boss the truth when he was wondering where she had been one morning. He felt great sadness for the Timmel’s and gave Delilah a bonus on every paycheck. She needed this money to pay the nurses who aided her father.
One day, Delilah was getting calls from the nurse who often worked during the afternoon. It was now 9:00 pm and Delilah was still working in the lab. The nurse stated that she had been trying to calm Dr. Timmel down for a couple hours now. “He is wondering where Janice is.” the nurse said. Janice was Delilah’s mother who died 24 years ago. Delilah rushed home right away. As she walked through the door her father sighed in relief, saying: “there you are Janice!” The two of them hadn’t talked about Delilah’s mother since May 15th.  This made Delilah cringe, she forgot that she looked like her mother.
Dr. Timmel’s condition started to deteriorate faster than expected. Delilah became more distant because every visit with her father became a personal struggle. She knew it wasn’t right for her to become so selfish. She decided to take another path in order to help her father. She would try to do something that was never done before. Cure Alzheimer’s.
Delilah teamed up with a hospital in the town over and started a clinical trial. After she stated her situation to some people of authority, they gave her a grant. Mostly everything was paid for. Delilah needed this to work. She abandoned her old life to save her father’s.
Three weeks after the clinical trial started, Dr. Timmel was lucid. He suddenly remembered everything. Delilah took this chance to update her father on what she had been doing. The nurses got the day off because Delilah was going to stay the whole day. No one ever knows how long lucidity might last. Delilah, for the first time, felt acknowledgement from her father. He was proud of her and she never wanted it to end. She spoke too soon, her father’s symptoms returned at 11:30 pm that night.
Three years had past since the diagnosis. Dr. Timmel was on hospice and the social worker said he only had a few days left to live. Delilah didn’t want to believe it but the social worker’s estimate was accurate. Delilah was holding her father’s hand when he took his last breath. Delilah’s sadness was overcome by anger. She didn’t solve the puzzle of Alzheimer’s until the year 2020. Delilah Timmel received the Nobel Prize in that same year.